Personality traits and smoking behavior in patients at the Check – up Clinic, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital

Abstract

Background: Cigarettes are caused of health issues and premature death of the smoking population, including the cause of other problems, such as other types of illegal drugs usage, which is the sources of crimes. Thus, recognition of smoking behavior will become increasingly important. Personality traits might associate with cigarette consumption. However, there are still restricted numbers of studies with conflicting data.

Objectives: To study factors association between personality and smoking behaviors in patients at the Check – up Clinic, King Chulalongkorn Memorial, Hospital.

Methods: This study is a cross-sectional descriptive study. Data collection was performed using a personal information questionnaire, Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence and International Personality Item Pool (IPIP). Demographic data were presented by frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation (SD) and in-depth statistics and student unpaired t - test. The associated factors of personality traits were analyzed using Pearson correlation.

Results: One hundred and fifteen subjects had the average mean age of which 80.0% of the subjects were male. Subjects with smoking relatives were approximately found 55.7% and the smoking acquaintances were 99.1%. From last year, 89.6% of the subjects had used other abusing substance instead of cigarettes which was alcohol. None of any subjects had been using hazard narcotics such as amphetamine, crystal meth, marijuana, opium, morphine, and heroin. The subject’s nicotine addiction average mean scores were mostly in low level which were classified as a non-addiction nicotine while the smoker’s average IPIP Personality mean score had the lowest emotion stability of 3.7 1.0 and had the highest agreeableness of 5.8 1.1.

Conclusions: Smokers had the lowest PIP Personality score in emotion stability aspect and the highest score in agreeableness aspect.