Elsevier

Addictive Behaviors

Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 182-186
Addictive Behaviors

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Automatic associations with the sensory aspects of smoking: Positive in habitual smokers but negative in non-smokers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2005.04.014Get rights and content

Abstract

To test whether pictorial stimuli that focus on the sensory aspects of smoking elicit different automatic affective associations in smokers than in non-smokers, 31 smoking and 33 non-smoking students completed a single target IAT. Explicit attitudes were assessed using a semantic differential. Automatic affective associations were positive in smokers but negative in non-smokers. Only automatic affective associations but not self-reported attitudes were significantly correlated with craving. Together these findings are consistent with the idea that positive (automatic) attitudes are involved in smoking behavior and support the view that direct and indirect measures tap different cognitive motivational systems.

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Participants

Thirty-one smoking and 33 non-smoking students (mean age = 22.9, SD = 3.8), participated in return for a small token (candy). Smokers' mean score on the Fagerstöm Tollerance Questionnaire (FTQ: Prokhorov et al., 2000) was 3.1 (SD = 1.4) (see Table 1).

Measures and procedure

Participants were tested in small groups with a maximum of 4 individuals. Smokers started with rating their craving for a cigarette on a 5-point scale. Then participants completed the stIAT, a computerized reaction time task. Based on Wigboldus et al.

Single target IAT

Following Wigboldus et al. (2005) we included only the median response latencies of the correct responses to the attribute items in the two critical phases (see Table 2). To explore the difference between smokers and non-smokers we calculated a stIAT effect so that negative stIAT effects indicate relatively strong associations with unpleasant (see also Table 2). Given our specific hypotheses the reported tests are one-tailed. The stIAT effect was significantly more positive for smokers than for

Discussion

The present results show that smokers tend to display positive associations with smoking when they are focused on the sensory aspects of smoking. These findings are consistent the results of Sherman et al. (2003) and extend them in that the presently used measure of automatic associations could differentiate between smokers and non-smokers. This suggests that specific valence associations with smoking may be important in smoking behaviour. Perhaps even more positive associations with smoking

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Bert Hoekzema for his technical assistance. Correspondence concerning this article can be addressed to Jorg Huijding, Department of Clinical and Developmental Psychology; University of Groningen; Grote Kruisstraat 2/1; 9712 TS Groningen; The Netherlands.

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