Your Personality Predicts How You Drink, and How Hard You Pay For It

“Shall I get another round for the table?” It’s the question you’ve been waiting for as you drain the last of your margarita. Sure, you only planned on having one quick catch-up drink with your friends, but now you’re feeling relaxed and chatty. Without hesitating, you hear yourself asking for an espresso martini. Why not?

Yes, you know – we all know – that drinking alcohol is bad for our health, and recent Gallup polls indicate that drinking rates have hit historic lows as a result. But over half of U.S. adults still regularly consume alcohol, some excessively per CDC definitions. Which got me wondering, is there a connection between personality type and how we reach for the bottle, and are some of us built to handle the aftermath better than others? 

Your Big Five Traits Could Predict How Much You Drink

What role does personality play in how much you drink? Researchers set out to answer that question in a study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Pooling data from 73,000 adults across eight cohort studies in the USA, UK, Germany and Australia, they found that heavy drinking was more common among people with high Extraversion and low Conscientiousness.

The study also looked at who was more likely to abstain, i.e. not drink at all, or to cut back and drink less than others. People with high Agreeableness and low Openness tended to fall into this category. There's a lot going on in those findings, so let's take a moment to unpack. 

Why Do Extraverts Drink More?

The study categorized alcohol consumption into three tiers: abstinence, moderate consumption and heavy consumption, based on standard quantity and frequency measures. It didn’t measure   the social context of the drinking. So the study can't tell us whether someone was getting through those heavy-consumption units at parties, alone at home, or anywhere in between.

But if we presume that at least some of those units are being drunk in company, there could be one obvious explanation for Extraverts going a little harder than most: where there’s a social setting, there’s usually a bar. And it’s well-established that Extraverts spend more time hanging out with friends compared to Introverts, and on high-leisure nights like Friday, have a much higher statistical probability of going out to parties or public venues. 

“Many social gatherings include some form of alcohol, so Extraverted individuals will often find opportunities to use their desire for social interaction as an opportunity to engage with other people while consuming alcohol,” says Dr. Allen Masry, MD, FASM, DAAP, medical director of All in Solutions, a network of treatment centers across the USA. So it could simply be that Extraverts drink more out of opportunity than anything else.

Why Do Low Conscientiousness People Drink More?

In the Big Five personality system, Conscientiousness is associated with orderliness, self-discipline, cautiousness and responsibility. These qualities make a person less likely to override a two-drink limit they've set for themselves, or to reach for a third round just because everyone else is. They also recognize when they’ve drunk too much and call it a day. So, when someone scores low on this trait, it’s only logical that those checks fall away.

“Low Conscientiousness has been related to higher levels of impulsiveness and goal-directed behavior,” Masry says. “When highly impulsive individuals begin to consume alcohol, it tends to be difficult for them to stop. They may have a hard time establishing limits."

Dr. Lori Bohn, a Board-Certified Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and Medical Director at Voyager Recovery Center, agrees. She explains that low Conscientiousness “tends to decrease an individual's motivation to think ahead, track how many drinks they've had, or adhere to their own limits.” She warns that people in this category are at “higher risk for impulsive and spontaneous drinking behavior."

The study referred to above links low Conscientiousness directly to higher rates of heavy drinking.  Someone who acts on sudden urges without pausing to think first, and who focuses on the immediate fun instead of tomorrow's duties, is exactly the profile most likely to say ‘yes’ to one more round without stopping to weigh the cost. 

Who's Sipping Water While Everyone Else Orders Shots? 

Openness describes how curious, imaginative and open to new experiences someone is. People who score low on this trait tend to prefer routine and familiarity over novelty, which extends to how they approach drinking. Low-O types may perceive trying a new cocktail or joining a round of shots as an unnecessary risk with an unfamiliar outcome, and these types have lower sensation-seeking generally, so the pull toward catching a buzz holds less appeal in the first place.

A similar restraint shows up in highly Agreeable people, though for different reasons. As Masry explains, "Agreeable people tend to be warm, friendly, and want to contribute to social harmony. Based on this, they are more likely to 'keep the peace' by avoiding risky behaviors like excessive drinking."

But while Agreeable types may be less likely to reach for a glass, in an ironic twist, they could face worse consequences than the rest of us when they do.

The Personality Type With the Worst Hangovers

Let’s say you overindulge in alcohol. The morning-after reckoning is just the price you pay for having had one too many, right? So how come some people wake up bright-eyed and unscathed while others are flattened for the rest of the day, even after drinking the exact same amount? 

While there’s not a huge amount of research in this area, a small-scale study casts some light on this mystery.

Agreeable People Have Worse Hangovers

In 2023, researchers at the University of Bristol set out to look at the relationship between personalities and hangovers. While the study had a small sample size of just over 100 participants, initial findings showed that the more Agreeable a person is, the more likely they are to suffer the next day. The paper doesn't dig into a causal mechanism, so we don't know why this happens, though it's a curious contradiction given Agreeable people's more moderate drinking habits. And interestingly, the researchers also found that despite feeling it more, Agreeable people pushed through their hangover better and said it had less impact on daily activities. 

Bohn says this may be less about the severity of the hangovers and more about trait Agreeabless always trying to cooperate and keep the peace. “Agreeable people are more inclined to experience feelings of remorse due to possibly disturbing others with their presence and/or their lack of functionality the following day. Therefore, this perceived negative aspect makes the hangover feel heavier regardless of the physiological response.” 

In plain terms: Agreeable people may feel worse partly because they're worried about the impact their hangover is having on everyone around them, not just their body's reaction to the alcohol itself. 

Extraverts May Struggle to Function the Next Day

Extraverts, on the other hand, take a bigger hit to their day-to-day functioning after a night of drinking. The study doesn’t say why, but Masry suggests this could have more to do with their sleep than how much alcohol they consumed.

“It is common for individuals who experience social pressure through extrinsically motivated factors to continue drinking into the late hours of the night,” he says. “Once this individual falls asleep, they will likely spend less time sleeping than someone whose last few drinks were consumed earlier in the evening. Alcohol increases drowsiness and causes sleep disruptions, making this potential loss of sleep more detrimental.”

According to that theory, Extraverts often stay out later, drink later, and end up shortchanging themselves on sleep, and that combination hits harder than the alcohol alone. So next time you're the last one standing at the bar, it might be worth asking whether it's really the drinks you'll be paying for tomorrow, or the sleep you didn't get. 

What This Means For Your Next Drink

While the results of the hangover study are certainly interesting, Masry says the small sample size "does not provide sufficient data for researchers to definitively conclude whether specific personality traits cause certain types of behaviors." Bohn agrees, adding that she "would love to see studies completed using thousands of participants which were administered across various countries and among various age groups." Until that research exists, it's worth treating these findings as an interesting starting point rather than a fixed rulebook.

No matter what the research says, and whether you're highly Agreeable and nursing a rough morning, or highly Extraverted and always the last to leave the bar, you don't have to accept a predetermined relationship with alcohol. As Bohn puts it: "Personality provides insight into what aspects of our behaviors and vulnerabilities need improvement… it does not prevent us from making healthier choices.”

There are plenty of ways to build a better relationship with drinking. Setting limits before you head out, alternating between water and alcoholic drinks, and eating something before you start all help. So does remembering that you can always say no to just one more round, even if that's harder for some personalities to pull off than others. Your type might explain the habit. It doesn't have to define it.