PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS OF ALCOHOLICS IN A RELIGIOUS TREATMENT PROGRAM.

Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) is a spiritually-based alcoholism treatment program and, as such, its members should differ from other alcoholics (who are either receiving a secular form of treatment or who are untreated), and from non-alcoholics. Forty-nine alcoholics who were members of A.A., 11 alcoholics who were not affiliated with A.A., and 45 nonalcoholics were given a questionnaire consisting of demographic information and several personality scales. Among the personality dimensions measured by these scales were need for affiliation, tolerance of ambiguity (cognitive structure), emotional dependence (succorance), dogmatism and authoritarianism (general and rightist authoritarianism, respectively), locus of control (and the subdimensions comprising it), purpose in life, and religiosity (and the subdimensions comprising it). All of the above personality variables are somehow related to traditional religiosity, which presumably distinguishes A.A. members from nonmembers. There were no significant differences between A.A. and non-A.A. alcoholic groups on the relevant personality dimensions. The A.A. alcoholics were significantly more controlled by impulses, more external on the locus of control dimension, and more religious than the nonalcoholic group. The non-A.A. alcoholics were more emotionally dependent, more external, and more religious than the nonalcoholics. Age, purpose in life, and the religious ideological, intellectual, experiential, and total religiousity dimensions were all significantly correlated in a positive direction with length of affiliation with A.A. The negative correlation between length of A.A. membership and control by impulses approached significance, and A.A. members\u27 age and control by impulses were significantly correlated in a negative direction. The discriminant analysis did the best job of classification when the A.A. members were compared to the nonalcoholics. The implications of the present study and directions for future research were discussed.Dept. of Psychology. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1981 .G642. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, Section: B, page: 1231. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1981