The Five-Factor Model Personality Traits in Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis

Highlights

•Schizophrenia and control subjects differed in all the personality traits measured by the NEO-FFI.
•Schizophrenia patients scored a higher N and lower E, O, A and C than controls.
•These effect sizes were not affected by gender distribution or mean age in each study, expect for gender effect for A.
•TCI may be more suitable for detecting distinctive personality traits in schizophrenia than NEO-FFI.

Abstract

Personality is one of important factors in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia because it affects patients’ symptoms, cognition and social functioning. Several studies have reported specific personality traits in patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy subjects. However, the results were inconsistent among studies. The NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) measures five personality traits: Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A) and Conscientiousness ©. Here, we performed a meta-analysis of these personality traits assessed by the NEO-FFI in 460 patients with schizophrenia and 486 healthy subjects from the published literature and investigated possible associations between schizophrenia and these traits. There was no publication bias for any traits. Because we found evidence of significant heterogeneity in all traits among the studies, we applied a random-effect model to perform the meta-analysis. Patients with schizophrenia showed a higher score for N and lower scores for E, O, A and C compared with healthy subjects. The effect sizes of these personality traits ranged from moderate to large. These differences were not affected by possible moderator factors, such as gender distribution and mean age in each study, expect for gender effect for A. These findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have a different personality profile compared with healthy subjects.

http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781(15)30606-5/abstract

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com.sci-hub.io/retrieve/pii/S0165178115306065

I am surprised that O(openness) was reckoned to be lower in people with schizophrenia . A lot of posters here have scored high on that factor.
Could it be that high openness is something found in the relatively high functioning people who post here?
Perhaps openness is very much seen as “intellect” which might explain why people here and non schizophrenics score higher/high but lower functioning people with schizophrenia score lower.

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thanks firemonkey for your post here. very very interesting to me.

judy

Lol hopefully it didn’t really occur to none of them that maybe experiencing psychotic symptoms affects your personality, not the other way around.

I agree with @Turnip, my personality changed after my psychotic break.

Yeah I imagine I wasn’t very agreeable, polite, open or outgoing when I thought the government was going to kill us all and nobody would believe me. In fact if I remember right, I was very rigid and paranoid and hostile. You know, because I was having paranoid psychosis. It makes people paranoid. As in not very open or agreeable. Lmao.

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:smile_cat: just read the study, they said that high pre-morbid neuroticism and low pre-morbid extroversion had been documented prior to this, but there was no similar research on openness, concientiousness or agreeableness.

It’s a meta analysis of about 10 different studies. They said that while correlations for every other factor stood up when one study was dropped, agreeableness did not, also that agreeableness was significantly influenced by gender (though it didn’t specify how.)

It said that the strongest effect was seen in neuroticism, then extroversion, then concientiousness, then agreeableness, then openness. N and E were large effects, C, A and O medium. It also noted that while self-transcendance is positively correlated with openness, people with schizophrenia tended to score much higher on self-transcendance than controls did.

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Isn’t this very common in the prodromal phase? Would this still happen in these people if there had been no prodrome?

You make an interesting point. Does personality drive a tendency towards psychosis or as Minnii and you both indicate does psychosis affect personality.

No idea. I’m just summarizing the study, ma’am :smile_cat:

http://www.personalitytest.org.uk/

Although not diagnosed with schizophrenia I am reckoned to have had psychosis. I score high neuroticism and low extroversion . Though couldn’t that combination also be seen in a depressed person or someone with social anxiety?

I think personality dysfunction such as that seen in Borderline Personality Disorder can cause symptoms that are technically psychosis, but not the same thing as experienced in Schizophrenia. There’s a difference between a paranoid delusion that your lover is cheating on you because you have abandonment issues, and being paranoid that the government has put a mind control device in your house or that demons are stalking you.

So basically yes I think certain extreme psychological dysfunctions can cause types of psychosis technically, but there’s a reason that some clusters of symptoms are set apart and given a different umbrella label.

I think pushing the notion that personality can affect psychotic symptoms in Schizophrenia could be dicey as then the real underlying message would be that, if that’s the case, then you don’t actually have Schizophrenia, do you?

I think the studies on personality of people with SZ are fine and may shed light on how the illness can affect personality, but

is a somewhat ludicrous claim. They seem to have nothing that shows that personality alone does affect SZ symptoms, and them claiming otherwise right out the gate like it’s a fact is not cool.

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Extraversion - relatively low
Agreebleness - relatively high
Conscientiousness - above average
Neuroticism - above average
Openness - relatively high

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Extraversion - relatively low
Agreebleness - relatively high
Conscientiousness - relatively low
Neuroticism - relatively high
Openness - relatively high

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Extraversion- relatively low
Agreeableness - relatively high
Conscientiousness- relatively low
Neuroticism - relatively high
Openness- relatively high

I tend to vary on openness depending on the questions asked.

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We’re twins! :smiley_cat:

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Flashbacks in PTSD are another example of psychotic experiences, technically in that they can be a “break from reality” in some cases, that are caused psychologically and not by an illness of the brain organ.

Hallucinations in Alzheimer’s are an example of psychosis that is caused by a disease of the brain organ.

Personality disorders that involve delusions would provide examples of psychosis with a psychological origin.

Schizophrenia so far seems to be a brain disease, although research is still in process in getting all the potential sub-illnesses sorted out beneath the big umbrella.

So if personality were proven to cause or influence symptoms specifically of Schizophrenia, that would indicate a psychological origin of the psychotic experiences, which would then indicate that it’s not actually Schizophrenia at work.

OR it can open up an even bigger can of worms with the notion that personality disorders are in some part illness and some part psychological. I’ve read some material on brain differences noted in several BPD patients, although it had to do with emotional arousal and not psychosis.

My pdoc says it’s common for schizophrenia patients to have some personality disorder attached.

I think I have/have had some borderline traits but wouldn’t say I qualify for a full diagnosis(that the pdocs have missed).
I certainly think the psychosis in schizophrenia is more severe and not so episodic.

I am diagnosed with paranoid but fit avoidant better and would say schizotypal is a borderline one for me.

At what point I was diagnosed with schizophrenia with personality disorder. I was never told which one. It was back in the early 80s.