Issues of Substance
Low Income and Poor Health Choices: The Example of Smoking
James Binkley
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, July 2010, Pages 972-984
Abstract:
Low-income individuals often make relatively unhealthy consumption choices. In the case of food, this is often attributed to limited budgets. We investigate another possibility, motivated by the fact that smoking is more prevalent among those with low incomes, despite the cost. We develop a model in which income serves both as a budget constraint and as a source of future utility. We test the model by estimating logistic models of beginning and quitting smoking. We find support for the idea that low-income consumers make less healthy choices because they face lower costs in terms of forgone future utility.
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Scott Rick & Maurice Schweitzer
University of Michigan Working Paper, June 2010
Abstract:
Although alcohol consumption often impairs cognition, we identify an implicit association between alcohol and cognitive impairment that causes people to over-generalize this link. When individuals observe a target consuming or merely holding a beverage, they rate the target as less intelligent when the beverage is alcoholic than when the beverage is non-alcoholic. In fact, simply priming individuals with the concept of alcohol causes individuals to evaluate targets (holding no beverage at all) as less intelligent. Across five experiments, we demonstrate this imbibing idiot bias for both beer and wine, for both male and female targets, and we find that this bias persists when observers are also consuming alcohol and when observers know that the target did not choose the beverage for themselves. We demonstrate that this bias has important practical implications. Job candidates who ordered an alcoholic beverage in simulated interviews were perceived as less intelligent and less hireable than those who did not, even when the boss had ordered an alcoholic beverage first. In a sixth experiment, we demonstrate that job candidates fail to anticipate that ordering an alcoholic beverage will reduce their perceived intelligence.
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Estimating the Effect of Tobacco Contributions on Legislative Behavior Using Panel Data
Daniel Bergan
Social Science Quarterly, September 2010, Pages 635-648
Objective: This article uses a data set of California State legislators to determine the effect of tobacco contributions on legislative behavior.
Methods: Although many previous studies have analyzed the effect of campaign contributions on legislative behavior, this study makes a number of improvements to previous studies, including the use of panel data and improved instruments.
Results: I find that contrary to prior research on tobacco industry contributions, campaign contributions from the tobacco industry do not influence legislative support for the tobacco industry.
Conclusion: This suggests that the tobacco industry is not an exception to the literature on the influence of campaign contributions, which has shown that campaign contributions generally do not influence legislative voting and other behavior.
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I Suppress, Therefore I Smoke: Effects of Thought Suppression on Smoking Behavior
James Erskine, George Georgiou & Lia Kvavilashvili
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Thought suppression is a method frequently employed by individuals who are trying to control their thoughts and behaviors. Although this strategy is known to actually increase unwanted thoughts, it is unclear whether thought suppression also results in behavioral rebound. The study presented in this article investigated the effects of suppressing thoughts of smoking in everyday life on the number of cigarettes subsequently smoked. Study participants recorded their daily cigarette intake and stress levels over a 3-week period. In Week 1 and Week 3, participants monitored intake and stress. During Week 2, in addition to monitoring intake and stress, participants in the experimental groups either suppressed or expressed smoking thoughts, whereas the control group continued monitoring. Our results showed a clear behavioral rebound: The suppression group smoked significantly more in Week 3 than the expression or control group did. Moreover, the tendency to suppress thoughts (measured by the White Bear Suppression Inventory) was positively related to the number of attempts to quit smoking. The implications of our findings for smoking cessation are discussed.
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Immediate reductions in misperceived social norms among high-risk college student groups
Joseph LaBrie, Justin Hummer, Sean Grant & Andrew Lac
Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current quasi-experimental design evaluated whether a brief, live, interactive, normative group (BLING) intervention produced immediate reductions in group-specific normative perceptions and whether the magnitude of these misperceptions differed among three at-risk undergraduate populations: first-year students (N = 767), Greek-affiliated students (N = 555), and student-athletes (N = 524). In a live group setting, participants used wireless keypads to enter in normative perceptions of their group's drinking levels, followed by their own actual drinking behaviors. Feedback data illustrating the discrepancies between perceived and actual norms were then presented graphically on a large screen. Across all groups at pre-intervention, respondents reported significantly higher perceived group-specific norms than actual alcohol use, with magnitude of initial misperceptions varying by group. The BLING intervention was equally effective in immediately correcting normative misperceptions among all three groups regardless of gender or the magnitude of initial misperception. These data further validate the ability of live normative group-specific data-collection and feedback to overcome saliency and credibility issues exhibited by many existing social norms interventions.
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Perceptions of Smoking Prevalence by Youth in Countries With and Without a Tobacco Advertising Ban
Dee Burton, John Graham, Anderson Johnson, Antti Uutela, Erkki Vartiainen & Raymond Palmer
Journal of Health Communication, September 2010, Pages 656-664
Abstract:
This study examined a proposed mechanism by which exposure to cigarette advertising may mediate the subsequent smoking of youth. We hypothesized that children's exposure to cigarette advertising leads them to overestimate the prevalence of smoking, and that these distorted perceptions, in turn, lead to increased intentions to smoke. Children in Finland, where there has been a total tobacco advertising ban since 1978, were compared with children in the United States at a time when tobacco advertising was ubiquitous. Samples of 477 8- to 14-year-old Helsinki students and 453 8- to 14-year-old Los Angeles students whose lifetime cigarette use consisted of no more than a puff of a cigarette were administered questionnaires in their classrooms. The primary hypothesis was confirmed. Los Angeles youth were significantly more likely than Helsinki youth to overestimate the prevalence of adult smoking, in spite of the fact that actual adult smoking prevalence in Helsinki was almost twice that of Los Angeles adults. A similar, significant pattern for perceived peer smoking was obtained, with Los Angeles youth being more likely than Helsinki youth to overestimate prevalence, in spite of the actual greater prevalence of youth smoking in Helsinki.
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C.H. Ramlau-Hansen, G. Toft, M.S. Jensen, K. Strandberg-Larsen, M.L. Hansen & J. Olsen
Human Reproduction, September 2010, Pages 2340-2345
Background: Concurrent alcohol exposure has been associated with reduced fecundity, but no studies have estimated the effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on male fecundity. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy, semen quality and levels of reproductive hormones in young, adult men.
Methods: From a Danish pregnancy cohort established in 1984-1987, 347 sons were selected for a follow-up study conducted in 2005-2006. Semen and blood samples were analyzed for conventional semen characteristics and reproductive hormones, respectively, and results were related to prospectively self-reported information on maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy.
Results: The sperm concentration decreased with increasing prenatal alcohol exposure. The adjusted mean sperm concentration among sons of mothers drinking 4.5 drinks per week during pregnancy was 40 (95% CI: 25-60) millions/ml. This concentration was 32% lower compared with men exposed to <1.0 drink per week, who had a sperm concentration of 59 (95% CI: 44-77) millions/ml. The semen volume and the total sperm count were also associated with prenatal alcohol exposure; sons prenatally exposed to 1.0-1.5 drinks per week had the highest values. No associations were found for sperm motility, sperm morphology or any of the reproductive hormones, including testosterone.
Conclusions: These results indicate that prenatal exposure to alcohol may have a persisting adverse effect on Sertoli cells, and thereby sperm concentration. If these associations are causal they could explain some of the reported differences between populations and long-term changes in semen quality.
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A money management-based substance use treatment increases valuation of future rewards
Anne Black & Marc Rosen
Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Objective: A positive association between delay discounting and substance use has been documented; substance users tend to discount future rewards more than non-users. However, studies detailing the responsiveness of delay discounting to interventions are lacking, and few have examined how any behavioral intervention affects delay discounting and whether these effects moderate changes in substance abuse. This study assesses the effectiveness of a money management intervention, Advisor-Teller Money Manager (ATM), in reducing delay discounting over time and the relationship of these effects to changes in cocaine use.
Method: Ninety psychiatric patients with histories of cocaine and/or alcohol use were randomly assigned to 36-weeks of ATM treatment or to a minimal-attention control condition. Delay discounting and cocaine use were measured throughout the intervention with a 52-week follow up measure of cocaine use. Analyses were conducted of (a) the effect of ATM on slopes of delay discounting and cocaine abstinence and (b) the relationship between change in delay discounting and change in cocaine abstinence.
Results: The ATM intervention was associated with significantly less delay discounting and less cocaine use over time relative to controls. Increases in delay discounting were associated with decreased abstinence from cocaine.
Conclusions: ATM treatment decreased delay discounting rates and these effects extended to cocaine use. Concrete conceptualizations of future events, as occur in financial planning, with higher perceived probability may account for higher valuation of future rewards in counseled patients.
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Alcohol alters men's perceptual and decisional processing of women's sexual interest
Coreen Farris, Teresa Treat & Richard Viken
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, May 2010, Pages 427-432
Abstract:
The current investigation examines the etiology of men's errors in sexual perception after moderate alcohol use. Sensitivity and bias estimates, derived from multidimensional signal detection analysis, revealed that men's alcohol-influenced performance was associated with declining sensitivity to the distinction between women's friendliness and sexual interest. However, sensitivity to the distinction between conservative and provocative clothing was unaffected. Similarly, an alcohol dose led to an increased bias to respond that women's ambiguous cues were sexual interest (rather than friendliness) but did not influence response thresholds for clothing style. Thus, there was specificity to the perceptual and decisional changes associated with alcohol use rather than a simple degradation of men's capacity to process all dating-relevant cues in the environment. Given the link between alcohol use, sexual misperception, and acquaintance-initiated sexual coercion, understanding the etiology of sexual misperception in the context of alcohol use may inform sexual coercion prevention efforts.
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Katrijn Houben, Tim Schoenmakers & Reinout Wiers
Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Abstract:
The goal of the present research was to test the value of evaluative conditioning (EC) to unobtrusively change alcohol-related attitudes and drinking behavior. In the EC paradigm, participants had to spot an irrelevant target picture in a series of trials in which many different stimuli were presented. In the experimental condition, beer-related pictures (CSs) were consistently paired with negative words and pictures (USs) in a number of trials. In the control condition, participants were exposed to the same stimuli, but without the critical alcohol-negative pairings. After the EC task, participants participated in an allegedly second experiment in which we measured beer-related attitudes, craving for beer, and actual drinking behavior both during a bogus taste test and during the week following the experiment. Compared to participants in the control condition, participants in the experimental condition showed more negative attitudes toward beer, experienced less craving for beer, and consumed less beer both in the lab during the taste test and outside the lab during the week following the manipulation. These findings suggest that unhealthy drinking behavior may be targeted through EC procedures.
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Catherine Goodall & Michael Slater
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Alcohol advertisements may influence impulsive, risky behaviors indirectly, via automatically activated attitudes toward alcohol. Results from an experiment in which participants were exposed to either four alcohol advertisements, four control advertisements, or four drunk driving public service advertisements (PSAs) suggested that alcohol advertisements had more measurable effects on implicit than on explicit attitude measures. Moreover, there were significant indirect paths from alcohol advertisement exposure through automatically activated alcohol attitudes on willingness to engage in risky alcohol-related behaviors, notably drinking and driving. A mechanism that may explain how these advertisements activate automatic, nondeliberative alcohol attitudes was investigated. Associative evidence was found supportive of an evaluative conditioning mechanism, in which positive responses to an alcohol advertisement may lead to more positive automatically activated attitudes toward alcohol.
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Are methamphetamine precursor control laws effective tools to fight the methamphetamine epidemic?
James Nonnemaker, Mark Engelen & Daniel Shive
Health Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
One of the most notable trends in illegal substance use among Americans over the past decade is the dramatic growth and spread of methamphetamine use. In response to the dramatic rise in methamphetamine use and its associated burden, a broad range of legislations has been passed to combat the problem. In this paper, we assess the impact of retail-level laws intended to restrict chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine (methamphetamine precursor laws) in reducing indicators of domestic production, methamphetamine availability, and the consequences of methamphetamine use. Specifically, we examine trends in these indicators of methamphetamine supply and use over a period spanning the implementation of the federal Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act (MAPA) (October 2000) and a more stringent state-level restriction enacted in California (January 2000). The results are mixed in terms of the effectiveness of legislative efforts to control methamphetamine production and use, depending on the strength of the legislation (California Uniform Controlled Substances Act versus federal MAPA), the specification of the comparison group, and the particular outcome of interest. Some evidence suggests that domestic production was impacted by these legislative efforts, but there is also evidence that prices fell, purities rose, and treatment episodes increased.
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Can parents prevent heavy episodic drinking by allowing teens to drink at home?
Jennifer Livingston, Maria Testa, Joseph Hoffman & Michael Windle
Addictive Behaviors, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current study examined whether permitting young women to drink alcohol at home during senior year of high school reduces the risk of heavy drinking in college. Participants were 449 college-bound female high school seniors, recruited at the end of their senior year. Participants were classified into one of three permissibility categories according to their baseline reports of whether their parents allowed them to drink at home: (a) not permitted to drink at all; (b) allowed to drink with family meals; (c) allowed to drink at home with friends. Repeated measures analysis of variance was used to compare the drinking behaviors of the three groups at the time of high school graduation and again after the first semester of college. Students who reported being allowed to drink at home during high school, whether at meals or with friends, reported more frequent heavy episodic drinking (HED) in the first semester of college than those who reported not being allowed to drink at all. Those who were permitted to drink at home with friends reported the heaviest drinking at both time points. Path analysis revealed that the relationship between alcohol permissiveness and college HED was mediated via perceptions of parental alcohol approval.
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Kristen Springer
Sociological Forum, September 2010, Pages 476-499
Abstract:
Prior research has examined race and class bias embedded in media presentations of pregnant drug users; however, this past research is limited in identifying biases because it focuses on single substances - primarily crack cocaine. I build on this work by conducting a comparative analysis of more than 15 years worth of New York Times articles on three drugs (crack cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco) used during pregnancy. These three drugs have varying levels of deleterious effects on fetal development and infant health, as well as varying levels of use by poor and minority women. Because of this variation, I am able to assess whether media coverage of pregnant drug-using women is proportional to the documented adverse consequences of specific drugs or, rather, whether media coverage is higher and more negative for poor and minority pregnant women regardless of the degree of adverse health consequences associated with the specific drug used. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that the prevalence and framing of news stories about pregnant drug-using women has little to do with protecting the health of children. Rather, concern for children is a rhetorical tool used to define poor and minority women as bad mothers and blame them for contemporary changes in families.
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When a Fear Appeal Isn't Just a Fear Appeal: The Effects of Graphic Anti-tobacco Messages
Glenn Leshner, Fred Vultee, Paul Bolls & Jensen Moore
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, July 2010, Pages 485-507
Abstract:
The current study experimentally tested two types of message attributes commonly used in anti-tobacco television ads-content that focuses on a health threat about tobacco use (fear), and content that contains disgust-related images (disgust)-for how they impact viewers' cognitive processing of the message. The results suggest that the impact of disgust content in anti-tobacco television ads on cognitive resources available for encoding the messages and on recognition memory varies according to whether or not the message is a fear appeal. The presence of disgust-related images led to slower secondary task reaction times (STRTs) and better audio recognition for low fear messages. The presence of disgust related images did not significantly affect STRTs and led to worse audio recognition for high fear messages. These results are interpreted in light of Lang's Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Message Processing, and recommendations about message construction are offered to health campaign designers.
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Tyrone Cheng & Celia Lo
Journal of Social Policy, October 2010, Pages 543-559
Abstract:
This longitudinal study examined the association between heavy alcohol use, alcohol- and drug-screening requirements, and social support network variables and mothers' welfare participation in the United States. The study was a secondary data analysis of 3,517 mothers. The sample was extracted from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data gathered in 1994-2004. Results of logistic regression show welfare participation is not associated with heavy alcohol use or alcohol- and drug-screening requirements, but is associated with a history of reported heavy alcohol use, informal help with childcare, and scant human capital. Results also indicate that alcohol- and drug screening required under TANF may not exclude heavy drinking mothers from TANF participation, and that social support networks do not cancel heavy drinking's association with participation. Policy implications are discussed.