Associations of Temperament and Character with Coping Strategies among Office Workers

Abstract

while younger adults may use support seeking or problem-focused coping strategies. 5 Among the various factors related to choosing a coping strategy, personality plays a major role. [6][7][8][9][10] Personality is, broadly speaking, described as a series of common behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns in an individual that stems from biological and environment aspects. 11 Although there are multiple viewpoints and ways to quantify personality, one widely used model is Cloninger's Psychobiological Model of Personality. 12 Cloninger proposed that personality consists of two parts; temperament, the biological part that is moderately heritable, and character, the psychological part moderately based on the individual's experience in life. 13 Temperament can be further divided into four parts. 12 High novelty seeking (NS) can mean impulsive and exploratory behavior, high harm avoidance (HA) can mean cautious and apprehensive behavior, high reward dependence (RD) can mean sympathetic and sentimental behavior, and high persistence (P) can mean ambitious and overachieving behavior. 12 Character can be divided into three parts. 12 High self-directedness (SD) refers to being responsible and self-accepting, high cooperativeness (C) to being empathic and helpful, and high selftranscendence (ST) to being spiritual and idealistic. 12

Perceived Social Support Partially Mediates the Impact of Temperament and Character on Postpartum Depression

“…The mediation analysis showed that social support could be a partial mediator for postpartum depressive symptoms in high HA subjects, but not in low SD subjects. One possible explanation is the use of different coping strategies between high HA and low SD subjects, which is supported by a recent study using office workers (46). This study suggests low HA is associated with problem-focused coping skills, whereas low SD is associated with emotion-focused coping skills.…”

“…Future study which examines social support specifically affect these specific factors of EPDS is needed. In contrast, high SD subjects had difficulty in utilizing emotion-focused coping skills ( 46 ), and thus their depressive symptoms might be independent of the availability of social support. Intensive psychological care, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, might be effective for those subjects, rather than an increase in social support ( 49 , 50 ).…”