The existence of addictive personality, explored from addiction to benign substances and activities among college students

Abstract

The aim of current research was trying to explore whether there was addictive personality through the examination of the existence of addictive tendency through six benign addictive areas - alcohol, cigarette, coffee, internet surfing, phone calling/texting and exercising, as well as to investigate whether there were particular personality traits underlying such behaviours, in which five personality traits -neuroticism, psychoticism, extraversion, sensation seeking, and self-esteem were measured in the research. In addition, four demographical factors -gender, age, cultural origin, and religiosity, had been measured as well to explore whether there was influential effect on the results. The current research was cross-sectional, quantitative, correlational and between-subjects design. In total, there were 102 participants selected from the Dublin Business School by convenience sampling technique. All the subjects completed the self-report questionnaire measuring the demographical information, addiction levels to each of these six addictive areas, and five personality traits. The results showed that there was a slightly general tendency to become addicted across these six addictive domains. Of 15 correlations, 10 were positive. Three of these were above .20, and significant at <.05. Gender, culture, and religiosity had certain effects on particular addictive areas, while age had no effect on any of those addictive areas. And also, in terms of addictive personality, extraversion, psychoticism, and self-esteem had specific effects on certain addictive areas, but neuroticism and sensation-seeking had no effect on any of these addictive areas. Criticism and further suggestion were provided in order to have broader understanding of addiction.