Personality and Emotion Dysregulation Profiles Predict Differential Engagement in a Wide Range of Health-Risk Behaviors

Objective: Health-risk behaviors have an unclear etiology and college students have elevated risk for engagement. Emotion dysregulation and several personality dimensions have been implicated in health-risk behaviors, but these constructs have rarely been studied together. Further, it is unknown if different types of health-risk behaviors have distinct etiologies. Participants: 2077 college students completed a cross-sectional survey. Methods: Latent profile analysis discerned classes of participants from emotion dysregulation and personality dimensions. Differential engagement in self-injury, suicidality, disordered eating, substance misuse, and unprotected sex was evaluated across classes. Results: Three classes were identified, which were primarily distinguished by emotion dysregulation, urgency, and neuroticism. Health-risk behaviors generally increased across classes with increasing emotion-related constructs. Self-injury and suicidality demonstrated different patterns than other health-risk behaviors. Conclusions: Results elucidate heterogeneity in health-risk behavior engagement. Focusing on emotional difficulties may be more important for reducing self-injury and suicidality than disordered eating, substance misuse, and risky sex.