7
Addtctivr Behaviors, Vol. 2. pp. 129-134. Pergamon Press 1977. Prmted m Great Br~tam SMOKING AS A SUBJECTIVELY RATIONAL CHOICE J. RICHARD EISER and STEPHEN R. SUTTON Addiction Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, 101, Denmark Hill. London. SE5 8AF. U.K Abstract-h order to identify variables which might influence adult smokers to attempt to give up smoking, questionnaires were distributed to a final sample of 45 public employees who were-cigarette smokers. These offered subjects the chance to apply for treatment at a nearby smo kers’ clinic and also asked questions about their own smoking history. their perceived dependence on smoking, their perceptions of utilities associated with continuing smoking or attempting to stop smoki ng and succeeding or failing in the attempt. Of the 45 subjects, 18 chose to apply for treatment, and a discriminant analysis was performed to see if these could be distinguished from the 27 “non-choosers” in terms of their questionnaire responses. The most important predictor was the number of cigarettes smoked per day, with choosers on average smoking over 30 and non-choosers under 18 per day. In addition, choosers tended to be slightly older, and enjoy the activity of smoking less than non-choosers. Non-choosers, as compared with choosers, were relatively confident in their own ability to stop smoking without help. if they wanted to. Although subjects as a whole tended to rate the overall consequences of continuing to smoke as worse than the overall consequences of successfully stopping, this was not an important predictor of which subjects chose to apply for treatment. INTRODUCTION In attempting to explain people’s indulgence in a form of behaviour which is clearly injurio us to health, it is perhaps not surprising that ma ny researchers seem to have favoured appr oaches that emphasize differences between smokers and non-smokers in terms of social upb ringing (Bynner, 1969) or personality (Eysenck, 1965) or stress the addictive effects of nicotine (Russell, 1976) to the relative neglect of the questions of how an individu al decides to become, remain, or try to give up being a smoker. As Aronson (1972, p. 9) has put it, “people who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy”, and there is a danger of assuming that behaviour which we see as producing negative consequences cannot be the outcome of decision-making processes which are subjectively rational, at ‘least within the context of what the smoker regards as personally important. This study is therefor e a preliminary attempt to see how adequately smokers’ decisions can be predicted from a knowledge of their hi story of tobacco use, and of their own evaluations of their behaviour. We shall concentrate on a single decision made within a specific situational context-namely, whether adult smokers will or will not accept an invitation to apply for treatment at a smokers’ clinic with a view to giving up smoking. Previous research on smokers’ decisions to stop or continue smoking have taken as their starting point a consideration of the positive and negative consequences which smokers expect to follow from each course of action. and of the subjective probabilities associated with such expectations. For example, Mausner & Platt (1971) calculated smokers’ “subjective expected utilities” (SEUs) for stopping smoking and for contin uing to smoke, and found partial confirmation of their pre diction that the higher a person’s SEU for stopping smoking as compared with his SEU for continuing to smoke, t he greater would be the chance of his deciding to stop smoking. They also found, however. that, among smokers, the SEU for stopping smoking is more positive than that for conti nuing to smoke-a result which focusses attention on the paradox of the “dis- sonant” smoker ( McKenne ll & Thomas, 1967). Similar notions are also promine nt in the argument, put forward by Rogers (1973, that the effectiveness of a commu nication is related not just t o its ability to make people believe th at negative consequences are more likely to occur as a result of a particular course of action (e.g. continuing to smoke), but also to the perceived efficacy of a recommended protective response (e.g. stopping smoking). Janis (1959) and Janis & Mann (1968) have also proposed a “balance sheet” model of decision-m aking in which Edited by Foxit Reader Copyright(C) by Foxit Software Company,2005-200 6 For Evaluation Only.
