Recently, researchers have turned to craving and mood assessments taken at the moment they happen in the smoker’s natural environment. Several naturalistic studies have used Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA; Schwarz, 2007; see Stone, Shiffman, Atienza, & Nebeling, 2007, for review), collecting mood and craving ratings with hand held computers from smokers in their day-to-day lives, in real time. These studies have investigated the temporal relationship between craving, negative mood, and smoking. For example, Shiffman and colleagues (2002) used EMA to study the antecedents of cigarette smoking and found that smoking increased with higher craving, but level of negative mood was unrelated to the initiation of smoking. That is, negative mood was no higher just before smoking than it was at random times of day. More recent EMA studies by Shiffman and colleagues have shown similar results. In a study of nontreatment seeking smokers, craving to smoke was the strongest predictor of subsequent smoking, while little relationship was found between mood and smoking (Shiffman, Paty, Gwaltney, & Dang, 2004). In another study comparing chippers (light, nonaddicted smokers) to heavy smokers, only
