The present study examines the immediate attitudinal effects of fear appeal and normative persuasive messages in the National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign's anti-marijuana public service announcements. The public service announcements are a part of a series called the "Above the Influence" campaign, which attempts to utilize modern electronic media to communicate anti-marijuana messages. However, an opposing body of research has claimed that there are so-called boomerang effects occurring as a result of unintentional normative messages being present in many of the campaign's advertisements. The present study aims to reconcile the contradictory findings present in the previous research by exposing subjects to differing levels of Above the Influence PSAs and determining the effects of increased exposure. The present study does not provide any statistically significant evidence indicating that the fear appeals were effective, and findings contradict the National Youth Anti-Drug Campaign research claiming that the ads are creating more anti-marijuana attitudes among teens. However, the results from the present study also fail to confirm the existence of normative messages being unintentionally communicated in the Above the Influence PSAs. Finally, the present study does provide evidence of a positive correlation between perceived normativeness of marijuana use and pro-marijuana attitudes.
