Brief, single session mindfulness training has been shown to reduce emotional distress, craving, and withdrawal symptoms among smokers when they are nicotine-deprived. However, no research has examined the efficacy of brief mindfulness training for non-nicotine-deprived smokers, or explored its effects on smokers' ability to tolerate emotional distress. Smokers progress differently through various stages as they attempt to change their smoking behavior and evidence-based strategies are needed for smokers at all levels of nicotine deprivation. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of a brief mindfulness exercise on state mindfulness, distress, distress tolerance, and smoking urges following a distressing laboratory task among 86 non-nicotine-deprived adult daily smokers (Mage = 46 years, 55% male, 74% African-American) who completed behavioral tasks and self-report measures before and after randomization to a 10-min mindfulness or control exercise. As hypothesized, the mindfulness exercise significantly increased state mindfulness [F = 14.24, p = 0.00, η2partial = 0.15] and demonstrated a non-significant small to medium effect on decreased distress levels [F = 3.22, p = 0.08, η2partial = 0.04]. Contrary to prediction, it was not associated with improvements in self-reported [F = 2.68, p = 0.11, η2partial = 0.03] or behavioral distress tolerance [F(1) = 0.75, p = 0.39, η2partial = 0.01], or smoking urges following a stressor [F = 0.22, p = 0.64, η2partial = 0.00.] These findings suggest that brief mindfulness exercises successfully induce states of mindfulness in non-nicotine-deprived smokers. These exercises might also improve current moment levels of distress, but they do not appear to improve self-report or behavioral indices of distress tolerance.
