Incremental validity of anxiety sensitivity in terms of motivation to quit, reasons for quitting, and barriers to quitting among community-recruited daily smokers

Abstract

The present investigation examined the relationships between anxiety sensitivity and motivation to quit smoking, barriers to smoking cessation, and reasons for quitting smoking among 329 adult daily smokers (160 females; Mage=26.08 years, SD=10.92). As expected, after covarying for the theoretically relevant variables of negative affectivity, gender, Axis I psychopathology, nonclinical panic attack history, number of cigarettes smoked per day, and current levels of alcohol consumption, we found that anxiety sensitivity was significantly incrementally related to level of motivation to quit smoking as well as current barriers to quitting smoking. Partially consistent with the hypotheses, after accounting for the variance explained by other theoretically relevant variables, we found that anxiety sensitivity was significantly associated with self-control reasons for quitting smoking (intrinsic factors) as well as immediate reinforcement and social influence reasons for quitting (extrinsic factors). Results are discussed in relation to better understanding the role of anxiety sensitivity in psychological processes associated with smoking cessation.