Addictive Personality

Addictive personality refers to a proposed set of personality traits, including impulsivity, sensation-seeking and emotional dysregulation, that may increase an individual's risk of developing addictive behaviors extending beyond substance use to gambling, internet use, compulsive eating and shopping; it is not formally recognized in diagnostic manuals such as the DSM-5. The validity of the construct remains controversial, with some researchers arguing the associated traits may emerge as a consequence of addiction rather than predict it and that the term itself lacks a consistent definition, though studies have found links between certain personality profiles and specific types of addiction, and research estimates that forty to seventy percent of individual variation in addiction risk is heritable.