Resisting everything except temptation: Evidence and an explanation for domain-specific impulsivity. European Journal of Personality. Advance online publication

Impulsivity is often assumed to be stable across domains despite the common observation that individuals act impulsively in some situations but not in others. We propose a model of self-control that predicts both domain-general and domain-specific variance in behavior. Using a novel self-report measure of the frequency of engaging in a range of impulsive behaviors, we found impulsive behaviors clustered into six domains: work, interpersonal relationships, drug, food, exercise, and finances. In support of domain-general mechanisms in impulsivity, domain-specific subscales were moderately intercorrelated (average rs from.26 to.30) across three separate samples of adults. In support of domain-specificity, the variance of impulsive behavior across domains within individuals was six times greater than the variance in average impulsive behavior between individuals. The variance in behavior within individuals across domains was explained more by the degree to which they were tempted by the activity than by their assessment of the harm associated with it. In a fourth study, we recruited targeted subsamples to confirm that individuals highly tempted in one domain are not likely to be more tempted in others