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Smokers make up 23% of the Canadian population, most likely more as a smokers was defined as someone who smokes pack a day (Statistics Canada, 2000). There must be more smokers out there that feel this malaise with me. Along with this distress, goes the equally stressing issues of our own desires (in a great many circumstances) to smoke, to quit and the difficulties involved. All of these stresses tend to make smokers want to quit, while at the same time lighting a cigarette. Being a smoker doesn’t only bring with it today the plain and chemical health risks but also psychological risks. This constant flux between the satisfying and gratifying act of smoking and the now all too obvious risks to ones health can create a great deal of cognitive dissonance. What happened though, when a smoker turns to psychology for help, or what of the smoker reading anything from the “objective” world of psychology regarding smoking. In the majority of the “means of quitting” type articles I have read, there seem to be a tone, something about the way it is presented that can be both supportive and derisive at the same time. In these articles, the main interest lie in the right place, but peripheral to this supportive message, there is often negative messages about health and social risks. Depending on where in the articles these message appear, they have more or less effect on the reader. Some of the simplest psychological precepts, like primacy and latency can give the reader a greater or lesser sense of self worth. This, among other things to be examined in greater depth later, can detract from motivation to quit or even further set a smoker in their ways. A great factor in motivation to quit smoking comes from what smoking does to one’s health. Drastic and terrible things like innumerable forms of cancer, heart deasese, stroke. These health risks go beyond what the average person is comfortable with, and from here, there stem problems with helping people quit. The following in an excerpt from one of many websites offering help for smokers. Nicotine and other tobacco toxins cause free radical damage to cells and destroy vitamins and minerals thereby weakening the immune system. Besides nicotine, cigarette smoke contains tar, arsenic, cyanide, DDT, ammonia, carbon monoxide and over 4,700 chemical components including approximately 500 known toxins which include cardiac poisons, cancer causing agents and industrial solvents. Nicotine is one of the most powerful poisons known to mankind. It is widely used as an insecticide. It is this drastic and almost sickening reports on the effects of smoking that heighten dissonance between the smoker’s desire to quit and the extreme difficulty of quitting. Anyone who has ever smoked more than one to five cigarettes a day can tell you how difficult it is to quit smoking. The addiction to smoking has been likened to that of heroine or alcoholism. However, there are so many factors at play in the addiction to smoking that one must take this statement with a grain of salt. The smoker who hears of the possible dependence nicotine engenders, can make several decisions. First, and least likely, is that they will hate having something controlling their life like that and make and attitudinal and behavioral change. In the other case the interpreter of the aforementioned information may interpret it as a reason not to quit (“well, if it can be harder to quit than heroine, I don’t have much chance in quitting. Motivation seems to be the biggest cue as to the potential success of a person quitting smoking . And this is only the tip of the counter productive iceberg. One of the other new supposed discoveries in the quit smoking craze has been the idea that smoking is a disease. Now, there are definite pro’s and con’s to viewing smoking in this manner (Smoking Cessation Clinic, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2000). This approach, when taken from s psychological view can be quite helpful as it takes into account some of the social, psychological and medical factors in the difficulty of smoking cessation. The problem that this “diagnosis” causes can counteract some of the effectiveness of this method. First of all, the smoker is lead to believe, with label of disease, that something has happened to them or that they are sick. In a sense, something has happened to them (most likely manipulation into smoking and addiction…) and take a more passive stance towards the idea of quitting. In this case, the quitter can become a patient, expecting a doctor to fix their problem. In this case, the motivation to quit isn’t internal, and without the internal drive to quit, little progress can be made. What about the attitudes of peers, or experts on the psychology of the smoker. If you are a smoker and the majority of your friends are also smokers, then there will be pressure on you to smoke socially around them. If you are a smoker in a group of mostly non smokers, there will be pressure on the individual not to smoke. Depending on the frame of mind of the smoker, either one of these positions may be uncomfortable. In the former, if the smoker is receptive to the idea of quitting, this situation causes stress, as the smoker is pressured by internal drives to smoke (satisfaction, physical addiction, mental addiction, etc…) as well as external drives (social pressure to conform, social mimicry, etc…). Now, take care not to think of this as something that happens every time a smoker lights a cigarette, at least not consciously, however, I contend that this sort of pressure and cognitive dissonance, over time and repetition, affect the smoker in negative ways. In the latter, it is easier to see where the discomfort to the smoker lies, in the constant pressure to quit. Even if the smoker’s associates never mention the fact that the smoker should quit, the pressure remains. It can well be imagined that in today’s society, since the majority of people know about the adverse effects of smoking and are anti smoking if they are a non smoker. I make this contention without the proper statistics to back the claim, however, it would seem reasonable with all of the research on the effects of second hand smoke. I am also certain that by now, the reader is familiar with the new types of cigarette packages out on the market. Currently, only a few of the Canadian brands (duMaurier, Vintage) sport the new warnings, but what does the Canadian government think the outcome of this new legislation be? In studies on the effects of an anti- drinking and driving campaigns comparing high stress and low stress here in Canada and in Britain, there was actually more effect in the lower stress condition. These findings were supported by research on high stress and low stress on dental habits (Janis and Feshbach, 1953). In the case of the high stress group, there was a feeling that the viewer was dissimilar enough from those he or she was observing, that the message was dismissed. It could also be the case that people seeing the terribly graphic nature of the pictures of diseased mouths found it to be too distressing and failed to retain the message. Could it not be a similar situation with the current attempt to cut back n smoking. What other methods has our fair government use to try to persuade us to quit smoking? Several years ago, the first warning came out on the cigarette packages. Since then there has been a drop in the number of smokers in Canada. The decline isn’t marked, however, there could be a correlation. This moderate form of propaganda / information that seems to have the greater effect. Like the forbidden toy experiments (Aronson & Carlsmith, 1963) the high stress condition (anger as opposed to annoyance at a child playing with a specific toy, judged to be of some importance to the child) resisted more to attitude change than the moderate stress condition (annoyance). It seems as though this principle holds here, but in the interests of public health, more “must” be done about smoking. Less drastic measures than those currently being undertaken would probably be more advisable. Last but not least, from other sectors of the Psychological community comes certain ideas about smokers. First, people who have what is dubbed as “addictive personalities” can come to disregard the need to quit because the feel that they can do little to change part of their “personalities”. Personality is seen as something constant and requiring a great deal more effort than they are willing to put in. Also, there is some belief that smokers are less happy with their live. This statement seems to be backed by higher rates of depression in smokers and lower scores on tests of self-esteem. If in someone’s self schemata, one of the roles is “smoker”, that person may come to identify with the group(smokers in general). If the smoker is aware of these statistics about the “quality” of life as a smoker, they may come to embody them, even though they are happy with their lives. This may in turn make it more difficult for the smoker to quit. In the end, all smokers have to quit smoking at one time or another, whether we survive cigarettes (by quitting) or not (we die). Internal motivation is the true key to quitting smoking and all that the quitter can really ask for is support. Bibliography: Works cited: -Aronson & Carlsmith, (1963) Effect of Severity of threat on the devaluation of forbidden behavior Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. - Janis and Feshbach, (1953) Effects of fear-arousing communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Internet: http://www.doryanet.co.il/smokeout/2.htm http://members.spree.com/interpro/nicotine.htm http://www.paihdelinkki.fi/english/addictionline/info/624.html http://www.committedquitters.com/library/psych_addict.htm http://members.aol.com/BreakHabit/drugs.html http://detnews.com/1999/health/9912/20/12200136.htm http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/health/why-smoke/whysmoke.txt http://stcwww.statcan.ca/start.html Word Count: 1663
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