Recent research has deconstructed the concept of impulsivity by identifying five different traits that influence engagement in impulsive behaviors: positive urgency (tendency to act rashly in response to a positive mood), negative urgency (tendency to act rashly in response to a negative mood), sensation seeking, lack of planning, and lack of perseverance. The traits are only moderately related to each other. The aim of this study was to apply this advance to the study of smoking. We tested a two-stage hypothesis: Higher sensation seeking was hypothesized to differentiate current smokers from non-smokers, and negative and positive urgencies were expected to predict concurrent level of nicotine dependence among smokers. As anticipated, greater sensation seeking was associated with a higher odds of being a current smoker (odds ratio = 1.51). Greater positive urgency, but not other impulsivity-related traits, was associated with significantly higher levels of nicotine dependence, explaining 29% of the variance in level of nicotine dependence.
ecent research suggests that personality traits associated with impulsivity (e.g., sensation seeking, risk taking, and delay discounting), influence tobacco use and perhaps level of nicotine dependence (Bickel et al., 1999, Doran et al., 2009, Mitchell, 2004 and Perkins et al., 2008). Various self-report and behavioral measures of impulsivity-related traits are associated with aspects of smoking behavior, including current smoking status (Bickel et al., 1999, Kassel et al., 1994, Lejuez et al., 2003 and Mitchell, 1999), smoking initiation (Lipkus, Barefoot, Williams, & Siegler, 1994), and smoking cessation outcomes (Doran et al., 2004, Kahler et al., 2009 and MacKillop and Kahler, 2009). However, the term impulsivity has been used broadly by many researchers to mean different things (Smith et al., 2007 and Whiteside and Lynam, 2001), and more research is still needed to define the dimensions of impulsivity-like traits that are most relevant to smoking and smoking dependence.
In recent years, personality researchers have made considerable progress in parsing “impulsivity” into its component constructs (Cyders and Smith, 2007, Evenden, 1999, Petry, 2001 and Whiteside and Lynam, 2001). At present, five different personality dispositions to engage in rash or impulsive action have been identified and have been found to be modestly related to each other (Cyders and Smith, 2007, Cyders et al., 2007, Smith et al., 2007 and Whiteside and Lynam, 2001). The five traits are negative urgency (the tendency to act rashly in response to negative mood), positive urgency (the tendency to act rashly when experiencing intensely positive mood), sensation seeking (the tendency to seek out novel and thrilling experiences), lack of perseverance (the inability to remain focused on a task), and lack of planning (the tendency to act without thinking).
The five specific traits are distinct from each other and predict different components of risky behaviors (Cyders and Smith, 2007, Cyders and Smith, 2008c, Smith et al., 2007, Whiteside and Lynam, 2001 and Whiteside and Lynam, 2003). Sensation seeking has consistently been shown to relate to the frequency of engaging in risky behaviors, such as alcohol consumption, gambling, and risky sex, in both cross-sectional and longitudinal research (Cyders and Smith, 2008b, Cyders et al., 2009, Smith et al., 2007 and Zapolski et al., 2009). In contrast, positive and negative urgency consistently relate, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, to problem levels of involvement in such behaviors, including problem drinking, pathological gambling, the use of illegal drugs, and binge eating (Anestis et al., 2007, Cyders and Smith, 2008b, Cyders et al., 2007, Cyders et al., 2009 and Zapolski et al., 2009). The purpose of the current study is to study the five impulsivity-like traits in relation to smoker status and level of nicotine dependence in college students.
