17.1.12

Personal Influences on Addiction

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Personality and Addictive Behaviour

There are three main personality dimensions: introversion-extraversion, neuroticism-stability, and psychoticism. Addicts tend to be more neurotic and higher on the psychoticism scale.

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Scales of personality

  • There are three scales of human personality according to Eysenck and Eysenck (1976).
    • Psychoticism (P): this is the tendency for a person to have experienced a psychotic break.
      • People higher on the psychotic scale have personality traits such as egocentrism, aggression and impulsivity.
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Scales of personality cont.

  • Extroversion (E): this is how sociable and outgoing a person is, the opposite being introversion.
    • People who are more extroverted tend to have characteristics of being happy, talkative and assertive.
  • Neuroticism (N): this is how stable a person is.
    • More neurotic people tend to have characteristics such as being anxious, irritable and moody.
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Addiction

  • Eysenck suggested that people with certain personality characteristics are more likely to develop addictions.
    • For example, if a person exhibits characteristics such as impulsivity or irritability, they are perhaps more likely to abuse substances like alcohol and drugs.
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Francis (1996)

  • A study conducted by Francis (1996) discovered that people with addictions to heroin, alcohol, and nicotine are more likely to have scored high in psychoticism and neuroticism as compared to extraversion.
  • But the relationship between personality traits and addiction is not clear.
  • It could be that traits like impulsivity and irritability make you more likely to use substances or make you less able to control the usage of such substances.
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Causality

  • As well, the causality is unclear.
  • It could be that being addicted to substances causes you to be moodier, more impulsive and irritable.
  • There does seem to be a clear correlation, but cause-and-effect has not been established.

Self-Efficacy and Addiction

Self-efficacy is part of one's personality and determines how able someone is to change their behaviour - in this case, giving up an addiction.

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Self-efficacy

  • Self-efficacy, as defined by Bandura (1977), is a measure of how well a person believes themselves to be capable of change.
  • In terms of addiction, a person with higher self-efficacy may believe themselves to be more likely to stop smoking.
  • A person with low self-efficacy would have strong doubt about whether they could quit.
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DiClemente (1981)

  • A study conducted by DiClemente (1981) found support for this conclusion.
  • A survey was given to smokers about their level of self-efficacy.
  • The smokers had recently given up smoking.
  • Five months after their levels had been measured, they were questioned on whether or not they had abstained from smoking.
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Findings

  • It was determined that the higher they had scored on the self-efficacy scale, the more likely they were to abstain from smoking.
  • Those that showed lower self-efficacy were more likely to have returned to smoking.

Jump to other topics

1Social Influence

2Memory

3Attachment

4Psychopathology

5Approaches in Psychology

6Biopsychology

7Research Methods

8Issues & Debates in Psychology (A2 only)

9Option 1: Relationships (A2 only)

10Option 1: Gender (A2 only)

11Option 1: Cognition & Development (A2 only)

12Option 2: Schizophrenia (A2 only)

13Option 2: Eating Behaviour (A2 only)

14Option 2: Stress (A2 only)

15Option 3: Aggression (A2 only)

16Option 3: Forensic Psychology (A2 only)

17Option 3: Addiction (A2 only)

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