The results found here support the conventional wisdom that smokers are motivated to smoke in order to lower craving and negative mood and that smoking generally accomplishes this goal. These findings replicate Shiffman and colleagues’ (2002) finding that there were no differences in level of negative mood immediately before smoking compared with mood ratings taken at random. However, in the present study participants reported a significant drop in negative mood immediately after smoking, suggesting that smokers may not smoke in response to increased levels of negative mood, but may be motivated to smoke in order to occasionally reduce baseline levels of negative mood. This result is consistent with the work of Beckham and colleagues (2007) who found smokers with posttraumatic stress disorder, a population with higher baseline levels of stress and anxiety, experienced a reduction in negative mood as a consequence of smoking. These findings stand in contrast to Conklin and Perkins’ (2005) laboratory study, which did not find a reduction in negative mood after smoking. However, their study induced high levels of negative mood, which one would not expect
