A note on ‘Smoking, personality and reasons for smoking’

Abstract

In their recent paper on smoking and personality, McManus & Weeks (1982) administered the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) and questionnaires regarding smoking to 100 subjects, and calculated correlations between the personality traits measured (psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and lie scale scores) and smoking. Contrary to expectation, there was no correlation with extraversion (E), only slight correlation with neuroticism, but a significant correlation with psychoticism (P). They argue that the lack of correlation with E is due to the changed contents of the scale, which has been changed from earlier versions, such as the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), by the omission of some impulsiveness items. They quote a paper by Rocklin & Revelle (1981) which argues in a similar vein.