engleski

Comparing Relationship Between Personality Traits and Ways of Coping in Samples of Pregnant Women and Students

Previous studies showed that personality predicted coping with stress, especially in young samples and samples under stress. The goal of the study was to relate personality traits and ways of coping in a normal population, in two different samples in specific stressful situations: students and pregnant women, and to compare the patterns of these relations. Undergraduate and graduate students (N = 186) and pregnant women (N = 51) anonymously filled out the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-FFI ; measuring neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) and Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WOC ; consisting of 8 subscales: Confrontive Coping, Distancing, Self- Controlling, Seeking Social Support, Accepting Responsibility, Escape-Avoidance, Planful Problem Solving, Positive Reappraisal). Correlational and regression analyses were performed. The results showed that personality traits were related to ways of coping in the sample of both students and pregnant women, with somewhat different patterns. The consistent finding in both samples was that neuroticism was positively associated with Accepting Responsibility and Escape-Avoidance, while consciousness was positively associated with Planful Problem Solving and negatively associated with Escape-Avoidance. Extraversion had a different role in coping in the sample of students and pregnant women, while openness to experience and agreeableness were not related to ways of coping. To conclude, neuroticism was more related to disengagement coping styles, while consciousness and extraversion were more related to engagement coping styles.

personality traits ; coping ; pregnancy

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