Beauty against tobacco control: viewing photos of attractive women may induce a mating mindset, leading to reduced self-control over smoking among male smokers

Successful smoking cessation or reduction requires smokers to focus on the distal concerns of health and control instead of immediate impulses to smoke. Based on pioneering research demonstrating that cues inducing a mating mindset (i.e., viewing pictures of attractive women) can engender greater temporal discounting in men, we conducted a laboratory experiment to examine whether viewing faces of attractive women rendered male smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking more likely to discount the future and give in to the immediate impulse to smoke by sacrificing distal health concerns during a subsequent task. Seventy-six male smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking were randomly assigned to view either attractive or unattractive opposite-sex faces. Participants completed a modified Stroop task measuring their mating mindset after the attractiveness manipulation. The dependent variables were temporal discounting and actual cigarette consumption during an ostensible survey. A mating mindset mediated the connection between viewing pictures of attractive women and greater temporal discounting. Male smokers exposed to photographs of attractive compared with unattractive women were less likely to refrain from smoking and smoked more cigarettes in a subsequent survey. Attractive women may act as stimuli that increase a mating mindset among male smokers with intentions to quit or reduce smoking, leading to greater temporal discounting and reduced control over cigarette consumption. The implications for associations among mating motives, temporal discounting, and control over addictive impulses and behaviors are discussed.