Successes and failures in resisting cigarettes affect partner support for smoking cessation

Abstract

Objective: Potential support providers may rely on observable behaviours (e.g. resisting a cigarette vs. smoking) to determine how much and what kind of support to provide. We evaluated the effect of smokers’ salient behaviour on partners’ likelihood of providing positive and negative support.

Design: Partners of smokers (N = 131) were randomly assigned to recall a time when their partner either successfully resisted a cigarette, failed to resist a cigarette or a control condition (no recall). All participants reported the likelihood of providing positive and negative support to their partner. Perceived commitment to quitting smoking was measured as a potential mediator.

Main Outcome Measures: The main outcome was intention to provide support for a quit attempt.

Results: Participants who recalled their partners’ past failures reported more intentions to engage in negative support and smaller ratios of positive to negative intended support than did participants in the success or control condition. These effects were partially mediated by perception of commitment to quitting.

Conclusion: Lapses in a quit attempt may change the nature of the support quitters receive. Interventions to improve communication between partners about the smoker’s commitment to quitting and experienced challenges may result in better support.

Keywords:

• smoking cessation
• social support
• romantic relationships
• commitment to quitting
• experimental design

Notes

1. Based on pilot research investigating the same ideas (prior success or failure changes perceived commitment and intended support) we expected medium to large effect sizes (d’s ranging from .47 to 2.61). Given this range, power to detect a significant difference between the success and failure conditions (assuming 43 people per condition) ranged from .70 to > .99.

2. Prior to the experimental manipulation, we measured participant smoking status and relationship satisfaction. Participants did not differ between conditions on smoking status, F(2, 127)= .11, p = .89, or relationship satisfaction, F(2, 128)= .13, p = .888. A separate manuscript (vanDellen, Boyd, Ranby, Lipkus, & MacKillop, 2016) reports relationships between these variables (which did not interact with the experimental manipulation) on willingness to provide support. We measured participant motivation to quit smoking at the end of the study, after the experimental manipulation and all dependent variables. Condition did significantly affect participants’ motivation to quit smoking, F(2, 82) = 3.65, p = .030.