Childhood socioeconomic deprivation, but not current mood, is associated with behavioural disinhibition in adults

Abstract

There is evidence to suggest that impulsivity is predicted by socioeconomic background, with people from more deprived backgrounds tending to be more impulsive, and by current mood, with poorer mood associated with greater impulsivity. However, impulsivity is not a unitary construct, and previous research in this area has focused on measures of ‘waiting’ impulsivity rather than behavioural disinhibition. We administered a standard measure of behavioural disinhibition, the stop-signal task, to 58 adult participants from a community sample. We had measured socioeconomic background using participant postcode at age 16, and assigned participants to receive either a neutral or a negative mood induction. We found no effects of mood on behavioural disinhibition, but we found a significant effect of socioeconomic background. Participants who had lived in more deprived postcodes at age 16 showed longer stop-signal reaction times, and hence greater behavioural disinhibition. The pattern was independent of participant age and overall reaction time. Though caution is required inferring causality from correlation, it is possible that that experiencing socioeconomic deprivation in childhood and adolescence may lead to greater behavioural disinhibition in adulthood.

Does Hunger Contribute to Socioeconomic Gradients in Behavior?

“…Whilst there is evidence of stable, personality-like individual differences in proneness to impulsivity (Odum, 2011), contemporary research has established that impulsivity can also vary markedly in relation to context or the subject’s state (Kidd et al, 2013; Lempert and Phelps, 2016). Lower-SEP individuals have been found to be less patient in terms of waiting (Green et al, 1996; Adams and White, 2009) and more disinhibited in terms of stopping (Paál et al, 2015). The chief motivation for studying the SEP-impulsivity association in adults has been the hypothesis that greater impulsivity statistically mediates the relationships between SEP on the one hand and health-damaging behaviors on the other (Adams and White, 2009; Ward et al, 2009).…”

Exploring the Health Case for Universal Basic Income: Evidence from GPs Working with Precarious Groups

“…From an evolutionary perspective, we are predisposed to invest less in long-term health if an early death is anticipated. Indeed, as Standing's concern for the 'shadow of the future' suggests, such conditions promote impulsive, short-term action (Páal, Carpenter, & Nettle, 2015). This was borne out by a recent empirical study of health behaviours among older adults in England, which showed that '[l]ower anticipated survival was associated with decreased probability of adopting healthier patterns of physical activity, and increased probability of becoming a smoker at follow up' (Adams, Stamp, Nettle, Milne, & Jagger, 2015, p. 1).…”

Psychological Consequences of Inequality for Food Intake

“…Experiencing harshness in developmental periods conditions behavioral patterns that are adaptive in those contexts. For instance, individuals who have grown up in more deprived neighborhoods show greater behavioral disinhibition (Paál, Carpenter, & Nettle, 2015).…”