The relationship between thought suppression and smoking cessation☆
Section snippets
Participants
Participants age 18 and older were recruited at the Fort Lauderdale (Florida) Museum of Science and Discovery in response to a poster stating “Current and ex-smokers, be a part of science, participate in a study now. A free self-help smoking cessation manual is available for all participants.” Participants were asked to read and sign a consent form that informed them that the study would take approximately 15 minutes and that their answers would be confidential. All participants who requested a
Results
Table 1 shows descriptive statistics and scores on the WBSI, the FTND, and the CO test for the two groups. A planned comparison was performed on WBSI scores using an independent samples t test. This analysis revealed a significant difference between the two groups [t(48)=1.90; P<.05, one-tailed] with the difference in the hypothesized direction. Current smokers who had unsuccessfully attempted to quit (M=46.28) scored significantly higher than ex-smokers (M=40.36) on the WBSI. As shown in Table
Discussion
The present study examined whether there is an association between the general tendency to suppress thoughts and smoking cessation, by comparing the WBSI scores of ex-smokers with scores of current smokers who had unsuccessfully attempted to quit. As predicted, current smokers had significantly higher WBSI scores than ex-smokers. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that a general tendency to suppress thoughts may produce intrusive thoughts that interfere with smoking cessation.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks are extended to Ms. Betsy Hennings and the staff of the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science for allowing us to use their facilities for this study. We would also like to thank Dr. Edward Simco for help in data analyses.
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Portions of this paper were presented at the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy Annual Convention, Toronto, Canada, 1999.