The Five Factor Model and impulsivity: using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity

Abstract

The present project utilized the Five Factor Model of personality (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1990) to clarify the multi-faceted nature of impulsivity. The NEO-PI-R and a number of commonly used impulsivity measures were administered to over 400 young adults. Exploratory factor analyses identified four distinct personality facets associated with impulsive-like behavior which were labeled urgency, (lack of) premeditation, (lack of) perseverance, and sensation seeking. Each of these traits was marked by a different facet of the FFM. Following the initial factor identification, scales to measure each of the personality facets were created and combined to form the UPPS Impulsive Behavior scale. Implications for the understanding of impulsive behavior and the FFM are discussed, as are future applications of the UPPS impulsive behavior scale.

Introduction

Impulsivity is an important psychological construct. It appears, in one form or another, in every major system of personality. For instance, Eysenck and Eysenck (1985) include impulsiveness (e.g., I usually think carefully before doing anything) as a component of psychoticism and venturesomeness (e.g., I would enjoy waterskiing) and sensation-seeking (e.g., I sometimes like doing things that are a bit frightening) as components of extraversion in their three dimensional view of personality. In his models, Cloninger (Cloninger et al., 1991, Cloninger et al., 1993) includes a superfactor of novelty seeking which consists of items asking about thrill seeking and preferring to act on feelings of the moment without regard for rules and regulations. Finally, Tellegen (1982) incorporates a dimension of control (vs impulsiveness) under his higher-order constraint factor.

In addition to its importance in personality, impulsivity also plays a prominent role in the understanding and diagnosis of various forms of psychopathology. In fact, after subjective distress, impulsivity may be the most common diagnostic criteria in the fourth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In addition to an entire section devoted to impulse-control disorders (e.g., intermittent explosive disorder, kleptomania, and pyromania), impulsivity appears in the diagnostic criteria for psychiatric disorders as varied as: borderline personality disorder (i.e., impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging), antisocial personality disorder (i.e., impulsivity or failure to plan ahead), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (i.e., blurts out answers, difficulty waiting turn, and interrupts or intrudes), mania (e.g., excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences), dementia (i.e., disturbance in executive functioning), bulimia nervosa (e.g., feeling as though one cannot control how much one is eating), substance use disorders, and the paraphilias. Additionally, impulsivity serves as a centerpiece in etiologic theories of psychopathy (Newman and Wallace, 1993, Lynam, 1996), crime (Moffitt, 1993), and substance use (Wills, Vaccaro & McNamara, 1994).

Given the pervasive importance of impulsivity in psychology, it is somewhat surprising to note the variety of current conceptualizations of impulsivity and the inconsistencies among them. As Depue and Collins (1999) note, “impulsivity comprises a heterogeneous cluster of lower-order traits that includes terms such as impulsivity, sensation seeking, risk-taking, novelty seeking, boldness, adventuresomeness, boredom susceptibility, unreliability, and unorderliness” (p. 495). Unfortunately, impulsivity suffers from both the “jingle” and “jangle” fallacies (Block, 1995). The jingle fallacy refers to situations in which two constructs with equivalent labels are in reality quite different; in the present instance, measures labeled impulsivity may reflect constructs as diverse as a short attention span and a tendency to participate in risky behavior. On the other hand, the jangle fallacy refers to situations in which two constructs with different labels are actually the same; for example, Tellegen’s control (Tellegen, 1982) and Zuckerman’s Disinhibition (Zuckerman, 1994) scales seem to measure similar constructs despite bearing different labels. Clearly, the jingle and jangle fallacies are more likely to inhibit than to advance the understanding of impulsivity; these fallacies “waste scientific time” and “work to prevent the recognition of correspondences that could help build cumulative knowledge” (Block, 1995, p. 210). It is in response to these concerns that we conduct the current investigation of impulsivity. Specifically, we attempted to understand the construct of impulsivity by analyzing, within the framework of a well-validated personality model, a variety of commonly used impulsivity measures.

There have been several previous attempts to bring clarity to the construct of impulsivity. For instance, Eysenck and colleagues have discussed impulsivity in terms of their three factor theory of personality which currently consists of neuroticism, extraversion, and psychoticism. In their earlier work, Eysenck and Eysenck (1968) included impulsivity as a subscale of the second order personality trait extraversion. Eysenck and Eysenck (1975) revised their personality scale which, according to Rocklin and Revelle (1981), redefined extraversion in a manner that included liveliness and sociability, but excluded impulsivity. Subsequent to the revision of their three factor theory of personality Eysenck and Eysenck (1977) subdivided impulsivity (labeled broad impulsiveness) into four specific dimensions: narrow impulsiveness, risk-taking, non-planning, and liveliness. They found that the four impulsivity scales correlated differentially with extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. The first factor, narrow impulsiveness, had high correlations with neuroticism and psychoticism, but did not correlate with extraversion. However, the other dimensions, risk-taking, non-planning, and liveliness, were more strongly correlated with extraversion. This work contributed to Eysenck and Eysenck's (1985), reconsideration of their original placement of impulsivity on extraversion (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) and their proposal that impulsivity consists of two components: venturesomeness that corresponds to extraversion, and impulsiveness, that corresponds to psychoticism.

Buss and Plomin (1975) included impulsivity, along with emotionality, activity, and sociability in their four factor model of temperament. They hypothesize that impulsivity is a multidimensional temperament with inhibitory control, or the ability to delay the performance of a behavior, as its core aspect. The other three components of impulsivity in this system involve the tendency to consider alternatives and consequences before making a decision, the ability to remain with a task despite competing temptations, and the tendency to become bored and need to seek novel stimuli. Although the authors describe impulsivity and the other temperaments as separate dimensions they contend that the traits influence behavior in an interactional manner. For instance, they postulate that while activity and emotionality motivate individuals to action, impulsivity works to slow down or inhibit behavior.

Zuckerman and colleagues likewise have discussed impulsivity in terms of a general model of personality. Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Thornquist and Kiers (1991) began the development of an alternative five-factor model through the factor analysis of a number of general personality inventories. They identified a factor consisting of the four subscales from Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman, 1994) and other measures of impulsivity which they have since labeled impulsive-sensation seeking. Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta and Kraft (1993) described this scale as consisting of items that “involve a lack of planning and the tendency to act impulsively without thinking”, as well as “experience seeking, or the willingness to take risks for the sake of excitement or novel experiences”. They determined that their impulsive sensation seeking scale measured a construct similar to the NEO conscientiousness factor (discussed below, Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the EPQ psychoticism factor.

Cloninger bases his model of personality structure and development on the physiological underpinnings of behavior (Cloninger et al., 1991, Cloninger et al., 1993). He has identified four temperament scales through research on studies of twins and families, longitudinal development, and neuropharmacology. Cloninger defines temperament factors as dimensions of personality that “involve automatic, preconceptual responses to perceptual stimuli, presumably reflecting heritable biases in information processing” (Cloninger et al., 1993, p. 977). Cloninger includes impulsivity as an aspect of novelty seeking, one of the four temperaments. In addition, novelty seeking also includes: (1) the initiation of approach behavior in response to novelty; (2) extravagance in approach to reward cues; and (3) the tendency to quickly lose one's temper. Cloninger therefore, apparently conceptualizes impulsivity as an automatic response to novel stimuli that occurs at a preconscious level due to biological tendencies.

Tellegen, 1982, Tellegen, 1985) has proposed a personality system that includes three higher-order factors. The first two, positive emotionality and negative emotionality, are directly related to mood. The third dimension, constraint, captures an individual’s level of caution, restraint, propensity towards risky behavior, and acceptance of conventional society. Individuals low in constraint describe themselves as relatively impulsive, adventurous, and inclined to reject conventional restrictions on behavior. The constraint factor includes a control-versus-impulsiveness scale. In Tellegen’s model impulsivity is one of three factors that determines the manner and intensity in which individuals respond to emotional stimuli.

Barratt and colleagues (Barratt, 1993, Gerbing et al., 1987, Patton et al., 1995, Stanford and Barratt, 1992) have developed one of the most comprehensive approaches to impulsivity by including information from four diverse perspectives: the medical model, the psychological model, the behavioral model, and the social model. The research incorporates a variety of measures including self-report inventories, cognitive and behavioral tasks, and brain-behavioral research with animals (Barratt, 1993). These researchers (Patton et al., 1995) have identified three higher-order factors which they argue reflect the different components of impulsivity: attentional impulsiveness (the ability to focus on the tasks at hand and cognitive instability), motor impulsiveness (acting on the spur of the moment and perseverance), and non-planning (self-control and cognitive complexity). The latter two factors have been identified by other researchers (Luengo, Carrillo-De-La-Pena & Otero, 1991) while the third factor has not replicated reliably.

In an effort to understand impulsivity from a physiological perspective, Newman and colleagues (Newman and Wallace, 1993, Wallace et al., 1991) have attempted to map Eysenck’s system of personality on to Gray’s neuropsychological model (Gray, 1987) of approach/avoidance learning. In Gray’s model behavior arises from three separate components: the Behavioral Activation System (BAS), the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), and the Nonspecific Arousal System (NAS). The BAS responds to environmental cues for reward and non-punishment by initiating approach and active avoidance. The BIS, on the other hand, responds to environmental cues for punishment and non-reward, with passive avoidance behavior, or extinction/inhibition of ongoing behavior. Thus, the BAS and BIS have inhibitory connections to each other so that activation of one system inhibits the other. The third system, the NAS, receives excitatory input from both the BAS and the BIS. Stimulation of the NAS in turn serves to intensify the frequency and intensity of behavior emanating from either system. Thus, an increase in the NAS prepares the organism to respond. Further these authors suggest that extraversion reflects the relative strength of the BAS to BIS and that neuroticism reflects the relative strength of the NAS.

Based on this theory, Newman and his colleagues have identified three distinct pathways to impulsive responding. The first pathway (normal impulsivity) involves the dominance of the BAS over the BIS amplified by a highly reactive NAS which results in overresponding to rewards; this pattern is seen in neurotic extraverts. The second pathway (anxious impulsivity) results from a dominant BIS intensified by a highly reactive NAS under conditions in which the dominant response is constrained to be one of approach; this pattern is seen in neurotic introverts. The third pathway, called deficient P-constraint by Lynam (1996), is seen in psychopaths responding under competing reward and punishment contingencies.

Dickman (1990) has proposed a two dimensional theory of impulsivity based on an information processing approach to personality. His work stems out of his observation that impulsivity can have positive as well as negative consequences and he differentiates between functional (i.e., the tendency to act with relatively little forethought when such a trait is optimal) and dysfunctional impulsivity (i.e., the tendency to act with less forethought than most people of equal ability when this is a source of difficulty). He has argued that dysfunctional impulsivity is associated with disorderliness, a tendency to ignore hard facts when making decisions, acting without forethought, and “a tendency to engage in rapid, error prone information processing because of an inability to use a slower, more methodical approach under certain circumstances” (p. 101). On the other hand, functional impulsivity is associated with enthusiasm, adventuresomeness, activity, and an ability “to engage in rapid error prone information processing when such a strategy is rendered optimal by the individual’s other personality traits” (p. 101).

Despite attempts to place impulsivity in a comprehensive theory of personality by researchers such as Eysenck, Jackson, and Cloninger, none of the frameworks put forward have gained widespread acceptance. This may be due, in part, to the variety of personality models used as a reference point and their disagreement on the number and content of personality dimensions. In an attempt to add clarity to the assortment of impulsivity measures that have been embedded in a variety of personality theories, the current project attempts to identify facets of impulsivity that are common across measures and place them in an inclusive model of personality. Specifically, we use the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1990) to provide a framework from which to understand and in which to place the various conceptions of impulsivity. This decision is consistent with Zuckerman et al. (1991) who concluded that three- and five-factor models of personality are equally robust and recommended the use of the latter, given its greater specificity.

One structural model of personality that might be used for the above purposes is the Five Factor Model of personality (FFM; McCrae & Costa, 1990). This model consists of five broad higher-order factors called domains (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) each of which is composed of six subfactors called facets. Within this model, there appear to be four distinct facets, on three different domains, that capture some aspect of impulsivity. Costa and McCrae (1992) explicitly propose that low self-control is measured by the Impulsiveness facet of the Neuroticism domain and by the Self-discipline facet of the Conscientiousness domain of their personality inventory the NEO-PI-R. Specifically, they assert that “people high in impulsiveness cannot resist doing what they do not want themselves to do” and that “people low in self-discipline cannot force themselves to do what they want themselves to do” (p. 18). High scorers on the Impulsiveness facet are described as moody, irritable, and excitable, whereas low scorers on the Self-discipline facet are described as lazy, disorganized, and not thorough. In addition, there are two other facets that capture impulsivity as conceptualized by other investigators. First, there is the excitement seeking facet of extraversion which is similar to the dimension of sensation seeking of Zuckerman (1994) and the venturesomeness of Eysenck and Eysenck (1977); high scorers on this facet are described as pleasure-seeking, daring, and adventurous. Second, there is the deliberation facet of conscientiousness which is similar to Tellegen’s control scale and to Barratt’s non-planning factor; low scorers on this facet are described as hasty, impulsive, careless, and impatient. In the end, the FFM offers four distinct conceptualizations of impulsivity that might be used to bring structure to the construct of impulsivity itself.

The present study examines the relations of commonly-used measures of impulsivity to the FFM. Specifically, we examine whether the four aspects of impulsivity inherent in the FFM map empirically onto the various conceptions of impulsivity present in the literature. To the extent that the FFM can bring structure to the diversity of impulsivity conceptions and measures, it provides a potentially useful framework for the understanding and study of impulsivity. Additionally, to the extent that distinct aspects of impulsivity emerge, scales to measure each form can be developed.