The Effects of a Social Norm Intervention on Smokers??? Physical Distress Tolerance and Smoking Behavior

Smokers have been regarded as having low distress tolerance, a characteristic shown to be linked to smoking behavior. Individual and population based interventions have proven to be effective in changing behavior; however, no research exists that has investigated the effect of a population based intervention on manipulating distress tolerance and subsequent smoking behavior. The present study utilized a type of population based approach commonly associated with successful behavior change: social norms. Specifically, the effects of a social norm intervention on distress tolerance as measured by pain tolerance during the cold pressor task as well as subsequent smoking behavior (i.e., latency to smoke) was examined. Participants consisted of 128 moderate smokers (at least 12 cigarettes per day). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: social norm treatment and social norm control. Two separate oneway ANCOVA???s were conducted to assess the effects of the treatment on distress tolerance and subsequent smoking behavior while controlling for covariates (e.g., gender, pain catastrophizing). Results indicated that individuals who received a social norm message increased pain tolerance compared to those who did not receive a social norm message. However, latency to smoke was similar across both groups. Implications as to how to better experimentally assess smoking variables in future studies are discussed.Psycholog