Psychophysiological reactions during active and passive stress coping following smoking cessation

This study investigated the effects of 9 days' smoking abstinence on psychophysiological stress reactions. The subjects were 40 female smokers; 20 of them intended to give up smoking in the course of the study, whereas the remaining 20 had no such intention. A first session was carried out before, a second and a third during days 3 and 9 of abstinence. The nonabstainers were tested at corresponding intervals. Each session consisted of a 30-min stress-coping phase with relaxation phases before and after. While performing a rapid information processing task (RIP) the subjects had to sustain electrical shocks which were, according to instructions, but not in fact, either avoidable (active coping) or not (passive coping). Generally, the active coping instruction produced greater responses to the RIP task than did the passive coping instruction for heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure but not for finger pulse amplitude, thus resembling a beta-adrenergic stimulation. RIP processing rate was not affected, but the response rate (total of hits and commission errors) was greater during active than during passive coping. However, none of these stress reactions differed between abstainers and nonabstainers. On the other hand, both heart rate and the craving to smoke decreased significantly in the abstainer group across the 9 days. Thus, it is concluded that a deprivation of 1 h, 3 or 9 days has no differential effect on physiological stress reactions.