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Situational Determinants of Coping in Smoking Relapse Crises 1
Author(s) -
Shiffman Saul,
Jarvik Murray E.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1987.tb00289.x
Subject(s) - coping (psychology) , situational ethics , psychology , clinical psychology , psychological intervention , cognition , social psychology , psychiatry
Interviews with 264 callers to a relapse prevention hotline were used to explore situational determinants of coping among exsmokers facing temptations to smoke. As hypothesized, subjects were more likely to perform cognitive and behavioral coping early in abstinence. Coping was also more likely in situations where subjects had habitually smoked. Discriminant function analyses were used to predict the performance of coping from situational variables. Cognitive coping could not be predicted. Performance of behavioral coping was predictable from six situational variables which accounted for 28% of the variance in coping performance. These situational variables also accounted for the decay of behavioral coping over time. The findings imply that individual differences play a limited role in coping performance and have implications for clinical efforts to enhance smoking cessation through coping interventions.