I Suppress Therefore I Smoke Summary

I Suppress, Therefore I Smoke: Effects of Thought Suppression on Smoking Behavior
Summary
The purpose of Erskine, Georgiou, and Kvavilashvili’s (2010) article “I Suppress, Therefore I Smoke: Effects of Thought Suppression on Smoking Behavior” was to examine the effects of thought suppression on smokers and to test the hypothesis that thought suppression can increase the amount a participant smokes. The study took 85 participants who had been smoking an average of 10 cigarettes a day for at least more than a year and split them into three separate groups. There were 30 participants were in the suppression group, 29 participants in the expression group, and 26 participants in the control group. Each participant had to document the stress they were experiencing and the amount of cigarettes they were smoking over a three week period. On the second week of the experiment, the suppression group was told to suppress the thought of smoking when it occurred and the expression group was told to think about smoking as much as they could. On the third week all the …show more content…
By looking at past studies, the researchers were able to plan for their study and create a more successful outcome.
The third test group used in this study, alongside the suppression and control groups, was the expression group. This test group was told during the second week of the experiment to think about smoking as much as they could. The participants in this test group were doing the exact opposite of the participants in the suppression test group. This group helped create a comparison for the results found at the end of the experiment. Another factor that helped this study was the researchers testing to see if the results of the test would be different depending on