Risk denial about smoking hazards and readiness to quit among French smokers: An exploratory study [An article from: Addictive Behaviors]
Description
This digital document is a journal article from Addictive Behaviors, published by Elsevier in 2007. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
In most developed countries, a significant part of the population is still smoking despite comprehensive tobacco control policies. Among other reasons, many smokers may endorse self-exempting beliefs that help them to deny the smoking hazards for themselves. We investigated the relationship between smokers' risk denial and their readiness to quit making use of a French cross-sectional survey conducted in the Paris Ile-de-France Region (N=939 smokers). Self-exempting beliefs were quite widespread among participants and two of them were significant predictors of a low readiness to quit: considering that one's cigarette consumption is too low to be harmful and believing that one's way of smoking can protect from smoking-related diseases. Future tobacco control messages and interventions should specifically address these self-exempting beliefs that reduce smokers' cognitive dissonance and then inhibit their willingness to quit.
Description:
In most developed countries, a significant part of the population is still smoking despite comprehensive tobacco control policies. Among other reasons, many smokers may endorse self-exempting beliefs that help them to deny the smoking hazards for themselves. We investigated the relationship between smokers' risk denial and their readiness to quit making use of a French cross-sectional survey conducted in the Paris Ile-de-France Region (N=939 smokers). Self-exempting beliefs were quite widespread among participants and two of them were significant predictors of a low readiness to quit: considering that one's cigarette consumption is too low to be harmful and believing that one's way of smoking can protect from smoking-related diseases. Future tobacco control messages and interventions should specifically address these self-exempting beliefs that reduce smokers' cognitive dissonance and then inhibit their willingness to quit.
