Emotional intelligence and smoking across ethnicity
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Adolescent tobacco use is a well-known public health problem with harmful health consequences. Regardless, increasing numbers of adolescents in California have recently begun to smoke. These increasing rates of smoking initiation among adolescents indicate that novel approaches to tobacco use prevention are needed in order to reduce the rising adolescent smoking prevalence in California.
 
 
 
 
 
 The most effective adolescent tobacco use prevention programs focus on social influences, such as perceived norms (e.g., “lots of people my age smoke”) and perceived social consequences (e.g., “smoking makes me look cool”) associated with smoking. Those with high levels of emotional intelligence may be better prepared to process and utilize the information learned from the prevention programs and thus better benefit from them. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive and appraise emotions within oneself and in others, to understand and reason about emotions (how emotions come about), and to manage and regulate emotions. Emotional intelligence accounts for human success in ways that other indicators, such as traditional intelligence measures like IQ, do not.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 It is hypothesized that low levels of emotional intelligence, resulting in an inability to cope and manage one’s emotions, contributes to the onset and progression of cigarette use. Conversely, high emotional intelligence may counteract the initiation and progression of cigarette use by increasing the adolescent’s awareness of experienced feelings regarding tobacco and tobacco offers, how those feelings developed, and how to manage them. It is also hypothesized that those with high emotional intelligence will be better able to apply methods taught in a social influences-based tobacco prevention program.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The proposed study will be conducted in conjunction with the Pacific Rim Integrated Research Project (PRIRP). The PRIRP is a five-year tobacco use prevention program targeting Pacific Rim populations that emphasizes Asians and Latinos. The PRIRP is culturally appropriate and focuses on social influences. The groups of this study provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the main effects of emotional intelligence over time and its effects on the relationship between tobacco use prevention programs and adolescent smoking behaviors across ethnicity.
 
 
 
 
 
 The knowledge gained from this research can be used to develop improved smoking prevention programs incorporating components of emotional intelligence in addition to the already successful social influences components for these adolescents and other adolescents throughout the U.S. The impact of this knowledge may lead to more successful and effective adolescent smoking prevention programs. As a result, this research may contribute to preventing adolescents from experimenting with cigarettes and/or becoming addicted to cigarettes, the greatest preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States.