Although the prevalence of smoking has decreased over the last decade, around one-third of
the population regularly smoke tobacco. Most of these report that they would like to give up
smoking but that they find it difficult to go without smoking even for a day (Ogden, 1996). For
health psychologists, understanding the factors that lead to the maintenance of tobacco smoking
is of great potential importance in developing new intervention techniques to help people give up.
Eysenck originally hypothesised that more extraverted people smoke in situations lacking in
stimulation in order to increase their cortical arousal, and that those higher in neuroticism smoke
in anxiety provoking situations to decrease their cortical arousal (Eysenck, 1973).