Personality and Smoking: A Review of the Empirical Literature

Studies of the differences between smokers and nonsmokers have concentrated on many variables: disease; age; sex; race; socioeconomic status; intelligence; academic performance; religion; occupation; marital status; accident-proneness; personality; attitudes toward smoking; and smoking practices of parents, siblings, peers, and spouses. In addition, many speculative articles have discussed the “psychology of smoking.” The present review deals only with empirical studies of relations between smoking and personality. (For a broader treatment, see Matarazzo and Saslow, 1960; Larson et al., 1961; and the report by the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General, published by the U.S. Public Health Service, 1964.)