Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T02:34:22.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Alcohol use and personality trait change: pooled analysis of six cohort studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2018

Christian Hakulinen  and
Markus Jokela
Christian Hakulinen*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland
Markus Jokela
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Finland
*
Author for correspondence: Christian Hakulinen, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

Personality has been associated with alcohol use, but less is known about how alcohol use may influence long-term personality trait change.

Methods

The present study examines associations between alcohol use and change in the five major personality traits across two measurement occasions (mean follow-up of 5.6 years). A total of 39 722 participants (54% women) were pooled from six cohort studies for an individual-participant meta-analysis. Alcohol use was measured as (1) average alcohol consumption, (2) frequency of binge drinking, (3) symptoms of alcohol use disorder, and (4) a global indicator of risky alcohol use. Changes in the five major personality traits (extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience) were used as outcomes.

Results

Risky alcohol use was associated with increasing extraversion [0.25 T-scores over the mean follow-up of 5.6 years; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.07–0.44] and decreasing emotional stability (−0.28; 95% CI −0.48 to −0.08), agreeableness (−0.67; 95% CI −0.87 to −0.36), and conscientiousness (−0.58; 95% CI −0.79 to −0.38). Except the association between alcohol use and extraversion, these associations were consistent across cohort studies and across different measures of alcohol use.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that alcohol use is associated with personality trait changes in adulthood.

Keywords

Alcohol usebig fivelongitudinal studiesmeta-analysespersonality
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , January 2019 , pp. 224 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, MS, Vella, SA and Laborde, S (2015) Health-related behaviour and personality trait development in adulthood. Journal of Research in Personality 59, 104–110.Google Scholar
Ashenhurst, JR, Harden, KP, Corbin, WR and Fromme, K (2015) Trajectories of binge drinking and personality change across emerging adulthood. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 29, 978–991.Google Scholar
Babor, TF, Higgins-Biddle, JC, Saunders, JB and Monteiro, MG (2001) The alcohol use disorders identification test guidelines for use in primary care. In World Health Organization, pp1–40.Google Scholar
Boden, JM and Fergusson, DM (2011) Alcohol and depression. Addiction 106, 906–914.Google Scholar
Bogg, T and Roberts, BW (2004) Conscientiousness and health-related behaviors: a meta-analysis of the leading behavioral contributors to mortality. Psychological Bulletin 130, 887–919.Google Scholar
Borsari, B and Carey, KB (2001) Peer influences on college drinking: a review of the research. Journal of Substance Abuse 13, 391–424.Google Scholar
Boyce, CJ, Wood, AM, Daly, M and Sedikides, C (2015) Personality change following unemployment. Journal of Applied Psychology 100, 991–1011.Google Scholar
Brim, OG, Baltes, PB, Bumpass, LL, Cleary, PD, Featherman, DL, Hazzard, WR et al. (2011) National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), 1995–1996. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) distributor.Google Scholar
Bushman, BJ and Cooper, HM (1990) Effects of alcohol on human aggression: an integrative research review. Psychological Bulletin 107, 341–354.Google Scholar
Collins, SE (2016) Associations between socioeconomic factors and alcohol outcomes. Alcohol Research: Current Reviews 38, 83–94.Google Scholar
Durbin, CE and Hicks, BM (2014) Personality and psychopathology: a stagnant field in need of development. European Journal of Personality 28, 362–386.Google Scholar
Fairbairn, CE, Sayette, MA, Wright, AGC, Levine, JM, Cohn, JF and Creswell, KG (2015) Extraversion and the rewarding effects of alcohol in a social context. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 124, 660–673.Google Scholar
Foran, HM and O'Leary, KD (2008) Alcohol and intimate partner violence: a meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review 28, 1222–1234.Google Scholar
de Goeij, MCM, Suhrcke, M, Toffolutti, V, van de Mheen, D, Schoenmakers, TM and Kunst, AE (2015) How economic crises affect alcohol consumption and alcohol-related health problems: a realist systematic review. Social Science and Medicine 131, 131–146.Google Scholar
Grant, BF, Goldstein, RB, Saha, TD, Chou, SP, Jung, J, Zhang, H et al. (2015) Epidemiology of DSM-5 alcohol use disorder. JAMA Psychiatry 20852, 1–10.Google Scholar
Hakulinen, C, Elovainio, M, Batty, GD, Virtanen, M, Kivimäki, M and Jokela, M (2015a) Personality and alcohol consumption: pooled analysis of 72949 adults from eight cohort studies. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 151, 110–114.Google Scholar
Hakulinen, C, Elovainio, M, Pulkki-Råback, L, Virtanen, M, Kivimäki, M and Jokela, M (2015b) Personality and depressive symptoms: individual participant meta-analysis of 10 cohort studies. Depression and Anxiety 32, 461–470.Google Scholar
Hakulinen, C, Hintsanen, M, Munafò, MR, Virtanen, M, Kivimäki, M, Batty, GD et al. (2015c) Personality and smoking: individual-participant meta-analysis of nine cohort studies. Addiction 110, 1844–1852.Google Scholar
Heinz, AJ, Beck, A, Meyer-Lindenberg, A, Sterzer, P and Heinz, A (2011) Cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms of alcohol-related aggression. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 12, 400–413.Google Scholar
Herd, P, Carr, D and Roan, C (2014) Cohort profile: Wisconsin longitudinal study (WLS). International Journal of Epidemiology 43, 34–41.Google Scholar
Hicks, BM, Durbin, CE, Blonigen, DM, Iacono, WG and McGue, M (2012) Relationship between personality change and the onset and course of alcohol dependence in young adulthood. Addiction 107, 540–548.Google Scholar
John, OP, Donahue, EM and Kentle, RL (1991) The ‘Big Five’ Inventory - Version 4a and 5a. Berkeley: Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California.Google Scholar
John, OP, Naumann, LP and Soto, CJ (2008) Paradigm shift to the integrative big-five trait taxonomy: history, measurement, and conceptual issues. In John, OP, Robins, RW and Pervin, LA (eds). Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 114–158.Google Scholar
Jokela, M, Batty, GD, Nyberg, ST, Virtanen, M, Nabi, H, Singh-Manoux, A et al. (2013 a) Personality and all-cause mortality: individual-participant meta-analysis of 3947 deaths in 76150 adults. American Journal of Epidemiology 178, 667–675.Google Scholar
Jokela, M, Elovainio, M, Nyberg, ST, Tabák, AG, Hintsa, T, Batty, GD et al. (2014a) Personality and risk of diabetes in adults: pooled analysis of 5 cohort studies. Health Psychology 33, 1618–1621.Google Scholar
Jokela, M, Hakulinen, C, Singh-Manoux, A and Kivimäki, M (2014b) Personality change associated with chronic diseases: pooled analysis of four prospective cohort studies. Psychological Medicine 44, 2629–2640.Google Scholar
Jokela, M, Hintsanen, M, Hakulinen, C, Batty, GD, Nabi, H, Singh-Manoux, A et al. (2013 b) Association of personality with the development and persistence of obesity: a meta-analysis based on individual–participant data. Obesity Reviews 14, 315–323.Google Scholar
Juster, FT and Suzman, R (1995) An overview of the health and retirement study. Journal of Human Resources 30, S7–S56.Google Scholar
Kornreich, C, Brevers, D, Canivet, D, Ermer, E, Naranjo, C, Constant, E et al. (2013) Impaired processing of emotion in music, faces and voices supports a generalized emotional decoding deficit in alcoholism. Addiction 108, 80–88.Google Scholar
Kotov, R, Gamez, W, Schmidt, F and Watson, D (2010) Linking ‘big’ personality traits to anxiety, depressive, and substance use disorders: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 136, 768–821.Google Scholar
Lachman, ME and Weaver, SL (1997) The Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) Personality Scales: Scale Construction and Scoring. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University.Google Scholar
Littlefield, AK, Sher, KJ and Wood, PK (2009) Is ‘maturing out’ of problematic alcohol involvement related to personality change? Journal of Abnormal Psychology 118, 360–374.Google Scholar
Littlefield, AK, Sher, KJ and Wood, PK (2010) A personality-based description of maturing out of alcohol problems: extension with a five-factor model and robustness to modeling challenges. Addictive Behaviors 35, 948–954.Google Scholar
Littlefield, AK, Vergés, A, Wood, PK and Sher, KJ (2012) Transactional models between personality and alcohol involvement: a further examination. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 121, 778–783.Google Scholar
Malouff, JM, Thorsteinsson, EB, Rooke, SE and Schutte, NS (2007) Alcohol involvement and the five-factor model of personality: a meta-analysis. Journal of Drug Education 37, 277–294.Google Scholar
Maurage, P, Grynberg, D, Noël, X, Joassin, F, Hanak, C, Verbanck, P et al. (2011) The ‘reading the mind in the eyes’ test as a new way to explore complex emotions decoding in alcohol dependence. Psychiatry Research 190, 375–378.Google Scholar
Quinn, PD, Stappenbeck, CA and Fromme, K (2011) Collegiate heavy drinking prospectively predicts change in sensation seeking and impulsivity. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 120, 543–556.Google Scholar
Rehm, J, Mathers, C, Popova, S, Thavorncharoensap, M, Teerawattananon, Y and Patra, J (2009) Global burden of disease and injury and economic cost attributable to alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders. The Lancet 373, 2223–2233.Google Scholar
Roberts, BW and DelVecchio, WF (2000) The rank-order consistency of personality traits from childhood to old age a quantitative review of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin 126, 3–25.Google Scholar
Roberts, BW, Walton, KE and Viechtbauer, W (2006) Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin 132, 1–25.Google Scholar
Roerecke, M and Rehm, J (2013) Alcohol use disorders and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Addiction 108, 1562–1578.Google Scholar
Saucier, G (1994) Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg’s unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment 63, 506–516.Google Scholar
Sebold, M, Deserno, L, Nebe, S, Schad, DJ, Garbusow, M, Hägele, C et al. (2014) Model-based and model-free decisions in alcohol dependence. Neuropsychobiology 70, 122–131.Google Scholar
Stockwell, T, Zhao, J and Macdonald, S (2014) Who under-reports their alcohol consumption in telephone surveys and by how much? An application of the ‘yesterday method’ in a national Canadian substance use survey. Addiction (Abingdon, England) 109, 1657–1666.Google Scholar
Sutin, AR, Luchetti, M, Stephan, Y, Robins, RW and Terracciano, A (2017) Parental educational attainment and adult offspring personality: an intergenerational life span approach to the origin of adult personality traits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, 144–166.Google Scholar
Sutin, AR, Stephan, Y, Luchetti, M, Artese, A, Oshio, A and Terracciano, A (2016) The five-factor model of personality and physical inactivity: a meta-analysis of 16 samples. Journal of Research in Personality 63, 22–28.Google Scholar
Turiano, Na, Whiteman, SD, Hampson, SE, Roberts, BW and Mroczek, DK (2012) Personality and substance use in midlife: conscientiousness as a moderator and the effects of trait change. Journal of Research in Personality 46, 295–305.Google Scholar
Volkow, ND, Koob, GF and McLellan, AT (2016) Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction. New England Journal of Medicine 374, 363–371.Google Scholar
Wagner, G, Frick, J and Schupp, J (2007) The German socio-economic panel study (SOEP)-evolution, scope and enhancements. Journal of Applied Social Science Studies 127, 139–169.Google Scholar
Wiers, RW and Stacy, AW (2006) Implicit cognition and addiction. Current Directions in Psychological Science 15, 292–296.Google Scholar
Wilson, KE and Dishman, RK (2015) Personality and physical activity: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences 72, 230–242.Google Scholar
Wooden, M and Watson, N (2007) The HILDA survey and its contribution to economic and social research (so far)*. Economic Record 83, 208–231.Google Scholar
World Health Organization (2014) Global status report on alcohol and health - 2014. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Hakulinen and Jokela supplementary material

Appendix

Download Hakulinen and Jokela supplementary material(File)
File 484.4 KB