No evidence for a psychological trait of impulsivity

Since its early psychometric days, impulsivity has been one of the most prominent and well-researched personality traits. In recent years, however, a number of researchers have questioned the trait ‘impulsivity’ by showing how it is simply a conglomerate of other traits. Huang and colleagues (2) attempted to address these controversies by applying bifactor analyses on 48 measures of impulsivity, yielding a statistical factor of impulsivity which they interpreted to be a ‘valid and useful psychological construct’ (p. 1). Here, we question this conclusion by arguing that the authors did not provide evidence for impulsivity as a psychological construct.