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Faulkner et al. (2020) found that smokers had more problems with emotion regulation than non-smokers. Halliday et al. (2025) found that risk perceptions and mood expectancies predicted intentions to smoke in the next thirty minutes. The higher the belief that smoking would enhance mood, the more prone an individual was to smoke. The mediating or moderating effects of factors in smoking are under researched. This is important for understanding the mechanisms through which impulsivity and smoking behaviour are associated. The role of psychological risk factors will be assessed in the relationship between impulsivity and nicotine addiction, with the inclusion of e-cigarette use. The research question was ‘do psychological flexibility, emotion dysregulation and outcome expectancies mediate and/or moderate the relationship between impulsivity and nicotine addiction?’
A Qualtrics survey including an information sheet, consent form, demographic questions, five standardised questionnaires and a debrief sheet was distributed to individuals who smoked nicotine products via opportunity and snowball sampling. The data were analysed via IBM SPSS Statistics V28 using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), multiple regression and PROCESS Macro.
The research had a quantitative, cross-sectional design. The study included 75 participants (Males, N = 38; Females, N = 37). Appetite/weight control significantly predicted nicotine dependence (β = .39, t = 2.83, p < .01). There was a significant indirect effect of positive urgency on nicotine dependence through strategies, β = .09, 95% CI [.00, .27]. Individuals that tried to control their appetite and weight had higher nicotine dependence levels. Individuals with high trait impulsivity tend to have difficulties in using emotion regulation strategies when in high arousal affective state, this in turn may lead to higher risk for nicotine addiction. A direction for future research could assess differences in gender, along with further investigating the relationship between appetite, impulsivity and nicotine dependence
Keywords: Impulsivity, Nicotine addiction
How to Cite: David, M. (2026) “Poster: Do psychological risk factors affect the relationship between impulsivity and nicotine addiction?”, New Vistas. 12(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.36828/newvistas.380