The Association Between Personality Traits and Health-Related Quality of Life and the Mediating Role of Smoking: Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: There are positive and negative correlations in different directions between smoking, personality traits, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL), where smoking may mask the pathway between personality traits and HRQOL. Understanding the masking pathway of smoking between personality traits and HRQOL can elucidate the mechanisms of smoking's psychosocial effects and provide new ideas for developing tobacco control strategies. Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between Big Five personality traits and HRQOL and whether smoking mediates the relationship between them. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study using data from 21,916 respondents from the 2022 Psychology and Behavior Investigation of Chinese Residents survey. Linear regression models were used to analyze the correlations between smoking, Big Five personality traits, and HRQOL while controlling for potential confounders. The mediating role of smoking on the association between Big Five Personality traits and HRQOL was analyzed using the Sobel-Goodman mediation test. Results: Extraversion (ß=.001; P=.04), agreeableness (ß=.003; P<.001), and neuroticism (ß=.003; P<.001) were positively correlated with HRQOL, whereas openness was negatively correlated with HRQOL (ß=-.001; P=.003). Smoking was associated with a decrease in HRQOL and mediated the positive effect of HRQOL on extraversion (z=-2.482; P=.004), agreeableness (z=-2.264; P=.02), and neuroticism (z=-3.230; P=.001). Subgroup analyses further showed that smoking mediated the effect of neuroticism on HRQOL in the population with chronic illnesses (z=-2.724; P=.006), and in the population without chronic illnesses, smoking contributed to the effect of HRQOL on extraversion (z=-2.299; P=.02), agreeableness (z=-2.382; P=.02), and neuroticism (z=-2.213; P=.03). Conclusions: This study provided evidence that there is a correlation between personality traits and HRQOL. It also found that smoking plays a role in mediating the connection between personality traits and HRQOL. The development of future tobacco control strategies should consider the unique traits of each individual's personality, highlighting the significance of extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Unpacking the relationship between Big Five personality traits and experimental pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Pain is essential for survival, but individual responses to painful stimuli vary, representing a complex interplay between sensory, cognitive, and affective factors. Individual differences in personality traits and in pain perception covary but it is unclear which traits play the most significant role in understanding the pain experience and whether this depends on pain modality. A systematic search identified 1534 records (CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, PubMed and Web of Science), of which 22 were retained and included in a systematic review. Only studies from the pressure pain domain (n=6) could be compared in a formal meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between Big Five traits and experimental pain. Pressure pain tolerance correlated positively with Extraversion and negatively with Neuroticism with a trivial effect size (<0.1). While these findings suggest personality might be only weakly related to pain in healthy individuals, we emphasize the need to consider standardization, biases, and adequate sample sizes in future research, as well as additional factors that might affect experimental pain sensitivity.

Relationships between obsessive-compulsive disorder and the big five personality traits: A meta-analysis.

Although several studies have examined the relationships between obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the Big Five personality traits (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness), the results have been inconsistent. Therefore, this meta-analysis comprehensively examined the relationships between OCD and these traits. In total, 23 studies (29 independent datasets) with 30,138 participants were analyzed. The pooled effect size was 0.34 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.28, 0.40) for neuroticism, -0.14 (95% CI: -0.18, -0.10) for extraversion, -0.04 (95% CI: -0.09, 0.02) for openness, -0.10 (95% CI: -0.16, -0.04) for agreeableness, and -0.03 (95% CI: -0.11, 0.05) for conscientiousness, indicating that OCD was associated with higher scores for neuroticism and lower scores for extraversion and agreeableness. Meta-regression and subgroup analyses indicated that heterogeneity was mainly due to differences in sample types and OCD measurement instruments. Sensitivity analysis showed that the results of the meta-analysis were robust. Overall, neuroticism was a maladaptive trait, whereas extraversion and agreeableness were adaptive traits for OCD. Although the results could be sample- and instrument-specific, our findings may inform preventions and interventions for OCD symptoms.

Large language models can infer psychological dispositions of social media users.

Large language models (LLMs) demonstrate increasingly human-like abilities across a wide variety of tasks. In this paper, we investigate whether LLMs like ChatGPT can accurately infer the psychological dispositions of social media users and whether their ability to do so varies across socio-demographic groups. Specifically, we test whether GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 can derive the Big Five personality traits from users' Facebook status updates in a zero-shot learning scenario. Our results show an average correlation of r = 0.29 ( range = [ 0.22 , 0.33 ] ) between LLM-inferred and self-reported trait scores-a level of accuracy that is similar to that of supervised machine learning models specifically trained to infer personality. Our findings also highlight heterogeneity in the accuracy of personality inferences across different age groups and gender categories: predictions were found to be more accurate for women and younger individuals on several traits, suggesting a potential bias stemming from the underlying training data or differences in online self-expression. The ability of LLMs to infer psychological dispositions from user-generated text has the potential to democratize access to cheap and scalable psychometric assessments for both researchers and practitioners. On the one hand, this democratization might facilitate large-scale research of high ecological validity and spark innovation in personalized services. On the other hand, it also raises ethical concerns regarding user privacy and self-determination, highlighting the need for stringent ethical frameworks and regulation.

Examining the association between the FTO gene and neuroticism reveals indirect effects on subjective well-being and problematic alcohol use.

Associations between the fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) gene and obesity are well-established. However, recent studies have linked FTO to addiction phenotypes and dopaminergic signaling, thus suggesting broader psychiatric implications. We explored this assumption by conducting a phenome-wide association study across 4756 genome-wide association studies, identifying 23-26 psychiatric traits associated with FTO at the multiple-corrected significance level. These traits clustered into four categories: substance use, chronotype/sleep, well-being, and neuroticism. To validate these findings, we analyzed a functionally suggestive FTO variant (rs1421085) in a separate cohort, examining its impact on (i) alcohol use based on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), (ii) subjective well-being based on the WHO (Ten) Well-Being Index, and (iii) neuroticism based on Schafer's Five Factor Model or the Karolinska Scales of Personality. Our results confirmed a direct association between rs1421085 and neuroticism that was independent of age, sex, alcohol use, body mass index (BMI), and childhood adversities. Interestingly, while no direct association with alcohol intake was observed, both cross-sectional and lagged longitudinal mediation analyses uncovered indirect relationships between rs1421085 and problematic alcohol use (AUDIT-P), with increased neuroticism acting as the intermediary. Mediation analyses also supported an indirect effect of rs1421085 on lower well-being through the pathways of increased neuroticism and BMI. Our study is the first to validate a direct association between FTO and neuroticism. However, additional studies are warranted to affirm the causal pathways linking FTO to well-being and alcohol use through neuroticism.

Perceived expectations for active aging: the role of motivational and personality factors.

OBJECTIVES: Perceived expectations for active aging (PEAA) reflect subjective exposure to social expectations about staying active and fit in old age, for example, by maintaining health and social engagement. We investigated whether motivational and personality factors were related to PEAA in the domains of physical health, mental health, and social engagement. METHOD: We used a nationally representative sample of German adults (SOEP-IS) covering the entire adult life span (N = 2,007, age range 16-94 years) to test our pre-registered hypotheses. RESULTS: Multiple regression analyses indicated that motivation (i.e. life goals and health-related worries) was consistently associated with PEAA in the matching domains and mediated the effects of openness to experience on PEAA. No other personality trait was associated with PEAA. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that individuals preferentially notice the expectations for active aging whose content relates to their personal concerns and goals.

Decoding career success: A personality-based analysis of data science Professional based on ANFIS modeling.

Career selection is one of the most important decisions every person faces in their life. Finding the right career path can be a complicated task, particularly in choosing careers with similarly required proficiencies. One of the critical factors affecting a person's career success is their personality, and taking account of this factor is of paramount importance. This study uses the NEO-FFI questionnaire to find personality patterns of software engineering and data science experts based on the Big Five personality traits: Neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Afterward, an ANFIS (Adaptive Network-Based Inference System) is conducted using the experts' personality data to match the participants of these fields with their corresponding choices. This study demonstrated that data scientists and software engineers score higher in conscientiousness and agreeableness, respectively. Also, data experts have higher scores in all traits overall. In the end, the ANFIS is tested with another similar dataset and the prediction accuracy of the model is measured.

Validation of an abbreviated Big Five personality inventory at large population scale: Psychometric structure and associations with common psychiatric and neurological disorders.

BACKGROUND: The five-factor model of personality, as quantified using instruments such as the Big Five Inventory, consists of broad personality domains including Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (emotional instability), and Openness. Such instruments typically include >40 items. However, instruments with many items can be unwieldly and a cause of measurement error in clinical and cohort studies where multiple scales are sequenced. Conversely, established 5- and 10-item versions of the Big Five Inventory have poor reliability. Here, we developed and validated an abbreviated 18-item Big Five Inventory that balances efficiency, reliability and sensitivity. METHOD: We analysed three datasets (N = 59,797, N = 21,177, and N = 87,983) from individuals who participated in the online Great British Intelligence Test (GBIT) study, a collaborative citizen science project with BBC2 Horizon. We applied factor analyses (FA), predictive normative modelling, and one-sample t-tests to validate the 18-item version of the Big Five and to investigate its associations with psychiatric and neurological conditions. RESULTS: The 18-item version of the Big Five Inventory had higher validity and retest reliability compared to the other previously shortened versions in the literature, with comparable demographic associations to the full Big Five Inventory. It exhibited strong (i.e. large effect size) associations with psychiatric conditions, and moderate (small-medium) associations with neurological conditions. Neuroticism (emotional instability) was substantially higher in all psychiatric conditions, whereas Conscientiousness, Openness and Extraversion showed differential associations across conditions. CONCLUSION: The newly validated 18-item version of the Big Five provides a convenient means of measuring personality traits that is suitable for deployment in a range of studies. It retains psychometric structure, retest reliability and clinical-group sensitivity, as compared to the full original scale.

Culture, sex and social context influence brain-to-brain synchrony: an fNIRS hyperscanning study.

BACKGROUND: Unique interpersonal synchrony occurs during every social interaction, and is shaped by characteristics of participating individuals in these social contexts. Additionally, depending on context demands, interpersonal synchrony is also altered. The study therefore aims to investigate culture, sex, and social context effects simultaneously in a novel role-play paradigm. Additionally, the effect of personality traits on synchrony was investigated across cultures, and a further exploratory analysis on the effects of these variables on pre- and post-session empathy changes was conducted. METHODS: 83 dyads were recruited in two waves from Singapore and Italy and took part in a within-subjects session where they interacted with each other as themselves (Naturalistic Conversation) and as others (Role-Play and Role Reversal). Big Five Inventory (administered pre-session) and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (administered pre- and post-session) were used as measures of personality and empathy respectively, while synchrony was measured using hyperscanning functional near-infrared spectroscopy in the prefrontal cortex. After data-preprocessing and preliminary analyses, a mixture of multiple linear regression and exploratory forward stepwise regression models were used to address the above study aims. RESULTS: Results revealed significant main and interaction effects of culture, sex and social context on brain-to-brain synchrony, particularly in the medial left cluster of the prefrontal cortex, and a unique contribution of extraversion and openness to experience to synchrony in the Italian cohort only. Finally, culture-driven differences in empathy changes were identified, where significant increases in empathy across sessions were generally only observed within the Singaporean cohort. CONCLUSIONS: Main findings indicate lowered brain-to-brain synchrony during role-playing activities that is moderated by the dyad's sex make-up and culture, implying differential processing of social interactions that is also influenced by individuals' background factors. Findings align with current literature that role-playing is a cognitively demanding activity requiring greater levels of self-regulation and suppression of self-related cognition as opposed to interpersonal co-regulation characterized by synchrony. However, the current pattern of results would be better supported by future studies investigating multimodal synchronies and corroboration.

Association between the Big Five personality traits and suicide-related behaviors in Japanese institutionalized youths.

Aim: Inmates in correctional institutions experience higher rates of suicide attempt (SA), suicidal ideation (SI), and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) than the general population. This study aimed to examine the association between the Big Five personality traits and suicide-related behavior, and to estimate the prevalence rate of such behaviors among Japanese institutionalized youth. Methods: The participants were 436 youths who had been admitted to four juvenile classification homes (JCHs) between September 2021 and March 2023; they were asked to respond to a self-report questionnaire after obtaining informed consent. Results: A total of 8.1% and 19.3%, 29.4% and 44.7%, and 46.3% and 75.3% of males and females had experienced SA, SI, and NSSI in their lifetime, respectively. Females reported significantly higher instances of suicide-related behaviors than males considering all suicide-related behaviors. Logistic regression analyses revealed that neuroticism significantly increased the odds ratios for SA, SI, and NSSI on controlling for sex, age, and number of admissions to JCHs. For NSSI, the odds ratio for agreeableness was significantly lower than 1, indicating a lower probability of NSSI. Conclusion: The findings of our study demonstrate that neuroticism, one of the Big Five traits, was consistently and significantly associated with all suicide-related behaviors, including SA, SI, and NSSI, among youth offenders, while agreeableness was found as a protective factor only against NSSI. The results of this study might help correctional officers identify justice-involved youth at higher risk for suicide and allow the development of early interventions to prevent suicide.

Defining distress tolerance in a structural model of Big Five personality domains.

OBJECTIVE: Distress tolerance (DT)-willingness to face internal discomforts-has a fuzzy boundary with neuroticism (low emotional stability), raising questions about its independent role in models of personality and mental health. METHOD: We investigated DT's overlap with neuroticism and other Big Five factors in a structural model of personality and personality disorder features in samples of university students (N = 1025), emotional disorder patients (N = 225), and substance-use patients (N = 210). RESULTS: In exploratory factor analyses, we found that DT indicators clustered with neuroticism and were essentially unrelated to other Big Five domains. Big Five personality dimensions collectively explained approximately 40%-70% of variation in DT, across different samples and methods of quantifying shared variance. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that DT and neuroticism are near neighbors in empirical space and speculate that much of the observed correlation between DT and mental health outcomes in the literature may be carried by shared neuroticism variance. We suggest that clearer distinctions between the two constructs in empirical research could improve our understanding of DT's unique role in the development and treatment of psychopathology.

Nuanced HEXACO: A Meta-Analysis of HEXACO Cross-Rater Agreement, Heritability, and Rank-Order Stability.

Most Five-Factor Model (FFM) questionnaire items contain unique variance that is partly heritable, stable, and consensually observable, demonstrates consistent associations with age and sex, and predicts life outcomes beyond higher order factors. Extending these findings to the HEXACO model, we meta-analyzed single-item cross-rater agreement, heritability, and 2-year stability using samples from six countries. We analyzed raw item scores and their residual variance and adjusted the estimates for measurement unreliability. The median cross-rater agreement, heritability, and stability estimates were, respectively, .30, .30, and .57, for raw items and .10, .16, and .39, for item residuals. Adjusted for reliability, the respective medians were .46 and .25 for cross-rater agreement, .46 and .39 for heritability, and .87 and .94 for stability. These results are strikingly consistent with FFM-based findings, providing nondismissible evidence that single items index a partly unique level of the trait hierarchy-personality nuances-with trait properties comparable to those of higher-order traits.

Sense of coherence and its components under COVID-19: relative associations with personality and psychosocial variables.

Sense of Coherence (SOC) is conceptualized as promoting resistance to stress. The study aimed to assess the impact of the Big Five personality traits and Social Capital (SC) on SOC levels during COVID-19, comparing associations with the pre-pandemic period. Another aim was to explore how personality and SC relate differently to SOC domains: Comprehensibility, Manageability, and Meaningfulness, reflecting perceptions of order, resource adequacy, and life's significance, respectively. SOC, Big Five personality traits, SC (using by the 13 items SOC scale, NEO-FFI and PSCS inventories, respectively) and demographic data were obtained from 2717 Israeli participants during the heights of the third COVID-19 wave (November 2020-March 2021). Strong relationships between SOC and personality traits have been found through regression analysis, but these associations differed between SOC domains. Big Five traits demonstrated comparable association with Comprehensibly and Manageability, but different from those with Meaningfulness, particularly in Neuroticism, Openness and Extraversion. Significant SC-SOC associations were observed, though weaker than those reported in the pre-pandemic period. Age and female sex were also associated with stronger SOC. Overall, effect sizes for SOC domains were medium to large for Big Five personality traits and small to medium for demographic variables. SC demonstrated a negligible effect size. Significant interactions of demographic, SC and personality traits were also observed. The study highlights SOC's strong links with personality and demographics, but weaker ties with psychosocial factors. Variations across SOC domains may explain diverse crisis effects.

Self-Regulated Parenting: A Systematic Review of the Relations Between Effortful Control, the Big-Five, and Parenting Practices.

It is well established that parents' own self-regulation is related to adaptive parenting practices (such as warmth and sensitivity) as well as to maladaptive ones (such as laxness and over-reactivity). However, parenting practices are not solely determined by parents' self-regulation. We discuss how broad personality dimensions (drawn from the Big-Five model) relate to temperamental self-regulation (effortful control) and to parenting practices. Considering the limited empirical literature linking these three constructs, we present extant evidence for each of the dyadic connections between these three constructs. We then propose a comprehensive model that includes the plausible moderation/mediation role of different personality dimensions (such as conscientiousness and agreeableness) on the connection between self-regulation and parenting practices. This systematic review summarizes the extant empirical findings from 74 studies, linking effortful control, character and parenting practices. It is the first to systematically review and organize the accumulating knowledge regarding their relations. Based on the reviewed literature, a conceptual framework is proposed for predicting parenting practices, which are, in turn, a crucial concept predicting children's behavioral and cognitive outcomes. In doing so, it provides a theoretical basis for the importance of parental character traits, specifically conscientiousness and agreeableness, as mediators between the parent's effortful control and their actual parenting practices.

Personality Traits and Insurance Demand.

Personality traits drive people's financial decisions and hence affect their lives. Yet, we know little about the relationship between personality traits and insurance decisions. Do Risk-Taking, the Big Five and Locus of Control predict a variety of personal insurance decisions? Using a sample of 14,624 German adults with the goal of identifying associations between personality and insurance demand, we found that personality traits predict demand for various insurance types. We also found that associations may be mediated by demographic variables and may depend on the statistical modeling approach (e.g., including nonlinear relationships or examining between- and within-person effects). These findings contribute to our understanding of the role of personality in insurance demand and highlight the need for further exploration of this relationship, as our results demonstrate that personality-insurance-demand-associations depend on the examined insurance type.

On the Construct of Subjective Risk Intelligence and Its Relationships with Personality, Emotional Intelligence and Coping Strategies: A Comparison between Adolescents and Adults.

The complexity of today's scenario has made it necessary to investigate the need for individuals to make choices that entail increasing exposure to risk and uncertainty. Among the individual resources that could help people to cope with situations of uncertainty, the new construct of subjective risk intelligence (SRI), known as a person's ability to effectively weigh the pros and cons of a decision in situations where not all the outcomes are foreseen, would seem to play a prominent role. Considering that personality and coping strategies have been shown to be significantly related in previous research, the present study investigates the relationships between subjective risk intelligence, emotional intelligence, personality traits and coping strategies in both adults and adolescents. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 1390 Italian people, divided into two subsamples of 641 adolescents and 749 adults. The results showed that SRI mediated the roles that personality traits and emotional intelligence have in coping strategies differently in the adult sample, in which the mediating role of SRI was found for avoidance coping, and in the adolescent sample, in which SRI influenced all of the antecedents analysed in the study for almost all of the identified coping strategies. In light of these findings, subjective risk intelligence could be activated to deal with uncertain and risky situations, influencing the choice of effective or ineffective strategies in both adults and adolescents.

The education-health gradient: Revisiting the role of socio-emotional skills.

Is the education-health gradient inflated because both education and health are associated with unobserved socio-emotional skills? We find that the gradient in health behaviors and outcomes is reduced by about 15 to 50% from accounting for fine-grained personality facets and up to another 50% from Locus of Control. Traditional aggregated Big-Five scales, however, have a much smaller contribution to the gradient. We use sibling-fixed effects to net out the contribution from genes and shared childhood environment, decomposing the gradient into its components with an order-invariant method. We rely on a large survey (N = 28,261) linked to high-quality Danish administrative registers with information on parental background and objectively measured diagnoses and care use. Accounting for Locus of Control yields the strongest gradient reduction in self-rated health status and objective diagnoses (30%-50%), and in health behaviors the most important factor is Extraversion, a skill that has been shown to be malleable in interventions.

Decision-Making Styles in Medical Students and Healthcare Professionals: The Roles of Personality Traits and Socio-Emotional Intelligence Factors.

Intuitive and deliberative styles can be considered the best-known decision-making styles, which are thought to be linked to actual workplace performance. However, there is a limited research on individual differences in these styles among individuals who provide healthcare. Therefore, adopting the self-report approach, this study examines the roles of the Big Five personality traits and socio-emotional intelligence factors in intuitive and deliberative decision-making styles among medical students and healthcare professionals. The research sample consists of 203 participants (50 medical students, 153 healthcare professionals) who completed the Big Five Inventory, the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, the Tromsø Social Intelligence Scale, and the Preference for Intuition and Deliberation Scale. The regression analyses revealed that attention to one's emotions and social information processing were positively related to intuitive decision-making style, while the clarity of one's emotions and social awareness were negatively related to intuitive decision-making style. It was further shown that conscientiousness, neuroticism, repair of one's emotions, and social information processing were positively related to deliberative decision-making style. The findings highlight the importance of personality and socio-emotional intelligence in understanding decision-making. Specifically, they point out that Big Five personality traits better explain deliberative style, while socio-emotional intelligence factors better explain intuitive style.

Personality and teachers' burnout stress: exploring the digital competence as personal job resource in allied health institutions.

Introduction: Job burnout has severe consequences for teachers and students. This study aimed to measure the direct effects of personality traits on job burnout-stress syndrome among allied health educators. Furthermore, teachers' digital competence was evaluated as a personal job resource for mitigating the negative impact of burnout. Methods: This study examined direct relationships between work-related stress syndrome and personality traits, namely, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Data was collected from 334 allied health institution teachers through a self-reported questionnaire. Linear regression analysis was used to test for direct effects. Moderating effects were evaluated using Andrew F Hays PROCESS macro v2.16.3. Results: All five personality traits had a significant negative relationship to burnout and teachers' digital competence moderated the relationship between personality traits and burnout. This study's findings provide evidence, that personality is significantly related to job burnout among allied health educators. Conclusion: These empirical findings conclude that personality traits are related to burnout in the non-Western culture of Pakistan. Furthermore, teachers' digital competence acts as a personal job resource and potential moderator in the current digital working environment. Therefore, future teachers should enrich their digital competencies for improved performance, and advanced digital competency courses should be included in their curriculum.

The General Factor of Environmental Sensitivity: Relationships with the General Factor of Personality.

Environmental sensitivity is a meta-concept that describes individual differences in susceptibility to both positive and negative environmental influences and has been repeatedly reported to correlate with other established personality traits, including the Big Five. The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between the general factor of environmental sensitivity (GFS) and the general factor of personality (GFP). A total of 1,046 adult participants (52% female; Mage = 45.15, SDage = 12.70) completed a self-report psychological questionnaire on an online form. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that GFS had a strong negative correlation with GFP (r = -.41, 95% CI [-.52, -.30], p < .001). Focusing on the relationship with the Big Five, individuals with higher environmental sensitivity were emotionally unstable and introverted. The trait of environmental sensitivity may be described not only in relation to the Big Five but also in relation to GFP, which is assumed to be an indicator of social effectiveness.