A Comparison of Personality Characteristics between Patients with Cancer and the Control Group

Abstract

Aim: It is known that personality can affect most of the issues related to physical and mental health. It is thought that some personality features carry importance as a factor in cancer development, and therefore, the theory of a cancer-prone personality continues to attract researchers’ attention. The aim of this study is to investigate and compare the differences in personality characteristics between patients with different types of cancer and healthy control group.Material and Methods: A total of 193 participants, patients with different types of cancer (n=100) and healthy individuals as the control group (n=93), were included in this study. Hacettepe Personality Inventory (HPI) was used to obtain the data related with personality traits.Results: The mean score of self-realization (SR) and emotional stability (ES), which are personal adaptation subscales of the HPI, was found to be significantly lower in cancer group compared to control group (p=0.016 and p=0.009). As a result of further analyses performed according to cancer types, it was found that both SR and ES scores in head-neck cancer group were lower than both control group and other subgroups of cancer types (p=0.004 and p=0.001).Conclusion: The results of this study revealed that there are differences between cancer and control groups in terms of personality characteristics. Overall, it was thought that the personality characteristics that are unique to patients with head-neck cancers may be the reactions that appear as a result of the development of head-neck cancer rather than a significant factor in cancer development.