Lower motivation for rewarded mental effort in tobacco dependence

Tobacco dependence is characterized by decision-making impairments, which may increase the risk of smoking relapse by lowering the capacity to resist the immediate gratification of nicotine consumption. Because controlling one's desires for immediate rewards is experienced as effortful, aversion to effortful control processes may also influence the prospects of successful smoking cessation. We therefore tested whether persons who smoke, compared with persons who do not smoke, show a lower willingness to engage in goal-directed mental effort. Thirty-seven persons who smoke and 38 persons who do not smoke performed a decision task requiring choices on whether to exert a demanding attention task for monetary rewards. Using state-of-the-art drift-diffusion modeling, we found that persons who smoke showed a stronger starting bias toward effort-free rewards. Taken together, our process model approach allowed us to identify the subcomponents of the decision process underlying the stronger aversion against mental effort in tobacco dependence, which may contribute to altered decision making by lowering the motivation to engage in effortful control processes when trying to suppress the desire for nicotine consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).