Nicotine

Question 1

Key Question (KQ) for Health Psychology

Answer 1

Can we encourage the cessation of smoking?

Question 2

Nicotine Learning Explanation: SLT (Identification, Friedman, Noble)

Answer 2

• Nicotine addiction behaviour is learnt through the observation and imitation of role models
• Teenager observes role model who smokes and identifies with them
• More likely to occur if role model is of same sex, higher status or similar in age

AO3 ‹+› Friedman used structured interviews (SI) with 157 teenagers to investigate smoking initiation, found that peer encouragement and exposure to smoking peers were a significant risk factor associated with onset and continued smoking behaviour
D.P. SI allows for replication, increasing reliability

AO3 ‹-› Noble collected quantitative data using questionnaires about smoking status of participants and blood tests to determine A1 variant
48% of active smokers had A1 VARIANT compared to 25% of non-smokers, supports DRD2 gene and using smoking to compensate for reward deficiency