¶ … Berglund et al. (2011) are addressing in this research are actually quite old questions regarding the relationship between addiction and personality. They discuss Cloninger's hypothesis of type I and type II alcoholics and differences in personality styles. The researchers are interested in determining if an empirical relationship between excessive alcohol consumption and certain personality traits in males exists. The idea of an addictive personality is actually quite old dating back to psychodynamic concepts of addiction and early researchers tried to find profiles on personality inventories such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) that were distinctive for additive behavior (e.g., Lester, Burkman, Gandica, & Narkunski, 1976). However, despite a few scales that have some predictive power towards potential addiction the idea of an "addictive personality" has never gained much empirical support. Technically the null hypothesis in this study would be that there is no difference between heavy drinkers and controls on scales of the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) which is actually the hypothesis of the researchers as well. The alternative hypothesis would be that there are differences between the two groups on the KSP scales. The first issue here is that the researchers are looking to support the...
Quite frankly the null hypothesis can never be confirmed (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994); however, it can be disconfirmed giving the specific parameters of a study. Thus, the researchers put themselves in awkward position of trying to confirm an unconformable hypothesis. In fact a bigger problem here is that there is no "addictive personality" profile specified by the KSP or any other personality inventory. That fact that there is not an addictive personality profile indicates the researchers are simply fishing for something that is not even there. Thus, this makes the study even more awkward because simple differences on a few scales of a large personality inventory did not indicate a specific personality type. Perhaps using the scales on the MMPI or other inventory that have empirical support to suggest a higher potential for addiction would have been better.
Drug Use and Abuse Drug abuse Caetano (1997, 58) in his studies describe drug abuse as the poor pattern of substance or drug consumption that results to harm on one's health and when you think about the word drugs, what comes to mind? It's in our human nature to instantly think about someone using crack or codeine. So therefore; we just stereo-typed someone we knew nothing about, it's what makes us humans.
This leaves many veterans prone to the condition known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This may be characterized as "an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat." (NIMH, 1) in the particular case of this discussion,
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