3.1.3 Personality and Addiction Flashcards
What are individual differences?
Differences in how we respond to the influences in our lives
What is personality?
Set of behaviours, attitudes and emotional temperament distinguishing one individual from another
Is a persons personality relatively stable over their life?
Yes
An addictive personality refers to a personality that might make an individual:
More likely to try an addictive substance, become addicted and find it hard to quit
What did Hans Eysencks theory suggest personality can be measured on?
2 dimensions
What are the six elements to the theory of personality?
Unstable - stable (neuroticism)
Extroverted - introverted
Normality - psychoticism
What does the resource model of addiction suggest?
Addiction develops as it fulfils a need in an individual’s personality
In the resource model of addiction Eysenck highlighted an important role in the dimensions of what?
Psychoticism and neuroticism
How do psychoticism and impulsivity link? (Resource model of addiction)
Those with high levels of psychoticism show low levels of impulse control - more likely to participate in maladaptive behaviours without considering the consequences
Give an example of how some psychotic addicts act impulsively -
Drug addicts take the drugs without thinking
Gamblers place a large bet without thinking
When will impulsivity cause issues?
When a person tries to stop their addiction
Impulsivity makes it more difficult to follow treatment, why?
It requires self control
neurotic people will use self medication as a way of doing what?
treating themselves
what is a characteristic of neurotic individuals?
low self esteem
what is self esteem?
self worth - how you feel about yourself
Baumeister suggested low self esteem may lead people to act in what way?
self defeating in order to escape awareness
neurotic individuals are using addiction as a way of avoiding what?
negative feelings
What did Gossop and Eysenck find and what year did they find it
Researched over 200 drug addicts and found that addicts had high P (psychotism) and N (neurotism) scores but lower E (Extroversion) and L (impulse control) scores than the control group.
Found this in 1980
What did Dalley et al find and when did he find it
Found that impulsive rats (p) increased cocaine intake more increased cocaine intake more than low impulsivity rats (L).
Found this in 2007
What did Blaszcynski et al find and when
Little difference in extroversion between addicts and non-addicts
