How personality shapes the risk of problematic alcohol use with Igor MarchettiHow personality shapes the risk of problematic alcohol use with Igor Marchetti
Addiction Audio
Dr Igor Marchetti speaks with host Sunveh Lim about how personality traits, especially conscientiousness, relate to problematic alcohol use. The conversation focuses on findings from a long-term Flemish study and what these might mean for prevention, clinical work and future addiction research.
19:22•15 May 2026
Personality, Conscientiousness and Alcohol Risk with Igor Marchetti
Episode Overview
- Personality is closely linked to emotion regulation, attention, and impulse control, making it highly relevant to understanding problematic alcohol use.
- Among several traits tested, only low conscientiousness emerged as a necessary condition for developing problematic alcohol use in this study.
- Conscientiousness involves self-regulation, delaying gratification, and following long-term goals, and is strongly related to impulse control.
- Personality traits tend to be stable over the lifespan but can be modified to some extent when directly targeted.
- Identifying necessary conditions like low conscientiousness could guide more precise prevention and clinical strategies, though replication and cultural comparisons are needed first.
“Basically, only those with low levels of conscientiousness could potentially have problematic alcohol use later in their life.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? Addiction Audio takes a different angle here, zooming in on personality rather than drinking behaviour itself. Host Sunveh Lim chats with Dr Igor Marchetti, an Associate Professor in clinical psychology at the University of Florence, about his paper on which personality traits are "necessary conditions" for problematic alcohol use, based on a 23-year longitudinal study from Belgium.
Instead of listing every trait linked to heavy drinking, Marchetti’s focus is on what must be present before problematic alcohol use can even develop. Using a method called necessary condition analysis, he explains how his team tested several traits but found that only low conscientiousness met this bar.
As he puts it, "Basically, only those with low levels of conscientiousness could potentially have problematic alcohol use later in their life." You’ll hear clear explanations of what conscientiousness actually means in everyday terms – things like impulse control, delaying gratification, sticking to long-term goals – and how this differs from related ideas such as impulsivity.
Marchetti is careful to stress that low conscientiousness doesn’t doom anyone to alcohol problems; it simply indicates potential risk, and those who don’t meet this condition in their data did not go on to develop problematic alcohol use. The conversation also touches on whether personality can change, with Marchetti noting that traits are “relatively stable” but can shift when directly targeted.
He sketches possible implications for prevention and clinical work, while repeatedly emphasising the need for replication and cultural comparisons before anyone runs ahead with policy changes. This episode suits researchers, clinicians, students and anyone curious about why some people develop alcohol problems while others don’t, even in cultures where drinking is common.
If you’ve ever wondered whether personality testing could help identify risk earlier, this might give you plenty to think about – could understanding conscientiousness be part of future alcohol prevention strategies?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.
Related Episodes
Similar episodes from other shows in the catalogue.