Type D personality and stress

Everybody reacts differently to stressful and other situations in life. To understand why, psychologists have tried to define personality profiles. Persons with a Type D personality, characterized by negative thinking and low social interest, seem to be especially vulnerable to stress.

Characteristics of the Type D personality profile

Type D personality is characterized by two things. If you have a Type D personality, you will have negative emotions frequently, and you will limit social contact with others. You will worry a lot, and feel anxious on a regular basis. You will have fewer social contacts and tend to feel less comfortable with people you don’t know.

In psychological tests, Type D individuals score highly on negative affectivity and social inhibition. Negative affectivity basically means that you experience negative emotions a lot. These can be depressed mood, anxiety, hostile feelings, and feelings of stress. It is quite similar to the neuroticism personality type according to the Big Five classification. If you score high on negative affectivity, you may have a negative view of yourself, have a lack of self confidence, and pay attention to negative things happening around you. It is almost as if you are scanning your surroundings for signs of problems that may arise any minute.

Social inhibition, the second characteristic of Type D personality, is that you would see potential dangers in having contact with others. Such dangers include disapproval by others of what you are saying or doing, or that the others may not appreciate you for who you are. It is a form of social anxiety. With a Type D personality, you would feel inhibited, tense, uncomfortable, insecure and stressed when you are with other people, especially with strangers. These feelings might also be found in introverts according to the Big Five classification, but on the other hand, introverts do not necessarily feel stressed or uncomfortable in the presence of others. Introverts may enjoy good company, but do not express and manifest themselves that much.

Assessing whether you score high for Type D personality

Psychologists have developed a questionnaire with which you can determine yourself whether you tend to have Type D personality. These questions deal with mood, emotions, and sociability. For each question you can answer with false, rather false, neutral, rather true and true, with points being assigned from 0 (false) to 4 (true).

A low score on questions 1 and 3, and a high score on the others, make you fall in the Type D personality profile. Most people, however, will land somewhere in the middle score range. Almost everybody can relate to one of the 14 questions to some extent, so you may pick up a point or two while going through the list.

It is important to realize that personality types are not set in stone. Even if you end up with a high score, there are still parts of your character that may not qualify for a Type D personality. Also, you may behave differently depending on the person you are with, perhaps feeling close to only a few good friends, to which you will open your heart without hesitation when you experience depressive thoughts. Or perhaps certain aversive circumstances give you stress and all the symptoms of Type D personality, whereas others you can shake off rather easily because you know from experience how to deal with them.

In relation to stress management, the only purpose of assessing someone’s personality type is to find clues of how you may react to stressful conditions, and how to lower your stress levels. Stress experience is something personal, so that one technique to reduce stress may work for you, but not for somebody else. In no way should personality types become stereotypes!

Type D personality and stress

People with a high score on Type D personality are more likely to experience negative emotions, and try to inhibit these negative emotions while avoiding social contacts (to avoid being confronted with the negative emotions). Type D individuals will experience situations in which negative emotions occur as stressful. Examples include the loss of control (a strong stressor!), fear, anxiety and helplessness. These situations will activate the stress reactions in the body.

Negative affect (as neuroticism) has a strong correlation with the presence of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood and saliva. In laboratory tests, cortisol levels were found to increase dramatically during public speaking, or while performing a mathematical task before a jury. Even the anticipation of a problem is already sufficient to make cortisol concentrations rise.

HPA axis function and Type D personality

The abnormally high cortisol levels in blood and saliva of individuals with Type D personality suggest that the activity of the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (HPA axis) works in a different way than in people with other personality profiles. The HPA axis is activated when the stress starts, and leads to the production of cortisol. Cortisol helps to redistribute energy throughout the body to deal with the problem that causes the stress (the stressor). Normally, cortisol will shut down the HPA axis again once the stress is over, and cortisol levels drop again. When the stress becomes chronic, cortisol will remain high, and the HPA axis continues to be active. This is a prominent problem in depression, where the negative feedback of cortisol to switch off the HPA axis doesn’t work properly. As Type D individuals are more stressed, anxious, and depressed relatively often, it seems that the cortisol feedback to the HPA axis is impaired. This would explain the episodes of depression in Type D.

Stress management of individuals with a high score for Type D personality

If you have a Type D personality, you will experience more stress than people with other personality types. You will thus also be at higher risk for developing psychiatric and medical disorders, such as depression, headaches, and cardiovascular diseases.

Type D individuals may therefore benefit from stress reduction techniques. This will not only bring their stress levels down, but also improve mental and physical health in general. There are all sorts of techniques and strategies available, ranging from cognitive behavioral therapy and social skills training to breathing exercises, various forms of meditation, and exercising. For example, regular exercise can reduce stress, anxiety and depression. It will also enhance the ability of handling daily stress, improve the quality of sleep, enhance libido, improve glucose tolerance and fat metabolism. Antidepressants are at times prescribed to limit the typically exaggerated responses to aversive stimuli, to make one more confident in social settings, and to decrease hostility towards others.

So there are plenty of things you can do to make your life more enjoyable when you have a Type D personality. You will not change your personality (personalities are rather fixed for life), but you will be able to deal with the aspects of your personality that may be bothering you better.