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Published in final edited form as: Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2010 Sep;4(9):767–782. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00296.x

The Multiple, Distinct Ways that Personality Contributes to Alcohol Use Disorders

Andrew K Littlefield 1, Kenneth J Sher 1
PMCID: PMC3002230  NIHMSID: NIHMS204249  PMID: 21170162

Abstract

There is little question of whether personality is associated with problematic alcohol involvement (such as alcohol use disorders; AUDs); it clearly is. However, the question remains: how or why is personality related to risky drinking and AUDs? To address this question, theoretical models have been posited regarding the causal effects of personality on alcohol use and related problems. In this article, several of these models are summarized and reviewed. Future research directions are discussed, including possible frameworks that serve to integrate various models of the personality-AUD relation.

Keywords: personality, alcohol use disorders, drinking motives

Does personality relate to pathological alcohol use? This question has long been a focus of substance use researchers and clinicians. Though the identification of an “addictive personality” (i.e., a specific configuration of personality characteristics linked to addictive behaviors) has largely been abandoned, numerous studies demonstrate links between specific personality traits and problematic alcohol involvement. More specifically, though traits related to impulsivity/disinhibition appear to demonstrate the most robust and consistent relation with alcohol involvement, all Five-Factor traits (i.e., openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) have been shown to correspond, with varying degrees of consistency, to alcohol use and outcomes (see Sher, Barthalow, & Vieth [1999] for a review of papers linking personality to alcohol use disorders [AUDs] and Malouff, Thorsteinsson, Rooke, & Schutte [2007] for a recent meta-analysis that suggests, among Five-Factor traits, only conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism are significantly linked to alcohol involvement, and Trull & Sher [1994] for an alternative analytic approach involving personality and AUDs). Thus, the question of whether personality is associated with problematic alcohol involvement (such as alcohol use disorders; AUDs) can be clearly answered: yes!

What remains to be addressed is how or why personality relates to risky drinking and AUDs. Understanding the mechanisms of how broad personality traits such as neuroticism influence mental and physical health has recently been identified as “top priority for research” (Lahey, 2009), and the relation between personality and AUDs is no exception. Though personality and AUDs could be, logically, linked in a variety of ways (e.g., personality could influence AUDs, AUDs could influence personality, both could be influenced by a third-variable; see Sher et al., 1999), numerous theoretical models focusing on causal effects of personality on alcohol use and related problems have been posited and examined. Below, we summarize several of these models and selectively review relevant empirical findings. We then close by discussing future research directions, including possible frameworks that serve to integrate various models of the personality-AUD relation.

Deviance Proneness

Rather than suggesting that problematic alcohol use is the result of psychological or psychobiological risk factors, the deviance proneness model (Sher et al., 1999) posits that substance use represents a facet of a broad pattern of deviant behaviors that are thought to begin in childhood as a result of deficient socialization and genetic vulnerability. These deficits are not specific to substance use but also are associated with a number of other problematic outcomes, including association with deviant peers, childhood achievement problems, and delinquent behaviors. For example, Cooper, Wood, Orcutt, and Albino (2003) demonstrated that the relations among educational underachievement, delinquent behavior, substance use, and sexual behavior could be adequately modeled as a single higher order factor and that avoidance coping and impulsivity were risk factors for engaging in these behaviors. Factor analytic models also suggest that alcohol dependence, reverse-scored constraint (a construct related to impulsivity), drug dependence, conduct disorder, and antisocial behavior appear to be well represented by an “externalizing” factor (i.e., latent variable), providing evidence that both personality and substance use should be viewed along the same externalizing continuum (see Krueger et al., 2002; Krueger, Markon, Patrick, & Iacono, 2005). Rather than indicating deficient socialization processes per se, these models suggest that the overlap between alcohol dependence, constraint, and other externalizing behaviors is due largely to genetic factors (see Genetic Diathesis section below) and, to a lesser extent, environmental influences (Krueger et al., 2002).

There are a number of alternative, though not incompatible, theories regarding the role of personality in the deviance proneness model. For example, long-term socialization processes such as those created through parents and community institutions (e.g., schools) are thought to be influenced by personality (see Sher et al., 1999). Conversely, other theories hypothesize that “risky” personality characteristics act proximally to influence problematic substance use through impulsive decision-making styles. Thus, under the deviance proneness model, personality could influence substance use both distally (e.g., through peer group norms) and proximally (e.g., “risky” decision making).

Genetic Diathesis

Though the idea that the genetic diathesis, or risk, for AUDs might be mediated by personality was first proposed by Cloninger (1987), the genetic correlation between personality and AUDs was first demonstrated by Slutske et al. (2002). Using data from over three-thousand twin pairs, Slutske et al. found that genetic variance in behavioral undercontrol (i.e., traits related to impulsiveness, novelty seeking, nonconformity, and aggressiveness; Sher, 1991) accounted for approximately 40% of the genetic variation in alcohol dependence. Conversely, genetic variation in negative emotionality only accounted for a modest (though significant) 4% of genetic variation in alcohol dependence in men, and failed to significantly account for a significant portion of alcohol dependence in women. The finding that genetic influences contributing to behavioral undercontrol substantially overlap with the genetic diathesis of AUDs suggests that common genetic factors of both impulsive personality configurations and AUDs may be identified (see Integrating Developmental Models of Alcohol, Personality, and Relevant Mediators section below). It also suggests that part of the genetic influence on the development of AUDs is not specific to alcohol use disorders and likely shared by a number of externalizing behavior problems including other substance use disorders (Kendler, Prescott, Myers, & Neale, 2003; Krueger et al., 2002; Krueger et al., 2005).

Pharmacological Vulnerability

Broadly, the pharmacological vulnerability model (Sher, 1991) proposes that individuals have differential responses to acute and/or chronic effects of alcohol; that is, some individuals may be more or less sensitive to either positive or negative reinforcement or to punishing effects of alcohol (see Sher et al., 1999, for more details). This general notion that variation in personality predicts vulnerability to certain alcohol effects has been around for more than 80 years (Cleckley, 1982; MacDougall, 1929). These individual differences in response to alcohol are thought to be relevant to the development of AUDs.

Some evidence suggests individual differences in personality moderate individual responses to alcohol. Laboratory studies examining individual differences in the stress-dampening effects of alcohol (Levenson, Oyama, & Meek, 1987; Sher & Levenson, 1982) found that individuals characterized by outgoing, aggressive, impulsive, and antisocial characteristics had pronounced stress-response-dampening effects from alcohol, suggesting that these individuals may find alcohol consumption to be especially reinforcing. Similarly, individuals high in anxiety sensitivity, a “cognitive, individual difference variable characterized by a fear of arousal-related bodily sensations such as dizziness, trembling, and racing heartbeat” (Stewart & Kushner, 2001, p. 775), also demonstrate marked anxiolytic effects to alcohol (e.g., Conrod, Pihl, & Vassileva, 1998; MacDonald, Baker, Stewart, & Skinner, 2000; Stewart & Pihl, 1994; see Stewart & Kushner, 2001; Stewart, Samoluk, & MacDonald, 1999).

Further, diagnosis of AUDs (especially alcohol abuse) is determined, in part, by the consequences that follow consumption. Traits ranging from empathy (Giancola, 2003) to those related to hostility (Giancola, 2002a; 2002b) are associated with experimentally provoked alcohol-related aggression. Importantly, these findings demonstrate that, independent of the link between personality and the “reinforcing” or “punishing” effects of alcohol, personality also appears to influence the nature of drunken comportment.

Despite these findings, several shortcomings regarding personality as a moderator of the pharmacological effects of alcohol (at least regarding response to stress) should be noted. Laboratory-based findings have been inconsistent (e.g., Sher, & Walitzer, 1986; see Sher & Wood, 2005) and there is a lack of laboratory studies that used structured and empirically verified measures of personality (e.g., Five-Factor measures of personality; Costa & McCrae, 1992). Thus, integrating these initial findings into contemporary models of personality is somewhat difficult. Recent research using within-person, process-oriented methodology (e.g., daily-diary data) and five-factor measures of personality (e.g., NEO–PI–R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) has also produced inconsistent findings regarding personality as a moderator of the alcohol-stress relationship. For example, Armeli et al. (2003) hypothesized that the stress-response dampening effects of alcohol should be stronger for participants high in neuroticism, extraversion, and self-consciousness. Though there was some support for these hypotheses involving extraversion and self-consciousness, results were inconsistent across the five moods assessed in the study (i.e., sad, nervous, relaxed, happy, and angry). Thus, though pharmacological vulnerability models of personality are conceptually important, empirical support for these models has been somewhat inconsistent.

Personality and Environmental Selection

As noted by Park, Sher, Krull, and Wood (2009), individuals tend to self-select into environments that are compatible with their own character or personality. This so-called selection process (Buss, 1987; see also Caspi & Bem, 1990; Plomin, DeFries, & Loehlin, 1977; Scarr & McCartney, 1983) is evidenced in several areas of human behaviors (e.g., peer relationships; Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). Notably, since individuals are inclined to act on the basis of their existing characteristics, selection processes based on personality may be especially likely during transitional periods that present a host of choices (Caspi & Bem, 1990).

For example, in a prospective study of over 3,000 undergraduates, Park et al. (2009) found that individuals high on impulsivity/novelty seeking appeared to select into Greek societies (i.e., college fraternities/sororities) because of the heavy drinking environment associated with these organizations. Park et al. (2009) also found that individuals high in extraversion selected into the Greek system despite not being particularly heavy drinkers prior to college. Thus, extraverted students may participate in the Greek system to meet their higher activity/social needs as means to enhance positive emotions. Notably, Greek membership places members at risk for heavy drinking, regardless of motives, and thus remains a robust environmental risk factor for problematic alcohol involvement. Overall, these findings suggest that personality also contributes to AUDs through self-selection into risky group memberships that, in turn, appear to increase problematic drinking behaviors through later socialization processes.

Affect Regulation

Individuals appear to be motivated to use substances for various reasons, including the regulation of both positive and negative emotions. Based on the work of previous theorists (Cox & Klinger, 1988, 1990), Cooper (1994) developed and validated a four-factor model for drinking motivations. This model characterized drinking motives along two underlying dimensions reflecting source (internal or external) and the valence (positive or negative) of the results an individual hopes to attain by drinking. Crossing these two dimensions constructs four motivational classes: (a) intrinsic, positive reinforcement (“enhancement”), (b) extrinsic, positive reinforcement for social rewards (“social”), (c) intrinsic, negative reinforcement (“coping”), and (d) extrinsic, negative reinforcement to avoid social disapproval (“conformity”).

Since personality traits are thought to influence the motivation of behavior in general, they are also expected to relate to specific alcohol related motivations, especially motives that are directly related to internal affect regulation (i.e., enhancement and coping). Several theorists have suggested that motivations act as a proximal influence on substance use through which more distal factors, such as personality, are mediated (e.g., Cooper, Frone, Russell, & Mudar, 1995; Cox & Klinger, 1988, 1990; Kuntsche, von Fisher, & Gmel, 2008; Stewart & Devine, 2000; see Sher et al., 1999). Providing empirical support for this notion, Kuntsche, Knibbe, Gmel, and Engels (2006) reviewed over 80 scientific papers concerning drinking motives of people aged 10–25 and concluded there was a robust positive relation between neuroticism (Cooper, Agocha, & Sheldon, 2000; Kuntsche et al., 2008; Stewart & Devine, 2000; Stewart, Loughlin, & Rhyno, 2001) and coping motives (i.e., drinking to alleviate negative emotional states). Enhancement motives (i.e., drinking to enhance positive emotional state) have been primarily linked to low inhibitory control (e.g., Colder & O’Connor, 2002), sensation-seeking (e.g., Comeau, Stewart, & Loba, 2001, Cooper et al., 1995), impulsivity (e.g., Cooper, Agocha, & Sheldon, 2000), and extraversion (e.g., Kuntsche et al., 2006).

Further, coping and enhancement motives exhibit robust relationships with alcohol involvement and have been shown to mediate the influence of personality on alcohol outcomes (e.g., Cooper et al., 1995; see Kuntsche, Knibbe, Gmel, & Engels 2005; Kuntsche et al., 2006). As reviewed by Kuntsche et al. (2005), enhancement motives appear to be related to heavy drinking (Carey, 1993; Cooper, Russell, Skinner, & Windle, 1992; Read, Wood, Kahler, Maddock, & Palfai, 2003; Schulenberg, Wadsworth, O’Malley, Bachman, & Johnston, 1996) whereas coping motives appear to be related to both heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems (Carpenter & Hasin, 1999; Cooper et al., 1995; Cooper, Russell, & George, 1988; Holahan et al., 2001; Holahan, et al., 2003; McNally et al., 2003; Simons, Correia, & Carey, 2000; Windle & Windle, 1996; but see also Cooper et al., 2008).

Despite these findings, several issues concerning the relation between personality and motives should be highlighted. First, personality traits do not necessarily account for a high proportion of variance in drinking motives. For example, the relation between sensation seeking and enhancement motives appears to be modest (e.g., r=.20; Cooper et al, 1995; r=.18; Comeau et al., 2001). Second, results of several studies suggest that the influence of personality on alcohol involvement remains even when accounting for drinking motives, implying that other mechanisms (such as those described throughout this article) are important mediators of the personality-alcohol involvement relation. Third, to some degree, there is a lack of specificity between personality traits and motives. Though the review by Kuntsche et al. (2006) concluded that adolescents and young adults that drink for enhancement rather than coping motives tend to be impulsive, impulsivity exhibited similar correlations with enhancement (r=.19) and coping (r=.21) motives in the Cooper et al. (2000) study. Indeed, noting that individuals high in impulsivity may engage in risky behaviors associated with immediate rewards that can be positively or negatively reinforcing, Cooper et al. (2000) posited that impulsivity may be linked with both enhancement and coping motives (a notion recently supported by developmental findings in Littlefield, Sher, & Wood, 2010; see Developmental Models of Personality-Alcohol Relation below). Further, impulsivity failed to be a significant predictor of enhancement motives when neuroticism and extraversion were taken into account, suggesting the relation between impulsivity and enhancement motives is at least partially accounted for by other personality traits (see Cooper et al., 2000; Kuntsche et al., 2006).

Notably, other models suggest that personality traits may influence the use of alcohol to regulate affect. For example, according to the self-awareness model of alcohol (Hull, 1987), painful affective states are mediated by a state of self-awareness. Thus, by interrupting psychological mechanisms that relate to self-awareness, alcohol is thought to reduce distress. Individuals with high private self-consciousness (i.e., the corresponding trait of the state of self-awareness) are considered to be particularly susceptible to experience negative affect when exposed to negative information about the self and thus may be more likely to seek relief through substances (e.g., alcohol) that attenuate negative affect produced by self-awareness processes. Consistent with this notion, Park, Sher, & Krull (2006) found that sorority members (who may experience higher levels of emotional distress and engage in heavy drinking as a coping strategy; see Park et al., 2006) increased their drinking as private self-consciousness increased.

Developmental Models of Personality-Alcohol Relation

The distinction between prealcoholic personality traits and clinical personality traits proposed by Gordon Barnes (1979) was a critical one in the history of research on personality and AUDs. Barnes noted that many traits associated with clinical alcoholism (at that time typically assessed via the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI]; Hathaway & McKinley, 1940) tended to change over the course of recovery and often differed from traits identified in prospective studies (e.g., Jones, 1968; Jones, 1971) and follow-back studies (e.g., Hoffman, Loper, & Kammeier, 1974). As noted by Sher et al., (1999), there is now a strong database demonstrating significant prediction of future alcohol (and other drug) problems, especially traits related to behavioral disinhibition and, to a lesser extent, neuroticism.

However, it is only recently that individual differences in developmental changes in personality and changes in problematic alcohol involvement have been empirically linked. Though personality traits are traditionally thought to be stable internal dispositions (McCrae et al., 2000; but see also Costa & McCrae, 2006), several studies suggest that specific personality traits exhibit systematic patterns of marked mean-level change, especially during emerging (roughly ages 18–25; see Arnett, 2000) and young adulthood (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005; McCrae et al., 1999; Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006).

The normative changes in these traits tend towards configurations of personality that reflect greater emotional stability, self-control, risk avoidance, and agreeableness as people reach adulthood. This normative tendency towards maturity, which has been labeled the maturity principle (Caspi et al., 2005), is thought to be linked to marriage, parenthood, and other adult role transitions (e.g., Roberts et al., 2006; Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).

Interestingly, marked developmental changes in problematic alcohol involvement also occur in this same timeframe. The “maturing out” (Winick, 1962) of problematic alcohol involvement is characterized by the peak prevalence of alcohol use and problems in the early twenties before declining as individuals grow older (e.g., Bachman et al., 2002; Fillmore, 1988; Jessor, Donovan, & Costa, 1991; Yamaguchi & Kandel, 1985; see O’Malley, 2004–2005). As with personality, these developmental changes in heavy drinking and AUDs are thought to be influenced by the acquisition of adult roles (O’Malley, 2004–2005). Notably, a number of studies suggest that adult role transitions (and/or satisfaction in adult roles and relationships) are linked to both declines in problematic alcohol involvement (e.g., Bachman et al., 2002; Bachman, Wadsworth, O’Malley, Johnston, & Schulenberg, 1997; Kearns-Bodkin & Leonard, 2005; Leonard & Rothbard, 1999; Gotham, Sher, & Wood, 2003) and changes in personality that suggest maturity (e.g., increased emotional stability; Neyer & Lehnart, 2007; Roberts & Chapman, 2000; Roberts, Helson, & Klohnen, 2002; Robins, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2002; Scollen & Diener, 2006; see Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).

Further, empirical evidence suggests variability in the developmental course of both alcohol involvement and personality, such that some individuals do not reduce problematic alcohol use (e.g., Fillmore, 1988) or make normative and ostensibly adaptive changes in personality (e.g., Johnson, Hicks, McGue, & Iacono, 2007; Jones & Meredith, 1996; Robins et al., 2001). Littlefield, Sher, and Wood (2009) recently found that changes in neuroticism and impulsivity corresponded with changes in alcohol problems from ages 18–35, such that individuals who exhibited sharper declines in neuroticism and impulsivity across this period also tended make steeper decreases in alcohol problems. Moreover, these changes remained significant when accounting for the influence of adult role statuses (i.e., marriage and parenthood). In the same sample and across the same time span, Littlefield, Sher, and Steinley (in press) demonstrated that distinct impulsivity trajectory groups exhibited differential changes in alcohol involvement (especially from ages 18–25), such that a trajectory group characterized by significant decreases in impulsivity from ages 18–25 was more likely to undergo significant decreases in a variety of alcohol-related indices (including consumption and consequence measures) across this period of time compared to other trajectory groups. Providing a more refined picture of the dynamic relation between impulsivity and alcohol involvement, findings from this recent work suggest that individuals high and comparatively stable in impulsivity are especially susceptible to maintain elevated levels of problematic alcohol involvement during emerging adulthood. Further, though the data were still correlational in nature and thus causal relations between impulsivity and alcohol cannot be completely determined, the patterns of covariation among these constructs suggests that alcohol use appears to be a trailing (i.e., a consequence of) indicator of impulsivity development (as opposed to leading, etiologic predictors of developmental course; see Littlefield et al., in 2010; Sher Gotham, & Watson, 2004).

Further, it appears that developmental changes in drinking motives, specifically coping motives, may be an important mechanism through which changes in both neuroticism and impulsivity relate to changes in alcohol problems. Littlefield, Sher, and Wood (2010) recently showed that changes in neuroticism and impulsivity also related to changes in coping motives, such that individuals that decreased in these respective personality constructs also tended to show more pronounced decreases in coping motives, which in turn predicted steeper decreases in alcohol problems. Overall, these findings suggest that the relation between changes in personality and alcohol problems are largely mediated by changes in coping motives and that these constructs should be considered together in a developmental framework (see Integrating Developmental Models of Alcohol, Personality, and Relevant Mediators section below).

Synthesizing Models of the Personality-Alcohol Relation

In sum, there are a number of theoretical models with varying degrees of empirical support that attempt to address the question of how or why personality relates to problematic drinking and AUDs. An illustration of these multiple pathways is provided in Figure 1. As noted elsewhere (e.g., Sher & Littlefield, 2008), these models are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. For example, an individual with relatively high levels of impulsivity/behavioral disinhibition could hypothetically: 1) display a range of externalizing behaviors during childhood that may overlap with personality through common genetic factors (genetic diathesis); 2) affiliate with deviant peer groups that have access to alcohol during adolescence (deviance proneness); 3) subjectively enjoy drinking because the effects of alcohol are especially rewarding by reducing stress (pharmacological vulnerability); 4) later self-select into a Greek organization during college that tolerates (or promotes) heavy drinking (environmental selection); 5) become increasingly involved in a heavy drinking lifestyle that includes using alcohol to increase positive moods and/or decreases negative moods (affect regulation); 6) experience developmental changes after college, including transitions to adult roles of marriage and parenthood, undergoing decreases in impulsivity/behavioral disinhibition, and exhibiting substantial reductions in heavy alcohol use (developmental). Importantly, this example and the model displayed in Figure 1 do not demonstrate the only ways that personality may relate to problematic alcohol use but rather illustrate the multiple pathways in which personality may influence AUDs across the lifespan. Indeed, none, one, or several of the pathways described above may contribute to the development of an AUD for a given individual and none of these pathways are mutually exclusive. Further, some risk factors may also interact to predict personality and AUDs (e.g., gene-environment interactions; see Integrating Developmental Models of Alcohol, Personality, and Relevant Mediators section below).

Figure 1. Multiple pathways linking personality to problematic drinking and AUDs.

Figure 1

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Note this model is not exhaustive and the multiple pathways depicted are not mutually exclusive and the engagement of multiple risk processes likely increase risk. Though not shown, it is assumed that genetic and early environmental factors also influence the distal constructs depicted above.

Implications and Future Directions

Several personality constructs have been linked to AUDs, especially constructs related to impulsivity/behavioral inhibition. Personality appears to influence alcohol use and misuse through a number of non-mutually exclusive pathways. Below, clinical implications of the personality-alcohol relation are discussed, as well as possible future directions for research.

Clinical Implications

Research documenting the relation between personality and alcohol problems has important implications regarding both assessment and treatment of AUDs. For example, Littlefield et al. (2009) suggest that their research documenting that changes in personality correspond with changes in alcohol problems implies that individuals that exhibit changes in both problematic drinking behaviors and personality may have undergone significant and beneficial change. Conversely, individuals that evidence changes in drinking behaviors but not personality may signify an elevated risk for relapse or sustained risk for associated problem behaviors.

Regarding treatment, alcohol interventions could employ strategies to reduce personality traits and corresponding motives for alcohol use that are linked to drinking (Littlefield et al., 2009; Littlefield et al., in press). For example, based on evidence that suggests corresponding changes between neuroticism and work satisfaction, researchers have recently proposed career counseling as a possible intervention to decrease neuroticism (Scollon & Diener, 2006). Other interventions ranging from cognitive skills programs to exercise regimes (Baumeister, Gailliot, DeWall, & Oaten, 2006) may lead to self-regulation and, therefore, decreases in impulsivity. Conrod et al. (2000) designed treatments customized to individuals with different substance use motivations associated with various dimension of personality, and empirical evidence suggests this approach has merit (especially for individuals high in sensation seeking; see Conrod, Castellanos, & Mackie, 2008). As coping motives appear to be an especially important mediator of the personality-alcohol relation, treatments targeting coping skills (see Marlatt & Witkiewitz, 2009; Witkiewitz & Marlatt, 2004) may also result in reductions in alcohol problems.

Using Refined Measures of Personality and Mediators of the Personality-Alcohol Relation

The majority of studies examining the link between personality and AUDs use broadband measures of personality rather than lower-order structures or facets of personality. However, recent research suggests specific facets of personality may differentially relate to alcohol use and misuse. Whiteside and Lynam (2001) employed factor analyses to identify four distinct personality facets related with impulsive-like behavior: sensation seeking, lack of planning, lack of persistence, and urgency (acting rashly when distressed). More recent evidence suggests that urgency can be broken up into positive and negative components (Cyders et al., 2007). These facets appear to account for different aspects of drinking related behaviors (e.g., urgency traits predict drinking problems, sensation seeking predicts drinking frequency; see Dick et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2007). Additionally, recent research using an updated measure of drinking motives that distinguishes between drinking to cope with depression (coping-depression) and drinking to cope with anxiety (coping-anxiety) suggests that coping-depression and coping-anxiety motives are differentially related to alcohol use and alcohol problems (see Grant, Stewart, O'Connor, Blackwell, & Conrod, 2007). However, it has yet to be documented how these more refined measures of drinking motives relate to personality, including facets of broad personality traits. Future research examining the relations between personality and AUDs (especially developmental relations) and potential mediators of this link would benefit from personality measures considered at the facet level as well as more refined measures of drinking motives.

Using Various Measures of Personality

An overwhelming majority of studies that examine the link between personality and AUDs use self-report measures of personality. However, there are several drawbacks to self-report questionnaires (e.g., people may not view themselves realistically or understand how their behaviors affects other people; see Klonksy, Oltsmann, & Turkheimer, 2002). Further, correspondence between self- and informant-reports of personality is modest at best (e.g., Oltmanns, Turkheimer, & Strauss, 1998), suggesting informant reports provide additional information that cannot be obtained by self-report alone. Thus, future studies examining the AUD-personality link would benefit from the use of multi-informant data. Though gathering this additional information may be perceived as excessively time-consuming or expensive, several researchers have provided practical and effective suggestions on how to obtain such data (see Achenbach, Krukowski, Dumenci, & Ivanova, 2005; Vazire, 2006).

Behavioral measures that may be useful intermediate phenotypes between “personality” and neurological functioning should also be considered. Miyake et al. (2000) factor analyzed behavioral measures of executive functioning and identified specific subtypes of this construct, including facets related to impulsivity (also see Dougherty, Mathias, Marsh, & Jaspar, 2005). More specifically, Dick et al. (2010) recently noted that laboratory tasks thought to measure prepotent response inhibition (i.e., the ability to suppress automatic thoughts) such as go/no-go tasks (Marczinski & Fillmore, 2003) may relate to urgency facets of the UPPS-P impulsivity scale (Cyders et al., 2007; Lynam, Smith, Whiteside, & Cyders, 2006). Further, the lack of perseverance facet of the UPPS-P may relate to laboratory tasks such as word naming tasks (Kane, Hasher, Stoltzfus, Zacks, & Connelly, 1994) thought to measure the resistance to distractor interference (i.e., avoiding interference from task-irrelevant information; Friedman & Miyake, 2004). Lack of perseverance may also relate to tasks measuring resistance to proactive interference (i.e., resisting memory invasive information that was previously relevant to the current task; Friedman & Miyake, 2004) such as cued recall tasks (Tolan & Tehan, 1999; see Dick et al., 2010). Preliminary evidence indeed suggests that behavioral tasks related to prepotent response inhibition correlate with negative urgency whereas behavioral measures of interference relate to lack of perseverance (see Gay, Rochat, Billeux, D’Acremont, & Van der Linden, 2008). Experimental paradigms involving evoked potentials and computer game models have also been suggested as potential personality assessments that “go beyond” self-report questionnaires (see Ebstein, 2006).

Integrating Developmental Models of Alcohol, Personality, and Relevant Mediators

As documented above, personality relates to AUDs through a variety of ways that most likely overlap. Further, individual differences in normative personality change have recently been linked to the developmental course of alcohol problems. Thus, a potentially profitable line of research includes examining common factors of personality, alcohol use and misuse, and likely mediators of the personality-alcohol relation (e.g., drinking motives) from an integrative, developmental framework. As noted above, there is substantial genetic covariation between the broad construct of behavioral undercontrol and AUDs (Slutske et al., 2002). Though results have been inconsistent (suggesting possible environmental/developmental interactions; South & Krueger, 2008), several potential genetic factors of personality have also been identified and reviewed (see Ebstein, 2006; Ebstein & Israel, 2009), including genotypes related to the functioning of dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters thought to be relevant to variation in alcohol involvement (see Ducci & Goldman, 2008; Goldman et al., 2005; van der Zwaluw & Engels, 2009). Initial evidence suggests that motives for alcohol use may also be linked to similar genetic factors. Drinking motives involving coping with negative moods appear to be, especially in females, heritable (Agrawal et. al., 2008; Prescott, Cross, Kuhn, Horn, & Kendler, 2004) and a substantial portion of genetic variation in AUDs appears to overlap with drinking to manage mood states (Prescott et al., 2004). Notably, the extent to which genetic variance in drinking motives: a) overlap with genetic variance in theoretically related personality constructs; or b) account for the genetic covariance between personality and alcohol has yet to be documented. However, the extant findings suggest that variance in personality (especially constructs related to behavioral undercontrol), AUDs, and motives for alcohol use are at least partially explained by common genetic factors. Future research should further elucidate genetic factors that relate to these constructs.

Along with examining genetic factors, environmental influences, as well as potential interactions between genetic and environmental influences (i.e., gene-environment interactions; GXE), should also be explored. Though GXE involving personality have only just begun to be investigated, the two published studies to date suggest GXE involving alcohol relevant genetic factors (i.e., dopamine) and alcohol relevant environmental risk factors (i.e., negative childhood family environments, parental alcohol use) influence novelty seeking (Keltikangas-Järvinen, Raikkonen, Ekelund, & Peltonen, 2004; Lahti et al., 2005). Further, a specific genetic serotonin polymorphism has been shown to influence the link between life stress and drinking (Covalut et al., 2006; Kaufman et al., 2007; Nilsson et al., 2005). Taken together, these findings suggest that a logical next step in understanding how and why personality relates to AUDs will be to integrate personality, AUDs, and drinking motives into a developmental framework in which changes in these constructs are viewed in the context of each other as well as in the context of related genetic factors, life-stage specific environments, and the interplay between genetic and environmental influences.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this article was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Grants T32 AA13526, R01 AA13987, R37 AA07231 and KO5 AA017242 to Kenneth J. Sher and P50 AA11998 to Andrew Heath. We gratefully acknowledge Julia A. Martinez and Amelia E. Talley for their insightful comments on a previous version of this article. Also, we thank the staff of the Alcohol, Health, and Behavior and IMPACTS projects for their data collection and management.

Biographies

Andrew K. Littlefield is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. In 2005, he received a B.A. in Psychology and B.S in Business at the University of Missouri-Columbia. In 2008, he received a M.A in psychology. Broadly, Mr. Littlefield’s research interests include developmental changes in alcohol involvement and how these changes relate to other biological and psychosocial variables of interest, including personality development, changes in drinking motives, the acquisition of adult roles, and how the development and co-development of these constructs relate to genetic and other environmental factors.

Kenneth J. Sher, Ph.D is a Curators' Professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Dr. Sher received a B.A. in Psychology from Antioch College in 1975 and his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1981. More detailed information regarding Dr. Sher’s biography can be found at http://web.missouri.edu/~sherk/bioII.htm. Dr. Sher’s research interests are broad but primarily focus on the etiology and course of substance use disorders (particularly alcohol dependence) across the lifespan.

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