the relationship between self-report mood and personality

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The relationship between self-report mood and personality

Julie Aitken Harris*, Adrienne Lucia

Department of Psychology, Brescia University College, 1285 Western Road, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 1H2

Received 15 July 2002; received in revised form 11 October 2002; accepted 30 December 2002

Abstract

Past research pertaining to personality and mood has been concerned with the relationship betweenspecific personality traits and specific mood states. The present examines the relationship between self-report measures of personality and mood. University students (82 males, 118 females), completed a per-sonality questionnaire consisting of 20 personality bipolar adjectives and a mood inventory measuring sixmood dimensions. Factor analysis of the personality adjectives revealed four factors, which were thencorrelated with the mood scales. Results of this analysis revealed significant correlations between thepersonality factors and mood dimensions suggesting that personality is related to some aspects of mood.# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Mood; Affect; Personality

1. Introduction

Building upon an understanding of the relationship between personality and mood helps todevelop a better understanding of how the two constructs are related for areas such as the pre-diction of behaviour (O’Malley & Gillette, 1984), as well as the question surrounding the stabilityof mood and personality (Ardelt, 2000; Valiant, 1993). Self-report personality has been shown tobe stable across time periods such as 6 years (Costa & McCrae, 1988; Sanderman, & Ranchor,1994), 9 years (Gustavsson, Weinryb, Goransoon, Pederson, & Asberg, 1997), and up to 19 years(Carmichael & McGue, 1994). Less investigated has been the stability of mood, although someresearchers have suggested that mood may be consistent over time (for example, see McConville& Cooper, 1997). If mood and personality are stable constructs, then meaningful relationshipsmay be found between the two areas.

0191-8869/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00039-4

Personality and Individual Differences 35 (2003) 1903–1909

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-519-432-8353; fax: +1-519-679-6489.

E-mail address: [email protected] (J.A. Harris).

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Watson and Tellegen (1985) studied the structure of affect and found two broad categories:positive affect which includes positive moods such as excited, elated, peppy, and lively, andnegative affect which includes such moods as nervous, anxious, annoyed, and depressed. In recentyears there has been a wealth of studies examining the relationship between positive and negativeaffect and personality (for examples, see Argyle & Lu, 1990; Emmons & Diener, 1985; Francis,1999; Francis, Brown, Lester, & Philipchalk, 1998; Hepburn & Eysenck, 1989; Larsen & Ketelaar,1991; Watson & Clark, 1992). McCrae and Costa (1991) examined the relationship between affectand five factors of personality including extraversion (sociability, activity, confidence), neuroti-cism (moodiness, irritability, emotionality), conscientiousness (organization, carefulness), agree-ableness (sympathy, understanding, warmth), and openness (creativity, innovation). Openindividuals were found to experience more positive and negative affect. Agreeable and con-scientious individuals were reported to experience more positive affect and less negative affect. Inaddition, it was found that neurotic individuals experience more negative affect and less positiveaffect, whereas extraverted individuals experience more positive affect and less negative affect.Other investigations have demonstrated a positive correlation between depression and neuroti-cism (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Kircaldy, 1984; Larsen, 1992), a negative correlation betweenextraversion and depression (Saklofske, Kelly, & Jazen, 1995; Kircaldy, 1984), and a positiverelationship between neuroticism and anxiety (Cantwell, 1990; del Barrio, Moreno-Russet,Lopez-Matinez, & Olmedo, 1994). In addition, extraversion has been found to correlatesignificantly with vigorous moods (Kircaldy, 1984).In contrast to examining relations between specific personality traits and specific mood states,

research has also focused on exploring the broad relationship between personality and mood.O’Malley and Gillette (1984) examined the relationship between a self-report personality scalemeasuring eight bipolar personality dimensions and a mood scale measuring six bipolar moodstates. A canonical correlation was computed between the set of personality variables and the setof mood variables, resulting in three significant variates. The first canonical variate paired theneurotic personality with anxious, depressed, angry, and confused moods. The second canonicalvariate related lack of compulsion, lack of energy, and introversion with quiescence and fatigue.The third canonical variate paired femininity and empathy with the moods of contentedness andcheerfulness. Taken together these results suggest that personality-mood relations occur over abroad range of personality-mood combinations. Similar to the study by O’Malley and Gillette(1984), the present study examines the broad relationship between self-report personality andmood.

2. Method

2.1. Participants and procedure

Two hundred university students (82 men, 118 women) with a mean age of 19.79 years(S.D.=2.75, range=17–42 years) volunteered to participate in the study. Individuals first com-pleted a self-report 20 adjective rating scale (Paunonen & Jackson, 1987), in which each adjectiverepresents one of the 20 personality dimensions from the Personality Research Form (Jack-son, 1984). Responses were given using a 9-point scale representing the bipolar nature of

1904 J. Aitken Harris, A. Lucia / Personality and Individual Differences 35 (2003) 1903–1909

each dimension (e.g. 1=arrogant to 9=meek). Below each adjective is a brief description ofthe trait.Following, individuals completed the Profile of Mood States Bi-Polar Form (POMS-BI; Lorr &

McNair, 1982). This questionnaire consists of 30 adjectives describing one of six mood states:vigor-activity, tense-anxiety, fatigue-inertia, depression-dejection, confusion-bewilderment, andanger-hostility. Participants respond to the adjectives (e.g. tense, angry, efficient, etc.) using a5-point scale, in which 0=not at all and 4=extremely. Participants were instructed to respond tothe adjectives in terms of how well the adjective described their mood during the past week.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Intercorrelations among mood scales

The six mood state scales were computed following the scoring key of the POMS-BI (Lorr &McNair, 1982). Table 1 lists the means and standard deviations for the mood scales as well as theintercorrelations. Vigor was found to be significantly and negatively related to scores on the otherfive mood scales: tension, fatigue, depression, confusion, and anger. The intercorrelationsbetween these five mood scales were all positive and moderate in magnitude.

3.2. Personality factor structure

Responses to the 20 personality adjectives were factor analysed using Principal ComponentsAnalysis with varimax rotation. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test of sampling adequacy was0.706. Four factors were extracted based on visual analysis of the scree plot and accounted for46% of the variance. Factor I was composed of the adjectives: arrogant, aggressive, changeable,defensive, exhibitionistic, adventuresome, impulsive, fun-loving, and status-seeking, and waslabeled as measuring Extraversion. Factor II was composed of the adjectives: ambitious, precise,persistent, methodical, organized, and inquisitive, and was given the label Conscientiousness.Factor III was composed of the adjectives: meek, affiliative, even-tempered, open, sympathetic,

Table 1Intercorrelations among mood scales

Vigor-activityM=10.43S.D.=4.51

TensionM=6.47S.D.=3.64

FatigueM=7.33S.D.=4.43

DepressionM=4.71S.D.=3.76

ConfusionM=2.41S.D.=3.38

Tension-anxiety
�0.23** Fatigue-inertia �0.40** 0.50** Depression-dejection �0.34** 0.58** 0.46**
Confusion-bewilderment
�0.18* 0.56** 0.40** 0.61** Anger-hostilityM=4.52
S.D.=3.55

�0.18*
0.39** 0.33** 0.49** 0.38**
* P<0.05; **P<0.001 (two-tailed).

J. Aitken Harris, A. Lucia / Personality and Individual Differences 35 (2003) 1903–1909 1905

and sentient, and was labeled Agreeableness. Factor IV was defined by the adjectives: dependent,predictable, and support-seeking, and was labeled Neuroticism. The rotated factor loadings forthe personality adjectives are presented in Table 2 and are similar to results found by Harris, Ver-non, Olson, and Jang (1999). Computation of the factor scale scores were based on aggregating thelargest absolute factor loadings for each factor such that an adjective only appeared in one factorscale score (i.e. Factor I=changeable+assertive+exhibitionistic�cautious+impulsive+fun-loving+status-seeking). Similar results to those reported below were found when factor scores,computed using the regression approach, were correlated with the mood scale scores.

3.3. Personality and mood

The four-factor scale scores from the factor analysis of the personality adjectives were corre-lated with the six mood scales. The correlation values are presented in Table 3. Results suggestthat extraverts are more vigorous and active and experience less fatigue-inertia. These findingssupport those reported by Kircaldy (1984), and correspond with the definitions of the extravertedpersonality dimension (for example, see Costa & McCrae, 1992; Eysenck, 1972; Goldberg, 1993;John, 1990). Conscientious individuals were found to report less confusion-bewilderment andscore lower on depression-dejection. The results found with the confused mood scale are not sur-prising in that conscientiousness is a personality trait characterized by organization, persistence,

Table 2

Rotated factor matrix for personality adjectives

Factor

I
II III IV
Meek vs Arrogant
�0.41 0.05 0.58 0.12 Ambitious vs Unaspiring 0.16 0.66 0.11 �0.25
Affiliative vs Aloof
0.36 �0.00 0.58 0.28 Aggressive vs Even-tempered 0.47 �0.06 �0.57 �0.05 Independent vs Dependent 0.10 0.03 �0.02 �0.70
Changeable vs Predictable
0.49 �0.00 0.16 �0.44
Precise vs Unexacting
0.01 0.56 �0.30 0.22 Defensive vs Open 0.17 0.03 �0.49 0.37 Assertive vs Compliant 0.58 0.34 �0.23 �0.06
Persistent vs Resigning
�0.04 0.59 0.14 �0.12 Exhibitionistic vs Shy 0.67 0.05 �0.05 �0.00 Cautious vs Adventuresome �0.61 �0.11 0.04 �0.06
Impulsive vs Methodical
0.54 �0.48 0.03 �0.12 Sympathetic vs Unsupportive �0.04 0.21 0.69 0.26 Organized vs Disorderly �0.16 0.60 0.11 0.23
Fun-loving vs Serious
0.50 �0.36 0.32 0.13 Sentient vs Unsensual 0.15 �0.01 0.51 �0.11 Status-seeking vs Unpretentious 0.42 0.33 �0.12 �0.01 Support-seeking vs Self-sufficient 0.01 �0.13 0.31 0.64
Inquisitive vs Unstudious
0.07 0.49 0.07 �0.30
Loadings >0.40 are in bold.


and achievement (McCrae & Costa, 1991), trait dimensions that by definition lead to less con-fusion and uncertainty. The negative correlation between conscientiousness and depression issupported by the findings reported by McCrae and Costa (1991) who found conscientiouspersonality scores to correlate positively with positive affect and life satisfaction and negativelywith negative affect. Similarly, Watson and Clark (1992) report a positive correlation betweenconscientiousness, in particular with the achievement facet, and positive affect, even after con-trolling for the variance in positive affect which could be accounted for by extraversion.Scores on the agreeableness personality factor were found to correlate negatively with the

anger-hostility mood scale. This finding corresponds with the definition of agreeable individualsas friendly, cooperative, and docile, while less agreeable individuals are aggressive and angry(Costa & McCrae, 1992). In addition, the present results suggest that individuals with high scoreson the neuroticism factor are more depressed, similar to the findings reported by Eysenck andEysenck (1985) as well as others such as Larsen (1992). Neuroticism in the present study was alsofound to have a significant correlation with the mood scale of tension-anxiety, supporting pastfindings of a positive relationship between neuroticism and anxiety (Cantwell, 1990; del Barrio etal., 1994), and in general support the finding of a relationship between neuroticism and negativeaffect (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Kircaldy, 1984; Larsen, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1991; Watson& Clark, 1992).In conclusion, the present study further demonstrates that mood and personality are related

constructs. These findings lend support to the temperamental model described by Watson andClark (1992) in which personality and affect may be from a common underlying source. Deter-mining links between personality and mood may in the future lead to a reconceptualization of theconstructs in which both personality and affect are seen as facets of each other or as falling withina common classification or measurement system.

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Table 3Correlations between personality factors and mood scales (values in parentheses represent partial correlations

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Extraversion
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* P<0.05; **P<0.01; ***P<0.001, two-tailed.


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