Reaction to Personality and Substance Use Study

Reaction to Personality and Substance Use Study

Summary

Topic Area

Researchers have studied and observed the relationship of personality with various constructs and behaviors. It seems interesting to relate to, and compare with the external factors in the environment. Studies of personality play a pivotal role in the debate of nature and nurture, with studies of identical and fraternal twin making it easier to study personality with divergent viewpoints (Haider, 2009).

Numerous studies target the relation between personality and substance use. Wolff and Wolff (2002) also carried out a study to further the claims made by the researchers regarding and addressing possible relationship between the structure of personality and three groups of students from college.

Hypothesis

This study presumes and endorses the earlier findings in this subject area. It hypothesized that the people who are just the “experimenters” of substances, who do not use them frequently and do not have a healthy withdrawal, possess healthier aspects of personality than the individuals who are extensive users of substances or the one who do not use substances at all (Wolff, 2002).

Method

Participants of the study, gathered by Wolff (2002), were college students enrolled in a very rural US university located in the south-western state. Sample size was 93; among which 37 were male, and 56 were female.

Surveys assisted the students for the use of substances for past, present or both. Students also recorded their demographics with full consent, after the briefing of the study and its purposes. Respondents also had an opportunity to quote any substance which they use other than alcohol such as caffeine, tranquilizers, sedative, inhalants and heroin. Corresponding each substance, students had to answer three basic questions; use of substance daily or nearly daily, its use ever in life and the last use.

Along with the interrogation of substance use, California Personality Inventory measured the personality of the subjects. Experimenters included CPI because of the strong empirical support, developed norms and reliability and validity. Lower scores on the scale characterized more “problematic” features of personality while higher scores characterized less problematic and more “healthy” structure of personality.

Ensuring the privacy and confidentially of the subjects, experimenters conducted drug surveys and personality assessment in numerous testing sessions which included 10 subjects on average in each evaluation setting. Furthermore, experimenters committed to the subjects about privacy of their results and identities.

Wolff and Wolff divided the evaluated group of subjects into three categories before correlating their personalities and finding out the differences. Students reporting no illegal substance or alcohol use ever, made up “Abstainers” group; ones who reported occasional use made up the “experimenters” category and finally, the subjects who reported regular use of such substances or alcohol made up the third category, “regular users”. Categorization was similar to the Shedler and Block study (1990).

Results and Discussion

No observations reflected any difference with respect to gender. Results were separated for the alcohol-users and users of other ill-legal substances. In the category of all the other illegal substances excluding alcohol, results revealed that out of twenty personality characteristics ...