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Comment by vharuck | Hacker News Reader

I remember reading about a study from long ago where they asked people their opinions on smoking and then had some start a smoking habit. Afterwards, the opinion on smoking was much more positive for those who had started smoking. Nicotine's addictiveness explains the continued habit, but the opinion change came from our fluid preferences and post-hoc rationalizations.

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I think this is called "cognitive dissonance".

They've had people rate various prizes by desirability. Then the person receives a prize of lesser desirability. Later, when asked again the person will rate the item they received higher. It is reasoned that the person's psyche would rather increase the desirability of what they did receive rather than accept that they received something that "sucks".

However that is the cynical take we are compelled to choose because of what we know and think of smoking.

Taking only the study itself into consideration, one could easily argue that the participants "knocked it before they tried it", i.e. by taking up smoking they realized how nice it actually is.

I am not trying to revive 60's tobacco propaganda, but I would say for a lot of personality/opinion/habit/preference changes in general this explanation is very likely (and far less sinister)

No, smoking is great. If it didn’t cause disease, everyone should smoke. It feels good, it looks cool, it’s social but not clingy, and it calms you down. The biggest problem with America today is we all need a smoke break but look at social media instead.

> I remember reading about a study from long ago where they asked people their opinions on smoking and then had some start a smoking habit.

"Had some start a smoking habit" for a study does not sound like an ethical study to me.

"long ago"

ta, point taken

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