Nicotine deprivation amplifies attentional bias toward racial discrimination stimuli in African American adults who smoke cigarettes.

ABSTRACT: High smoking prevalence and low quit smoking rates among African American adults are well-documented, but poorly understood. We tested a transdisciplinary theoretical model of psychopharmacological-social mechanisms underlying smoking among African American adults. This model proposes that nicotine's acute attention-filtering effects may enhance smoking's addictiveness in populations unduly exposed to discrimination, like African American adults, because nicotine reduces the extent to which discrimination-related stimuli capture attention, and in turn, generate distress. During nicotine deprivation, attentional biases toward discrimination may be unmasked and exacerbated, which may induce distress and perpetuate smoking. To test this model, this within-subject laboratory experiment determi

SUBMITTER: Bello MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10837307 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature