A Person-Centered Approach to Moralization-The Case of Vaping

Using e-cigarettes for smoking cessation is a controversial topic among health experts. Evidence suggests that vaping might have been moralized among the general public. Despite the detrimental consequences of moralizing health behaviors on social cohesion and health, some argue for using moralizati...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2022-05, Vol.19 (9), p.5628
Main Authors: Arhiri, Laura, Gherman, Mihaela A, Holman, Andrei C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude
Attitudes
Child
Cigarette smoking
Cigarettes
Cross-Sectional Studies
Drug addiction
Electronic cigarettes
Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems
Ethics
Health behavior
Humans
Morality
Nicotine
Ostracism
Perceptions
Prototypes
Regulation
Rhetoric
Self control
Smokers
Smoking
Vaping
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Using e-cigarettes for smoking cessation is a controversial topic among health experts. Evidence suggests that vaping might have been moralized among the general public. Despite the detrimental consequences of moralizing health behaviors on social cohesion and health, some argue for using moralization strategically to prevent and combat vaping. We aim to add to the body of literature showing the dangers of moralization in health by proposing a person-centered approach to the moralization of anti-vaping attitudes. Our cross-sectional survey explores the moralization of anti-vaping attitudes and its predictors on a convenience sample of 348 Romanian never-vapers, before the final vote to severely restrict vaping. By fitting a hierarchical regression model on our data, we found support for a unique contribution of negative prototypes (β = 0.13) and opinions of vapers (β = 0.08) in predicting moralization, with significant contributions of piggybacking on moralized self-control, on moralized attitudes toward smoking and on sanctity/degradation, disgust, anger, harm to children, and gender. Together, these variables explained 56% of the variance of the moralization of anti-vaping attitudes. Our findings add to our knowledge of motivated moralization and advise against using moralization in health, suggesting that people may weaponize it to legitimize group dislike.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph19095628