Association Between Personality Types and Temperament (Mizaj) Based on Persian Medicine

Abstract

Background: Personality and personality disorders are important in psychology. In addition, mizaj is a key concept of Persian medicine, according to which, it can affect the personality of the staff of an organizations. Objectives: The aim of this study was to find the relationship between personality types based on NEO-FFI questionnaire, and mizaj, based on the knowledge of Persian medicine. Methods: This is a cross-sectional descriptive analytical study. The participants were selected from 20 - 40-year-old staff of the medical school of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences through 2016. Mojahadi’s questionnaire, including 10 questions based on three-point Likert scale for the assessment of the mizaj as well as the NEO-FFI questionnaire, which includes 60 questions based on five-point Likert scale for the assessment of personality type were used in this study. SPSS 18 was performed for analyzing the data. Results: Overall, 112 staff members, including 20 men (17.9%) and 92 women (82.1%) enrolled in the study. The mean age of the participants was 32.29 ± 5.10 years. In this study, neuroticism was positively related with hot temperament (P = 0.02). However, there was no statistically significant relationship between other aspects of temperament and personality (P > 0.05). Conclusions: The correlation of hot temperament and neuroticism is in line with the concept of Persian medicine. However, more research is needed to reveal more aspects of the relationship between temperament and personality.