About “Smoking and Emotions”

Some participants were asked to help us learn about the physical effects of emotions and smoking on the body. They viewed a series of pleasant (someone laughing, for example) and unpleasant (such as a snake) pictures while the research team measured their emotional and physical responses by monitoring heart rate and skin conductance. Participants who were regular smokers were allowed to smoke a cigarette before they viewed the pictures. Non-smoking participants were not allowed to smoke. We were interested in finding out how the emotional and physical reactions to the pictures varied for both nonsmokers and smokers. This project involved three visits to the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) over two years.

STUDY UPDATE:This part of the project is finished. We plan to post study results here in the future. Please check back if you are interested.