"How obsessive are dental students?" - A personality styles & disorder inventory-based cross-sectional, controlled...

To assess whether personality styles vary across student and professional cohorts in dentistry, using psychology controls.

A total of 249 dental students and 162 practicing dentists were compared with 160 psychology students and 430 psychotherapists. All participants completed the Personality-Styles-and-Disorders-Inventory (PSDI). Fourteen personality styles were analyzed across disciplines and career stages.

MANOVA with post-hoc-tests showed significant differences among the four groups (dental and psychology students and professionals). Both student groups showed strong fluctuations around the normative mean, indicating higher emotional levels and peaks in stress-dependent styles. Dental students showed signs of severe stress and burnout tendencies. Their depression scores were highest, while optimism was lowest. Professionals generally showed lower values than students, often below the norm, indicating "functional adaptation" and professional stability. Psychotherapists showed the most balanced profile with the lowest values. Dentists remained moderately higher than psychotherapists, indicating higher stress. Their most distinctive characteristic was "compulsiveness", reflecting precision and perfectionism, already elevated during training and increasing in practice. While psychotherapists developed from higher stress levels during their studies to a balanced profile, dentists maintained higher stress and increased their perfectionism.

Dentists demonstrate stronger tendencies towards precision and perfectionism than psychologists, who show greater flexibility and openness. Professionalization appears associated with adaptive personality style, although compulsive tendencies in dentistry remain elevated and may increase with clinical experience. These findings suggest an interplay between pre-existing dispositions and occupational socialization. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify whether these differences are present before training or arise during professional practice.

Insights into the differences in personality styles between dental students and dentists may inform dental education and prompt further research on dentist-patient relationships and treatment outcomes.