Attentional Mediation of Cigarette Smoking's Effect on Anxiety

It was hypothesized that smoking's calming effects are cognitively mediated and depend on the presence of a benign distractor; smoking narrows the focus of attention, thereby reducing anxiety by facilitating distraction from stressful cognitions (cf. C. M. Steele R. A. Josephs's [1988] att...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health psychology 1997-07, Vol.16 (4), p.359-368
Main Authors: Kassel, Jon D, Shiffman, Saul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Anxiety
Anxiety - psychology
Arousal
Attention
Distraction
Factors
Female
Human
Humans
Male
Mediators
Self Disclosure
Smoking
Smoking - psychology
Stress, Psychological - complications
Tobacco Smoking
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Summary:It was hypothesized that smoking's calming effects are cognitively mediated and depend on the presence of a benign distractor; smoking narrows the focus of attention, thereby reducing anxiety by facilitating distraction from stressful cognitions (cf. C. M. Steele R. A. Josephs's [1988] attention-allocation model of alcohol reinforcement). This notion was tested by examining the effect of smoking (vs. not smoking) on anxiety with and without a concurrent distraction in 82 smokers; distraction effects were also assessed in 42 nonsmokers. As predicted, smoking reduced anxiety only when paired with a distractor. Further, these findings could not be explained by direct nicotine effects or nicotine withdrawal. Several measures of attention allocation failed to confirm the hypothesized cognitive mechanisms, however. Implications of the findings are discussed.
ISSN:0278-6133
1930-7810
DOI:10.1037/0278-6133.16.4.359