The role of personality traits in the relationship between health beliefs and smoking behavior in individuals with and without a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease: A review in the framework of the Health Belief Model

Cardiovasculer diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally. Smoking is one of the most important risk factors for CVD. Health Belief Model (HBM), which is one of the important health behavior models in the field of health psychology, suggest that we can obtain certain clues based on the beliefs held by individuals about many health behaviors, including smoking. If individuals believe that they are under a threat (perceived susceptibility X perceived seriousness) about smoking and its consequences, find the steps to be taken to get rid of this threat useful, ignore the obstacles in front of the steps and believe that they can overcome them, they can reduce/quit smoking. However, literature findings reveal that the picture is not so clear. For this reason, this study draws attention to the importance of some personality traits that cause individuals in the CVD diagnosis group to continue smoking. Within the framework of HBM, this study aims to reconsider smoking, one of the health behaviors, in terms of personality traits. A total of 531 participants were included in the study, 285 of whom were diagnosed with CVD and 246 participants were without any CVD diagnosis. Psychosociodemographic and Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) Risk Factors Information Form, the Basic Personality Traits Scale to measure personality traits, and the Heart-Related Health Belief Scale to measure health beliefs about CVD were used. The results of the descriptive analysis show that the CVD diagnosis group is at higher risk than the control group in terms of smoking and smoking frequency. When the health beliefs of the CVD diagnosis group towards CVD are evaluated, there is a picture that is far from the ideal expectation of HBM, except for the perceived benefit and self-efficacy dimensions: While the dimensions of perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness and perceived barrier were found to be moderate; self-efficacy dimension is relatively high. When health beliefs about CVD were compared according to groups, it was found that the CVD diagnosis group had higher CVD-related threat perception and perceived barrier scores. When both groups are compared in terms of personality traits, there was only difference in neuroticism; the mean score of the CVD diagnosis group was higher. When the findings regarding the relationship between smoking status, personality traits and health beliefs about CVD are evaluated according to CVD diagnosis status, only the effect size on health beliefs (perceived disability and self-efficacy) can be mentioned. It was observed that a one-unit increase in perceived susceptibility scores increased the risk of developing CVD approximately 1.13 times (28,4%), and a one-unit increase in perceived disability scores increased approximately 1.05 times (5%). In our country, studies on the CVD diagnosis group within the framework of HBM are almost nonexistent; in the world, it is available in limited numbers. Although an expected pattern could not be determined regarding the relationship between smoking status and personality traits according to CVD diagnosis status, it is thought that our study may be a guide for future research, even in terms of its descriptive feature, due to the limitations of the aforementioned study.