Welcome!

In this laboratory, we investigate the psychological processes that contribute to continued smoking despite the high personal and societal costs of tobacco use.  We also study the process of quitting smoking and try to use this information to develop better treatments to help people stop smoking for life.

Our research focuses on helping people stop smoking because:

• Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S. and takes approximately 430,000 lives annually (about one life every 1.2 minutes; Centers for Disease Control, 2006)
  
  
• Most people who smoke report that they want to quit smoking, yet only about 4% are able to stop smoking for 3 months or longer (Centers for Disease Control, 2002)
  
  
• Existing treatments can double the chances of quitting successfully (Fiore et al., 2000), but could be improved and made more affordable, accessible, and acceptable (Fiore et al.,  2004)
  
  
• We do not know enough about how our current treatments work to efficiently refine them or to match individuals to particular treatments (McCarthy, Bolt, & Baker, 2007)

In our research, we work together with people who want to stop smoking to better understand what helps people quit and what gets in the way of staying quit for life. To learn more about our ongoing research studies and opportunities to participate in research, click here.

To learn more about our research team, click here.

To learn more about smoking, health, and quitting, click here.