Race as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Distress Tolerance and Cigarette Smoking

Abstract

The present study examined the role of distress tolerance (DT) and race in relation to cigarette smoking. For this study, between 2008 and 2010, 153 women (62.1% White, 37.9% African American) from the Washington, DC metropolitan area completed a computerized behavioral DT task and self-reported smoking history. Results suggest that low DT (OR = .23, p = .03) and the interaction between DT and race (OR = 4.58, p = .05) were significantly related to greater odds of being a smoker, such that African American women, but not White women, with low DT were at increased risk for being a lifetime smoker.

Keywords :

• cigarette smoking
• distress tolerance
• race
• disparities
• high-risk groups

THE AUTHORS

Jennifer Dahne received her M.S. from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2013. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses on factors that contribute to the initiation and maintenance of cigarette smoking.

Kelcey J. Stratton received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 2012 from The New School for Social Research, and she is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia. Her research interests include risk and protective factors for posttraumatic stress disorder and chronic pain, particularly among U.S. military veterans.

Ruth Brown received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University in December of 2011. Her primary research interests are the development and dissemination of evidence-based assessments and treatments for anxiety, depression, and trauma in youth. In particular, she is interested in the use of multimodal assessment strategies to improve diagnosis and evaluate treatment processes and outcomes. She is also interested in the adaptation and evaluation of evidence-based practices for youth with intellectual disabilities.

Ananda B. Amstadter is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her program of research centers on the identification of risk and resilience factors for traumatic stress related psychopathology.

Carl W. Lejuez is a professor and the Director of Clinical Training in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Maryland. He is the Founder and Director of the Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research (CAPER), Co-Director of a NIDA T32 Institutional Training Program at the intersection of basic science and addictions treatment development, and Founding Editor of the American Psychological Association Journal Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment. His research has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2002 and he has published extensively in the areas of addictions, personality pathology, and mood disorders.

Laura MacPherson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research focuses on a developmentally informed examination of the progression and cessation of addictive behaviors among adolescents and young adults to improve youth-tailored interventions, as well as developing behavioral treatments for adult smokers with psychiatric comorbidities.

Notes

1 Of the full sample, current (past 30 days) cigarette smoking information was available for 151 participants. 7.3% (n = 11, 45.5% African American) of the sample reported smoking daily during the last month. Of participants reporting smoking during the last 30 days, cigarettes per smoking day (CPSD) data were available for 17 of the 18 participants. Of these individuals, average CPSD was 7.8 ± 5.1 [White CPSD M(SD) = 8.7±5.8; African American CPSD M(SD) = 6.6 ± 3.9].