Personality types and tobacco use of Georgia college students : (Vol. 13,2)

The problem was to determine whether a relationship exists between psychological types, as determined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and tobacco use among college students. The study was a cross-sectional survey of students, aged 18 to 24 years, from 8 Georgia colleges and universities. 1,029 students were recruited from personal health/wellness or introductory psychology classes. The MBTI categorized each subject into 1 of 16 types. The Tobacco Use Inventory questions were adopted from the 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey and yielded the tobacco use data. Three hypotheses were proposed to test the 2 research questions and were evaluated via logistic regression statistics technique and chi-square tests. Alpha level was set at .05. MBTI type INTP was associated with the highest probability of smoking and type ISTJ was associated with the lowest probability for smoking. Type ISTJ represented half as many smokers as expected and INTP had significantly more smokers than expected. Type ISTP had twice the number of lifetime daily smokers than expected. ESFP had more current smokers and ESFJ represented fewer current smokers than expected. The collapsed category ESTP-ESFP-ENFP-ENTP depicted 1.6 times the former smokers as expected. The category ISTJ-ISFJ-INFJ-INTJ revealed significantly fewer current smokeless tobacco users as expected. MBTI types characterized by spontaneity in decision-making, a desire for new ideas and experiences, and curiosity appear to have some level of predictive value for smoking. Attributes of open-mindedness and adaptability tend to be associated with former smokers. Decisive introverts, persons who desire to protect themselves from unnecessary, undesirable experiences, reflect before acting, and seek structure in life, tend not to be smokeless tobacco users. This study confirmed the recent increase in tobacco use initiation and prevalence rates among college students. There is a need for college student assistance programs that target tobacco use prevention. Type awareness might offer a means of prevention in the college health class. By determining a student's psychological type, health educators could tailor learning activities considering the student's individual type, considering those types that tend toward tobacco use at some level.