The long term goal of this program of research is to test a model for the development of behavioral addiction incorporating trait based risk factors with psychosocial learning risk factors. The model is that trait urgency, the tendency to act rashly to relieve distress, is a broad, distal risk factor for maladaptive addictive behaviors such as problem drinking and binge eating, while specific, psychosocial learning based risk factors such as expectancies influence the specific behaviors that one chooses to engage in. Cross-sectional, correlational support for this model has been found in a college student sample. The specific goal of this project is to replicate the findings supporting this model in a clinical sample of individuals with alcohol use disorders and binge eating disorder. A sample of patients with alcohol use disorders, a sample of patients with binge eating disorder, and a comparison community sample of adults will be given structured interviews for alcohol use disorders and eating disorders, and complete self-report measures assessing urgency, sensation seeking, and other forms of impulsivity, as well as expectancies for alcohol use and eating. We predict that, as in the college student sample, urgency will correlate with both alcohol use and binge eating, and that urgency will positively correlate with positive expectancies for alcohol use and positive expectancies for eating. However, we predict that the specific expectancies for alcohol use will correlate with drinking, but not binge eating or eating expectancies. Similarly, specific expectancies for eating will correlate with binge eating, but not with either drinking or drinking expectancies.
| Settles, Regan E; Fischer, Sarah; Cyders, Melissa A et al. (2012) Negative urgency: a personality predictor of externalizing behavior characterized by neuroticism, low conscientiousness, and disagreeableness. J Abnorm Psychol 121:160-72 |
| Fischer, Sarah; Settles, Regan; Collins, Brittany et al. (2012) The role of negative urgency and expectancies in problem drinking and disordered eating: testing a model of comorbidity in pathological and at-risk samples. Psychol Addict Behav 26:112-23 |
| Fischer, Sarah; Smith, Gregory T; Cyders, Melissa A (2008) Another look at impulsivity: a meta-analytic review comparing specific dispositions to rash action in their relationship to bulimic symptoms. Clin Psychol Rev 28:1413-25 |
| Smith, Gregory T; Fischer, Sarah; Cyders, Melissa A et al. (2007) On the validity and utility of discriminating among impulsivity-like traits. Assessment 14:155-70 |
