Robustness of Personality and Affect Relations Under Chronic Conditions: The Case of Age-Related Vision and Hearing Impairment

• Published in: The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences Vol. 67; no. 6; pp. 687 - 696
• Main Authors: WAHL, Hans-Werner, HEYL, Vera, SCHILLING, Oliver
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cary, NC Oxford University Press 01-11-2012
• Subjects: Activities of Daily Living; Adaptation, Psychological; Adult. Elderly; Affect; Age differences; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Anxiety Disorders - epidemiology; Anxiety Disorders - psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Causality; Comorbidity; Comparative analysis; Correlation analysis; Developmental psychology; Extraversion; Extraversion (Psychology); Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Gerontology; Hearing; Hearing Disorders - epidemiology; Hearing Disorders - psychology; Hearing impairment; Hearing loss; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Leisure Activities; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Neuroticism; Personality; Persons With Hearing Impairments - statistics & numerical data; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Quality of Life - psychology; Sensory perception; Vision Disorders - epidemiology; Vision Disorders - psychology; Visually Impaired Persons - statistics & numerical data; Human; Neuroticism; Affect affectivity; Vision disorder; Auditory disorder; Personality; Positive affect; Vision and hearing impairment; Eye disease; Chronic; Extraversion introversion; Extraversion; ENT disease; Elderly; Age; Negative affect
• ISSN: 1079-5014; 1758-5368
• DOI: 10.1093/geronb/gbs002

Relations between personality and affect are generally regarded as robust. Extraversion is closely linked to positive affect (PA), but not to negative affect (NA), whereas neuroticism is closely linked to NA, but not to PA. We argue in this work that the stress experience associated with age-related vision and hearing impairment may alter this commonly found pattern as compared with sensory unimpaired (UI) older adults.
We analyzed data from a sample of severely visually impaired (VI; N = 121), severely hearing impaired (HI; N = 116), and a control condition of sensory UI (grand age mean: 82 years; N = 150).
Based on a structural equation modeling approach, we found that the relationship between extraversion and PA was higher in the UI as compared with the sensory impaired groups. In contrast, the strong linkage between neuroticism and NA was not affected by sensory status. Furthermore, we observed a meaningful negative relation between extraversion and NA only in the VI group.
Findings support the argument that the relationship between personality and affect deserves qualification when chronic vision and hearing impairment is present.