| Abstract: | Assigned 144 college students to 1 of 4 social situations in which Ss were led to believe that they were to be evaluated and had to wait in a room with the evaluators or that they were waiting with other Ss, who were actually confederates and who engaged the real S in friendly conversation. In these situations the confederates were either smoking or not smoking. Results indicate that, although the anxiety manipulation was effective in raising Ss' arousal levels (Ss' self-reports and observers' subjective ratings) in the evaluation condition, only the presence of other people smoking significantly increased the number of Ss who smoked in the situations; this result applied only to "light" smokers. However, the presence of confederates who were smoking significantly increased the number of minutes the Ss smoked during the condition for both light and heavy smokers, suggesting a ceiling effect for heavy smokers. Tension reduction is not viewed as an adequate explanation for cigarette smoking behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
