Discordance of physiological and biochemical response to smoking and to psychological stress

Both smoking and psychological stress produce marked effects upon cardiovascular function, and several studies have demonstrated that in combination they produce additive or potentiating effects. More recently, it has been reported that individuals strongly reactive to psychological stress are also strongly reactive to nicotine. In an attempt to replicate and extend those findings, we examined reactivity to smoking and competitive mental arithmetic across several physiological and biochemical variables. Despite stable responding across mental arithmetic trials, we were unable to demonstrate significant correlations between reactivity to smoking and to a psychological stressor. We further observed that anxiety level, when low, was a poor predictor of desire to smoke and of withdrawal, whereas higher anxiety levels were more tightly linked to these measures. These findings have implications for the identification of individuals at risk of cardiovascular disease as well as for the design of smoking treatment and relapse prevention programs.