Examining how personality type influences symptoms of depression

More than 280 million people live with depression, according to the World Health Organization. People experience the condition in a wide range of ways, with some faring better than others in how they cope with the symptoms.  

In a 2024 Clinical Psychological Science study, APS Fellow Thomas Olino of Temple University and his coauthors investigated whether a person’s personality could affect their experience of depression. This theory, called the pathoplasty model, suggests that people’s unique personality traits might affect how they manage their unique psychopathology.  

In the study, Olino and colleagues explored how personality types might influence the expression of depression. For example, in this model, it could be possible that highly extroverted people with depression have higher energy levels than people with depression who are more introverted.  

This theory had intrigued him for decades, said Olino in an interview. “For me, it was a fun paper to work on because the theory was really driving the work,” he said.  

Previous studies that examined the relationship between depression and personality found that experiencing depression may change an individual’s personality (Klein, 2011) or that one’s personality type might make them more likely to develop certain symptoms of depression (Hakulinen, 2015).  

But there are challenges to studying how pathoplasty relates to symptoms of depression, such as difficulties standardizing the data, so there are fewer studies which examine this model specifically, Olino said.  

“There hadn’t been methodological tools that have permitted this kind of research to be conducted,” Olino explained. “Frequently for the kinds of tests that are needed in order to evaluate that hypothesis, you need to have a binary predictor.” A binary predictor is a variable that can only yield two outcomes, like a true or false question.  

These kinds of variables are relatively simpler to study because the data they produce sorts itself easily. When studying personality, researchers can’t sort all the variables they want to investigate into two simple categories, which makes researching the topic more challenging.  

To get around this, Olino and his coauthors utilized moderated nonlinear factor analysis, which can find patterns across a large group of individuals with unique differences. They fed data from five separate samples measuring personality and depression symptoms into their analysis. The participants ranged in age from late adolescent to elderly and were located across the United States.  

In some samples, researchers used the Big Five model of personality, which sorts a person’s personality according to their levels of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. In other samples, they used the Big Three model, which sorts personality according to levels of negative emotionality, positive emotionality, and constraint. Constraint, in this model, can be thought of as a measure of self-control and discipline.  

The researchers anticipated that participants with high levels of negative emotionality or neuroticism would have higher levels of symptoms like low mood, sadness, and low energy. By contrast, they anticipated that participants with high levels of positive emotionality or extraversion would have lower levels of symptoms like low mood.  

While the team found links between personality and depression symptoms in individual samples within the review, overall, there was little evidence to support the pathoplasty model. This may serve to refocus future research investigating the links between personality and experience of mood disorders, Olino said.  

This could include exploring other models of personality and symptoms of depression. Understanding how one’s personality may influence their experience of a disorder could help clinicians develop better tools to support people living with that disorder down the line.  

“There are a number of more dynamic kinds of factors that can be examined so that we’re able to better understand what kinds of symptoms might precipitate particular symptoms,” Olino said. “And those might lead to better individualization of treatment and care.”  

References 

Hakulinen, C., Elovainio, M., Pulkki-Råback, L., Virtanen, M., Kivimäki, M., & Jokela, M. (2015). Personality and depressive symptoms: Individual participant meta-analysis of 10 cohort studies. Depression and Anxiety, 32(7), 461–470. 

Klein, D. N., Kotov, R., & Bufferd, S. J. (2011). Personality and depression: Explanatory models and review of the evidence. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 7, 269–295.   

Olino, T. M., Schlechter, P., Klein, D. N., Kotov, R., & Seeley, J. R. (2024). Personality and presentation of depression symptoms: A preliminary examination of the pathoplasticity model. Clinical Psychological Science, 0(0).