Smoking at the workplace: effects of genetic and environmental causal accounts on attitudes toward smoking employees and restrictive policies
People hold diverse beliefs regarding the etiologies of individual and group differences in behaviors which, in turn, might affect their attitudes and behaviors. It is important to establish how perceived etiologies of smoking might affect the effectiveness of policy initiatives and
prevention efforts. The present study assessed whether exposure to genetic vs. environmental accounts for smoking affects attitudes toward (a) workplace-related smoking policies and (b) smokers at the workplace. Results indicate that exposure to a genetic explanation led to stronger objections
to a smoking restrictive policy compared with a non-genetic explanation. Additionally, participants in the genetic condition were more accepting of a smoker in the workplace than those in the environmental condition. Evidently, beliefs about the etiology of smoking influence a range of attitudes
related to smokers and smoking-related policies.
Keywords: etiology; public opinion; public policy; workplace
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia 2: Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA 3: Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA
Publication date: 02 October 2014
- Editorial Board
- Information for Authors
- Subscribe to this Title
- Ingenta Connect is not responsible for the content or availability of external websites
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content