Perception of the Combined Effect of Smoking and Alcohol on Health

Because smoking is significantly associated with drinking, the consumption of alcohol can be associated with indirect consumption of tobacco (passive smoking), and alcohol and tobacco can have synergetic effects, the ways people perceive their combined effects were investigated. Information integration theory was applied, and the results showed that rather than representing the combined effects of tobacco consumption and alcohol consumption in a synergetic or summative way, the sample of 40 French adults apparently considered that indulging in only one of these two behaviors results almost unilaterally in maximal alteration of health. The two effects were seen to combine disjunctively, a way of perceiving the combined effects of the two substances that runs counter to current medical data on the subject.