Smoking and life satisfaction among native American Indians

Suz Wallace Highfill
The School of Psychology, Fielding Graduate University
June, 2016
 
Committee member: Penn, Nolan E.; Beals, Janette L.; Bush, Joseph P.
 

Abstract
Beyond its role as the leading cause of preventable death in our country, recent evidence points to cigarette smoking as a key factor associated with reduced life satisfaction. Accordingly, it would seem that those with the highest smoking prevalence, namely Native American Indians, would endorse lower levels of life satisfaction than the general population. On the contrary, due to the sacred history that Native Americans have with smoking practices, this study hypothesized that smoking would be positively related to life satisfaction in the Indian population. Further, because of the relatively high prevalence of PTSD among Native Americans, it was suspected that this disorder might influence the relationship between smoking and life satisfaction such that an inverse relationship would be found between smoking and life satisfaction for Indians who suffer with PTSD via an interaction effect between smoking and PTSD. Multiple regression and correlation analyses were computed to determine the significance of these relationships as well as to control for the effects of other potential covariates. Exploratory analyses were conducted to further investigate the bases of the persistent significance of another smoking-related variable, number of cigarettes smoked per day. Results of the analyses indicated no significant relationship between smoking status and life satisfaction. A significant negative relationship was found between PTSD and life satisfaction. Smokers without PTSD reported significantly greater life satisfaction than smokers with PTSD. PTSD did not interact with smoking status to moderate the relationship between smoking and life satisfaction. However, PTSD was found to interact with number of cigarettes smoked per day to negatively impact life satisfaction. These results suggest that, contrary to the findings in the general population, Native Indian smokers and nonsmokers do not differ on level of life satisfaction. Similar to mainstream society, however, PTSD was indeed found to be negatively associated with life satisfaction among Native Americans. Although PTSD was not found to moderate the relationship between smoking status and life satisfaction, PTSD was found to moderate the relationship between daily smoking and life satisfaction, such that increasing number of cigarettes smoked per day was significantly associated with reduced life satisfaction for Indians with PTSD but not for Indians without PTSD.