On the Psychobiology of Personality

Essays in Honor of Marvin Zuckerman

Robert M Stelmack

• Publisher: Pergamon
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780080537986
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Zuckerman received his Ph.D. in psychology from New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science in 1954 with a specialization in clinical psychology. After graduation, he worked for three years as a clinical psychologist in state hospitals in Norwich, Connecticut and Indianapolis, Indiana. While in the latter position the Institute for Psychiatric Research was opened in the same medical center where he was working as a clinical psychologist. He obtained a position there with a joint appointment in the department of psychiatry. This was his first interdisciplinary experience with other researchers in psychiatry, biochemistry, psychopharmacology, and psychology.

His first research areas were personality assessment and the relation between parental attitudes and psychopathology. During this time, he developed the first real trait-state test for affects, starting with the Affect Adjective Check List for anxiety and then broadening it to a three-factor trait-state test including anxiety, depression, and hostility (Multiple Affect Adjective Check List). Later, positive affect scales were added.

Toward the end of his years at the institute, the first reports of the effects of sensory deprivation appeared and he began his own experiments in this field. These experiments, supported by grants from NIMH, occupied him for the next 10 years during his time at Brooklyn College, Adelphi University, and the research labs at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. This last job was his second interdisciplinary experience working in close collaboration with Harold Persky who added measures of hormonal changes to the sensory deprivation experiments. He collaborated with Persky in studies of hormonal changes during experimentally (hypnotically) induced emotions.

During his time at Einstein, he established relationships with other principal investigators in the area of sensory deprivation and they collaborated on the book Sensory Deprivation: 15 years of research edited by John Zubek (1969). His chapter on theoretical constructs contained the idea of using individual differences in optimal levels of stimulation and arousal as an explanation for some of the variations in response to sensory deprivation. The first sensation seeking scale (SSS) had been developed in the early 1960's based on these constructs.

At the time of his move to the University of Delaware in 1969, he turned his full attention to the SSS as the operational measure of the optimal level constructs. This was the time of the drug and sexual revolutions on and off campuses and research relating experience in these areas to the basic trait paid off and is continuing to this day in many laboratories. Two books have been written on this topic: Sensation Seeking: Beyond the Optimal Level of Arousal, 1979; Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking, 1994. Research on sensation seeking in America and countries around the world continues at an unabated level of journal articles, several hundred appearing since the 1994 book on the subject.

Part I

Historical Perspectives on the Biological Bases of Personality

Chapter 1

Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking: A Historical Perspective on Current Challenges

E. Barratt; L.F. Orozco-Cabal; F.G. Moeller

1 Introduction

Nowhere is the challenge of defining and measuring personality constructs more obvious than in a historical review of impulsivity and sensation seeking. Debates about these traits have revolved around their level of complexity, their relationship with other traits, and their relationship with each other. Examples of specific questions posed in these debates include: (1) Do impulsivity and sensation seeking have subdimensions? If so, what are they? (2) Do impulsivity and sensation seeking combine to define a superfactor? (3) How do these two traits relate to other higher-order personality constructs that have been identified in more encompassing personality models? (4) How do different measures of these traits as defined within different disciplines or subdisciplines relate to each other? For example, how do phenomenal self measures, e.g. self-report questionnaires, relate to behavioral measures involving delay of reward? What relative value do these discipline specific measures have as predictors of impulse-control disorders? Although both impulsivity and sensation seeking have a relatively long history within the general context of personality research, these debates have not been resolved. These questions per se will not be broached in depth in this chapter but, rather, general observations that currently preclude their being answered will be reviewed briefly and selected general suggestions for their resolution will be outlined.

The major goal of this chapter is to review the current pragmatic status of these two personality constructs at the cusp between past and future research. From the viewpoint of better understanding persons and achieving a more promising future for societies and individuals, is the current status of these two personality traits all there is? The answer is no if different approaches can be used to inter-relate data from the different disciplines that study persons from molecular biology to social interactions. An alternative strategy for defining and measuring personality dimensions in general and impulsivity and sensation seeking in particular must be found. The strategies proposed for new approaches are not meant to be the only approaches nor ones that will endure beyond a limited time frame. Most scientific methodologies are usually modified over time. The more basic the problems addressed by the methodologies, the longer will be their influence.

This chapter will not chronicle in depth the history of impulsivity and sensation seeking research and their role in clinical and social decision-making. The history of the study of both traits has been well documented in other sources. Reviews of both theoretical and applied impulsivity research include: (1) McCown and De Simone (1993); this source not only provides a historical overview but also defines important terms (e.g. impulsivity and impulses); this review is part of a book (McCown & De Simone 1993) whose chapters cover a wide range of theoretical and clinical approaches to understanding impulsivity; (2) Webster and Jackson (1997); the first five chapters review different approaches to impulsivity ranging across clinical, social psychology, sociological, legal, “cybernautical” perspectives; this book is more oriented toward social applications, especially forensic considerations; and (3) Evenden (1999); this article in an issue of Psychopharmacology is an overview of varieties of impulsivity. It is an excellent overview contrasting the theory and development of self-report measures of impulsivity with behavioral measures that are primarily based on learning theory principles. The article reviews a wide range of impulsivity research especially with lower animals.

Reviews of sensation seeking research include: (1) Zuckerman (1979); this book contains a historical review by the author whose pioneering research on sensation seeking has made his name almost synonymous with the study of this trait; and (2) Zuckerman (1991); chapter one provides an overview from a broader perspective of how sensation seeking and other personality traits are related to more encompassing personality theories; the difficulties in classifying personality traits are made obvious in this chapter.

The current chapter is divided into four parts: (1) Why are impulsivity and sensation seeking important personality traits? (2) Why is there confusion about defining and measuring impulsivity and sensation seeking? (3) What challenges and potential solutions confront researchers in defining these traits? (4) The future: selective alternative approaches.

2 Why are Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking Important Personality Traits?

Impulsivity and sensation seeking are implicated in a broad range of psychopathologies and social problems that are part of a wide spectrum of impulse control disorders. For example, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., Text Revision) (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association 2000), impulsivity is implicated in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, antisocial personality disorders, borderline personality disorder, substance abuse, aggression (intermittent explosive disorder), mood disorders, (especially mania), and eating disorders (especially binge eating). If this list is translated into the context of social problems that currently plague human kind, the basis for the importance of impulsivity is obvious. Sensation seeking has also been related to a wide range of psychopathologies and social problems including for example delinquency (Greene et al. 2000), aggression (Joireman et al. 2003), and antisocial and borderline personality disorders(DSMIV-TR). Zuckerman and Neeb (1979) in an early study relating the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) to psychopathology found that the SSS was related primarily to a spectrum of sociopathic disorders.

Lessons learned in reviewing the relation of impulsivity and sensation seeking to clinical disorders include: (1) both traits are multidimensional; (2) different sub-dimensions of both traits relate to different impulse control disorders; (3) the two traits often interact with each other and with other personality traits in their involvement with selected psychopathologies.

Why do impulsivity and sensation seeking relate to a wide range of impulse-control disorders and social adjustment problems? It is proposed that not only are these traits multidimensional but they can also be characterized by a wide range of biological, behavioral, cognitive, and social/environment constructs and measurements. The substratum of the impulsivity and sensation seeking measures within these four categories of constructs have common variance with the substrates of the psychopathological and social disorders listed above and provide the bases for the relationships of the two personality traits to these disorders.

3 Why is There Confusion About Defining and Measuring Impulsivity and Sensation Seeking?

After reviewing “a number of different approaches to analyzing impulsivity ranging from the study of human personality traits, through psychiatric symptoms to animal behavior,” Evenden (1999: 358) noted that “even though almost all authors are in agreement that impulsivity is multifactorial, there is little agreement as to what these factors are even within a single field of research such as human personality traits.” It is proposed here that the main reason for lack of agreement on measuring impulsivity and sensation seeking lies within two contexts: First, the lack of general agreement on an encompassing personality model which can allow for the synthesis of data ranging from molecular biology measures to measures of social/pathological disorders; most models establish a structure of personality based on self-report measures or interview data even though they may have originally been conceived as personality measurements of biologically based constructs. For example, Zuckerman (1979) developed the SSS based on biological and behavioral research data related to an optimal level of arousal. Cloninger (1986) and his colleagues (Cloninger et al. 1993, 1994) started with biological data when developing the Temper...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Part I: Historical Perspectives on the Biological Bases of Personality
• Part II: On the Identification and Structure of Personality Factors
• Part III: Personality and Social Behavior
• Part IV: Biological Bases of Personality
• Part V: Epilogue
• Bibliography of Marvin Zuckerman
• Author Index
• Subject Index