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A Big Five Personality Typology in Adolescents with Congenital Heart Disease: Prospective Associations with Psychosocial Functioning and Perceived Health

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed (1) to identify different personality types in adolescents with congenital heart disease (CHD), and (2) to relate these personality types to psychosocial functioning and several domains of perceived health, both concurrently and prospectively. Hence, this study aimed to expand previous research by adopting a person-centered approach to personality through focusing on personality types rather than singular traits.

Method

Adolescents with CHD were selected from the database of pediatric and congenital cardiology of the University Hospitals Leuven. A total of 366 adolescents (15–20 years old) with CHD participated at time 1. These adolescents completed questionnaires on the Big Five personality traits, depressive symptoms, loneliness, and generic and disease-specific domains of health. Nine months later, 313 patients again completed questionnaires.

Results

Cluster analysis at time 1 revealed three personality types: resilients (37 %), undercontrollers (34 %), and overcontrollers (29 %), closely resembling typologies obtained in previous community samples. Resilients, under-, and overcontrollers did not differ in terms of disease complexity, but differed on depressive symptoms, loneliness, and generic and disease-specific domains of perceived health at both time-points. Overall, resilients showed the most favorable outcomes and overcontrollers the poorest, with undercontrollers scoring in-between.

Conclusion

Personality assessment can help clinicians in identifying adolescents at risk for physical and psychosocial difficulties later in time. In this study, both over- and undercontrollers were identified as high-risk groups. Our findings show that both personality traits and types should be taken into account to obtain a detailed view on the associations between personality and health.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and through grant OT/11/033 from the Research Fund of KU Leuven (Belgium).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Foundation Flanders, Brussels, Belgium

    Jessica Rassart & Eva Goossens

  2. Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Jessica Rassart, Koen Luyckx & Leen Oris

  3. Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Eva Goossens, Silke Apers & Philip Moons

  4. The Heart Centre, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Philip Moons

  5. Institute of Health and Care Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Philip Moons

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  1. Jessica Rassart
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  5. Silke Apers
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On behalf of the i-DETACH investigators

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Correspondence to Jessica Rassart.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Rassart, J., Luyckx, K., Goossens, E. et al. A Big Five Personality Typology in Adolescents with Congenital Heart Disease: Prospective Associations with Psychosocial Functioning and Perceived Health. Int.J. Behav. Med. 23, 310–318 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-016-9547-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-016-9547-x

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