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Examining the prevalence of type-D personality in an Australian population

journal contribution
posted on 2015-01-01, 00:00 authored by Sharon HorwoodSharon Horwood, Daniel Chamravi, Gregory Tooley
© 2015 The Australian Psychological Society. Objective: Type-D personality is a construct that describes a tendency to simultaneously experience negative emotions and inhibit self-expression for fear of negative social judgement. The link between type-D and poor health outcomes may be partly mediated by two prominent psychosocial mechanisms, poor-quality health-related behaviour and poor perceived-social support. Method: The present study replicated and extended a 2008 UK and Irish prevalence study, utilising a sample from the Australian general population. The study aimed to investigate the relationship between type-D personality and subjective levels of social support, health-related behaviours and neuroticism, as well as examining the estimated prevalence rate of type-D in the general Australian population. Nine hundred and fifty five Australian participants over the age of 18 (194 male and 761 female) completed four measures assessing levels of type-D personality, quality of health-related behaviours, perceived-social support and neuroticism. Results: As hypothesised, the estimated prevalence rate was not found to be significantly different from the rate obtained by Williams etal. (2008). In addition, type-D individuals reported significantly lower perceived-social support and poorer-quality health behaviours than non-type-D individuals. Conclusions: The results of this study provide further support for the association of type-D personality with poor health-related behaviours and poor perceived-social support, as well as demonstrating the applicability of the type-D construct to the Australian general population for the first time. General healthcare applications are discussed, as well as the potential for type-D personality research to influence public illness prevention in general.

History

Journal

Australian psychologist

Volume

50

Issue

3

Pagination

212 - 218

Publisher

Australian Psychological Society

Location

St. Lucia, Qld.

ISSN

0005-0067

eISSN

1742-9544

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2015, Australian Psychological Society