When an individual’s well-being is challenged, he or she may be stressed. Not all stress is bad; however, when it undermines mental and physical health, issues arise. Stress is a common and inevitable phenomenon of life from which a temporary as well as long term discomfort arises. Scientific information has confirmed that personality traits are vital factors in the identification of stress events and later approaching and responding those events (Dumitru & Cozman, 2012). Personality traits works as a trainer that prepares the individual to think and act similarly in response to variety of different situations and stimuli.
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Studies have also shown that some personality traits can predict stress level. According to Atherton et al. (2014) personality influences how an individual perceives and reacts to his or her environment. Although human is creative and self-determining in responding to stressful events, researchers have found that stress coping traits are relatively stable in individuals going through stressful situations (Weston & Jackson, 2016). Folkman and Lazarus (1980) added people selected ways to cope with specific problems they were dealing and the contexts within the problems occurred according to their personality. Many researchers like Strober (2016) revealed in their research that coping resources are directly affected by certain personality types. According to Marnie (2008), coping is a monitoring process that helps in reducing the adverse feelings arising from stressful events. Many studies (Barlett & Anderson, 2012; Connor-Smith & Flaschbart, 2007; van Berkel, 2009) have considered the relationship between personality and coping processes. It has been shown by some studies that personality traits like extraversion that are considered to be adaptive are positively linked to the active coping styles (Connor-Smith & Flaschbart, 2007) whereas maladaptive traits such as neuroticism are negatively related to the coping of stress (Barlett & Anderson, 2012).
The relationship of personality and coping suggest that maladaptive traits make an individual to experience more stress because they are unable to use adaptive coping strategies (van Berkel, 2009). However, not all studies have shown the consistent results while considering the relationship of personality traits with the stress. Some researchers found no significant relation between personality traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness with coping of stress (David & Suls, 1999). A study by
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Barlett et al. (2012) has showed no relationship between extraversion and stress coping such as finding social support and accepting responsibility.
Moreover, it has been observed in studies that individuals with extravert personality traits use active coping for reducing stress whereas neurotic individuals show passive coping strategies (Bakker, Van der Zee, Lewig, & Dollard, 2006; Vollrath & Torgersen, 2000). Costa et al. (1992) neurotic individuals find it difficult to use active coping strategies and this trait is linked more to the avoidant coping. Moreover, extraversion was shown to be positively associated with active coping such as problem-focused coping and seeking social support. Conscientiousness is also related to problem-focused coping such as planning and accepting responsibilities whereas agreeableness is positively linked to social support (Bakker et al., 2006) that seeks active coping and planning reappraisals and negatively related to avoidance, self-blame and wishful thinking. Additionally, previous research findings also showed that openness and positive reinterpretation and active coping are positively related.
Several other studies on neuroticism identified that higher scores of neuroticism is related to negative emotions in stressful situations (Duggan, Friedman, McDevitt, & Mednick, 2014). These characteristics turn into worst subjective mental and physical health. While in case of extraversion, high subjective well-being (Strober, 2016) and low level of depression provides the evidence of better mental health of highly extraverted individuals.
Number of studies showed linkage between self-rated health and extraversion (Gonzalez- Abraldes, Millan-Calenti, Lorenzo-Lopez, & Maseda, 2013) but association of extraversion with physical health is merely studied previously as compared to studies of
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neuroticism. A study by Reynolds and Livingston (2012) suggests that individuals who score high on extraversion scales of Big Five personality measurements employ active coping strategies like problem solving and seeking social support. On contrary, highly neurotic personality traits are linked to a higher experience of stressful situations (Weston & Jackson, 2016).
In recent years, remaining three personality traits have gained increasing importance particularly conscientiousness. A meta-analysis by Bogg and Roberts (2004) indicated that individuals appear to be organized and self-disciplined who scores high on this trait. This in turn, is linked to better subjective health by promoting greater health behaviors. Confidence and sense of competence is also reported by highly conscientious people which may partially affect their mental health (Friedman, Kern, Hampson, & Duckworth, 2013).
Although mental flexibility enhances cognition and might help an individual to perform well in stressful situation, still there is a scarce research on the health implications of openness and agreeableness (King, Jackson, Morrow-Howell, & Oltmanns, 2014). Primarily, agreeableness is a willingness to cooperate with others; therefore, association of openness with physical health is small although it has been linked to better mental health by various studies (Ferguson, 2013).
In accordance with above mentioned study, Lench (2011) found a positive relationship between stress and personality. According to them, neuroticism renders as an important predicting variable because it positively correlated with stress. This is consistent with
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other findings in that people with neurotic characteristics tend to be more anxious and fearful, which can lead to experiencing more stress (Weston et al., 2014).
Besides, Lockenhoff et al. (2011) reported positive association of conscientiousness and negative association of neuroticism with mental health. On the contrary, caregiver strain and self-efficacy were found to mediate the personality traits and subjective health of caregivers. However, personality might be directly or indirectly associated with physical and mental health as it may incline caregiver to interpret event as threatening or benign (Melo et al., 2011).
Thus, in relatively equivalent situations, some caregivers feel more stressed than others depending on the personality. Caregiving situation is differently affected by personality traits. For instance, the study conducted by Eloise, Tew, Naismith, Pereira and Simon (2013) indicated that caregiver stress and physical symptoms were associated with neuroticism, extraversion and conscientiousness of a caregiver which is in consistence with the study conducted in 2015 by Natasha O’Connor.
Moreover, the benefits or risks of health could be exacerbated by becoming a caregiver. For instance, neurotic individuals who show increased exposure to stressors may experience more harmful effects of caregiving as compared to everyday benign hassles (Melo et al., 2011). Likewise, conscientious person is able to cope well during varied demands of caregiving due to his high level of confidence and organization (Hampson, Edmonds, Goldberg, Dubanoski, & Hillier, 2015). On contrary, merits and demerits of personality traits might be minimized by so pervasive demands of caregiving. This shows
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that subjective health of caregiver is not much affected by personality traits as compared to the health of general population.
Up till now, health implication of personality traits among caregivers has been found to be scarce empirically. Present literature on caregivers of cancer patients, older adults or children has considered only three of the personality traits that assessed all five-factor dimensions (Snyder & Christine, 2015). This is in contrast to hundreds of publications that examined other factors related to caregivers’ health.
In summary, neuroticism has gained a large amount of attention in the limited literature of personality traits. Caregivers who score high on neuroticism tends to show negative emotions and depression throughout the stressful event (Eloise et al., 2013), lower perceptions of caregiving-related benefits, greater caregiver burden and distress (Gonzalez-Abraldes et al., 2013), more sensitivity to caregiving-related stressors, worse subjective mental health and fewer health promoting behaviors (Ferguson, 2013).
Additionally, studies on extraversion indicated that lower negative emotions are linked with the caregiver who is extravert (Sherman, Nave, & Funder, 2013). He is likely to be less sensitive to stressors related to caregiving and have better subjective health (Elios et al., 2013). Moreover, higher levels of agreeableness show a good coping behavior of the caregiver and a better relation with the care recipient whereas positive perceptions are found to be linked with openness for care-related growth and a better caregiving relationship (Lautenschlager, Kirz, Loi, & Cramer, 2013). However, only fewer studies have examined the correlation between openness and agreeableness with the physical and mental health of caregivers.
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A summary of studies by Ferguson (2013) indicated that one’s health is greatly affected by intensity of stressor rather than the duration of stressor. Therefore, person might get stressed due to enduring nature of personality traits that eventually affect the wellness level of an individual (Finch et al., 2012).
Hence, to understand the variation of personality factors that made individuals more resilient and resourceful, or more vulnerable to stress, it is pertinent to learn about human from a socially-embedded perspective through understanding the individual personality in individual, familial, and cultural contexts.