Abstract
Objectives: The consequences of impulsive decisions and actions represent a major source of concern to the health and well-being of individuals and society. It is, therefore, crucial to understand the factors which contribute to impulsive behaviors. Here, we examined how personality traits of behavioral tendencies, interoceptive sensibility as well as transient mood states predict behavioral performance on impulsivity and risk-taking tasks.Method: 574 (121 males; age 18–45) individuals completed self-report personality measures of impulsivity, reward sensitivity, punishment avoidance as well as interoceptive sensibility, undertook a mood assessment and performed a set of cognitive tasks: delay discounting (temporal impulsivity), probability discounting (risk-taking), and reflection impulsivity task. Data were interrogated using principal component analysis, correlations and regression analyses to test mutual relationships between personality traits, interoceptive sensibility, mood state and impulsive behaviors.Results: We observed a clear separation of measures used, both trait and behavioral. Namely, sensation-seeking, reward sensitivity and probability discounting reflected risk-taking. These were separate from measures associated with impulsivity, both trait (negative and positive urgency, premeditation, perseverance) and behavioral (delayed discounting and reflection impulsivity). This separation was further highlighted by their relationship with the current emotional state: positive affect was associated with increased risk-taking tendencies and risky decision-making, while negative emotions were related to heightened impulsivity measures. Interoceptive sensibility was only associated with negative emotions component.Conclusion: Our findings support the proposal that risk-taking and impulsivity represent distinct constructs that are differentially affected by current mood states. This novel insight enhances our understanding of impulsive behaviors.
Highlights
Impulsivity describes a set of behaviors characterized by relative dominance of spontaneity over consideration
Due to the specific character of the study and limited control over circumstances participants were completing the tasks, for the Matching Familiar Figures Task (MFFT), for which response time is important for calculating the dependent variable Impulsivity Score (IS), we excluded participants whose reaction times were outside the range observed in the previous study performed in our lab with a large sample size (N = 160) (Caswell et al, 2015) (46 excluded)
Our results indicate that IPTs predict temporal and reflection impulsivity, while reward sensitivity predicts risk-taking behavior
Summary
Impulsivity describes a set of behaviors characterized by relative dominance of spontaneity over consideration. Spontaneous actions may be adaptive, for example when the matter is of little importance or when there is little time to make a decision (Dickman, 1990), high levels of impulsivity often result in negative consequences. A high degree of impulsivity is related to risky driving (Pearson et al, 2013), violent behavior when under the influence of alcohol (Klimkiewicz et al, 2014), diminished self-control and an increased food intake (Guerrieri et al, 2007a,b; Meule and Kübler, 2014), especially while experiencing negative emotions (Van Blyderveen et al, 2016). Risk-taking is closely related to impulsivity and predicts the initiation of drug and alcohol use and the pursuit of other hazardous behaviors (e.g., unprotected sex) (Donohew et al, 2000; Ríos-Bedoya et al, 2008)
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