Lost That Smoking Feeling: Emotions sputter as cigarette motivator
By Bruce Bower
Cigarette smokers have reported on many questionnaires that sadness, nervousness, and other unpleasant feelings prompt their tobacco intake. Many researchers have inhaled those accounts and argued that people continue to smoke cigarettes to quell nasty moods triggered by the first pangs of nicotine withdrawal.
It may be time for researchers to kick that habit. The first detailed effort to monitor the reactions of cigarette smokers as they carry out their daily activities finds that they light up at times when they feel neither better nor worse than at times when they don’t begin smoking.