Novelty Seeking Personality Trait

Description

Human personality traits that can be reliably measured by rating scales show a considerable heritable component. One such instrument is the tridimensional personality questionnaire (TPQ), which was designed by Cloninger et al. (1993) to measure 4 distinct domains of temperament--novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, and persistence--that are hypothesized to be based on distinct neurochemical and genetic substrates.Risk-taking is a characteristic of behaviors that occur under conditions of uncertainty and involves a tradeoff between beneficial versus detrimental outcomes, perceived or real. Risk-taking may or may not involve conscious evaluation of the probability and magnitude of possible outcomes (Anokhin et al., 2009).See also harm avoidance (OMIM ) and pathologic gambling (OMIM ), which may be related.

Clinical Features

• Abnormality of the nervous system
• Impulsivity