Ricerc@Sapienza

Public service antismoke announcements (PSA) are essential tools for promoting messages
worthy of society. In 2015 the Italian Government released an anti-smoking PSA to raise young people’s
awareness of the smoking dangers. To demonstrate the effectiveness of that campaign, the present study
investigated the mental response of 56 participants while watching the PSA through the
Electroencephalogram (EEG). The EEG is frequently employed in neuromarketing to face the limitations

Human factors’ aim is to understand and evaluate the interactions between people and tasks, technologies, and environment. Among human factors, it is possible then to include the subjective reaction to external stimuli, due to individual’s characteristics and states of mind. These processes are also involved in the perception of antismoking public service announcements (PSAs), the main tool for governments to contrast the first cause of preventable deaths in the world: tobacco addiction.