Category: Psychology

I saw an anti-smoking pop-up the other day. I hate pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-throughs and pop-whatever-else-they’ve-come-up-with, but I did appreciate the message. Not enough to make me like pop-ups, but it was nice to know they’re being used for a good purpose, at least. If I remember rightly it mentioned some of the classic health problems associated with smoking, but as usual none of the lesser known ones. For instance, did you know smoking causes stress? That’s one example. Here’s another one. It’s time to dust off your brain trainer, and postpone your application to Who Wants to be a Millionnaire?, because evidence suggests that smoking impairs certain cognitive functions.

There’s some debate in this area though. This is often the case with smoking research. I remember one study that analysed all the evidence on passive smoking, and found that there were no negative health effects – until they removed the studies done by authors connected to the tobacco industry – then it showed, correctly, that there are indeed negative health effects.

In this case, the debate is between some studies that show nicotine improves cognitive functions, and others that say it weakens them. The problem is that many of the studies didn’t include an important ingredient of the scientific process – a control group, in this case, non-smokers. This is important, because without one you couldn’t say whether smoking caused an increase in performance, or removed a deficit. A study in 2000 tried to clear this up. (1)

To measure cognitive function, the researchers used the Sternberg task, which goes a little something like this: a string of letters is presented on a computer screen, then they disappear. Later, a couple of letters come up and you have to say if they were in the original string or not. It’s a test of both memory and reaction time – how long does it take for people to decide whether or not the letters were in the original set, and how accurate are they, under different conditions?

In this study, the ‘conditions’ were whether people were heavy smokers (20+ cigarettes per day), light smokers (10 or fewer cigarettes per day), or non-smokers, and whether they have either recently smoked a cigarette or have abstained for 12 or more hours.

What happened?

When smokers were allowed to smoke, there was no difference in reaction time or accuracy between smokers or non-smokers. The scores were about the same. But, when smokers were deprived of cigarettes for 12 hours before taking the test, the results were different: this time the heavy smokers did worse than the non-smokers. After a cigarette, however, their performance returned to about the same level.

This suggests that smoking does not heighten performance on this task, but merely removes a deficit in performance that smoking itself creates. This is similar to the finding that smoking causes stress.

Urges to smoke

But it raises another question – does nicotine deprivation slow reaction times directly, or is the urge to smoke distracting people from the task?

The technical explanation, some researchers propose, goes like this: drug use is related to an action schema, stored in long-term memory: basically, a set of instructions telling smokers to find and take the drug, which is triggered by a drug-related cue (seeing cigarette packets, seeing other people smoke, etc.). According to this theory, if the schema is triggered, but smokers don’t get to take the drug for whatever reason, they get an urge. Once the schema is active, some mental resources will be allocated away from other functions in order to maintain the urge.

A study in 2003 investigated whether the urge is what causes poorer reaction times. (2) They also used the Sternberg task, and had three groups – a group allowed to smoke, a group deprived of cigarettes, and a group deprived of cigarettes but given nicotine patches. The people given patches had an equal urge to smoke a cigarette as the deprived group, but they got a nicotine fix. So it’s an ideal test of whether nicotine deprivation or the urge causes poor performance.

In the end, the deprived group had worse results than the patch group, who had worse results than the smoking group. Although the deprived group had the same urge to smoke as the patch group, they did worse on the test.

This shows that having the urge to smoke does interfere with the performance on this test; but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In addition to the effect of the urge, nicotine deprivation has some direct effect on the brain which slows down reaction times.

If you smoke, how often are you in a withdrawal state? Whenever you go without smoking for over an hour or so, you’re in withdrawal, and at least one of your mental functions – reaction time – is not as working as sharply as it could if you were a non-smoker. This has important ramifications – pop-ups! You’ll take longer to react click the ‘x’ of a pop-up window. You might even click the fake ‘x’, that just opens up another 10 pop-ups! I don’t know about you, but I think that’s as good a reason as any to quit.

References:

(1) Tait, R., Martin-Iverson, M., Michie, P.T., Dusci, L. (2000). The effects of cigarette consumption on the Sternberg visual memory search paradigm. Addiction. 95(3), 437-446.
(2) Havermans, R.C., Debaere, S., Smulders, F.T.T., Wiers, R.W., Jansen, A.T.M. (2003). Effects of Cue Exposure, Urge to Smoke, and Nicotine Deprivation on Cognitive Performance in Smokers. Psychology of Addictive Behavious, 17(4), 336-339.

Contrary to popular opinion, smoking isn’t relaxing.  The evidence shows smoking actually causes stress, rather than reduce it.  That “aahhhhh” feeling when you light up, is an illusion.  If you’re a smoker reading this, it’s hard to prove this to you, because from your point of view, you have a certain level of stress, then you light up a cigarette, and that certain amount of stress reduces.  Based on your first hand experience, cigarettes are relaxing, and what more evidence could you possibly need than your own first hand experience?

The theory behind this is called the ‘Deprivation Reversal Model’.  Smoking creates stress between cigarettes, and removes it during and immediately after smoking.  There’s a little experiment that you can do that will make the idea behind this model more clear.  First, find a wall.  Any good, solid wall will do.  Next, walk right up to it, so you’re toes are touching it.  Then, repeatedly bash your head into the wall.  Go ahead!  Keep doing it for about a minute, taking note of how you feel.  Then stop, and again take note of how you feel.

Now I’ve never actually tried this myself, but I’m told that after you stop, you feel relief, the pain is reduced and you just generally feel better than you did when you were banging your forehead against solid concrete.

This the analogy for smoking.  Banging your head represents the time between cigarettes (withdrawal), and stress gradually increases during this time.  Stopping banging your head represents having a cigarette, after which, some of that stress is removed.  The low-stress period lasts about an hour, then you re-enter withdrawal, and you’re back up against the wall.

How do you know?

First you might ask yourself, if cigarettes relax you, why are they more pleasurable when there has been a long time since the last one?  Surely the opposite would be true; if you had eight cigarettes in a row, you should get more and more relaxed, and perhaps eventually fall asleep.  But you don’t.

Second, when the mental health of a large group of people was tracked over a long period of time, researchers found that taking up smoking in the teens leads to various psychological problems further down the line; and these problems weren’t as prevalent in people that didn’t start smoking. (1)

Third, there have been some experiments testing the link between smoking and stress.  Here’s one example; mood questionnaires were used to compare smokers’ stress levels with non-smokers and deprived smokers (smokers who had not smoked for about 12 hours).  Here are the results:

As you can see, non-smokers had the lowest stress levels overall, but only marginally – smokers who had smoked earlier that day had roughly the same stress level as non-smokers, but smokers who had been deprived of cigarettes for 12 hours or more, had become pretty stressed out!

Then look what happens if you let the smokers smoke, let the non-smokers sit and rest for five minutes or so, and give the test again:

Deprived smokers are no longer deprived, so now their stress level is roughly the same as everyone else’s.  It seems stress isn’t causing people to smoke, at least not primarily, but rather smoking is causing stress. (2)

Because of this, smokers’ moods fluctuate through the day, with periods of increased stress between cigarettes and periods of normality just after smoking.  It’s a roller-coaster, not a particularly enjoyable one, and the heavier smoker you are, the heavier the ups and downs.

This is one difference between cigarettes and other forms of addictive drugs; rather than being in a normal state and then getting ‘high’, you are in a stressed state and then get ‘normal’.  Let’s get normal!  But from a smoker’s perspective, it’s the same experience.  It’s just like your subjective experience of stopping banging your head against a wall – it removes pain, but only the pain it caused to start with.

Double Whammy

Where smoking differs from our earlier head-banging experiment – and by the way, if you actually tried that, you have bigger problems than smoking – is that smoking is a behaviour that reinforces itself.  You get chemically rewarded when you smoke, and chemically punished when you don’t smoke.

I actually learned all this the day after I quit; by pure, ridiculous chance.  I had a lecture on nicotine.  I sat through 3 hours of talking about smoking and cigarettes, which wasn’t particularly what I wanted to hear.  But it did seem to work, because once I understood how nicotine worked, and the physical and mental effects smoking has on people, I didn’t smoke again.  Well that’s not true, I actually switched to cigars for a while (and eventually stopped that too – ten a day was getting too much), but I definitely haven’t smoked a cigarette since then.

Quit Cold Turkey or Cut Down Slowly?

Stress, along with the other withdrawal symptoms (irritability, anxiety, anger, poor concentration, strong cravings for cigarettes, restlessness, insomnia, increased appetite, weight gain, impatience, etc.) start about an hour after the last fix.  They then increase in intensity, and peak sometime within the next three days or so (The Three Days of Hell, as they are sometimes known).

Studies tracking peoples’ moods over time find that the few weeks after quitting smoking invariably bring poor moods because of these withdrawal symptoms.  After which, they improve over the longer term.

But, if you smoke during this period – even if you just have the odd cigarette – you’ll put yourself back into a state of withdrawal, and you’ll have to go through it all over again.  You need to quit cold turkey. Although, note that very heavy smokers should cut down before quitting altogether – if you go from heavy smoking to nothing overnight, it can be a shock to the body as it’s gotten used to all the nicotine and other chemicals being there, and adapted around it. It’s a little bit like a tug-of-rope where one side suddenly lets go – the other side, still pulling, fall all over themselves.

Try to avoid passive smoking too.  From the point of view of trying to quit, it’s not really the bad moods that are the problem, it’s the cravings.  If you smoke after quitting, you’ll actually strengthen the cravings for more, not reduce them, which is what you’re hoping.  Don’t worry if you do give in though; it may take a few attempts.  Feel like making one today?

Recommended Reading:

• The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Non-Smokers Using Allen Carr’s Easyway Method

References:

(1) McGhee, R., Williams, S., Poulton, R., & Moffitt, T. (2000). A longitudinal study of cannabis use and mental health from adolescence to early adulthood. Addiction, 95(4), 491-503.

(2) Parrott, A.C. & Garnham, N.J. (1998). Comparative Mood States and Cognitive Skills of Cigarette Smokers, Deprived Smokers and Nonsmokers. Human Psychopharmacology, 13, 367-376.

See also: Parrott, A.C. (2000). Does Cigarette Smoking Cause Stress? American Psychologist. 54(10), 817-820.

and: Parrott, A.C. (2000). Cigarette Smoking Does Cause Stress. American Psychologist. 1159-1160.

Ever been labelled? Ever labelled someone yourself?  Everyone’s done both, sometimes it’s benign, sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing.  It starts from an early age and continues through life – he’s a jock, he’s conscientious, she’s a troublemaker.  Assigning labels to things seems to be part of how our brain makes sense of the world.  But what happens to a person when you give them a particular label?

Researchers Alice Tybout and Richard Yalch devised an ingenious way to test this.  A week or so before an election, they went door-to-door, surveying people about their attitudes towards the different candidates and some current issues.  Then, while still in front of the participant, they compared the survey answers to a voter profile for an “average” citizen, and told the participant that, based on their answers, the likelihood they would vote was either average, or above-average. In reality, however, the voter profile was fake and this label was given randomly.

Here’s how the labels were specifically given:

Above average label:

“That’s interesting, your proftle indicates that, relative to others in this community, you are an above-average citizen. Our research shows that people like you are very likely to vote in elections and participate in political events.”

Average label:

“That’s interesting, your profile indicates that, relative to others in this community, you are an average citizen. Our research shows that people like you have an average likelihood of voting in elections and participating in poitical events.”

As you can see, the label seemed to come from a place of authority, and they made sure that the participants knew what was expected of people with this particular label.  So how did these labels affect voter turnout?  As you might have guessed, labelling people as likely to vote did increase turnout – 86.5% of this group voted, versus 75.3% of the ‘average’ group.  But have a look at the chart below:

The label had the strongest effect on people who already thought of themselves as voters; who had what psychologists call a “self-schema” for voting.  A ‘self-schema’ (pronounced skeema) is a generalisation you make about yourself based on your previous behaviour and experiences.  A self-schema will tend to affect how you interpret and respond to other information you receive about yourself.

In this case, for example, people were more likely to vote when their self-scheema and the label they received were congruent.  Make sense?  Assuming this is true for every self-schema, you can see some practical application.  Labelling your workforce as a hard workers will have a bigger effect on productivity if they already see themselves as hard workers; though it will still have some effect if they don’t.

You can see that when people already have a self-schema as being the voting type, telling them they are an average voter will make them more likely to vote than telling people who don’t have this self-scheema, that they are above-average citizens.  This might be because we don’t pay as strong attention to things when they don’t match our self-schema.  Or maybe, simply talking about political issues was enough to get these eager voters fired up.

How long does a label last?

Less than eight months, apparently.  In a following election, eight months later voter turnout overall had dropped to 54% for the group labelled above average, and 53% for the average group.  Labelling only seems to work in the short-run, probably because many other different labels, cues and primes will come along over time, and they might override a label that was only given once.

Practical Applications

This is another example of how a something deceptively simple can affect peoples’ behaviour. There are plenty of ways that labelling can be ethically applied.  Teachers could tell students that they seem able and competent, managers can tell their staff they are up to the task, and you can tell your date that she definitely seems like the type of girl who’d come home with you (OK, maybe not the last one!).

What I’d want to know it how authority affects labels.  For example, if you really like and respect your teacher, and she tells you that she’s been keeping an eye on you and she really sees potential in you, you could go a long way, would that have a bigger effect than if one of your classmates said it, for instance?  You also have to wonder, if a police officer tells you that you’re worthless criminal scum, what effect does that have on you?

I wonder what would happen if the police went around acting genuinely surprised whenever someone committed a crime, and absolutely insisted, to the full extent of their authority, that the perpetrator was a law-abiding, upstanding citizen, and the couldn’t understand why they did it.  Maybe some people would just bow down to the authority “I am?  Oh.  Didn’t realise officer, my bad!”

Another application is you can become more aware of attempts to label you, particularly by advertisers.  This is definitely something you should do, I mean, after all, you’re worth it.  And if you can figure out your self-schema, you’ll be able to see what types of labels are more likely to affect you.

Oh, by the way, I was analysing my web traffic statistics yesterday, and I suddenly realised that readers of Generally Thinking are a loyal, intelligent and open-minded bunch, who like to visit this site regularly!

Recommended Reading:

• Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Reference:

Tybout, A. M., Yalch, R. F. (1980). The Effect of Experience: A Matter of Salience? Journal of Consumer Research, 6, 406-413.