Personality characteristics of sons of alcohol abusers

Studies of personality characteristics of sons of alcohol abusers who are at high risk for alcoholism have yielded equivocal results. Although differences in personality attributes have been identified in clinical samples, similar differences have not been found in nonclinical samples, raising the possibility that these dispositional differences do not characterize the majority of offspring of alcoholics. This study investigated personality characteristics of sons of alcohol abusers (n = 199) and controls (n = 601) in a nonclinical sample of college-aged men. Analyses revealed that scores of sons of alcohol abusers differed significantly from controls on all 10 Clinical scales and 7 of 13 Wiggins Content scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Replicating earlier studies with clinically identified male offspring of alcoholics, these results show that parental alcohol abuse is related to reliable but relatively small elevations of MMPI personality profiles in well-functioning sons of alcohol abusers.