Personality traits associated with decision-making deficits

This aim of the study was to identify personality correlates of poor decision-making-the latter defined by performance on two versions of the Iowa Gambling Task. We used a large sample of healthy adults (n = 245) and multiple performance measures in our investigation. Higher scores on measures of impulsivity, sensitivity to reward and to punishment, and addictive personality were all significantly associated with some measures of performance deficits on the A′B′C′D′ task. These results suggest that different and independent psychological processes may lead to the same qualitative decision-making deficits across individuals. Contrary to expectation, however, none of the personality traits were related to the E′F′G′H′ performance measures; nor did the two tasks have an interactive relationship with the personality factors. One reason for these null findings might relate to our lack of counterbalancing the order of task presentation.