Personal Influences on Addiction
Psychology: AQA A Level, topic 17.1.11
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Test yourself on Personal Influences on Addiction
Which is NOT a personality trait of someone high on the psychotic scale?
What is a characteristic of someone who is more extroverted?
Which addiction did Francis (1996) NOT study?
Who first defined self-efficacy?
DiClemente (1981) re-recorded levels of self-efficacy after how many months?