The Big-Five Personality Traits, Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy, and Educational Qualifications as Predictors of Tobacco Use in a Nationally Representative Sample

Objective To investigate the associations between the Big-Five personality traits, parental social class, maternal smoking status during pregnancy, childhood cognitive ability, education and occupation, and tobacco use in a longitudinal birth cohort study. Method 17,415 babies born in Great Britain in 1958 and followed up at 11, 33, and 50 years of age. Lifelong tobacco use status (ever/never) and current tobacco use status (yes/no) at age 50 years were the outcome measures respectively. Results Logistic regression analyses showed that among the 5,840 participants with complete data, whilst maternal smoking status, educational qualifications, and all the big-5 personality traits were significant predictors of adult lifelong tobacco use; educational qualifications, own occupational levels, traits Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness were significant predictors of current smoking status. In lifelong measure men tended to have a greater rate of tobacco use than women (52.1% in men and 49.2% in women). However, the sex effect on lifelong tobacco use ceased to be significant once a set of socio-economic and psychological variables in childhood and adulthood were taken into account. Conclusion Educational qualifications and the Big-Five personality traits were significantly associated with both current and lifelong tobacco use status.