Effects of acute nicotine administration on ratings of attractiveness of facial cues.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

The researchers therefore sought to test the hypothesis that nicotine enhances the hedonic impact of behaviors performed in the presence of nicotine, using ratings of facial attractiveness, as the researchers considered these to have considerable ecological validity in the context of the social environment within which cigarette smoking takes place.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, both men and women.

Male and female participants attended a single testing session and were randomized to smoke either a nicotine-containing or a denicotinized cigarette, after which they completed ratings of attractiveness of 20 male and 20 female faces.

Participants were required to have abstained from smoking for 24 hr prior to testing, and the nicotine manipulation was conducted double blind.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and double-blind study.

Because people in this Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide), so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Affect, Cues, Esthetics, Face, Interpersonal Relations, Nicotine and Sex Factors.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2009 (Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco), a journal based in England.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.