Interaction of the 'Big Five' Helps Predict Depression

BFAS Inventory

Each of the mentioned personality traits has 2 aspects. Altogether, these traits create an inventory known as the BFAS (Big Five Aspect Scales).

• openness to experience: openness and intellect
• conscientiousness: industriousness and orderliness
• extraversion: enthusiasm and assertiveness
• agreeableness: compassion and politeness
• neuroticism: volatility and withdrawal 

The 'Big Five' has already been studied from different perspectives, and research has also shown that three personality traits—high neuroticism, low extraversion, and low conscientiousness—mitigate each other in a three-way interaction that predicts depressive symptoms in a healthy population.

In this study, a group of researchers from Canada and the USA tested the hypothesis that this effect is driven by three lower-order traits: withdrawal, industriousness, and enthusiasm. For the first time, the authors also examined this interaction in a clinical population.

Assessed Population

Group 1 comprised 376 healthy volunteers. Group 2 consisted of 354 patients diagnosed with ongoing depressive disorder. Personality and depressive tendencies in Group 1 were assessed using BFAS (personality) and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5; depression), while in Group 2, they were assessed using the NEO-PI-R inventory (personality) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; depression).

Study Methodology and Results

Withdrawal, industriousness, and enthusiasm interacted and predicted depressive tendencies in both groups. This effect was robust for both methods of depression assessment (PID-5 and BDI-II) and was not observed for opposing aspects of the studied traits (volatility, assertiveness, and orderliness).

The interaction pattern followed the principle of 'two out of three,' whereby low-risk scores in two of the studied traits 'protect' against a high-risk score in the third trait. The data also support the principle of 'the worst two out of three,' where high-risk scores in two personality traits are associated with the same severity of depression as high-risk scores in all traits.

Conclusion

Empirical studies of personality and psychopathology show that many psychiatric disorders feature maladaptive variants of normative personality traits. The results of this study indicate that the previously discovered interaction of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness actually stems from specific aspects of these traits, observed even in clinical populations. This finding could broaden the understanding of the etiology of depressive disorders and improve diagnostic accuracy and therapy planning. The conclusions emphasize the importance and significance of studying the interactive effects of personality traits in psychopathology.

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Source: Allen T. A., Carey B. E., McBride C. et al. Big Five aspects of personality interact to predict depression. J Pers 2018; 86 (4): 714–725, doi: 10.1111/jopy.12352.