Impulsivity is considered a personality trait affecting behavior in many life domains, from recreational activities to important decision making. When extreme, it is associated with mental health problems, such as substance use disorders, as well as with interpersonal and social difficulties, including juvenile delinquency and criminality. Yet, trait impulsivity may not be a unitary construct. We review commonly used self-report measures of personality trait impulsivity and related constructs (e.g., sensation seeking), plus the opposite pole, control or constraint. A meta-analytic principal-components factor analysis demonstrated that these scales comprise 3 distinct factors, each of which aligns with a broad, higher order personality factor-Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality, Disinhibition versus Constraint/Conscientiousness, and Extraversion/Positive Emotionality/Sensation Seeking. Moreover, Disinhibition versus Constraint/Conscientiousness comprise 2 correlated but distinct subfactors: Disinhibition versus Constraint and Conscientiousness/Will versus Resourcelessness. We also review laboratory tasks that purport to measure a construct similar to trait impulsivity. A meta-analytic principal-components factor analysis demonstrated that these tasks constitute 4 factors (Inattention, Inhibition, Impulsive Decision-Making, and Shifting). Although relations between these 2 measurement models are consistently low to very low, relations between both trait scales and laboratory behavioral tasks and daily-life impulsive behaviors are moderate. That is, both independently predict problematic daily-life impulsive behaviors, such as substance use, gambling, and delinquency; their joint use has incremental predictive power over the use of either type of measure alone and furthers our understanding of these important, problematic behaviors. Future use of confirmatory methods should help to ascertain with greater precision the number of and relations between impulsivity-related components.

The trait of "impulsivity" is difficult to place within a personality framework due to the many potential pathways to impulsive behavior and the lack of consensus regarding the structure of the trait(s). This lack of consensus also hinders systematic investigation into relations between "impulsivity" and its behavioral manifestations. Undergraduates (Sample 1 N = 507) completed a battery of self-report measures, all purporting to assess trait "impulsivity"; a subset (n = 408) and Sample 2 (N = 388) also completed a retrospective questionnaire about specific behaviors they may have engaged in over the past year, and another subset of Sample 1 agreed to complete (n = 208) and actually completed (n = 152) a 2-week prospective measure of impulsive behaviors. Finally, a subset of Sample 1 (n = 321) and Sample 2 completed an omnibus self-report inventory in a follow-up study. Structural equation modeling confirmed a 3-factor structure of what we call impulsigenic traits-traits that are manifested in impulsive behavior. This finding is consistent with previous research and supports the growing consensus that "impulsivity" is a colloquial label attached to a group of distinct traits that have phenotypically similar behavioral manifestations. Each of these impulsigenic traits relates differentially to impulsive behavior and to broad temperamental dimensions. The results also show clear 2-factor structures of both daily and less frequent (yearly/semiyearly) impulsive behaviors. Finally, a unique method of data collection permitted an investigation of relations between the impulsigenic and other personality traits and observed behaviors, demonstrating the predictive utility of personality traits to discrete, in situ behaviors.

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The broad personality trait of disinhibition reflects the tendency to behave in an underconstrained versus overconstrained manner and is associated with externalizing psychopathology and risk-taking behaviors. This article describes the development and initial validation of the Disinhibition Inventory (DIS-I), a multifaceted measure of disinhibition that helps explicate the nature of this important higher-order dimension more fully. Factor analyses of an initial item pool resulted in five content-distinct, yet correlated scales measuring both high (Manipulativeness, Distractibility, Risk Taking) and low (Prosociality, Orderliness) levels of disinhibition that cross-validated in an independent sample. Evidence for the construct validity of the DIS-I is presented, including convergent and discriminant relations with Big-Three and Big-Five/five-factor model measures of personality. Results indicate that the DIS-I scales are associated most strongly with other measures of disinhibition, but that the DIS-I additionally contains content absent in extant adult measures of disinhibition that may prove useful in the assessment of externalizing psychopathology.

Her research focuses on the impulsigenic personality traits (i.e., those traits that manifest in impulsive behavior); personality assessment; and the trait-behavior link. She teaches diverse classes, including Experimental Psychology and Quantitative Research Methods. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Iowa.