Cessation of patterned behavior: Withdrawal from smoking

Abstract

CHANGE in behavior patterns implies not only alteration in overt activity but also in the mental sets and material items associated with carrying out the behavior. Much of the sociological research in behavior change has focused on the acquisition of the new material aspects utilized in novel behavior patterns. These investigations have studied the diffusion of innovations such as agricultural implements, fertilizers, new types of seed, new drugs, immunization, tuberculosis prophylaxis and other public health innovations. (Wilkening [ 1 ] ; Ryan and Gross [2] ; Coleman et al. [3] ; Deasy [4]. Although the material aspect has been central in each of the above inquiries, it is apparent that the adoption of these innovations also required changes in knowledge, attitudes, and values. This is also true of innovations wherein the change does not involve new physical equipment, such as a new card game, the boiling of drinking water, the Ghost Dance of the California Indians, or the Controlled Interval Method in athletics training. (Graham [5]; Wellin [6] ; Gayton [7] ; Loy [S]). In these cases as in those involving new paraphernalia, new ideas and preferences as well as behavior patterns are required for adoption. Some of the same reorientation of behavior and mental sets may be required when a behavior pattern long utilized by the individual and institutionalized in his group is abandoned. That this is likely is suggested by the fact that the adoption of many innovations requires that the group first relinquish an older behavior pattern. In many cases, a new drug or mode of transport displaces an old one, but involved in the process is the abandonment of the old one and the behavioral and mental alterations accompanying this abandonment. And even where there is no replacement of the eliminated item by a new one, some similar changes will be required. At this point, then, we suggest that there are at least two types of change in patterned behavior: incremental, that is, cessation of one pattern of behavior with replacement by a new one, and decremental, that is, cessation without replacement. Both decremental changes and those more usually studied in sociological literature, incremental or innovational, are instances of changes in patterned behavior. It seemed possible, therefore, that hypotheses generated in earlier investigations of innovation diffusion might be extended in their application to describing displacement of a long-held behavior pattern. Withdrawal from smoking is a change of this type which is currently of concern. The literature out of which these hypotheses have developed is well summarized and elucidated by Everett Rogers [9], a concise and comprehensive theoretical orientation to diffusion is provided by Katz et al. [lo], and the conclusions and their possible applications