The relationship of personality to mood and anxiety states: a dimensional approach

This study evaluates the relationship of personality to mood and anxiety states in a sample of 50 psychiatric out patients. In order to overcome arbitrariness inherent in categorical diagnoses of affective, personality and anxiety disorders, we use a dimensional approach to personality, mood and anxiety. According to our results, mood and anxiety states affect personality domains differentially. Namely, relatively large portions of personality and behavior, such as higher-order traits of novelty seeking and reward dependence, seem independent from mood and anxiety states. In contrast, the higher-order dimension of harm avoidance and its corresponding lower-order traits reflect changes in mood and anxiety to a much greater extent. Both the likelihood that large portions of personality may be independent from current mood and the likelihood that some precisely delineated personality domains tend to change simultaneously with current mood may improve our understanding of the relationship of personality to emotionality and affective disorders.