Experiment Among Smokers in Which Two Variables Are Manipulated: Ostracism and Concealability

Dickinson College

Status: Begins enrollment in a year or more

Conditions: Ostracism

Treatments: Behavioral: Do men and women differ in their reactions to the experimental conditions.

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06462950

MHLStudy3

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this experimental study is to learn about the effects of ostracism and concealment among adult smokers. The main aims are:

1. Determine the causal consequences of gendered stigmatization. Specifically, do women react more strongly than men to exclusion (as opposed to inclusion) especially when their gender is revealed (as opposed to concealed) for outcomes such as smoking stigma, stress, cognitive depletion, smoking attitudes, and smoking cessation intentions (Study 3)?
2. Examine the moderating roles of cultural context. Specifically, contrasting the cultural context in the US and Denmark (where gender norms are more egalitarian) do Danish smokers show fewer gender differences than US smokers in how they describe and react to their smoking stigmatization experiences (Study 1, 2, and 3)?

Full description

The proposed studies examine cross-culturally the reasons why among smokers, women feel more stigmatized than men do. An experiment with US and Danish smokers will examine how men and women differ in their reactions to being stigmatized (using a standard exclusion manipulation) when their gender is revealed instead of concealed. The outcome measures will include stress, smoking stigma, cognitive depletion, smoking attitudes, and smoking cessation intentions.

Enrollment: 340 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• daily smoker who smoker more than 5 cigarettes daily and have smoked for at least 1 year
• speak English reside in the United States

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Factorial Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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340 participants in 2 patient groups

Ostracism

Experimental group

Description:

Ostracism is manipulated by randomly assigning people to the inclusion condition (they play an online ball tossing game and get the ball passed a third of the time) or exclusion condition (they get the ball passed twice in the beginning of the game and then not again).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Do men and women differ in their reactions to the experimental conditions.

Concealment

Experimental group

Description:

Concealment is manipulated by randomly assigning the participants to information that the other players did (revealed condition) or did not know (concealed condition) the gender of the participant.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Do men and women differ in their reactions to the experimental conditions.