If you’re looking for a new way to help a loved one quit smoking, new research in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine might have the solution. According to the research, sending smokers anti-tobacco messages via their PDA for two weeks convinced more than half of the users in the study to attempt quitting. The key, according to the study, was to get smokers to worry about the health consequences of the habit.
The findings of the study suggest that health concerns are prime motivators for smokers to quit, more so than worry over social consequences or aesthetics like wrinkles and yellowed teeth. It should be no surprise that motivation is a key factor in convincing someone to quit smoking. What is interesting about this study is how researchers used PDAs to help motivate smokers to quit.
The study involved 119 smokers with an average age of 26. The researchers didn’t ask the participants to try to quit, they simply provided PDAs that received regular messages about smoking. One group received messages about the daily hassles of smoking, such as money problems and stress. The other group received messages about the consequences of smoking, such as lung cancer and death statistics. At the end of the two-week study, more than half of the group getting the anti-smoking messages said they had started efforts to quit, compared to just 19% percent of the comparison group.
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