Who Drinks Responsibly? Nice, Thoughtful People, Study Finds

When you picture someone who drinks irresponsibly, you might imagine someone who psychologists would describe as being high on a personality trait called neuroticism: someone who is depressed, angry, volatile, and who does not cope healthily with stress. While this image is not incorrect, recent data indicate that there are two other personality traits that you might not expect are just as strongly associated with having an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

A forthcoming meta-analysis by Lui and colleagues accepted for publication in Alcohol and Alcoholism investigated the relationship between personality and alcohol misuse in 80 samples involving over 63,000 participants. They examined three types of misuse: alcohol consumption, which included whether participants used alcohol, how often they were drunk, and the quantity of alcohol they consumed; risky and hazardous drinking, or the frequency of binge drinking; and negative consequences of alcohol consumption, defined as experiencing personal problems as a result of drinking (e.g., friction in or loss of relationships, getting fired, getting a DUI) or being diagnosed with an alcohol-related substance use disorder.

Neuroticism is associated with more negative consequences of alcohol use.

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Consistent with the idea that people who are higher in neuroticism engage in more maladaptive forms of alcohol use, the study found that people with greater levels of neuroticism, especially people who were impulsive, hostile, depressed, and felt vulnerable, were significantly more likely to experience negative consequences related to their alcohol use. Additionally, the more impulsive participants were, the higher their overall amount of alcohol consumption. People higher in most aspects of neuroticism (anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, impulsivity, and vulnerability) engaged in more risky or hazardous drinking behavior.

These results are pretty intuitive. But less obvious is the finding that conscientiousness and agreeableness were just as strongly related to all three types of alcohol misuse as neuroticism. Conscientious people have a tendency to be responsible and dutiful, deliberate, organized, self-controlled, persistent, and hard-working. The study found that people who carefully weighed decisions, were more orderly, and had a strong sense of duty drank less alcohol overall. People who were higher in all aspects of conscientiousness—competence, order, dutifulness, achievement-striving, self-control, and deliberation—were significantly less likely to experience alcohol-related consequences. All facets of conscientiousness but order were correlated with a lower tendency to binge drink.

There were similar patterns with a trait called agreeableness, which refers to people’s tendency to be trusting, honest, cooperative, altruistic, modest, and sensitive: people with higher levels of agreeableness, especially higher levels of honesty and compliance, were less likely to binge drink or have personal problems due to their alcohol consumption. Additionally, people who scored highly on these characteristics and also had greater modesty drank less overall.

Why are nice, conscientious people less likely to drink irresponsibly? For one, both traits involve a sense of obligation—in agreeableness, we may be more cognizant of our accountability to other people, and with conscientiousness, we both recognize the impact of our actions on others and institutions, and have a strong respect for rules. These traits may result in would-be drinkers thinking more about the consequences of alcohol misuse for themselves or others.

Additionally, due to their heightened sensitivity to the rules, conscientious people may be more likely to follow public health guidelines for what it means to drink responsibly. Several studies have shown that they are more likely to stick to their doctor’s orders than less conscientious people. Further, both conscientious and agreeable people are more likely to respond proactively to public health messages.

Conscientiousness and agreeableness are associated with healthier drinking behavior.

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Although conscientious and agreeable people appear more receptive to health messaging, purveyors of alcohol products do little to educate the public on responsible use. Despite the ubiquity of “drink responsibly” messages from alcohol companies, which seem at first like good-faith attempts to help their consumers avoid negative personal and societal consequences from using their products, an analysis of 1,795 “drink responsibly” advertisements for alcohol products, a study found that none of those ads defined what mindful alcohol consumption actually looks like in practice.

But based on conscientious individuals’ lower alcohol consumption and less risky behavior, combined with a mountain of research linking conscientiousness to better overall physical health and more adaptive health-related behaviors, it is likely that conscientious people may seek out health guidelines related to alcohol use. This is especially likely for conscientious individuals who are also high scorers on another personality trait, openness to experience; one study found that individuals who were both conscientious and open were highly likely to use the internet to seek health information in the absence of any health problems, while people who had higher levels of neuroticism, a variable Lui et al. (2021) found to be positively related to alcohol misuse, more often tended to seek health-related information in the face of a health concern.

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Another explanation may lie in the relationship between conscientiousness and education. Conscientiousness alone predicts engaging in fewer risky and more preventative health behaviors. However, it is associated with higher educational attainment, which is itself associated with taking actions to prevent health problems and avoiding risky behavior.

Taken together, these results indicate once again that conscientiousness and agreeableness are preventative of many of life’s woes. Being disposed to follow the rules and be mindful of how our actions affect others can have long-ranging positive effects, not just for others in our lives, but also for our own. One piece of good news is that on average, conscientiousness and agreeableness both tend to increase with age, while neuroticism tends to decrease. Perhaps as personality develops in ways that lead to more maturity and better functioning, so too might our relationship with alcohol.

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