Personality predictors of health behaviours as means of affective regulation among Slovak health professionals

Abstract

Many health professionals regularly experience severe stress during their practice. The way they cope with the resulting emotions may create additional health concerns. The aim of this study is to assess the relationships between Big Five personality traits, sensation seeking, and health behaviours as means of affective regulation among health professionals. Data were collected in 2010 among emergency medical dispatchers, paramedics and nurses across Slovakia (N=206; 22.3% males; mean age 39.4±9.0 years). The Big Five traits, sensation seeking and affective regulation styles (alcohol use, smoking, and physical exercise) were measured by Ten Item Personality Measure (TIPI), Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS), and Measure of Affect Regulation Styles (MARS), respectively. The associations between the personality traits and health behaviours were calculated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. No associations between Big Five traits and health behaviours were found, except for openness to experience, associated with alcohol use (r=.15; p<0.05) and physical exercise (r=.25; p<0.001). Sensation seeking was positively associated with all three behaviours (r’s between .22 and .29; all p-values under 0.01) but within the sub-scales, the relationships varied widely by particular behaviour. Sensation seeking was associated with both positive and harmful health behaviours as means of affective regulation. This suggests that highly sensation-seeking individuals might benefit from health promotion activities that provide greater arousal, in order to compensate for the pleasure derived from the use of psychoactive substances. However, further studies need to explore this, and confirm the causal nature of the given relationships in the first place.