Predictors of the development of elementary-school children's intentions to smoke cigarettes: hostility, prototypes, and subjective norms

Children's intentions to smoke are reliable predictors of subsequent smoking and precede smoking initiation; thus identifying predictors of intentions is important for preventing or delaying smoking initiation. Children's hostility and sociability, mediated by the development of prototypes (i.e., social images of children who smoke cigarettes) and subjective norms regarding smoking among peers, were expected to predict the development of their intentions to smoke cigarettes in the future. Children in 2nd through 5th grades (N = 809) from a western Oregon community participated in a longitudinal study. Hostility and sociability were assessed by teachers' ratings, and prototypes, subjective norms, and intentions were assessed by self-report at each of the first four annual assessments. Children's intentions to smoke predicted whether they had tried cigarettes by the fifth assessment. For both genders, latent growth modeling demonstrated that hostility, but not sociability, predicted the development of smoking intentions. Children who were more hostile were more likely to have higher initial levels of intentions to smoke, and for boys this effect was mediated by their higher initial levels of subjective norms about smoking. Sociability was not related to the development of smoking cognitions for boys or girls. These results are discussed in terms of opportunities to intervene in early influences on smoking intentions.