Cigarette Smoking and Personality Change Across Adulthood: Current smoking is related to detrimental personality change, but smoking cessation was mostly unrelated to personality change (you get no relief from cessation)

Cigarette Smoking and Personality Change Across Adulthood: Findings from Five Longitudinal Samples. Yannick Stephan et al. Journal of Research in Personality, June 14 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.06.006

Highlights
•    Current smoking is related to detrimental personality change.
•    Smoking cessation was mostly unrelated to personality change.
•    Smoking is related to personality development across adulthood.

Abstract: Personality traits are related to cigarette smoking. However, little is known about the link between smoking and change in personality. Therefore, the present study examined whether current cigarette smoking and smoking cessation are associated with personality change across adulthood. Participants (n=15,572) aged from 20 to 92 years were drawn from five longitudinal cohorts with follow-ups that ranged from 4 to 20 years. Compared to non-smokers, current smokers were more likely to increase on neuroticism and to decline on extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness over time. Compared to the persistent smokers, those who quit had a steeper decline in agreeableness. Cigarette smoking is related to detrimental personality changes across adulthood, and the pattern was not improved by smoking cessation.