Nicotine-related interpretation biases in cigarette smoking individuals

Addictive behaviors are characterized by information processing biases, including substance-related interpretation biases. In the field of cigarette smoking, such biases have not been investigated yet. The present study thus adopted an open-ended scenario approach to measure smoking-related interpretation biases. Individuals who smoke, those who ceased smoking, and those without a smoking history (total sample N = 177) were instructed to generate spontaneous continuations for ambiguous, open-ended scenarios that described either a smoking-related or neutral context. Overall, people who smoke generated more smoking-related continuations in response to smoking-relevant situations than non-smoking individuals or people who had stopped smoking, providing evidence for a smoking-related interpretation bias. When differentiating for situation type within smoking-relevant scenarios, smoking individuals produced more smoking-related continuations for positive/social and habit/addictive situations compared to negative/affective ones. Additionally, the tendency to interpret habit/addictive situations in a smoking-related manner was positively associated with cigarette consumption and levels of nicotine dependence. Exploratory analyses indicated that other substance-related continuations were correlated with their respective behavioral counterparts (e.g., the level of self-reported alcohol or caffeine consumption). The present study is the first to demonstrate smoking-related interpretation biases in relation to current cigarette smoking. Future studies should investigate the causal role of such biases in the initiation and/or maintainance of nicotine addiction and the merit of Interpretation-Bias-Modification training to support smoking cessation.