Is type-D personality trait(s) or state? An examination of type-D temporal stability in older Israeli adults in the community

Department of Psychology, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer Regional Council, Israel
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1499v1
Subject Areas
Psychiatry and Psychology
Keywords
Personality, Type-D, predictive validity, temporal stability
Copyright
© 2015 Zohar
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Zohar AH. 2015. Is type-D personality trait(s) or state? An examination of type-D temporal stability in older Israeli adults in the community. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1499v1

Abstract

Background: Type-D personality was suggested as a marker of poorer prognosis for patients of cardiovascular disease. It is defined by having a score of 10 or more on both sub-scales of the DS14 questionnaire, Social Inhibition (SI) and Negative Affect (NA). As Type-D was designed to predict risk, its temporal stability is of prime importance. Methods: Participants in the current study were 285 community volunteers, who completed the DS14, and other personality scales, at a mean interval of six years. Results: The prevalence of Type-D did not change. The component traits of Type-D showed rank order stability. Type-D caseness temporal stability was improved by using the total DS14 score. Using the scale's product as a criterion further improved temporal stability. Logistic hierarchical regression predicting Type-D classification from Time1 demonstrated that the best predictors were Time1 scores on NA and SI, with the character trait of Cooperation, and the alexithymia score adding some predictive power. Conclusions: Temporal stability of Type-D caseness may be improved by using a sum or product threshold, rather than the current rule. In any case, as the temporal stability of Type-D is limited, research is required to formulate the optimal timing for Type-D measurement for predictive purposes.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

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DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1499v1/supp-1

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DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1499v1/supp-2