The Role of I and D-Curiosity to Start Smoking and its Consequences

Curiosity plays an important role in smoking initiation. The present paper demonstrates that individuals can be I-curious (interest-driven) to start smoking and/or D-curious (deprivation-driven) to start smoking (study 1). We demonstrate that scoring high on D-curiosity to start smoking is associated with more regret for smoking initiation, and with more motivation for smoking cessation in comparison with I-curiosity to start smoking (study 1). Study 2 shows the underlying process behind these main effects. We provide evidence for a serial mediation model in which we find that D-curiosity smokers elaborate more on their decision to smoke, which leads to more regret, which in turn leads to a higher motivation for smoking cessation. Finally, study 3 shows that anti-tobacco campaigns are only effective for individuals who score high on D-curiosity to start smoking.