EYSENCK’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY AO3

• Supporting evidence is provided by Francis (1996) who found that addicts scored higher in neuroticism and psychoticism than non-addict controls when investigating addiction to nicotine, alcohol, and heroin. This supports the role that personality may play in addiction, particularly substance addiction. It may be that high levels of psychoticism link with impulsivity and that those with high levels of neuroticism use addiction as a form of self-medication.
• However, any theory on personality assumes that personality is consistent.

  But, some suggest a situational perspective, suggesting that people may be consistent in similar situations but not across situations. For example, someone may be relaxed and calm at home but neurotic at work. Personality also changes with age and life experience. This is a criticism of Eysenck’s theory of personality, proposing that personality may not be consistent and that our personality can change in different situations.
• Further explanation against

  Therefore, it is highly unlikely that as these personality changes occur this in turn leads to different type of addictions. furthermore, a notion of one addictive personality traits is flawed as people don’t have ‘one’ personality.
• Methodological issue - a key issue with the personality theory of addiction is cause and effect. While there is plenty of evidence that there is a relationship between certain personality traits and addiction, much of the research is correlational.
• Further on the methodological issues

  This criticises Eysenck’s personality theory on two levels. Firstly, it may be that the personality traits predispose people towards addictive behaviour. Secondly, addictive behaviour (particularly substance abuse) may cause changes to personality such as causing people to become impulsive or neurotic, therefore we cannot establish cause and effect, and this is a limitation of this explanation.