What is it about?
We question whether it is profitable to look at smoking (both smoking status and the number of cigarettes smoked a day): (1) in terms of the personality traits of Extraversion, Neuroticism and Psychoticism; (2) in terms of their pairwise interactions; (3) with respect, rather, to impulsivity or sensation seeking; or (4) taking into consideration both these levels of analysis. Our sample comprised 121 smokers and 111 non-smokers (mostly students). No interactions were predictive of smoking. Both Psychoticism and impulsivity were found to be central traits—thereby providing support for the notion that it is a better strategy to look at smoking in terms of both these levels of analysis.
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Why is it important?
When considering what contexts lead certain people to smoke, a relevant discussion might also be found in this chapter: Glicksohn, J., & Naor-Ziv, R. (in press). Diathesis-stress model. In A. E. Wenzel (Ed.), The SAGE encyclopedia of abnormal and clinical psychology. New York: Sage.
Perspectives
Galit's MA thesis with me, resulting in this paper, was ostensibly concerned with differentiating between smokers and nonsmokers, using various related personality traits. In this paper, I saw the opportunity to tackle a more interesting question, concerned with the interaction of personality traits. This is a topic that I have recently returned to.
Professor Joseph Glicksohn
Bar-Ilan University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Interacting personality traits? Smoking as a test case, European Journal of Personality, January 2007, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/per.609.
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