Expectancy Accessibility and the Influence of Outcome Expectancies on Adolescent Smokeless Tobacco Use

Abstract

This study investigated the moderating influence of expectancy accessibility on the relation between outcome expectancies and drug use intentions. Specifically, it was hypothesized that expectancies made temporarily more accessible would predict smokeless tobacco intentions to a greater degree than would less accessible expectancies. In addition, it was anticipated that expectancies regarding positive outcomes of smokeless tobacco use would be better predictors of intention than would expectancies about negative outcomes. Results partially supported the accessibility hypothesis, but this effect occurred for positive outcome expectancies only. In addition, the anticipated prepotency of positive over negative expectancies in predicting drug use intentions was strongly supported. These findings are consistent with theories of problem behavior which differentiate between positive and negative outcome expectancies and which postulate that accessibility of expectancies plays an important role in expectancy‐behavior relations.

Prescription Stimulant Expectancies in Recreational and Medical Users: Results from a Preliminary Expectancy Questionnaire

“…Positive expectancies are typically more strongly related to alcohol use than are negative expectancies (Brown, Creamer, and Stetson, 1987;Collins, Lapp, Emmons, and Isaac, 1990;Fromme, Stroot, and Kaplan, 1993;Southwick, Steele, Marlatt, and Lindell, 1981;Stacy et al, 1990a), although negative expectancies might prove important in the prediction of abstinence and efforts to resist drinking (Jones and McMahon, 1996;Leigh and Stacy, 2004).…”

Generality and specificity in health behavior: Application to warning-label and social influence expectancies.

“…In addition, the predictive superiority of positive expectancies over negative expectancies and attitude suggested that models that focus primarily on health beliefs referring to negative outcomes of a behavior are likely to be incomplete explanations of health behavior. Other research also has found support for the distinction between positive and negative expectancies (Christiansen, Goldman, & Inn, 1982;Rohsenow, 1983;Stacy, Dent, et al, 1990).…”

Memory activation and expectancy as prospective predictors of alcohol and marijuana use.

“…For example, Rather, Goldman, Roehrich, and Brannick (1992) found evidence that outcome expectancies regarding alcohol use can be modeled as a network of relationships in memory. Also, Stacy, Dent, et al (1990) found that a manipulation of the accessibility of positive outcomes of tobacco use from memory moderated the predictive effects of outcome expectancies on behavior intentions toward tobacco use.…”

“…Most research derived from this framework has been closely aligned with work on outcome expectancies (e.g., Goldman et al, 1991;Stacy, Dent, et al, 1990), operationally defined as behavioral beliefs (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) or subjective probabilities of outcomes (Bauman, 1980) as reported on questionnaires. In this literature, outcome expectancies have been shown to be strongly related to drug use, and this relationship has been described recently as a memory process.…”