Emotional Stimuli and Context Moderate Effects of Nicotine on Specific, But Not Global Affects

We tested the hypothesis that the effects of nicotine on affect are moderated by the presence or absence of emotionally positive and negative stimuli and by attentional choice to avoid attending to emotionally negative stimuli. Thirty-two habitual smokers were assigned to tasks allowing attentional freedom to look back and forth at two simultaneously presented pictures, while another 32 habitual smokers viewed single pictures without attentional choice. Picture contents in both tasks were one of four combinations: emotionally negative + neutral, negative + positive, positive + neutral, or neutral + neutral. Participants wore a nicotine patch on one day and placebo patch on another day. Nicotine reduced anxiety most when negative pictures were presented in combination with neutral pictures, but had no effects on anxiety when negative pictures were presented in combination with positive pictures and when negative pictures were not presented. In contrast, nicotine only reduced depressive affect when the participant had attentional choice between positive and negative pictures. Nicotine also enhanced PANAS positive affect and reduced PANAS negative affect, but these effects were not moderated by task manipulations. Overall, the findings support the view that nicotine’s ability to reduce specific negative affects is moderated by emotional context and attentional freedom. Nicotine tended to enhance eye-gaze orientation to emotional pictures versus neutral pictures in women, but had no significant effect on eye-gaze in men.