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Inducing nostalgia to people who smoke may help in creating a scenario that displays negative attitudes towards smoking, allowing them to increase their drives in quitting. This latest research in finding an approach that will help in suppressing the need to smoke was found to be effective compared to smokers who did not experience negative memory on smoking.

Medical News Today published a research authored by Ali Hussain and Maria Lapinski of the Michigan State University. Their study suggests that smoking campaigns should focus on conjuring nostalgia-evoking messages instead of advertisements that evoke negative emotions towards smoking. The study was included in the journal Communication Research Reports.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is still one of the leading causes of deaths, that could have been prevented in the United States. Mortality rates due to smoking and its complications account for 20 percent of the total mortality rate in the United States every year.

In the research, it has been observed that instead of feeling motivated to stop smoking, the current campaigns against smoking illustrating the health implications of smoking only creates fear, disgust and bad feelings towards the ones who are trying to scare smokers.

Nowadays, there are already several artificial alternatives to smoking that produces fewer toxins for the body. The Independent UK reports that health experts have already given their approval in vaping as a safer alternative to smoking. In a 6-month experiment involving ex-smokers, those who have switched from smoking real cigarettes to e-cigarettes had fewer toxins and cancer-inhibiting substances in their body.

Meanwhile, the PSA study included test subjects aged between 18 and 39. Some of the smokers were exposed to nostalgic public service announcement (PSA) while a different group was exposed to today's current quit-smoking campaigns. The earlier showed more interest in dropping smoking while those exposed to the traditional campaigns showed lower effectivity results.