Impulsivity
The tendency to act quickly on urges without forethought.
What it means
Impulsivity is the disposition to act rapidly and without adequate forethought, planning, or regard for consequences. It is multidimensional rather than unitary: influential models distinguish facets such as urgency (acting rashly under strong emotion), lack of premeditation, lack of perseverance, and sensation seeking. Impulsivity is associated with steep delay discounting, poor response inhibition, and dysregulation in prefrontal control systems relative to subcortical reward and emotion systems. It is a transdiagnostic risk factor implicated in addiction, ADHD, gambling, overeating, and risky decision-making. It matters because it links personality, self-control failure, and the neuroscience of choice, and because its different facets respond to different interventions.
Examples
An impulsive shopper grabs an expensive gadget at the register on a whim, then regrets the purchase an hour later.
Furious straight after a meeting, a manager sends the email he would never have sent an hour later. The feeling drove the send button, not any considered view of the situation.
Offered £50 today or £75 next month, the impulsive chooser takes the £50 — waiting drains more value from the later reward for him than it does for most people.
First described in Multifaceted construct; UPPS model, Whiteside & Lynam (2001).