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Bradstreet, Matthew

Psychology

2010

MA

This study examined the association between social discounting, or generosity, and smoking status in a cohort of pregnant women who were either smokers (n=91), quitters (n=27), or never-smokers (n=30) (<100 cigarettes lifetime) at the time of entering prenatal care. The smokers and quitters were participants in clinical trials on reducing smoking while the never-smokers were controls in a study on nicotine withdrawal during pregnancy. Social discounting is a measure of the amount of money a person is willing to forgo in order to share money with individuals in their immediate and extended social network.
The amount that women were willing to forgo in order to share decreased hyperbolically as a function of social distance, with smokers exhibiting steeper discounting functions (i.e., less generosity) than quitters or never-smokers; discounting functions of quitters and never-smokers did not differ significantly. In multivariate analyses controlling for potential sociodemographic and other confounds, social discounting remained a significant predictor of smoking status among smokers versus quitters. Overall, these results suggest that social discounting, or generosity, may be a factor influencing the choices that smokers make about quitting upon learning of a pregnancy.