What do you think about the notion of a smoking personality?

I don’t think we need another label to categorise one’s personality. I think most of us display those characteristics in one way or the other. Some people may be more (insert behaviour) than others, but that’s just who they are. They don’t belong to a certain group of people.

The first thing that came to my mind was James Dean. I think smoking was seen as something cool, relaxing, an appetite suppressant, something women did in public that was rebellious and a sign of the times of the coming I am Woman generation. I think movies played a very large role in this mindset. Along with the cig was a cocktail in your hand. That was seen as cool.

@Keep_on_running – I know a lot of people who are introverts, not impulsive and not sensation seeking.

@bkcunningham – Gladwell goes on and points out that “of all the teenagers who experiment with cigarette smoking, only about a third ever go on to smoke regularly. Nicotine may be highly addictive, but it is only addictive in some people.”

@mattbrowne I would be one of them, but I just don’t see the need to say I have “this” personality, because it discounts or even excludes parts of us that aren’t stereotypically included in our personality “type”.

Smoking was made cool by the media. I don’t think the people who are smoking are cool, because I don’t see defiance, sexual precocity, honesty, impulsiveness, indifference to the opinion of others, and sensation seeking as cool. They just are.

There is a certain romanticism associated with lack of inhibition, and uninhibited people do liven things up quite a bit, but humans have evolved impulse inhibition for a very good reason. Impulse inhibition isn’t always—or even usually—a matter of being a slave to social norms. It’s the manifestation of our ability to foresee consequences and optimize outcomes.

The romantic pitch is that lack of inhibition equals freedom, but that’s ridiculous. It’s a slavery to urges. Impulse inhibition doesn’t preclude spontaneity or creativity; it just keeps you from screwing yourself or others over.

My work often brings me into institutional day programs for the mentally disabled. At any given time, there will be large numbers of the population puffing away outside the building; how “free” is that?

I started smoking as a very young teen because one of my older brothers, a product of the 1960s, smoked. I thought he and his friends were the coolest people to walk on the face of the earth. They were all the things Gladwell described: defianct, honest, impulsive, indifferent (to the opinion of others) and sensation seeking with fast cars and racing motocross. I don’t know about the sexual precocity part. I was too young to have noticed.

I have known people, recently, who smoked a few cigs and didn’t become smokers. Hmmm. I’d never thought about it before. Interesting, @mattbrowne.

Stop telling teenagers not to smoke. Let them make up their own minds. I think taking up smoking when being told not to is HEALTHY because your mind’s and freedom’s health means more than your lungs ever will. So blow a smoke ring in the face of the next person who wants to control you and believes your body belongs to whatever set of rules they draw up instead of yourself.

I don’t think “smoking” relates to cigarettes any more than “hot” relates to being of high thermal temperature. I see it more as a synonym, or at least a similar word to “hot” (in the sense of being sexy and charismatic).

@fluthercensors – Who said anything about telling teenagers not to smoke? My question is about Gladwell’s claim that smoking was never cool, but smokers are cool.

@mattbrowne – smoking is hard to view by itself out of context just like saffron or vanilla extract are hard to declare as good or bad tasting without considering their combination with food. For instance mustard might be great on a burger but terrible inside a Twinkie. It has to be viewed in context. Smoking is cool in the context MG describes it.

Hey are you the guy that asked the question about censorship and propriety not long ago? rofl

I think there are personalities that are prone to addiction, but the extrovert part in this….. I don’t know. I knew a lot of introverts in school that threw in with the smokers in the alley, because they didn’t know where to fit themselves in socially and smoking was an easy common denominator, seeing as how they already felt like an outsider.

I think any moron can start smoking for what ever immature, rebellious notion, and it is up to the chance of their own brain chemistry and the chemistry the tobacco companies use as to whether they get hopelessly hooked and then their own medical history as to whether they die young from it.

@fluthercensors @FutureMemory “I think taking up smoking when being told not to is HEALTHY because your mind’s and freedom’s health means more than your lungs ever will.”

There are so many marketing dollars being spent on both sides. No matter which way a teenager chooses, they’ll be going along with someone’s agenda. The best thing you can do is just make a well-informed decision.

Yeah, smokers are super cool, like when they cough up blood & gasp for air climbing a flight of stairs.
I just think the whole notion is thankfully outdated & seen by right minded people as the dangerous nonsense it is.