Personality - individual differences

• Eyesenck developed a resource model of addiction develops because it fulfils a need relating to the persons personality profile.
• Gossop and Eyesenck compared the personalities of over 200 addicts and a control group of non-addicts used EPQ, Eyesencks questionnaire, and looked for common patterns in score on the EPQ amongst addicts, addicts has higher scores on psychoticism and neuroticism but lower extraversion and lie scores.
• Psychoticism and addiction - a key trait of psychoticism is impulsivity and this trait can explain AB as an impulsive person is more likely to engage in risky behaviours without considering the consequences of their actions. For example a person taking cocaine on a night without considering the long term consequences of doing so.
• Dalley et al - conducted research using rats and found that impulsive rats had higher cocaine in take than low - impulsivity in rats. Stevens found that impulsive individuals were less successful in treatment programmes as they were more likely to drop out and less likely to achieve abstinence.
• Neuroticism and AB - neurotic personalities are more susceptible to stress and may feel that they need to use the AB to overcome this. Psychologists argue that people with this personality type self-medicate to deal with the anxiety they experience. Can be seen as the intiation of AB, for example a person getting into the habit of drinking a bottle of wine on an evening to cope with stressful days at work.
• Low self-esteem may lead individuals to use AB to escape their own self-awareness. People who are high introverts are more likely to be addicts.
• Positives - comes from supporting research. Dalley et al study. therefore this supports the role of personality traits such as neuroticism and psychoticism in addictive behaviour giving validity and credibility to personality as an explanation of AB.
• Negative - 1 - methodological issues with research into AB and personality. A large body of the research is that correlational such as the gossop and eyesenck study. Personality tests are often given once the person has developed AB. So, cause and effect cannot be established as it may be that the AB causes the individual to be more stressed or more impulsive rather than their personality causing them to seek out AB.
• Negative - 2 - furthermore research relies heavily on personality questionnaires which are prone to social desirability, ppts may lie about their traits to be seen in a better light or perhaps blame their addiction on their personality, these issues significantly reduce the validity of the research meaning the explanation does not have adequate supporting evidence.
• Negative - not all traits can be linked to AB, for example impulsivity may link to some AB such as drugs like cocaine but not others. Mcnamara researched impulsive rats tendency to self-administer cocaine and heroin and found that rats who were impulsive self-administered high-levels of cocaine but not heroin. This research challenges the personality explanation and suggests that maybe only certain AB.
• Negative - too simplistic as it suggests complex AB are the result of personality traits alone, a weakness as this explanation fails to account for other influences such as genes, peers and cognitions which have evidence to implicate their role in AB. Therefore unlikely to be solely due to personality traits. A better explanation may be one that accounts for an interaction between personality and other factors.
• Conclusions - some supporting evidence for the role of personality there is also contradicting evidence which suggests that personality is not sole cause of AB. The degree to which personality influences AB could be based on the substance/behaviour the person is addicted to so personality may explain some AB is better than others.
• Conclusions - not a useful explanation cannot really be used for treatment but can be useful to know traits for therapy. Reductionist does not take social, biological, cognitive explanations into account.