Research Article Association between Positivity and Smoking Cessation Maria Caterina Grassi, 1 Guido Alessandri, 2 Stefania Pasquariello, 3 Michela Milioni, 2 Domenico Enea, 3 Mauro Ceccanti, 3 Paolo Nencini, 1 and Gian Vittorio Caprara 2 1 Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, “V. Erspamer” School of Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy 2 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Rome, Italy 3 Department of Clinical Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Viale dell’Universit` a 37, 00185 Rome, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Maria Caterina Grassi; caterina.grassi@uniroma1.it Received 11 March 2014; Revised 30 April 2014; Accepted 7 May 2014; Published 22 May 2014 Academic Editor: Giuseppe La Torre Copyright © 2014 Maria Caterina Grassi et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. he literature documents that personality characteristics are associated with healthy lifestyles, including smoking. Among positive traits, Positivity (POS), deined as a general disposition conducive to facing experience under a positive outlook has shown robust associations with psychological health. hus, the present study investigated the extent to which POS is able to predict (i) relapse ater quitting smoking and (ii) the desire to smoke again. All participants (481) had previously attended a Group Counselling Program (GCP) for Smoking Cessation (from 2005 through 2010). hey were contacted through telephone interview. Among participants, 244 were ex-smokers (age: years 56.3 ± 10.08, 52% female) and 237 were still-smokers (age: years 55.0 ± 9.63; 63.5% female). he association of POS with “craving to smoke” levels was assessed with multivariate linear regression analysis while controlling also for important diferences in personality such as conscientiousness and general self-eicacy, as well as for gender and age. Results showed that POS was signiicantly and negatively associated with smoking status and with craving to smoke. Among covariates (i.e., conscientiousness, generalized self-eicacy), gender was associated with smoking status and with craving to smoke. Altogether these indings corroborate the idea that POS plays a signiicant role in sustaining individuals’ eforts to quit smoking. 1. Introduction In Italy about 11 million adults are smokers, 20.7% of the entire adult population, according to the Osservatorio Fumo, Alcol e Droga [1]. Mortality trends over time for men and women demonstrate that smoking is “a huge threat to public’s health” and explicitly posits “cigarette smoking among the most important health hazard” [2, 3]. As it stands, smokers lose at least one decade of life expectancy, as compared with those who have never smoked. Likewise, for people who smoke, the risk of death from cigarette smoking continues to increase over the years. Hence it has been established that smoking killed about 100 million people in the 20th century and it will kill about 1 billion in the 21st century [2, 3]. hus, identifying reliable psychological predictors of smoking cessation seems a noteworthy enterprise. In this regard, a large body of research has recently focused on human strengths and personality qualities asso- ciated with mental and physical health [4], with an emphasis on the personality characteristics associated with healthy lifestyles, including smoking [5–7]. Empirical studies on tobacco dependence have reported positive associations between quality of afective experience and the status of nonsmokers, reporting that nonsmokers experience higher quality of their life than smokers [8, 9]. Recently, Fidler and West [10] described “the enjoyment to smoke” as an important predictor of the individual’s engagement in quit- ting smoking. hese indings are a bit surprising as they seem not to be consistent with other results showing that quitting smoking can lead to experiencing a deterioration in the perceived quality of life [11–13]. All in all, it is likely that a decrease in self-perceived quality of life may nonetheless Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2014, Article ID 780146, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/780146