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.