Inducing feelings of gratitude in people who smoke can both help to reduce their urge to smoke, and increase their likelihood of joining a programme to help them quit smoking, suggests research.
It was through a series of multi method studies, that the researchers found consistent evidence of an association between gratitude and lower rates of smoking behaviour.
The authors said their results could inform newer approaches to public health messaging campaigns that aim to reduce other risky health behaviours such as smoking, drinking, and drug use.
‘The conventional wisdom in the field was to induce negative emotions in anti-smoking campaigns,’ said lead researcher Ke Wang. ‘Our work suggests that such campaigns should consider inducing gratitude, a positive emotion that triggers cascading positive effects.’
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