About “Smoking and Emotions”

Some teens will be asked to help us learn about the physical effects of emotions and smoking on the body. Teens will visit the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) 3 times over two years. They will look at a series of pleasant (someone laughing, for example) and unpleasant (such as a snake) pictures. The research team will measure their emotional and physical responses by using painless monitors to measure heart rate and skin conductance. Participants who are regular smokers will be asked to smoke a cigarette before they look at the pictures. Teens who do not smoke will NOT smoke a cigarette. We are interested in finding out how the emotional and physical reactions to the pictures vary for both nonsmokers and smokers.