History and Development of the BIS

History and Development

     The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS; Patton et al., 1995) is a 30 item self-report instrument designed to assess the personality/behavioral construct of impulsiveness.  It is used extensively in psychological, sociological, and educational research.  The original version of the BIS was developed as part of a larger attempt to relate anxiety and impulsiveness to psychomotor efficiency (Barratt, 1959).  A later review of factor analytic studies of impulsiveness items (e.g., Twain, 1957; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1977) convinced Barratt that impulsiveness was not a unidimensional construct, as he had originally conceptualized.  Instead, he surmised that impulsiveness was composed of three subtraits.  Thus, the BIS (version 10) was redesigned to measure these three, a priori defined, subtraits.  Barratt labeled these subtraits cognitive impulsiveness, motor impulsiveness and nonplanning impulsiveness (Barratt, 1985).  Subsequently, this three subtrait structure of impulsiveness has been consistently demonstrated in the literature (Gerbing et al., 1987; Luengo et al., 1991; Patton et al., 1995).

Barratt’s Subfactors of Impulsiveness

     Within Barratt’s three component conceptualization, cognitive impulsiveness involved making quick cognitive decisions, motor impulsiveness involved acting without thinking, and nonplanning impulsiveness involved a lack of “futuring” or planning (Barratt, 1985).  In recent years, Barratt has defined the BIS and the subtraits of impulsiveness more specifically.  For example, Patton et al. (1995) performed a principal components analysis on BIS scores gathered from a sample of 412 university students.  Six oblique first order factors and three second order factors were identified.  The second order results clearly supported Barratt’s hypothesis of a three subtrait structure for impulsiveness.  In addition, the subtraits of motor impulsiveness and nonplanning impulsiveness were clearly identified.  The third factor while having a heavy load of cognitive items was not exactly the cognitive impulsiveness subtrait Barratt had originally conceptualized.  Other studies also had problems identifying the cognitive impulsiveness subtrait when using the BIS (Luengo et al., 1991).  As a result, this third factor was labeled attentional impulsiveness and defined as an inability to focus attention or concentrate.  Perhaps due to this confusion in the identification of impulsiveness subtraits, most studies using the BIS tend to report only the total impulsiveness score rather than the subfactor scores.

References

Barratt, E. S.  (1985).  Impulsiveness subtraits: Arousal and information processing.  In J. T. Spence and C. E. Izard (Eds.), Motivation, Emotion and Personality (pp. 137-146). Elsevier Science, North Holland.

Barratt, E. S.  (1959).  Anxiety and impulsiveness related to psychomotor efficiency.  Perceptual and Motor Skills, 9, 191-198.

Eysenck, S. B. G. & Eysenck, H. J.  (1977).  The place of impulsiveness in a dimensional system of personality description.  British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16, 57-68.

Gerbing, D. W., Ahadi, S. A. & Patton, J. H.  (1987).  Toward a conceptualization of impulsivity: Components across the behavioral and self-report domains.  Multivariate Behavioral Research, 22, 357-379.

Luengo, M. A., Carrillo-de-la-Pena, M. T. & Otero, J. M.  (1991).  The components of impulsiveness: A comparison of the I.7 impulsiveness questionnaire and the Barratt impulsiveness scale.  Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 657-667.

Patton, J. H., Stanford, M. S. & Barratt, E. S.  (1995).  Factor structure of the Barratt impulsiveness scale.  Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 768-774.

Twain, D. C.  (1957).  Factor analysis for particular aspects of behavioral control – impulsivity.  Journal of Clinical Psychology, 13, 133-136.