Images of attractive women can induce a “mating mindset among male smokers” and lead to “reduced control over cigarette consumption,” according to research coordinated by Chiou Wen-bin (邱文彬), an education professor at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung.
Increased temporal discounting — the focus on instant, rather than delayed, gratification — can be registered among male smokers who have viewed images of beautiful women, making them more likely to “discount the future and give in to the immediate impulse to smoke,” the study found.
The research was published in an online issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior last year, making Chiu the first Taiwanese author published by the renowned journal.
The researchers assembled 76 male smokers “who intended to quit or reduce smoking” and randomly assigned each to rate photographs of either highly attractive or less attractive women, they said.
Later, to gauge nicotine’s effect on attention, they were asked to complete a task to test their reaction time to mating-related and neutral terms, before being led to a smoking room to complete unrelated questionnaires, the researchers said.
“Male smokers exposed to photographs of attractive — compared with unattractive — women were less likely to refrain from smoking and smoked more cigarettes,” the study found, based on the number of the butts left in an ashtray.
Those who had viewed attractive female faces took longer to name the color of mating-related terms, which suggested that images of attractive women can induce a “mating mindset” and reduced control over smoking, the research found.
“Successful smoking cessation or reduction requires smokers to focus on the distal concerns of health and control, instead of immediate impulses to smoke,” the research found.
The research results were featured in a newsletter by Elsevier — one of the largest academic publishers — and in English-language newspapers, including the Daily Mail and India’s the Pioneer.
A Pacific Standard magazine report on the results of the study suggested that “for people trying to stop smoking, it is very useful to know what your potential triggers are, so you can avoid them when possible. So if you are a guy trying to part with your Pall Malls, put away that Playboy. It will just make things worse.”
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