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Open Access JMUBR: The Journal of Midwest Undergraduate Behavioral Research
Underlying Reasons Behind Alcohol Consumption:
A Personality Survey of Social Media Users
Blake Panasiewicz (bspanasi@mtu.edu)
Cassaundra Santerre (cdsanter@mtu.edu)
Chase LaFave (cclafave@mtu.edu)
Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences
Houghton, MI 49931 USA
ABSTRACT
The objective of these experiments was to determine whether there was a relationship between
alcohol risk, personality type, intelligence and demographic variables. We hypothesized that there
would be a correlation between different personality types and alcohol risk, as well as a relationship
between demographic variables and alcohol risk. Participants were recruited from social media web
communities, including ones devoted to both drinking and alcoholism support. Results showed a
strong correlations between Openness to Experience and alcohol risk; there was also a relationship
between Conscientiousness and Alcohol risk. However there was no correlation between any
demographic variables and alcohol risk. This current research can hopefully be built upon in order to
offer a way to prevent high risk alcohol use.
Keywords: personality, alcohol, conscientiousness, openness to experience
INTRODUCTION
he present study tested the hy- pothesis that individuals person- ality factors would contribute to
the frequency of alcohol usage, as well as
dependency and problems related to al- cohol consumption. Previous researchers
have investigated how personality type is
related to alcohol use. For example,
(Woicik, 2005) showed how certain per- sonality types were predictive of alcohol
use in young adults. In another study
(Westmaas, et. al., 2007) found that anti- social intoxication related with lower
scores on Conscientiousness and Agree- ableness scales. Our goal in the present
study was to assess the relationship be- T
tween personality factors and alcohol
usage within broad online communities
devoted to alcohol use and recovery.
EXPERIMENT 1
METHOD
Participants:
A total of 30 women and 60 men par- ticipated in this study. The average age
of the participants was 26.33 years. Par- ticipants were tested using an anony- mous online survey. This survey was
posted on social media and public discus- sion forums (both interest groups related
to alcohol use and general interest fo- rums and mailing lists). Any individual
that visited these forums had the oppor- http://sites.google.com/a/mtu.edu/jmubr/ 2014 | Volume 2 | e201402
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Open Access JMUBR: The Journal of Midwest Undergraduate Behavioral Research
tunity to voluntarily participate. The
participants were recruited with a mes- sage similar to:
“Hello, my research team and I are con- ducting a study about alcohol consump- tion. The objective of this research
project is to determine if there is a higher
risk of alcohol consumption with certain
personality types and environmental fac- tors. The survey will ask you some gen- eral questions about your personality,
and questions about your past and cur- rent alcohol use. This survey is anony- mous. If you are willing to take part,
please go to the following url.
Participants were not compensated for
taking part in the survey. No deception
was used in this study and survey par- ticipation was completely anonymous
and no IP addresses were collected. Con- sumption, personality and demographic
questionnaires for comparison purposes
were collected within this survey. This
survey contained 84 questions with the
following purposes outlined within the
procedure.
Procedure:
First, a set of 50 questions that as- sesses the participant’s personality type
were tested. These questions have been
developed and normed previously by
Goldberg (1999), and attempt to assess
five common personality traits (the Big
Five).
Next, a set of 10 questions assessing
the frequency, dependency and problems
of the participant’s alcohol consumption
were assesssed. These questions are
taken from the Alcohol Use Disorders
Identification Test (AUDIT) (Allen, Lit- ten, Fertig, Babor, 1997) which is a sim- ple tenquestion test developed by the
World Health Organization to determine
if a person's alcohol consumption may be
harmful. The test was designed to be
used internationally, and was validated
in a study using patients from six coun- tries. Questions 1–3 deal with alcohol
consumption, 4–6 relate to alcohol depen- dence and 7–10 consider alcoholrelated
problems. A score of 8 or more in men (7
in women) indicates a strong likelihood of
hazardous or harmful alcohol consump- tion. A score of 20 or more is suggestive
of alcohol dependence (although some au- thors quote scores of more than 13 in
women and 15 in men as indicating likely
dependence).
Finally, a set of 24 demographic and
historiographical questions, including
age, ethnicity, country of origin, etc. were
administrated.
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The Big Five Personality scores, Alco- hol Use Disorders Identification Test
(AUDIT) scores and demographics were
analyzed and revealed that two person- ality dimensions were related to scores
on the AUDIT.
First, there was a significant positive
correlation between Openness to Experi- ence and the AUDIT [r=0.235, n=89,
p=0.027]. Figure 1 summarizes this rela- tionship. Second, there was a significant
negative correlation between Conscien- tiousness and the AUDIT [r=0.251,
n=89, p=0.018], summarized in Figure 2
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Open Access JMUBR: The Journal of Midwest Undergraduate Behavioral Research
Figure 1. The relationship between open- ness to experience and alcohol risk.
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Alcohol vs. Openness to Experience
Figure 2. The relationship between con- scientiousness and alcohol risk.
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Alcohol vs Conscientiousness
EXPERIMENT 2
A second study was performed to deter- mine whether a numeracy test known to
be a correlate of general intelligence was
also related to either alcohol usage or the
personality factors indicated in Experi- ment 1.
Participants:
A total of 58 women and 99 men
participated in this study. The average
age of the participants was 27.64 years.
Participants were recruited and tested in
the same manner as the previous study
conducted.
Procedure:
First, a subset of just the 20 questions
from the first experiment that assess
conscientiousness and openness to expe- rience were measured.
Next, the same set of 10 questions as- sessing the frequency, dependency and
problems of the participant’s alcohol con- sumption (AUDIT) were tested. This was
then followed by four demographic ques- tions (i.e. age, and level of education).
Lastly we incorporated the four Berlin
Numeracy Test questions (Cokely et al.,
2012) to assess numerical intelligence.
The Berlin Numeracy Test is a fast and
flexible psychometric instrument, vali- dated for use with educated samples
from diverse countries (e.g., college stu- dents, computerliterate adults, physi- cians). We used the traditional four
question test within our survey to assess
an individual’s intelligence and decision
making skills (Cokely et al., 2012).
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DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
In Experiment 2 we tested the relation- ship of Openness to Experience, Consci- entious, and the Berlin Numeracy Test,
to an Alcohol Use Disorder Identification
Test (AUDIT). Results again showed sig- nificant correlations between alcohol risk
and the personality traits Conscientious
and Openness to Experience, but no rela- tionship to numeracy ability.
In this experiment there were 8 vari- ables with 28 possible comparisons be- tween variables. However the only two
variables that correlated to alcohol risk
was Openness to Experience [r=0.296,
n=157, p<0.001] as shown in Figure 3.
The next significant correlation in rela- tionship to alcohol risk was Conscien- tiousness [r= 0.385, n=157, p<0.001] as
shown in Figure 4. One important factor
to notice is that level of education did not
correlate with alcohol risk [r=0.029,
n=157, p=0.715]. In addition, the Berlin
Numeracy Test also did not correlate
with alcohol risk [r=0.032, n=157,
p=0.687].
Figure 3. The relationship between alcohol
risk and conscientiousness in Experiment 2.
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Alcohol vs Conscientiousness
Figure 4. The relationship to Alcohol risk and
openness to experience in Experiment 2
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Alcohol vs. Openness to Experience
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