Success and failure attributions in smoking cessation among men and women.

1. Smoking behavior is intermingled with a very complicated array of social and psychological processes which suggests the presence of sociocultural factors that directly influence smoking behavior. 2. Social and cultural factors which distinguish former smokers from smokers indicate that behavioral factors may be related to the ability to successfully stop smoking. 3. Evidence suggests that attributional patterns differ according to gender, with women being more external and employing more luck attributions than men. 4. When attribution and self-efficacy expectations were combined with demographic variables, increased understanding of the cessation process increased and predictive power of success in smoking cessation improved.