Assessment of empathy and psychological characteristics of smokers

Abstract

IntroductionSmoking causes many life-threatening diseases and is a major risk factor for several main causes of death. Damage by smoking is also caused to those called “passive smokers”. Passive smoking has been implicated in many adverse effects on health. Very few studies deal with empathy in smokers while smoking in the presence of non-smokers.PurposeEstimation of empathy and psychological characteristics of Greek smokers.MethodologyFor research purposes we used questionnaires Toronto empathy questionnaire (TEQ), symptom check list 90-R, experience of shame scale (EES) and other as Shamer scale – OAS.ResultsA statistically significant difference has been observed in the TEQ to gender (2.436, 0.02), with women showing the highest value (3.4 ± 0.4), as well as in the mean in behavioral shame 2. Another statistically significant difference has been observed in behavioral shame between educational level (3.419, 0.026) and the price of characterological shame among those who reported smoking in the workplace and those who did not.ConclusionsThe sample consisted of 27 subjects with average age 24 years and standard deviation of 4 years. Smokers accounted for 48.1%, of whom 69.2% stated that smoke in their living space. Respectively, the percentage of smokers in the workplace was equivalent. The largest percentage of smokers, (13 people, 69.2%) think that non-smokers are very annoyed when surrounded by people smoking close to them. The proportion of those who said they are very much bothered when in places where smoking is prohibited but somebody smokes, is large (47.1%).Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.