Implicit Attitudes toward Smoking: How the Smell of Cigarettes Influences College-Age Smokers and Non-Smokers
Journal of Health Psychology: An Interdisciplinary, International Journal
Published online on March 11, 2013
Abstract
The habit of smoking may have automatic behavioral components guided by implicit attitudes. Smokers’ attitudes toward smoking should thus be less negative than nonsmokers’, so that a salient smoking cue (smell) is able to activate positive aspects of these attitudes. An affective priming task was used to explore this hypothesis. Unexpectedly, smokers and nonsmokers showed equally negative implicit attitudes, irrespective of smell. Smokers exposed to the cigarette smell did, however, display generally slower responses than nonsmokers, suggesting attentional bias. This could have implications for smoking policies in contexts where attentional factors affect performance.