Early Insights Into the Role of Personality in Adherence to Voice Rest After Phonomicrosurgery

The purpose of this preliminary investigation was to explore the relationship between personality and adherence to voice rest in individuals following phonosurgery for benign mucosal or submucosal/lamina propria lesions. We hypothesized that adherence to voice rest would be inversely related to Extraversion and directly related to Conscientiousness, two superfactor traits of the Big Five personality model.

This was a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study.

Twenty-five patients (eight men, 17 women; mean age = 46.25 years; SD = 14.38) of Houston Methodist Hospital's Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery underwent microflap phonosurgery. Each participant provided demographic information, completed the Ten Item Personality Inventory (a brief Big Five personality instrument), and wore a vocal dosimeter to objectively measure voice rest adherence during a seven-day, postoperative period.

The participants' mean personality scores were higher than reported norms across all Big Five traits. Contrary to our hypotheses, (1) Extraversion related directly to voice rest adherence, and (2) no other personality traits (including Conscientiousness) related to voice rest adherence.

Although extraverts have been described as talkative, assertive, and outgoing, we found that high Extraversion was related to less vocalizing during the voice rest period. Our results are compatible with the health psychology literature that describes a positive relation between Extraversion and adherence to preventive healthcare practices. Future research should employ a larger, single-sex sample, potentially with greater similarity between patient diagnoses. Clinically, such data could inform counseling approaches to facilitate voice rest adherence and potentially improve surgical outcomes.