Affecting Perceived Risks and Ambivalence About Smoking

描述（由申请人提供）：青少年戒烟项目运用了各种态度-行为关系模型来解释吸烟行为。当青少年和年轻人尝试并继续吸烟时，他们认为吸烟的积极结果比消极结果更突出。当他们想到戒烟时，消极的态度和消极的结果预期变得更加突出，并与现有的积极信念相竞争。因此，一个主要的挑战是改变潜在的态度结构，重点是增加消极吸烟信念的显著性，以激励戒烟。然而，年轻的吸烟者不太可能注意到戒烟信息，并在没有令人信服的证据表明吸烟对他们有负面影响的情况下试图戒烟。因此，提供有关吸烟危害的个性化数据可能足以增加年轻吸烟者对吸烟风险的认知和戒烟的愿望。重要的是，通过个性化的风险反馈来增加吸烟后果的个人相关性，应该激励那些认为自己的风险更高的年轻吸烟者关注和处理与吸烟有关的信息。通过增加吸烟负面观念的显著性，年轻吸烟者可能会对吸烟感到更加矛盾。矛盾心理被定义为“一个人对态度对象的反应在评价上混合的程度，其中包括积极（有利）和消极（不利）的因素”（Priester & Petty, 1996, p. 460）。研究人员尚未探索：1)让年轻吸烟者对他们的吸烟感到矛盾影响戒烟，2)吸烟风险的个体化影响吸烟相关信息的程度，这些信息旨在诱导矛盾心理，甚至可能是矛盾心理本身。使用120名年轻成年经常吸烟者（18-24岁的社区大学生），我们测试了旨在增加感知吸烟相关风险和对吸烟的矛盾心理的操作的有效性。受试者将被随机分为2（个体化风险反馈：否/是）x2（吸烟矛盾心理诱导：否/是）受试者前后设计。个体化风险条件下的参与者将通过肺活量测定法获得关于自我报告的呼吸系统症状和肺老化的反馈。处于吸烟矛盾心理状态的吸烟者将观看一段关于大学生吸烟者对吸烟表达矛盾情绪的视频。假设操作成功，预期在个体化风险反馈和吸烟矛盾心理诱导条件下，参与者会表现出更强烈的戒烟愿望，更有可能使用自助手册，并减少。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Youth smoking cessation programs have applied various models of attitude-behavior relations to explain smoking behaviors. As teens and young adults experiment with and continue to smoke, they view the positive outcomes of smoking as more salient than the negative outcomes. As they think about quitting, negative attitudes and negative outcome expectancies become more salient and compete with existing positive beliefs. Thus, a major challenge is changing the underlying structure of attitudes, with an emphasis on increasing the saliency of negative smoking beliefs to motivate cessation. However, young smokers are less likely to attend to cessation messages and attempt to quit without convincing evidence that smoking is affecting them negatively. Hence, presenting individualized data on the harms of smoking may be sufficiently threatening to increase young smokers' perceived smoking risks and desires to quit. Of import, increasing the personal relevance of smoking consequences via individualized risk feedback should motivate young smokers who perceive their risk as higher to attend to and process smoking-related messages. By increasing the saliency of negative smoking beliefs, young smokers may come to feel more ambivalent about their smoking. Ambivalence is defined as "the extent to which one's reactions to an attitude object are evaluatively mixed in that both positive (favorable) and negative (unfavorable) elements are included" (Priester & Petty, 1996, p. 460). Researchers have yet to explore how: 1) making young smokers feel ambivalent about their smoking affects cessation, and 2) the individualization of smoking risks affects the extent of process smoking-related messages intended to induce ambivalence, and possibly ambivalence itself. Using 120 young adult regular smokers (community college students ages 18-24), we test the efficacy of manipulations intended to increase perceived smoking-related risks and ambivalence towards smoking. Participants will be randomized to a 2 (individualized risk feedback: no/yes) X 2 (smoking ambivalence induction: no/yes) pre-post between subjects design. Participants in the individualized risk condition will get feedback about self-reported respiratory symptoms and lung aging, obtained via spirometry. Smokers in the smoking ambivalence condition will watch a video about college smokers expressing conflicted feeling towards smoking. Assuming the manipulations are successful, it is expected that participants in the individualized risk feedback and smoking ambivalence induction conditions will express a stronger desire to quit, be more likely to use a self-help manual, and reduce.