Do People With A Predisposition Toward Alcoholism Exhibit Certain Personality Traits?

Factual Questions
1

Is it true that people who are biologically predisposed toward developing alcoholism at some point in their lives tend to have a particular set of personality traits? If so, what might these personality traits be??

Thanks.

2

Addictive personality for one.

3

Wow, two questions about my long-ago days in grad school in the same week!
There has been a lot of research into this question. There are basically two ways to go about trying to answer it.
One is to do studies where active alcoholics are compared to social drinkers or teetotallers. The problem with this approach is that there’s some doubt about what you’ve learned - are the behavior patterns caused by drinking? Or are they personality traits that tend to be more common in alcoholics, even without the booze?
This is why family history, IIRC, is most often used to try to answer your question. The study will compare people with a family history of alcoholism (usually defined as more than one parent, grandparent, or sibling with the condition), with people who do not have a familiy history of alcoholism. One study used this method to find out if family history of alcoholism tends to predict a low tolerance for frustration. I believe it found that the two groups (family history + and family history -) were indeed found to be different, suggesting that irritability and impatience are common in alcoholics (or at the very least people who are FH+). Does it mean that a large percentage of alcoholics drink because they’ve built up a bigger head of frustration than most people, and have no other way to blow it off? It’s a hint, but another study would be needed to test this hypothesis.
Other studies have looked at links between family history and compulsiveness, under the reasonable theory that alcoholism is a form of compulsion.
To find out more, Google this:
alcoholism AND “family history” AND MMPI
(The MMPI is - or was - the most widely used instrument to find out about personality traits. IIRC, the MMPI is not bullshit. It has been shown to be very reliable and surprisingly predictive of all kinds of stuff).