Chunk #29 — Evidence for the Existence of Positive and Negative Urgency — Urgency in Relation to Comprehensive Models of Personality — Factor analyses relating positive and negative urgency to comprehensive personality structure
Second, positive and negative urgency appear quite similar to alpha: high scores on the urgency traits relate to scores on alpha that reflect emotional instability, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness. Below, we present a theoretical account of the urgency traits. That account, together with these empirical findings, suggests one possible relationship between the urgency traits and alpha. If alpha marks something of a broad failure of the socialization process, such that individuals are emotionally unstable and comparatively unable to inhibit acting on their impulses, perhaps positive and negative urgency describe a personality process that can contribute to that failure of the socialization process.
