Personality of drug addicts: Eysenckian analysis

Abstract

A sample of 58 male crude-heroin (‘brown sugar’) addicts and a comparison sample of 58 male non-addicts matched in terms of age, education and occupation were administered the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R). The results supported the four hypotheses that the addicts would score high on the P (psychoticism) and N (neuroticism) scales and low on the E (extraversion) and L (lie) scales. The two groups differed on the P, E, and N scales even after treating the L scores as covariate. The stepwise discriminant analysis, however, retained only three predictors—the P, N, and E scales for predicting group-membership. The results demonstrate the cross-cultural applicability of the Eysenckian theory in the area of the personality of drug addicts and also provide evidence for the validity of the EPQ-R scales.