Psychobiological Theories of Smoking and Smoking Motivation

Abstract. Theories of smoking have been developed about the conditions and causes of smoking as well as for explaining its maintenance. Moreover, factors of smoking motivation have been identified, which describe incentives to smoke and types of smoking behavior. The most frequently reported motives are psychosocial smoking, sensorimotor smoking, indulgent smoking, stimulation smoking, sedation smoking, dependent smoking, and automatic smoking. In the first phase after the start of smoking, psychosocial smoking is the dominating motive, which is best represented by theories of social psychology. Sensorimotor smoking may be best explained by theories of classical and operant conditioning. Indulgent smoking (= smoking for pleasure) may be explained by neurochemical theories and by the neurobiological theories of dependence emphasizing nicotine-induced activation of mesolimbic dopaminergic reinforcement. Stimulation smoking and sedation smoking are related to arousal models. Moreover, sedation smoking is also explained by aspects of reducing negative affect (as claimed by theories of affect regulation) and by biochemical theories emphasizing serotonergic mechanisms in modulating anxiety as well as by theories of dependence. Dependent smoking, which is mostly based on negative reinforcement (suppression of withdrawal symptoms) may be explained by neurochemical theories as well as by neurobiological theories of psychological and physical dependence explaining blunted dopaminergic and serotonergic responsivity as due to desensitization of respective receptors. Also automatic smoking may be explained by processes of habit learning and neurobiological theories of dependence. Finally, personality theories have been applied to all of these smoking motives.