Changes in smoking legislation, attitudes, and behavior.

Legislative changes and attitude campaigns are generally acknowledged to be effective in the battle against smoking and its health hazards. In some instances it seems as if these means are insufficient to produce necessary change. In this study, the following general hypotheses were posed: (1) an advertising ban leads to reduced tobacco sale and (2) to reduced smoking; (3) attitude campaigns improve attitudes about regulation of smoking and (4) reduce smoking. In addition, two national hypotheses were formulated. The results supported neither hypothesis! It is concluded that it is important to follow the development closely with scientific methods of high quality. Further, smoking campaigns must include a broad spectrum of interventions to be sufficiently effective.     

Postpartum return to smoking: staging a "suspended" behavior.

Two hundred fifty-six pregnant women who had quit smoking were classified into the precontemplation (PC), contemplation (C), preparation (PA), or action (A) stages of change for postpartum smoking cessation based on a 3-item algorithm assessing personal goals, self-efficacy, and smoking behavior. Logistic regression and event history analyses indicated group differences in return to smoking at 6 weeks and 3, 6, and 12 months postpartum. The percentage of women who returned to postpartum smoking was highest in the precontemplation stage and decreased with each subsequent stage, that is, at 6 weeks 83% of PCs, 64% of Cs, 35% of PAs, and 24% of As had returned to smoking. Results lend support for the stages of change for postpartum smoking abstinence. Stage-based interventions may be developed to assist women in maintaining abstinence postpartum.     

Social representations of smoking and attitudes towards smoking restrictions in the Norwigian Navy

The present study investigated the relationship bewteen social representations about smokers and smoking, and attitudes towards smoking restrictions. Data were collected by means of questionnaires among a sample of employees ( n =4224)in the Norwegian Navy. Based on the results from first- and second-order principal components analyses, three dimensions of social representations were identified. The dimensions were labeled "negative representations", "positive representations" and "social influence". The three dimensions clearly differentiated between daliy, occasional and non-smokers. Further, structural equation modeling of the relation between social representations and attitudes towards smoking restrictions, indicated that social representations function as intermediating factors of the effect from smoking states upon attitudes towards smoking restrictions.
The findings indicate the need to focus upon social psyshological processes taking place in the ineraction between groups of smokers and non-smokers, as understanding of such processes may be relevant in preventing the development of group conflict.     

Differences in smoking attitudes of adolescents and young adults

This study employed the Theory of Planned Behavior to examine the differences between adolescent (n = 182) and young adults (n = 209) in their intention to smoke and examined possible differences. Analysis showed that young adults had more positive self-reported attitudes toward smoking than adolescents, had higher intentions to smoke, lower perceived behavioral control over smoking and perceived they were more informed about smoking. The Theory of Planned Behavior provided good prediction of intention for both young adults (R2 = .70, attitudes, information, and past behavior significant) and adolescents (R2 = .68, attitudes, past behavior significant). For both samples attitudes were the strongest predictor of intentions to smoke. Implications for understanding intention toward smoking between adolescents and young adults are discussed.     

Rethinking procrastination: positive effects of "active" procrastination behavior on attitudes and performance

Researchers and practitioners have long regarded procrastination as a self-handicapping and dysfunctional behavior. In the present study, the authors proposed that not all procrastination behaviors either are harmful or lead to negative consequences. Specifically, the authors differentiated two types of procrastinators: passive procrastinators versus active procrastinators. Passive procrastinators are procrastinators in the traditional sense. They are paralyzed by their indecision to act and fail to complete tasks on time. In contrast, active procrastinators are a "positive" type of procrastinator. They prefer to work under pressure, and they make deliberate decisions to procrastinate. The present results showed that although active procrastinators procrastinate to the same degree as passive procrastinators, they are more similar to nonprocrastinators than to passive procrastinators in terms of purposive use of time, control of time, self-efficacy belief, coping styles, and outcomes including academic performance. The present findings offer a more sophisticated understanding of procrastination behavior and indicate a need to reevaluate its implications for outcomes of individuals.     

Emotional competence and aggressive behavior in school-age children

Examined emotional competence in 87 children, aged 7–10 years, who varied with respect to reports of aggressive behavior to determine whether individual differences in emotional competence characterize children with higher levels of aggressive behavior. Emotional competence was assessed during a 1-hr lab visit that included (a) an observational period consisting of a modified disappointment paradigm, (b) assessment of cognitive and language abilities, and (c) 2 structured emotion interviews. Children with higher levels of aggressive behavior exhibited more intense and frequent expressions of anger, both as reported by mothers and as observed during the disappointment paradigm. Less sophisticated ability to identify the causes of emotion also characterized children with higher levels of aggressive behavior. Gender moderated the relation between aggressive behavior and type of emotion identified such that reports of happiness (in response to receiving a disappointing prize) were associated with lower levels of reported aggressive behavior for boys. The value of assessing children's emotional competence in the context of an emotionally arousing situation is suggested by these findings.     

Emotional and personality changes following cingulotomy

The effects of bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) lesions on emotional and personality functioning were studied. Patients undergoing cingulotomy for chronic intractable pain were assessed on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Profile of Mood States (POMS), cognitive tests, and pain ratings, pre- and postsurgically. Patients with intractable pain, not treated with cingulotomy, served as controls. Cingulotomy patients experienced reductions in POMS-Tension, POMS-Anger, and MMPI Scale 7 (Psychasthenia) compared with baseline and the controls. POMS-Tension was significantly correlated with attention-intention performance. The results indicate that the ACC modulates emotional experience, related to self-perceived tension, and that there is relationship between the emotional and the attentional effects of cingulotomy.     

Emotional expressions forecast approach-avoidance behavior

The contention that basic behavioral intentions are forecasted by emotional expressions has received surprisingly little empirical support. We introduce a behavioral task that gauges the speed with which movement of angry and fearful faces (toward or away from an expressor's gaze) are accurately detected. In two studies we found that perceivers were faster to correctly detect approaching anger faces (i.e., faces that moved in the direction of their own gaze). The opposite, however, was not true for fear expressions. These findings offer evidence that, at least for anger displays, the basic behavioral intent to approach is strongly transmitted and at very low-levels of processing, even priming congruent behavioral responses in observers. The null results for fear faces may indicate that these signal a “freezing” response or behavioral inhibition rather than flight per se. The results of this work are discussed in relation to contemporary theories of emotion.     

Adolescent smoking behavior and outcome expectancies

Adolescent smoking behavior is assumed to be associated with smoking outcome expectancies. Results in this paper are based on data from the control group of two data collections among Norwegian secondary school students taken approximately 30 months apart (T1 and T2). The dimensionality of smoking outcome expectancies was the same at both time points, revealing three components ("Addicted", "Not harmful" and "Social"). After correction for attenuation, the Pearson's correlation between T1 and T2 was 0.41 for the total sumscore, indicating low to moderate relative stability. When examining smoking expectancy sumscore means by smoking habits at T1 and T2, never smokers were different from smokers on both occasions. Never smokers scored low on "Social" and "Not harmful", and high on "Addictive". All associations were statistically significant (p < 0.001). The "Social" dimension was the strongest predictor of smoking behavior at T1 and T2. One of the outcome expectancy sumscores ("Addictive") at T1 predicted smoking habits at T2 after controlling for smoking habits at T1 (p < 0.01). This predictor was significant also after entering outcome expectancy sumscores at T2 into the model (p < 0.05). These results indicate that outcome expectations other than the health-related ones should be paid attention to when planning new prevention programs.     

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

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.     

The theory of "truth": how counterindustry campaigns affect smoking behavior among teens.

This study used structural equation modeling to test a theory-based model of the pathways by which exposure to the "truth" counterindustry media campaign influenced beliefs, attitudes, and smoking behavior in national random-digit-dial telephone surveys of 16,000 12- to 17-year-olds before, 8 months after, and 15 months after campaign launch. Consistent with concepts from the theory of reasoned action, youth in markets with higher levels of campaign exposure had more negative beliefs about tobacco industry practices and more negative attitudes toward the tobacco industry. Models also provided support for a social inoculation effect, because negative industry attitudes were associated with lower receptivity to protobacco advertising and with less progression along a continuum of smoking intentions and behavior.     

Development and validation of a scale measuring attitudes toward smoking

The authors developed the Smoking Attitudes Scale (SAS) and administered it to 2 samples of U.S. students who were smokers or nonsmokers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL (K. G. J?reskog & D. S?rbom, 1989) methodology revealed that the SAS consists of 4 factors. The overall instrument possesses good internal consistency and adequate construct validity as well.     

Emotional reactions to harmful intergroup behavior

In this paper, we examined reactions to situations in which, although one is not personally involved, one could see oneself connected to either the perpetrators or the victims of unfair behavior. We manipulated participants' similarity and measured their identification to either one of two groups which participants later learned was the victim or the perpetrator of harmful behavior. As predicted, making salient similarities to the victims lead participants to: 1) appraise the perpetrator's behavior as more unfair; 2) experience more anger; and 3) be more likely to take action against it and less prone to show support for it as a function of their level of identification with their salient ingroup. In sharp contrast, focusing participants' attention on their similarities to the perpetrators reversed this pattern of findings: Compared to high identifiers, low identifiers appraised the behavior as more unfair than high identifiers, which made them feel angry (and guilty) and less likely to show support for the perpetrator's behavior. The data also provide strong support for a mediational model in which appraisal of the situation colors the emotional reaction which in turn orients action tendencies. We discuss the implications of our findings for the issue of group‐based emotions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.