Furthermore, it has been suggested (Dichter & Tomarken, 2008; Mneimne et al., 2008) that depressed individuals’ startle hyporesponsivity to affective stimuli is consistent with emotion context insensitivity (ECI), a condition characterized by diminished reactivity to both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli (Rottenberg, Gross, & Gotlib, 2005). Rottenberg and colleagues (2005) hypothesized that ECI is detrimental to individuals’ adjustment to the environment and have shown that, among depressed individuals, those who exhibited blunted reactivity to affective stimuli were significantly less likely to recover from depression than individuals who exhibited normal reactivity (Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross, & Gotlib, 2002). Given never-quitters’ nonclinical depression and blunted responses to both appetitive and defensive stimuli, it is conceivable they would experience more difficulty adjusting to the many demands that were associated with quitting smoking and ultimately failed in establishing abstinence that was longer than 24 hours.
