Trying to quit smoking? Encouragement works better
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In the same week that would-be quitters got the depressing news that they’re at higher risk of developing diabetes for roughly a decade after stopping smoking, a study published Thursday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has made a remarkable discovery:
Positive messages are a better way to help you quit!
It turns out that phone counselors staffing Quitlines, which are an increasingly popular and effective way to support smokers in kicking the habit, might be more effective if they reframed their comments to be positive, a study conducted by Yale University researchers found.
So instead of telling a smoker in the grips of nicotine withdrawal, ‘you gotta resist the urge to light up, or else you’ll be more likely to die an early and painful death,’ the counselor might say, ‘if you resist the urge to light up, you’re very likely to live a longer life!’
Whodathunkit?
Actually, the effectiveness of scary versus positive messages in discouraging people from smoking is very much an active subject of research right now. With its new regulatory powers over tobacco, the Food and Drug Administration is empowered to dictate that cigarette packaging has prominent warnings about the dangers of smoking or the importance of quitting. Amid growing evidence that scary, graphic images of blackened lungs and death actually backfire, the agency is deliberating just what kinds of messages will sway consumers best from buying cigarettes.
The Yale study found that the consistent delivery of such ‘gain-framed’ exhortations to quit made smokers using the quit-lines more likely to attempt a program of smoking cessation and more likely to have continued abstaining from cigarettes when they were contacted two weeks later. At the three-month mark, alas, the difference between the two disappeared--a testament, perhaps, more to the addictive powers of nicotine than to the weakness of positive thinking.
Even more remarkable, perhaps, is that these were would-be quitters who were taking antidepressants to aid in their effort. That may have made them more amenable to hopeful, positive messages encouraging them to stay the abstinence course.
Nevertheless, the authors of the study argued that positive messages of encouragement--which are neither more expensive nor more intrusive to deliver than messages that are scary or more neutral--are worth trying for states and institutions running quit lines. And their study showed that it’s possible to get operators to deliver ‘gain-framed’ messages consistently, with just a little training.
So, let’s go back to that diabetes/quitting study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and think how to ‘gain-frame’ that message.
Old: ‘Hey, while you’re jones-ing for that cigarette, you want to be careful not gain too much weight, because for the next three years, you’re at much higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.’
New: ‘You know, if you can just quit smoking now, you’re going to lower your risk of developing diabetes to that of someone who never smoked in about 12 years!’
See? It’s that easy!
Is giving up cigarettes your New Year’s resolution, or have you done so in recent years? Here‘s the National Cancer Institute’s guide to all things quitting, and here‘s the American Cancer Society’s guide, also available in Spanish. And here‘s a guide to all the research that says you should do so. And if you think that packing on the pounds is an inevitable effect of quitting, check out this authoritative website.
-- Melissa Healy
