Br. J . SOC. clin. Psychol. (1975), 14, pp. 429-430 Printed in Great Britain

Extraversion, Neuroticism and Cigarette Smoking

BY GORDON RAE Department of Educational Psychology, Aberdeen College of Education I n the last decade or so a number of studies have been conducted to determine whether personality differences exist between smokers and non-smokers. I n two large British surveys (Eysenck et al., 1960; Eysenck, 1963) a highly significant relationship was found between smoking and extraversion, in the sense that non-smokers were the least extraverted, light smokers were slightly more extraverted, medium smokers more extraverted still, and heavy smokers most extraverted of all. Pipe smokers were the most introverted group and ex-smokers fcll half-way betwecn light and medium smokers. It was suggested that these findings indicate genotypic differences between the groups. Although several studies (e.g. Schubert, 1965 ; Brackenridge & Bloch, 1972) support Eysenck's contention that cigarette smokers are more extraverted than non-smokers, there is no such consistency in the evidence for neuroticism scores. Some studies (Matarazzo & Saslow, 1960; Brackenridge & Bloch, 1972) have found that cigarette smokers score higher on neuroticism measures than non-smokers while others have found either no relationship between cigarette smoking and neuroticism (Eysenck et al., 1960; Eysenck, 1963) or a negative one (e.g. Kanekar & Dolke, 1g7o).The purpose of the present study was to attempt to replicate Eysenck's findings using a more refined method of classifying smokers. Two hundred and fifty-three female students at a college of education were administered the Eysenck Personality Inventory, Form B (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964), and a questionnaire about smoking habits. Non-smokers were taken to be those who said that they had never smoked more than 10 cigarettes. Ex-smokers were taken to be those who had smoked cigarettes for at least one year but had not done so in the past year. Smokers were those who had been smoking for at least one year and who inhaled the cigarette smoke. The amount of nicotine each smoker absorbed in a week was estimated from the brand of cigarette smoked, the nicotine yield of the cigarette" and the number of cigarettes smoked each week. This enabled the smokers to be further divided into light smokers ( < IOO mg/week) and medium smokers ( 3 IOO mg/week). It is appreciated that these figures only give an indirect measure of the amount of nicotine absorbed, since they ignore such factors as the intensity and duration of the inhalations and the time interval between inhalations. Table I . Means and standard deviations for the four groups

N scores

E scores &

Group Non-smokers Ex-smokers Light smokers Medium smokers Table

I

7

Mean

S.D.

Mean

S.D.

I 26

13'75

I1

I 4.00

3'51 2'45 3.60 4'05

13.92 14.18 14.23 13.91

3'89 2-96 3'84 3.87

n

31

15'39

32

I 5.66

prcsents the mean extraversion and neuroticism scores of each group. Individua

t tests were carried out to establish significance of differences between groups. Significant differences wcrc obtained between non-smokers and light smokers (t = 2.32; d.f. = 1 5 5 ; P < 0.05) and betwecn non-smokers and medium smokers (t = 2.68; d.f. = 156; P

Extraversion, neuroticism and cigarette smoking.

Br. J . SOC. clin. Psychol. (1975), 14, pp. 429-430 Printed in Great Britain Extraversion, Neuroticism and Cigarette Smoking BY GORDON RAE Departmen...
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