Person-environment transactions in youth drinking and driving

Drinking and driving is a significant health risk behavior for adolescents. This study tested mechanisms by which disinhibited personality traits (impulsivity and sensation seeking) and aspects of the adolescent home/social environment (parental monitoring and alcohol accessibility) can influence changes in drinking and driving behavior over time. Two hundred two high school age youths were assessed at 2 time points, approximately 8 months apart. Zero-inflated Poisson regression analyses were used to test (a) an additive model, where personality and environmental variables uniquely predict drinking and driving engagement and frequency; (b) a mediation model, where Time 2 environmental variables mediate the influence of disinhibited personality; and (c) an interaction model, where environmental factors either facilitate or constrain the influence of disinhibited personality on drinking and driving. Results supported both the additive and interaction model but not the mediation model. Differences emerged between results for personal drinking and driving and riding with a drinking driver. Improving our understanding of how malleable environmental variables can affect the influence of disinhibited personality traits on drinking and driving behaviors can help target and improve prevention/intervention efforts.     

Weak etiologic links between control and the externalizing behaviors delinquency and substance abuse in adolescence

Impulsive/disinhibitory personality traits have consistently been associated with externalizing symptomatology such as delinquency and substance use problems, often starting in adolescence. Yet the etiological nature of this co-occurrence is not well understood. Using a classic twin study design with self-report data from 717 male and female twin pairs, aged 15–18 years, a hierarchical psychometric model was examined. In this model the shared variance and etiological structure between control, delinquency and substance abuse symptoms, was modeled through a common externalizing factor. Model fitting indicated that the genetic and environmental influences differed in strength between male and female adolescents. The heritability of the externalizing factor was 45% in males and 10% in females, though neither was statistically different from zero. A statistically significant influence of shared environmental factors was seen for both sexes, 21% in males and 54% in females. In both sexes, the externalizing factor accounted for little variance in control, indicating a weak association and little shared etiology with externalizing liability. These results illuminate further that facets of impulsivity are differentially associated with vulnerability for externalizing symptomatology.     

Personality,dangerous driving,and involvement in accidents: Testing a contextual mediated model

The present study tested the role of various personality traits in explaining dangerous driving and involvement in accidents, using a contextual mediated model (N = 311). We initially found direct effects of personality traits on dangerous driving indicators (Big-5, Dark Triad, sensation seeking, aggression, and impulsivity). Subsequently, personality variables with predictive power were tested in the mediation model. Indirect effects of anger, psychopathy and sensation seeking on the history of involvement in traffic accidents were found, which was predicted directly by risky driving. The results are discussed based on the characteristics of each trait. Overall, our research replicates and extends previous findings and highlights the importance of psychological evaluations (e.g., personality test) when prospective drivers are applying for a driver license.     

Personality traits and alcohol consumption in a sample of non-alcoholic women

Many studies have shown the importance of personality traits as factors related to alcohol use and misuse. The relationship between personality traits and alcohol consumption was studied in a sample of 149 non-alcoholic women using the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R). The results showed positive correlations between alcohol consumption and disinhibitory personality traits (sensation seeking, impulsivity, psychopathy, nonconformity) and dimensions (psychoticism and extraversion). Sensation seeking combined with impulsivity were the strongest predictors of alcohol consumption. Anxiety-related traits and neuroticism were not related to alcohol frequency/amount of alcohol use.     

The association between persistent disruptive childhood behaviour and the psychopathic personality constellation in adolescence: A twin study

This study tested if persistent externalizing behaviour and symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in childhood are associated with personality and behavioural aspects of the psychopathic personality constellation in adolescence. The target sample consisted of all 1,480 twin pairs born in Sweden between 1985 and 1986. Parent‐reported externalizing behaviour and ADHD symptoms were obtained when the participants were 8–9 and 13–14 years old. Personality and behavioural aspects of the psychopathic personality constellation were measured with self‐report questionnaires when the participants were 16–17 years old. Persistent externalizing behaviour in childhood was associated with both psychopathic personality and antisocial behaviour in adolescence. However, within twin‐pair analyses showed that genetic factors explained the association between persistent externalizing behaviour and psychopathic personality, while shared environmental factors explained the association between persistent externalizing and antisocial behaviours. We conclude that persistent externalizing behaviour is a genetically influenced precursor of psychopathic personality among boys.     

The influence of the frequency of cannabis use and of the five impulsivity traits on risky driving behaviors among young drivers

Concerns about road safety are at the forefront of discussions given the recent legalization of cannabis in many areas. Some studies have demonstrated that the frequency of cannabis use is a significant predictor of risky driving among young drivers. However, it is difficult to isolate the specific contribution of substance use from the influence of certain individual personality traits such impulsivity. Indeed, impulsivity traits (i.e., positive urgency, negative urgency, lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, sensation seeking) are also correlated with risky driving. The present study examined the effect of the frequency of cannabis use on risky driving while taking into account the effect of five impulsivity traits. A community sample of 209 young drivers (aged 17–25 years) completed self-report questionnaires about their road behaviors, their cannabis use, and their impulsivity traits. The results showed that the frequency of cannabis use was significantly associated with risky driving beyond the five impulsivity traits measured. Positive urgency was the only impulsivity trait that remained significantly associated with risky driving once all covariates were entered into the model. Moreover, the frequency of cannabis use acted as a mediator in the relationship between sensation seeking and risky driving.     

Driving self-regulation and risky driving outcomes

Self-regulation has been associated with risky driving outcomes in the past but there are no available measures to assess driving-specific self-regulatory capacity. The present study assessed the association of a newly developed driving self-regulation measure with driving violations, errors, and lapses. Overall, 330 UK drivers completed measures of risky driving outcomes, driving anger, trait impulsivity, sensation seeking, normlessness, domain-general trait self-regulation plus a new unidimensional measure of Driving Self-Regulation Questionnaire (DSRQ-16). Bivariate correlation analysis indicated that the DSRQ-16 showed expected associations with both driving-related outcomes and factors, as well as with impulsivity traits and general self-regulation. Bootstrapped hierarchical linear regression models showed that the DSRQ-16 was significantly associated with driving violations, errors, and lapses after controlling for the effects of other relevant predictors. This is the first study to demonstrate the association of driving-specific self-regulation with risky driving behaviour, driving anger, impulsivity and related personality traits. Driving-specific self-regulation may present a novel target for road safety interventions, as well as a theoretically relevant component of models of risky driving behaviour.     

Extraversion and Behavioral Activation: Integrating the Components of Approach

This investigation evaluates the structure and correlates of lower order traits related to approach, specifically, facets of extraversion and behavioral activation system (BAS) sensitivity. A 3-factor structure of approach was derived in community and clinical samples: assertiveness, enthusiasm, and sensation seeking. All factors were positively associated with Openness/Intellect scores. Enthusiasm and assertiveness were both negatively associated with Neuroticism scores, but were distinguished by associations with Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Sensation seeking was negatively associated with Conscientiousness scores. The 3 factors demonstrated a unique profile of association with components of impulsivity. Enthusiasm and assertiveness were negatively related to psychopathological symptoms, whereas sensation seeking was largely independent of psychopathology. Results suggest that approach is associated with 3 subfactors, which differ in their pattern or magnitude of associations with other variables, thus underscoring the importance of distinguishing among them. Further, results support the construct validity of the Assertiveness and Enthusiasm aspect scales of the Big Five Aspect Scales to assess traits at this level of the personality hierarchy.     

Instrumental and disinhibited financial risk taking: Personality and behavioural correlates

Risk taking, including that within the financial domain, is often considered to represent a unidimensional personality trait. This paper considers the relatively unexplored construct of instrumental financial risk taking: a class of behaviours that while inherently risky, are entered into with a greater degree of consideration than more impulsive or disinhibited forms of risk taking. Participants (N = 1043) completed a novel questionnaire assessing instrumental and disinhibited financial risk taking as part of a battery including measures of: sensation-seeking, impulsivity, psychopathic personality traits and real life financial outcomes. Correlations revealed a divergent pattern of relationships supporting the utility of characterising these different forms of financial risk. Scores on the novel instrument are shown to explain more than 10% of the variance in the use of riskier, more productive savings products, over and above the influence of demographics and financial status.     

Collegiate heavy drinking prospectively predicts change in sensation seeking and impulsivity

Recent models of alcohol use in youth and young adulthood have incorporated personality change and maturation as causal factors underlying variability in developmental changes in heavy drinking. Whereas these models assume that personality affects alcohol use, the current prospective study tested the converse relation. That is, we tested whether, after accounting for the effect of traits on drinking, collegiate heavy drinking in turn predicted individual differences in change in alcohol-related aspects of personality. We also examined whether affiliation with heavy-drinking peers better accounted for this relation. Following a cohort of recent high school graduates (N=1,434) through the college years, we found evidence for transactional relations between heavy drinking and changes in impulsivity and sensation seeking. Both traits predicted increases in heavy drinking, but more important, heavy drinking predicted increases in sensation seeking and impulsivity. In final models, social influences did not underlie the effect of heavy drinking on increases in sensation seeking and impulsivity. The results of this investigation suggest that collegiate heavy drinking may negatively and pervasively impact a wide range of behaviors because of its effect on personality change.     

Is David Lykken's theory of crime likely?

Lykken proposed a model of antisocial behaviour based on the criminal's temperamental difficulties. Personality traits stressed by this model are impulsivity, fearlessness, and sensation seeking. The present study compares one sample taken from the general population with a sample of prison inmates on these traits. The results indicate that prison inmates score higher than the general population on sensation seeking and fearlessness, whereas their scores on impulsivity are lower. Some implications are discussed.     

Personality and risk-taking: common biosocial factors

The first part of this article describes a study of the relationships between personality and risk-taking in six areas: smoking, drinking, drugs, sex, driving, and gambling. The participants, 260 college students, were given self-report measures of risky behaviors in each of the six areas and the Zuckerman-Kuhlman five-factor personality questionnaire. Generalized risk-taking (across all six areas) was related to scales for impulsive sensation seeking, aggression, and sociability, but not to scales for neuroticism or activity. Gender differences on risk-taking were mediated by differences on impulsive sensation seeking. The second part discusses biological traits associated with both risk-taking and personality, particularly sensation seeking, such as the D4 dopamine receptor gene. the enzyme monoamine oxidase, and augmenting or reducing of the cortical evoked potential. Comparative studies show relationships between biological markers shared with other species and correlated behaviors similar to sensation seeking in humans. A biosocial model of the traits underlying risk-taking is presented.     

Common genetic influences on impulsivity facets are related to goal management,psychopathology, and personality

In this study, we characterized the genetic/environmental commonality and heterogeneity of impulsivity facets and tested the hypothesis that goal-management is central to their common variance. 764 young-adult twins completed the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale and measures of goal management, personality, and psychopathology. We found common genetic influences across all impulsivity facets except sensation seeking. These impulsivity genetic influences explained 40.0% of variance in goal-management ability. Other results supported three hypotheses concerning heterogeneity: that sensation seeking is independent of other facets, that urgency is more related to psychopathology than lack of premeditation, and that lack of perseverance is more similar to urgency than lack of premeditation. Thus, impulsivity facets show considerable heterogeneity in addition to common variation related to goal-management abilities.     

A genetic and environmental analysis of sensation seeking

The genetic and environmental contributions to the trait of sensation seeking were analyzed using the responses of 422 pairs of twins to the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form IV). The biometrical method of Jinks and Fulker was applied to the data. The data fit the model indicating the likelihood of a predominantly additive gene action controlling the general trait. The heritability figure of 58% (69% of the reliable variance) was quite high for a personality trait. Data from other studies suggest that the heritability of the personality trait rests upon specific inherited biological traits, such as the biochemicals of the brain and gonadal hormones which affect arousability of the central nervous system and relevant traits, such as mood, impulsivity, risk taking, and sociability.     

On the distinction between violations and errors: sensation seeking associations

In this study about 700 young adult Swedish drivers aged 18–27 yr responded to a questionnaire on sensation seeking, the tendency to engage in risky behaviours, four types of aberrant driving behaviour (violations, mistakes, inattention and inexperience errors), traffic offences and accident involvement. These results suggest, not unreasonably, a differential relationship between different aspects of sensation seeking and aberrant driving behaviour. Whereas sensation seeking explained a large part of the variation in the violations factor, it accounted for very little of the variance in the other aberrant driving behaviour factors. This finding corresponds reasonably well with a hypothesis calling for a distinction between violations and errors. Still after controlling for the effect of exposure the self-reported accidents was associated with self-reported violations and driving mistakes. Self-reported traffic offences was associated with violations. Consequently, the violations and mistakes factors proved to be stable predictors of offences and accidents. The hierarchical approach taken in this study also shows how the construct of sensation seeking may be associated with aberrant driving behaviour.     

Age differences in sensation seeking and impulsivity as indexed by behavior and self-report: evidence for a dual systems model

It has been hypothesized that sensation seeking and impulsivity, which are often conflated, in fact develop along different timetables and have different neural underpinnings, and that the difference in their timetables helps account for heightened risk taking during adolescence. In order to test these propositions, the authors examined age differences in sensation seeking and impulsivity in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 935 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30, using self-report and behavioral measures of each construct. Consistent with the authors' predictions, age differences in sensation seeking, which are linked to pubertal maturation, follow a curvilinear pattern, with sensation seeking increasing between 10 and 15 and declining or remaining stable thereafter. In contrast, age differences in impulsivity, which are unrelated to puberty, follow a linear pattern, with impulsivity declining steadily from age 10 on. Heightened vulnerability to risk taking in middle adolescence may be due to the combination of relatively higher inclinations to seek excitement and relatively immature capacities for self-control that are typical of this period of development.     

Individual differences in the development of sensation seeking and impulsivity during adolescence: further evidence for a dual systems model

Consistent with social neuroscience perspectives on adolescent development, previous cross-sectional research has found diverging mean age-related trends for sensation seeking and impulsivity during adolescence. The present study uses longitudinal data on 7,640 youth from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth Children and Young Adults, a nationally representative sample assessed biennially from 1994 to 2006. Latent growth curve models were used to investigate mean age-related changes in self-reports of impulsivity and sensation seeking from ages 12 to 24 years, as well individual differences in these changes. Three novel findings are reported. First, impulsivity and sensation seeking showed diverging patterns of longitudinal change at the population level. Second, there was substantial person-to-person variation in the magnitudes of developmental change in both impulsivity and sensation seeking, with some teenagers showing rapid changes as they matured and others maintaining relatively constant levels with age. Finally, the correlation between age-related changes in impulsivity and sensation seeking was modest and not significant. Together, these results constitute the first support for the dual systems model of adolescent development to derive from longitudinal behavioral data.     

Genetically influenced change in sensation seeking drives the rise of delinquent behavior during adolescence

Sensation seeking is associated with an increased propensity for delinquency, and emerging research on personality change suggests that mean levels of sensation seeking increase substantially from childhood to adolescence. The current study tested whether individual differences in the rate of change of sensation seeking predicted within-person change in delinquent behavior and whether genetically influenced differences in rate of personality change accounted for this association. Sensation seeking and delinquent behavior were assessed biennially between ages 10-11 and 16-17 in a nationally representative sample of 7675 youths from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth: Children and Young Adults (CNLSY). Analyses using latent growth curve modeling found that within-person change in sensation seeking was significantly and positively correlated with within-person change in delinquency from childhood to adolescence. Furthermore, behavioral genetic analyses of a subset of 2562 sibling pairs indicated that there were substantial genetic influences on both initial levels of sensation seeking and change in sensation seeking during early adolescence, with over 80% of individual differences in change due to genetic factors. Finally, these genetically driven increases in sensation seeking were most important for predicting increases in delinquency, whereas environmental paths between sensation seeking and delinquency were not significant. These results suggest that developmental changes in delinquent behaviors during adolescence are driven by a genetically governed process of personality change.     

A test of the four-factor model of impulsivity-related traits

In a recent article, Whiteside and Lynam [Person. Indiv. Diff. 30 (2001) 669] proposed a new model for understanding personality pathways to impulsive behavior. Their UPPS model maintains that there are four personality dimensions that are related differentially to impulsive behaviors: urgency, sensation seeking, (lack of) premeditation, and (lack of) perseverance. The purpose of the current study was to provide validation for this model and to test some of the specific hypotheses offered by Whiteside and Lynam. The sample used in this study consisted of 481 individuals who completed mailed surveys at age 20 and an in-depth laboratory protocol at age 21. Zero-order correlations and multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relations between the four personality traits and various forms of externalizing behaviors, several types of internalizing psychopathology, and intelligence. Results revealed that the four traits were differentially related to various behaviors and forms of psychopathology consistent with many of Whiteside and Lynam's predictions. Therefore, the UPPS model does appear to offer a novel and useful way of understanding behaviors and forms of psychopathology considered to be characterized by some form of impulsivity.     

Trait impulsivity and callous-unemotional traits as predictors of inhibitory control and risky choices among high-risk adolescents

Trait impulsivity and callous-unemotional traits are associated with behavioural problems among high-risk adolescents. While both are known to influence behaviour, the nature of their expression in high-risk behaviours, particularly those related to inhibitory control, is not well understood. In the current, preliminary study, we examined whether and how these traits predicted deficits in behaviour driven by bottom-up, automatic versus deliberate, top-down inhibitory processes among high-risk adolescents. Two go/no-go task variants, emotional and non-emotional, were used to assess reactive response inhibition, and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task was used to assess the ability to resist deliberate risky choices. The results showed that the two types of self-reported trait measures were differentially associated with performance on the two types of behavioural inhibition tasks. Trait impulsivity predicted non-emotional inhibitory control whereas callous-unemotional traits predicted risky choices. The results also showed that the emotions task elicited slower reaction times and higher false alarm rates than did the letters task, and that participants had greater difficulty inhibiting responses to negatively than to positively valenced no-go stimuli. While preliminary, the results suggest that the interplay between trait impulsivity and callous-unemotional traits is an important determinant of inhibitory behaviour in this high-risk adolescents.