Modeling Idiographic Longitudinal Relationships between Affect and Cigarette Use: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Abstract

Background: Despite public knowledge of the adverse health effects of tobacco use, cigarettes remain widely used due to the addictive nature of nicotine. Physiologic adaptation to the presence of nicotine over time leads to unpleasant effects during withdrawal periods. Alongside these physiological effects, tobacco users often report changes in their consumption of tobacco in response to their emotional state. Objectives: We hypothesized that idiographic, or person-specific level, increases in participants’ negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) ratings at a given time point would be associated with higher and lower craving and smoking over the following several hours, respectively. Fifty-two participants completed block randomized ecological momentary assessment surveys on their smartphones 4 times per day for 30 days, reporting from 0-100 their level of seven discrete emotions, stress, current craving, and smoking behavior. We analyzed the relationships between affect and smoking and craving using idiographic generalized linear models. Results: While some participants exhibited the hypothesized relationships, each participant varied in the strength and direction of the relationships between affect and craving/smoking. These outcomes were partially moderated at the group level by anxiety/depression at baseline, but not by level of nicotine dependence or sex. Conclusions: This suggests that the factors driving cigarette use vary significantly between individuals.

Keywords:

• Tobacco
• craving
• affect
• idiographic
• ecological momentary assessment

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Aaron Fisher, Dr. Hannah Bosley, and Apoorva Polisetty for their feedback on early versions of this manuscript.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Data availability statement

Data and files available at the following link: https://osf.io/uyr48/?view_only=71dae47d245e492c8c75590937487d74.

Additional information

Funding

The project described was supported by Award Number T32AA007240, Graduate Research Training in Alcohol Problems: Alcohol-Related Disparities and P50AA005595, Epidemiology of Alcohol Problems: Alcohol-related Disparities, from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism or the National Institutes of Health.