Exposure to pictures of natural landscapes may reduce cigarette smoking.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Reducing temporal discounting may help smokers to reduce their smoking by improving inhibitory control. This study aimed to assess whether viewing pictures of natural versus urban scenes would cause participants to smoke fewer cigarettes mediated by lower temporal discounting.

DESIGN

A single-factor (natural scene, urban scene and control) between-subjects design was employed.

SETTING

Laboratory at Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan.

PARTICIPANTS

A community sample of 93 daily smokers.

INTERVENTION AND COMPARATOR

Participants were exposed to pictures of natural or urban scenes or no images (control).

MEASUREMENTS

The discounting measure was implemented after the landscape exposure manipulation. Participants expressed their preferences related to winning a lottery by answering a series of nine binary choice questions, opting either to receive a certain amount of money immediately or varying amounts of money 1 year in the future. The dependent measure was cigarette consumption during an ostensible survey.

FINDINGS

Participants exposed to pictures of natural scenes smoked fewer cigarettes [mean = 1.1 cigarettes, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.7, 1.6] than did those exposed to pictures of urban scenes (mean = 2.1 cigarettes, 95% CI = 1.7, 2.6, 0.002) and control participants (mean = 1.8 cigarettes, 95% CI = 1.4, 2.3, 0.029). The discounting rate mediated the association between exposure to nature and the amount of smoking (B = -0.62, 95% CI = -1.07, -0.20, P < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONS

Exposing smokers to pictures of natural landscapes may lead to reduced smoking by lowering temporal discounting.