Recent advances in understanding the personality underpinnings of impulsive behavior and their role in risk for addictive behaviors.

Recent advances in understanding the personality underpinnings of impulsive behavior and their role in risk for addictive behaviors. Curr Drug Abuse Rev. 2011 Dec;4(4):215-27 Authors: Birkley EL, Smith GT Abstract Impulsivity has been a widely explored construct, particularly as a personality-based risk factor for addictive behaviors. The authors review evidence that (a) there is no single impulsivity trait; rather, there are at least five different personality traits that dispose individuals to rash or impulsive action; (b) the five traits predict different behaviors longitudinally; for example, the emotion-based urgency traits predict problematic involvement in several risky behaviors and sensation seeking instead predicts the frequency of engaging in such behaviors; (c) the traits can be measured in preadolescent children; (d) individual differences in the traits among preadolescent children predict the subsequent onset of, and increases in, risky behaviors including alcohol use; (e) the traits may operate by biasing the learning process, such that high-risk traits make high-risk learning more likely, thus leading to maladaptive behavior; (f) the emotion-based urgency traits may contribute to compulsive engagement in addictive behaviors; and (g) there is evidence that different interventions are appropriate for the different trait structures. PMID: 22126707 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: Current Drug Abuse Reviews - Category: Addiction Tags: Curr Drug Abuse Rev Source Type: research