Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
Personality traits associated with caffeine intake and smoking
Introduction
Personality has been conceptualized as the dynamic organization of the psychobiological systems of the individuals that determine their adaptation to the environment (Allport, 1937). This organization varies from person to person and manifests itself through quantifiable dimensions which can be reliably assessed by means of different questionnaires, built upon their underlying theory of personality. The association of personality traits (including novelty seeking) with the use, abuse and dependence of tobacco, as well as of alcohol and illegal drugs have been extensively documented (Eysenck et al., 1960, Zuckerman et al., 1990, Cloninger et al., 1995, Mitchell, 1999, Carton et al., 2000, Sher et al., 2000, Etter et al., 2003, Le Bon et al., 2004, Pomerleau et al., 2004, Terracciano and Costa, 2004, Laucht et al., 2005, Hu et al., 2006).
The association of personality traits with caffeine consumption has been less investigated. Personality could influence caffeine consumption according to some (Revelle et al., 1980, Waldeck and Miller, 1997, Shohet and Landrum, 2001, Jones and Lejuez, 2005) but not all studies (Primavera et al., 1975, Liguori et al., 1999, Brice and Smith, 2002, Hewlett and Smith, 2006). Caffeine affects cognitive performance according to personality and time of the day; highly impulsive subjects are helped in the morning but hindered in the evening, whereas lowly impulsive subjects are hindered in the morning but helped in the evening (Revelle et al., 1980). Morningness is negatively correlated with both impulsivity (Caci et al., 2005) and novelty seeking (Caci et al., 2004), and subjects with Evening personality consume more caffeine in the evening than those with a Morning personality (Shohet and Landrum, 2001). Moreover, higher caffeine consumption has been found associated with impulsivity (Waldeck and Miller, 1997) and caffeine dependence with sensation seeking (Jones and Lejuez, 2005).
On the other hand, co-occurrence of caffeine consumption with tobacco smoking has been well documented in both epidemiological and clinical samples (Istvan and Matarazzo, 1984, Swan et al., 1996, Mitchell, 1999, Brice and Smith, 2002, Pomerleau et al., 2004, Gurpegui et al., 2004, Gurpegui et al., 2006, Martínez-Ortega et al., 2006) and could be explained through both pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interactions. Smoking interferes with the pharmacokinetics of caffeine by increasing its metabolism; cigarette smoke contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that induce the cytochrome P450 1A2 (CYP1A2), the main enzyme involved in caffeine metabolism (Parsons and Neims, 1978). This interaction may contribute to higher consumption of coffee in smokers than non-smokers (Parsons and Neims, 1978), in such a way that non-smokers have significantly higher median plasmatic concentrations of caffeine than smokers with equivalent caffeine intake (de Leon et al., 2003).
On the other hand, acute and chronic exposure to caffeine — as some experimental studies in both humans and animals have shown — can modify the rewarding and emotional effects of nicotine and may be an important factor in shaping and maintaining tobacco smoking (Shoaib et al., 1999, Tanda and Goldberg, 2000, Jones and Griffiths, 2003, Celik et al., 2006, Kayir and Uzbay, 2006); and may contribute in the onset, maintenance of and relapse of nicotine dependence by a pharmacokinetic interaction (Gasior et al., 2002). Besides, the association between smoking and caffeine intake could be explained in part by common genetic factors (Hettema et al., 1999).
From the perspective of the well known relationship between smoking and personality and between caffeine consumption and smoking, the main objective of this cross-sectional study was to analyze the association of certain personality traits with caffeine intake controlling for the effects of smoking; a secondary objective was to explore the effect of caffeine intake on the relationship between personality and smoking.
Section snippets
Participants
A more complete description of the participants can be found in a previous report (Jurado et al., 2005). The participants of this study were 498 school teachers working at primary or secondary schools in the city of Granada (southern Spain). Of these subjects, 42% (210/498) were men and 58% (288/498) women. Their age (mean ± standard deviation, SD) was 45.1 ±9.7 years (range, 22 to 67). The research protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Granada.
Measurements
Information was
Sample description
Of the 498 participants, 35% (174/498) were current daily smokers; out of them, 16% (82/498) were moderate smokers and 18% (92/498) heavy smokers [among smokers, the figures were 47% (82/174) and 53% (92/174) respectively].
Regarding caffeine consumption, 74% (368/498) were daily consumers; out of them, 58% (289/498) were moderate caffeine consumers (≤ 200 mg/day); and 16% (79/498) were heavy caffeine consumers [among caffeine users, the mean intake was 182 ± 88 mg/day and the respective figures
Discussion
In the present study, the temperamental dimension of novelty seeking was associated with heavy caffeine consumption (> 200 mg/day), controlling for the effect of smoking. Moreover, after controlling for the effect of caffeine intake, a high score of novelty seeking (> 7, the median) was associated with smoking and heavy smoking (> 20 cigarettes/day) and a low score of self-directedness (< 20, the median) was associated with smoking.
The temperament trait of novelty seeking, relies on the behavioral
Conclusion
In summary, our study shows the association between novelty seeking and heavy caffeine intake, independently of the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interactions with tobacco smoking and of other individual variables as age and sex, and confirms the well known relationship between personality and smoking even after controlling for the potential confounding effect of caffeine intake. Our study offers an epidemiological evidence of the relationship of novelty seeking — considered to be
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Provincial Delegation of the Educational Council of the Andalusian Regional Government for their institutional support. We are also grateful to the participants. This study was partly funded by the Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria (FIS 00/0594) of the Spanish Ministry of Health. The authors are also grateful to Jean Sanders for editing.
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2017, Psychiatry ResearchCitation Excerpt :However, other previous studies support our findings that eveningness was associated with high novelty seeking (Adan et al., 2010; Caci et al., 2004; Lee et al., 2014). A study provided an epidemiological evidence of the relationship for high novelty seeking, considered to be associated with low basal dopaminergic activity, with both nicotine consumption in form of smoking and heavy caffeine intake, two substances that enhance dopaminergic neurotransmission (Gurpegui et al., 2007). In addition, severity of addiction was linked to a higher novelty seeking among patients with substance use disorders (SUD) and bipolar disorder, compared with patients with other mental disorders (Marquez-Arrico et al., 2016).