Compensation for participation and transportation was provided. To standardize exposure to nicotine and tobacco and reduce urges related to nicotine selleck chemical Idelalisib deprivation (e.g., Upadhyaya, Drobes, & Wang, 2006), eligible participants were asked to smoke a cigarette right before participation (Bordnick, Graap, Copp, Brooks, & Ferrer, 2005). Participants arrived at the laboratory between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays. They were randomly assigned to either the strong or the weak argument condition. In each condition, after baseline questions (including demographics, smoking history, and baseline smoking urge) were answered, sensors were attached to the participant to collect skin conductance and heart rate data during advertisement viewing. Participants watched three no-cue advertisements without answering any questions between or during the advertisements.
Each advertisement-viewing session had a 30-s to 45-s baseline time with blank screens before each advertisement started. After viewing the advertisements, participants completed the outcome measures including smoking urge and other attitudinal variables not analyzed in the present study. Psychophysiological responses were not collected while questions were answered. After participants finished this set of outcome measures and right before they watched smoking cue advertisements, their baseline smoking urge for smoking cue advertisements was measured. They then watched three smoking cue advertisements. The same psychophysiological data were recorded. After this advertisement-viewing period, all sensors were detached from the participants and the same set of outcome measures was collected.
Participants Data on four participants were excluded because sensors fell off two participants and the other two participants fell asleep during the study. A total of 96 participants finished the study. Mean participant age was 33 years (SD = 12); 54% were male. The majority of the participants were White (59%), followed by Black (24%), Hispanic (5%), and Asian (4%). On average, they smoked their first cigarette at the age of 15 (SD = 4), and smoked an average of 17 cigarettes per day (SD = 9) during the week prior to the study. Measures Smoking urge was measured with a five-item brief form of the Questionnaire of Smoking Urges (Cox, Tiffany, & Christen, 2001). The scale items ranged from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7) (actual data ranging from 1.
6 to 6.8). Smoking GSK-3 urge was assessed four times in the study with high reliability (Cronbach’s �� = .84�C.90). The psychophysiological measures were collected with Biopac software. A difference score was calculated for each advertisement by subtracting 30-s baseline means from the corresponding advertisement viewing means for heart rate and skin conductance responses.