The intergenerational transmission of implicit and explicit attitudes toward smoking: Predicting adolescent smoking initiation

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Abstract

This study examined the intergenerational transmission of implicit and explicit attitudes toward smoking, as well as the role of these attitudes in adolescents’ smoking initiation. There was evidence of intergenerational transmission of implicit attitudes. Mothers who had more positive implicit attitudes had children with more positive implicit attitudes. In turn, these positive implicit attitudes of adolescents predicted their smoking initiation 18-months later. Moreover, these effects were obtained above and beyond the effects of explicit attitudes. These findings provide the first evidence that the intergenerational transmission of implicit cognition may play a role in the intergenerational transmission of an addictive behavior.

Section snippets

Intergenerational transmission of attitudes

Given the historical utility of both implicit and explicit attitudes in predicting behavior, it is important to understand the origins and development of these attitudes. Currently, little is known about the early developmental origins of implicit attitudes. Recently, Rudman, Phelan, and Heppen (2007) reported that smokers’ implicit attitudes toward smoking were uniquely predicted by early smoking experience, whereas their explicit attitudes toward smoking were predicted by recent smoking

Participants

Participants were adolescents (10–18) and their parents who were participants in an 18 month longitudinal web-based study of families and smoking socialization. Families were recruited through adult participants in the Indiana University (IU) Smoking Survey, an ongoing cohort-sequential study of the natural history of cigarette smoking (see e.g., Chassin, Presson, Sherman, & Pitts, 2000). The larger study has been ongoing since 1980, with yearly in school assessments in 1980–1983 of all

Measurement invariance test

For both fathers’ and mothers’ models, measurement invariance (i.e., invariance of factor loadings and intercepts) in IAT scores was supported across boys and girls (model chi-square difference: 12.01 for the fathers’ model and 11.17 for the mothers’ model at df = 8) except the intercept of one of the four child IAT measures. In the structural path invariance tests, this intercept was allowed to vary across boys and girls.

Structural path invariance test

As shown in Table 1, structural path invariance was supported across boys

Discussion

The goal of this study was to examine the intergenerational transmission of both explicit and implicit attitudes toward cigarette smoking and the role of these attitudes in adolescents’ smoking initiation (and the intergenerational transmission of smoking). To our knowledge, this is the first study to directly test the intergenerational transmission of implicit attitudes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the correlation between implicit and explicit attitudes, although significant for fathers’ models,

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by Grant DA13555 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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