Using affective modulated startle response and self-report questionnaires, this study found a significant difference in the affective reactivity between smokers who could and smokers who could not establish an initial abstinence of 24 hours. Never-quitters have received relatively little attention and were often excluded from analyses or counted as relapsers in previous studies. However, these findings caution researchers in either discounting never-quitters as unmotivated quitters or treating them simply as smokers who relapsed early. Our results showed that although never-quitters were unsuccessful in abstaining from smoking, they often made obvious efforts to quit and reduced their daily cigarette consumption by as much as 50%. Furthermore, we found that unlike abstainers and relapsers, when never-quitters made an attempt to quit, they exhibited an atypical startle response profile that had previously been observed among depressed individuals. This particular finding highlights the need for future studies to consider never-quitters as a separate subgroup of smokers who experience a distinctive affective hyporeactivity profile and may require better understanding of their experience and a uniquely tailored intervention to assist them in quitting smoking.
