Smoking Behavior Linked to Personality

Cigarette smokers, cigar smokers and nonsmokers each have distinct personality profiles, according to a study published July 3 in Plos One by Dritjon Gruda from Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Portugal, and Jim McCleskey from Western Governors University in the United States.

Gruda and McCleskey examined the association between prominent personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism—and cigar or cigarette smoking in a sample of 9,918 older adults across 11 European countries.

The results showed that smoking is associated with lower scores in conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher extraversion scores than not smoking. The authors speculate that relatively low conscientiousness among smokers may reflect a lack of self-discipline and disregard for long-term health risks, characteristic of more impulsive behaviors, while reduced agreeableness could help explain why smokers often persist despite societal disapproval. They also suggest that the higher extraversion observed may suggest that these individuals enjoy the social nature of smoking.

The analysis also determined personality differences between types of smokers, finding that cigar smokers tend to exhibit lower neuroticism and higher openness compared to both cigarette smokers and nonsmokers, underlining that the motivations and contexts of tobacco use are varied.

According to the study’s authors, these findings suggest that personality traits are antecedents of smoking behavior, with implications for targeted public health interventions and social policies aimed at combating tobacco use.