Approach Without Liking: The Effects of Smoking-Related Settings on Implicit Liking Attitudes and Approach Tendencies Toward Smoking

Little is known about whether smokers consistently show implicit liking attitudes and approach tendencies toward smoking in various smoking-related settings. This study aimed to examine the effects of static object and dynamic action cues associated with cigarettes on the liking and approach components of implicit attitudes toward smoking. Three experiments were conducted using a modified paradigm of the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT). In each experiment, participants were required to complete both the liking-BIAT and approach-BIAT. Experiment 1 showed that smokers exhibited fewer negative attitudes and more approach tendencies toward smoking than nonsmokers. Experiment 2 showed that neither liking nor approach tendencies of implicit attitudes toward smoking differed significantly in smoking-related and neutral situations among smokers. Experiment 3 showed that smokers exhibited more approach tendencies toward smoking under dynamic action cues associated with cigarettes than that under static object cues, whereas implicit liking attitudes were not significantly different under these two settings. The present results suggested that the approach component of implicit attitudes was more sensitive to smoking-related settings, including cues of cigarette-offering action, than implicit liking attitudes, which increased the understanding of distinct activation mechanisms of different components of implicit attitudes toward smoking.