The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

THE BOOK OF TELLS
out of the side of their mouth and tend to be lacking in
confidence. Then there are the 'nasals', who blow smoke
out of their nose. Like 'fronters', they tend to be dominant
and aggressive, rather like a bull. 'Fronters' and 'uppers'
like to announce their presence by filling the atmosphere
with their smoke; 'downers' and 'siders' are more considerate.
They don't like to intrude on others by enveloping
them with their smoke, so they direct it away.
In addition to the way that people smoke cigarettes, the
fact that they smoke - and how heavily they smoke - can
also provide clues to what kind of person they are.
Psychologists have discovered that there are moderate but
significant differences in personality between smokers and
non-smokers - smokers, for example, tend to be more
extraverted, impulsive and neurotic. 12 Extraverts, it seems,
are drawn to cigarettes because they have lower levels of
arousal than introverts, and need the boost provided by
nicotine. It has also been suggested that the reason why so
many extraverts are smokers is that they find it harder to
give up smoking - the idea being that the difference
between the numbers of extraverts and introverts who take
up smoking is not that pronounced, but that because the
introverts find it relatively easy to give up, there are always
more extravert than introvert smokers. 13 It's also worth
noting that the social pressure to conform to the smoking
habits of one's friends and colleagues is much greater for
extraverts, because they spend more time in company and
are more eager than introverts to please other people. The
link between impulsivity and smoking is fairly straightforward
- people who are uninhibited and who seek out
new experiences are much more likely to take up
smoking. The mood swings that occur between smoking a
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