Venturesomeness, impulsiveness, and Eysenck's personality dimensions: a study among Australian adolescents

In Eysenckian personality theory, the dimension extraversion has traditionally consisted of two elements, sociability and impulsiveness. More recently, however, impulsiveness has become associated with the dimension psychoticism (Rocklin & Revelle, 1981), although subfactors of impulsiveness have been shown to be differentially related to extraversion and psychoticism (S. Eysenck & H. Eysenck, 1977). This study investigates the structures of impulsiveness and venturesomeness and their association with extraversion, emotional stability-neuroticism, and psychoticism among 170 Australian adolescents. Both impulsiveness and venturesomeness were found to be multidimensional, although the subfactors differed slightly from those suggested by the Eysencks. No support was found for the view that impulsiveness narrowly defined is pathological, although the impulsiveness and venturesomeness subfactors were found to be differentially related to extraversion, emotional stability-neuroticism, and psychoticism. The theoretical implications of these findings are briefly discussed.