Our results support our first hypothesis that heavier and more dependent smokers experience greater negative affect and craving at baseline with convincing evidence across modalities. Smokers with higher FTND had larger COR EMG to unpleasant slides, higher PANAS Negative scale scores, higher in-session Negative ratings, and higher in-session Craving ratings at baseline. The self-report measures did not support the second part of this hypothesis, that more dependent smokers would experience greater negative affect after quitting than less dependent smokers. However, postquit COR EMG responses to unpleasant slides were positively associated with baseline FTND scores. Overall, these multimodal findings suggest that more dependent smokers experience greater day-to-day negative affect and craving, and reactivity to unpleasant emotional cues, regardless of smoking abstinence status. Our findings do not support previous studies’ findings that greater nicotine dependence causes greater negative affect and craving during withdrawal (Killen et al., 1988; Shiffman et al., 1994). We also found no evidence that less dependent smokers are more reactive to smoking cues (Shiffman & Paty, 2006; Watson, Carpenter, Saladin, Gray, & Upadhyaya, 2010), contrary to arguments that less dependent smokers smoke in more proscribed and hence stimulus-dependent situations (Stewart, de Wit, & Eikelboom, 1984).
