Isolating the Unique Role of Transdiagnostic Risk Factors and Perceived Barriers for Smoking Cessation

Individuals who smoke cigarettes and experience affective vulnerabilities report more severe smoking patterns. Prior work has identified several transdiagnostic risk factors associated with perceived barriers for smoking cessation, including distress tolerance, anxiety sensitivity, and emotion dysregulation. However, no work has explored the unique effect of these constructs on dimensions of perceived barriers for smoking cessation while controlling for the shared variance across these affective vulnerabilities. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of anxiety sensitivity, distress tolerance, and emotion dysregulation on perceived barriers for smoking cessation related to addiction, external, and internal domains when controlling for the shared variance across the identified affective vulnerabilities. Participants included 154 adults who reported daily cigarette smoking and low distress tolerance (M _age = 29.6 years; SD = 7.49; 31% female). Results indicate that higher anxiety sensitivity is related to greater external perceived barriers for smoking cessation whereas lower distress tolerance is related to greater internal and addiction perceived barriers for smoking cessation. The current findings suggest anxiety sensitivity and distress tolerance are important to better understanding perceived barriers for smoking cessation in the context of one another and emotion dysregulation.