Smoking behavior intervention based on implicit approach: a cross-sectional pilot study

Introduction: Indonesia is the country with the highest smoking rate in Southeast Asia and the third-highest globally. Smoking has become one of Indonesia's biggest addiction problems. The goal of this research is to develop smoking behavior intervention based on an implicit approach. Methods: This article contains a two-step study that was part of a comprehensive study on smoking behavior in Indonesia. The first study, applying measurement of Stroop task to 117 male-university-students with results revealed that smoking behavior was associated with attention bias. This result is the basis for developing an implicit approach-based intervention. In the second study, the research aims to develop an intervention by investigating the effects of the experimental retraining by manipulating the automatic-avoidance-action tendencies using an approach-avoidance task (AAT) on 40 male university student smokers that proved to have an attentional bias in the first study. Results: The outcomes of the studies showed that the retraining (six weeks, twice a week) proved to shape the AAT effect and reduce the cigarettes consumption of the smokers. This pilot research becomes initial step to develop smoking cessation interventions in Indonesia using an implicit cognition approach.