[Personality, hassles, and psychological and physical well-being]

The effects of personality characteristics on psychological/physical well-being of ninety-one Japanese working women were investigated with second-order factors of the 16PF questionnaire. Multiple regression analyses revealed significant, negative contributions of extroversion and independence to depression. However, adding hassles as perceived stressors to the regression equation markedly decreased the amount of depression variance explained by these personality variables. None of the personality factors predicted physical symptoms, and only hassles significantly contributed to their prediction, indicating strong associations between hassles and physical symptoms. Conceptual overlap and confounding effects between hassles and symptom measures are discussed in the light of these results.