Impulsivity is a stable, measurable, and predictive psychological trait

作者：Yuqi Huang, Shenghua Luan, Baizhou Wu, Yugang Li, Junhui Wu, Wenfeng Chen, R. Hertwig · 发表于：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1073/pnas.2321758121 · 被引用次数：41 · 研究领域：Medicine

Significance Impulsivity is a personality trait associated with many behaviors in clinical and nonclinical contexts. Serious doubts, however, have been raised on impulsivity as a valid psychological construct, let alone a personality trait. In this large-scale study (N = 1,676), each participant completed 48 measures of impulsivity, and we extracted one general factor of impulsivity I, akin to the general intelligence factor g, and six specific factors from these measures. Besides being temporally stable, factor I could predict self-reported impulsivity-related behaviors (e.g., impulsive buying and social media usage) better than existing measures and be measured with a psychometrically well-performing scale. These findings show that individuals do differ in trait impulsivity, and such differences are stable, measurable, and predictive of real-world behaviors.