Abstract
Little is known about the relationship between temperament and character inventory (TCI) profiles and depressive symptoms. Personality profiles are useful, because personality traits may have different effects on depressive symptoms when combined with different combinations of other traits. Participants were from the population-based Young Finns study with repeated measurements in 1997, 2001, and 2007 (n = 1402 to 1902). TCI was administered in 1997 and mild depressive symptoms (modified Beck's depression inventory, BDI) were reported in 1997, 2001, and 2007. BDI-II was also administered in 2007. We found that high harm avoidance and low self-directedness related strongly to depressive symptoms. In addition, sensitive (NHR) and fanatical people (ScT) were especially vulnerable to depressive symptoms. high novelty seeking and reward dependence increased depressive symptoms when harm avoidance was high. These associations were very similar in cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis. Personality profiles help in understanding the complex associations between depressive symptoms and personality.
Highlights
The biosocial model of personality developed by Cloninger conceptualizes personality as the combination of two interrelated domains: temperament traits reflecting heritable and neurobiologically based differences in behavioral conditioning and character traits reflecting both neurobiological and sociocultural mechanisms of semantic and self-aware learning
Temperament is characterized by novelty seeking (NS; a tendency toward exploratory activity and intense excitement in response to novel stimuli) that was originally hypothesized to be linked with low basal dopaminergic activity, harm avoidance (HA; a tendency to respond intensely to aversive stimuli and to avoid punishment and novelty) that was originally hypothesized to be linked with high serotonergic activity, reward dependence (RD; a tendency to respond intensely to reward and to learn to maintain rewarded behavior) that was originally hypothesized to be linked with low basal noradrenergic activity, and persistence (P) that has no special neural correlates [3]
We have shown the importance of personality profiles in studying the vulnerability to depressive symptoms cross-sectionally and over time
Summary
The biosocial model of personality developed by Cloninger conceptualizes personality as the combination of two interrelated domains: temperament traits reflecting heritable and neurobiologically based differences in behavioral conditioning and character traits reflecting both neurobiological and sociocultural mechanisms of semantic and self-aware learning. Those domains are hypothesized to interact as a nonlinear dynamic system regulating the development of human psychological functions [1, 2]. Typical people scoring high on SD are responsible, resourceful, and self-accepting [4]. Cooperative persons are tolerant, empathic, and helpful [4], while those scoring
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