Decline in smoking cessation rate associated with high self-efficacy scores.

Background: Clinical observation indicates that self-efficacy, although generally linked with maintaining smoking cessation, can be excessive.

Methods: In the present study, this phenomenon was explicitly investigated by adding the squared component of self-efficacy to the logistic regression analyses for a treatment sample (n = 381) to predict long-term success.

Results: Quitters with very high posttreatment self-efficacy were found to be at a greater risk for unsuccessful smoking cessation than quitters with merely high posttreatment self-efficacy, and by accounting for this phenomenon, long-term success was better predicted. No such relation was found for self-efficacy change.

Conclusions: It is possible that quitters with very high levels of self-efficacy overestimate their capacity to quit and thereby neglect the use of coping skills and possibly engage in more high-risk situations.