The Geneva Smoking Pictures: development and preliminary validation

Cue reactivity is essential to the maintenance of addictive disorders. A useful way to study cue reactivity is by means of normative pictures, but few validated tobacco-related pictures are available. This study describes a database of smoking-related pictures: The Geneva Smoking Pictures (GSP). Sixty smoking-related pictures were presented to 91 participants who assessed them according to the classic emotional pictures validation provided by the International Affective Picture System (NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, 2002). The pictures were rated according to three dimensions: (1) valence (from positive to negative), (2) emotional arousal (from high arousing to low arousing), and (3) dominance (from submissive to dominant). Participants were also screened with the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence. Normative ratings for valence, arousal and dominance of the pictures are provided for the whole sample, as well as separately for dependent (n = 46) and nondependent smokers (n = 45). Arousal and dominance were associated with greater nicotine dependence, but valence ratings were not. The GSP is a normative database providing a large number of stimuli for investigators who are conducting nicotine and tobacco research