Personality

• Personality AO1

  • no such thing as addictive personality, certain traits have been linked to increased likelihood of addiction
  • anti-social behaviour disorder(impulsivity and rule breaking) leads to high vulnerability to addiction
• AO1

  3 innate dimensions associated with addiction, measured through questionnaire

  • novelty seeking- intensely excited in response to new stimuli, continuously seeking new more extreme experiences
  • inhibited harm avoidance- lack of inhibitions, worry or fear
  • Increased reward dependency - tendency to respond to MORE reward e.g. social approval
• AO3

  • Correlational research - cause and effect- addiction causes them to take more risks, reward dependent or engage in novelty seeking, lacks internal validity
  • Strength comes from research done by Schneider et al. Found novelty seeking was a trait most associated with increased involvement with alcohol, cannabis and cocaine. Shows positive correlation with novelty seeking and relapse rates of several drugs, gives validity to theory that high novelty seeking personality does increase vulnerability