Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 545–548

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Short Communication

Temperament and Character Inventory – Revised (TCI–R) 1 yearafter the earthquake of L’Aquila (Italy)

Alessandro Rossi a,⇑, Cristina Capanna a, Francesca Struglia a, Ilaria Riccardi a, Paolo Stratta b

a Università de L’Aquila, Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale, Sezione di Psichiatria, L’Aquila, Italyb ASL de L’Aquila, Dipartimento di Salute Mentale, L’Aquila, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 17 January 2011Received in revised form 12 May 2011Accepted 12 May 2011Available online 8 June 2011

Keywords:Temperament and Character Inventory –Revised (TCI–R)Harm Avoidance (HA)Persistence (P)Earthquake

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.05.016

⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Dipartimento diversità de L’Aquila, Via Vetoio, Coppito II, 67100 L’Aq433602.

E-mail address: alessandro.rossi@cc.univaq.it (A. R

The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the impact of L’Aquila earthquake (Italy) on the Temperamentand Character Inventory – Revised (TCI–R) administered 1 year after the earthquake to a communitysample of 375 subjects exposed to the earthquake and 480 non-exposed. Exposed people showed varia-tions in the adaptive response to stress with higher Persistence (P) and lower Harm Avoidance (HA)dimensions among adult and lower self directedness (SD) and higher Harm Avoidance (HA) in older peo-ple. No differences in young adults were seen. Temperament and character dimensions are sensitive totrauma exposure in different ways in different age groups.

� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

People exposed to traumatic events experience strong physicaland psychological distress: those trauma-related disorders havebeen reported in various studies on victims of disasters (Brewin,Andrews, & Valentine, 2000; Dell’Osso et al., in press; Galea, Nandi,& Vlahov, 2005; Parker, Bahrick, Fivush, & Johnson, 2006; Vigil &Geary, 2008).

There are considerable individual/subjective differences in psy-chological reactions to trauma: a wide range of studies showedthat different coping strategies are important predictors of sizeand outcomes of these kinds of reactions (Briere & Elliott, 2000).Other dispositional variables play an important role in mediatingbetween disaster and psychological adaptive/maladaptiveresponse.

Many studies considered the relationship between personalitydimensions and post traumatic stress symptoms. Gil and Caspi(2006) found that people who showed high levels of Harm Avoid-ance (HA) before the trauma were at increased risk for the develop-ment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the next6 months.

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Medicina Sperimentale, Uni-uila, Italy. Tel./fax: +39 0862

ossi).

A report by North, Hong, Suris, and Spitznagel (2008), based onfire victims, revealed that symptoms of PTSD are related to HA,self-transcendence (ST) and self-directedness (SD) dimensions ofthe Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Finally, in arecent study, patients with PTSD showed significantly higherscores on HA and ST subscales and lower scores on SD and Cooper-ativeness (C), when compared to controls. Because most studies inthis area assessed personality characteristics following a traumaexposure and trauma may bring changes in personality, it is noteasy to disentangle causes and consequences of trauma exposure(Bramsen, Dirkzwager, & van der Ploeg, 2000).

On April 6th 2009, at 3:32 am, an earthquake (Richter Magni-tude 6.3) struck L’Aquila, Italy, a town with a population of72,000 and a ‘local health’ (i.e. Azienda Sanitaria Locale) of105,000 inhabitants. L’Aquila earthquake caused the death of 309people, with more than 1600 individuals injured, among which200 were severely injured and hospitalized, and 66,000 displaced.Many buildings collapsed in the town of L’Aquila: large parts of itwere completely destroyed.

We hypothesized that exposure to this trauma would have dif-ferentially affected temperament and character domains. Sincetemperament and character configurations are related to one an-other in a complex but systematic way (Cloninger, Svrakic, &Svrakic, 1997), we expected variation and/or adaptation in morethan one dimension.

546 A. Rossi et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 545–548

The aim of this study was to assess the Temperament and Char-acter Inventory – Revised (TCI–R) in a population exposed to anearthquake in comparison to a control population living in a closerarea but not directly exposed. Because age may affect personalitymeasures (Brandstrom, Richter, & Przybeck, 2001; Caspi, Roberts,& Shiner, 2005; Read, Vogler, Pedersen, & Johansson, 2006) this fac-tor has been taken into account to evaluate its influence followinga disaster in the statistical analysis.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Procedure and participants

The questionnaire was collected thanks to a collaboration withstudents in general psychology courses at the University of L’Aqui-la. Students were briefed on general aims of the research and in-structed on how to administer the instruments.

The initial sample was limited to 985 subjects, 427 exposed and551 not exposed: 7 subjects did not answer the question ‘whetherpresent or not present’ at the moment of the earthquake. Datawere collected during the month of April 2010.

Each student was requested to collect questionnaires and socio-demographic data from four people, equally distributed for genderand age. Since students lived in a wider area including the areastruck by the earthquake, it was not possible to strictly match ‘ex-posed’ and ‘not exposed’ so that at the end of data collection thenumber of non-exposed individuals exceed the number of thosewho were exposed to the earthquake (n. 480 vs. n. 375). The ex-posed population came from people living in the town of L’Aquilawho received assistance in the emergency conditions that pre-vailed. All residents were directly ‘‘exposed’’ to the disaster, thoughthis clearly introduces a broad range of possible individual expo-sures (Galea et al., 2005; Leon, 2004). All people were displacedin locations within a 150 km area from the town or in tents locatedin the urban area. Even 12 months after the earthquake, only 25%of the inhabitants were able to return to their homes. All experi-enced loss of property, damage to home, 5% were trapped underrubble with minor physical consequences, 15% lost a known per-son. Because only a small number of people experienced severepersonal damage, these were excluded from the analysis.

Non-exposed individuals lived outside the area described aboveand they have not been affected by the earthquake in any way.

2.2. Measure

The TCI–R (Cloninger et al., 1997) is a self-administered instru-ment that contains seven domain scales: four temperament scales

Table 1Means and standard deviation of TCI–R scores in people exposed and not exposed to the

TCI–R scores Exposed (n = 375)

Age class

18–30(n. 234)M/F88/146

31–50(n. 80)M/F32/48

51–65(n.61)M/F37/24

Novelty seeking 105.61 ± 12.22 100.20 ± 13.67 94.90Harm Avoidance 96.15 ± 16.05 95.13 ± 18.65a 98.59Reward dependency 101.57 ± 13.99 100.14 ± 15.84 101.04Persistence 119.11 ± 16.56 125.85 ± 18.3a 120.58Self-directedness 133.74 ± 15.84 137.84 ± 18.03 136.48Cooperativeness 129.81 ± 15.97 131.71 ± 19.55 131.52Self-trascendence 70.44 ± 13.94 74.22 ± 17.27 73.30

aSee Table 2.

(i.e., novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persis-tence) and three character scales (i.e., self-directedness, coopera-tiveness, self-transcendence). Each main scale has from three tofive ‘facet’scales. For each of the 235 items, respondents indicatedthe extent to which they usually act or feel on a 5-point scale rang-ing from ‘very false for me’ (1) to ‘very true for me’ (5). Five controlitems have been introduced in this version. The present authorizedversion of the TCI–R was translated from English into Italian byprof. Marco Battaglia at the University of Milan, School ofPsychology.

Complete TCI–R endorsement was obtained from 375 exposed(157 males and 218 females, mean age 32.5 years ± 13.7 SD) and480 not exposed (258 males and 222 females; mean age39.8 years ± 14.1 SD) people, respectively. 24% of the total samplewas married, 12% had secondary school degree, 61% had highschool degree and 15% university or post-graduate degree. Therewere no between group differences in the marital status andeducation.

Statistical analysis was carried out by a Multivariate Analysis ofVariance (MANOVA) since several correlated dependent variables(i.e., TCI–R domains) were analyzed: following this overall statisti-cal test on this set of variables, single univariate ANOVA measureson each outcome were then obtained. Analysis of variance for ageclasses, gender and interaction was performed with post hoc t-testanalysis.

3. Results

TCI–R domains from exposed subjects (n. 375) vs. non-exposed(n. 480) (Table 1) were analyzed by a Multivariate Test (Wilks’Lambda for exposure ns; Wilks’ Lambda for age class: .87, F(14,1672) = 8.00, p = .000; Wilks’ Lambda for gender: .83, F(7836) = 22.96, p = .000; Wilks’ Lambda for interaction gender byexposure ns; Wilks’ Lambda for interaction exposure by age class:.97, F (14,1672) = 1.56, p = .08) (Table 2).

Since the exposure interaction by age class revealed a trend forstatistical significance, we examined univariate F tests for eachTCI–R variable to explain the meaning of any single effect. In otherwords, we deeply looked at those specific dependent variables thatcontributed to significant overall effect.

We evaluated TCI–R findings by 2-way ANOVA tables for suchfactors as exposure vs. non-exposure, age classes (i.e., 18–30,31–50 and 61–65), gender and interactions.

The 2-way ANOVA revealed the age factor being statisticallysignificant (p < .05) for NS and 3 character domains, with NSdecreasing and character domains increasing (Tables 1 and 2). De-spite no differences in the exposure factor, there was a statistically

earthquake in different age classes.

Not exposed (n = 480)

Age class

18–30(n.176)M/F100/76

31–50(n.164)M/F66/98

51–65(n.140)M/F92/48

± 10.94 107.03 ± 13.74 99.17 ± 15.48 96.31 ± 13.88± 21.32a 96.14 + 18.37 100.17 + 18.70 93.15 + 17.86± 14.1 100.23 ± 14.81 98.95 ± 14.57 97.66 ± 14.97± 18.44 119.51 ± 18.14 119.20 ± 20.54 123.52 ± 21.11± 15.90a 133.49 ± 17.19 135.80 ± 18.33 143.19 ± 17.39± 17.69 127.23 ± 16.06 131.69 ± 17.32 132.17 ± 16.57± 15.94 69.76 ± 13.76 71.79 ± 15.74 74.69 ± 16.59

Table 2Analysis of variance for effects of gender, age, and exposure by age class interaction on TCI–R scores reported in Table 1.

Gender Age Exposure by age class interaction

df F p df F p df F p

TCI–R scoresNovelty seeking 1, 854 2.08 ns 2, 854 39.93 .000 2, 854 .56 nsHarm avoidance * 1, 854 65.86 .000 2, 854 .38 ns 2, 854 5.01 .007Reward dependency 1, 854 44.61 .000 2, 854 1.28 ns 2, 854 .61 nsPersistence * 1, 854 12.59 .000 2, 854 3.48 ns 2, 854 3.06 .047Self-directedness * 1, 854 10.97 .001 2, 854 7.00 .001 2, 854 3.22 .040Cooperativeness 1, 854 28.64 .000 2, 854 4.44 .012 2, 854 .187 nsSelf-transcendence 1, 854 27.18 .000 2, 854 9.29 .000 2, 854 1.23 ns

Exposure factor: ns; exposure by gender interaction: ns; gender by age class interaction: ns; exposure by gender by age class interaction: ns.* Post hoc t-test (exposed vs. not exposed people): HA (18–30): df 408, t = .007, p = ns; HA (31–50): df 242, t = 1.97, p = .049; HA (51–65): df 239, t = 1.95, p = .052. P (18–30):df 408, t = .23, p = ns; P (31–50): df 242, t = 2.45, p = .015; P (51–65): df 239, t = .96, p = ns. SD (18–30): df 408, t = .15, p = ns; SD (31–50) : df 242, t = .82, p = ns; SD (51–65): df239, t = 2.66, p = .008.

A. Rossi et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 51 (2011) 545–548 547

significant interaction for HA, Persistence (P) and SD. At post hocanalysis exposed people showed a trend for higher HA and lowerSD in the older age-class, while showing lower HA and higher Pin middle-age adults (Tables 1 and 2). No differences were seenfor young adults.

4. Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first study comparing TCI–Rdimensions in a population exposed to a severe natural disaster.Evaluation was carried out in 2 samples with similar demographicfeatures and from the same geographical area. They only differ onthe exposure to the earthquake. It is reasonable that differences inTCI profile could be related to such a kind of exposure. All peopleliving in the area struck by the earthquake were directly ‘‘exposed’’to the disaster, though this clearly introduces a broad range of dif-ferent individual exposures (Galea et al., 2005; Leon, 2004). In oursamples we argued a ‘‘random allocation’’ of people with different‘‘vulnerability to stress’’ so that differences are reasonably due toemotional consequences/sequelae of the trauma.

Since trauma may bring about changes in an individual’s per-sonality (Beltran & Silove, 1999), to consider these post traumapersonality measures as a reliable representation of pre traumapersonality may be problematic. Furthermore, environmentalinfluences may produce short-term changes, but genetic factorscontribute to individual set points to which individuals return(Read et al., 2006).

However, it is difficult to compare our sample with other stud-ies because it comes from a general population and we have noother clinical interview. It is conceivable that we are measuringconsequences of circumstances that represent significant chal-lenges to the adaptive resources of the individual, and pose signif-icant challenges to individuals’ way of understanding the stressrelated events. Some people may answer with more adaptive ormaladaptive TCI changes. It refers to psychological changes experi-enced as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life cir-cumstances. We report that exposed people within 31–50 yearsshowed higher P and lower HA than non-exposed. Persistent per-sons tend to perceive frustration and fatigue as a personal chal-lenge. They do not give up easily and, in fact, tend to work extrahard when criticized or confronted with mistakes in their work.Persistence has been reported to relate to distress tolerance (Leyro,Zvolensky, & Bernstein, 2010) and it is considered an adaptive con-struct (Serpell, Waller, Fearon, & Meyer, 2009). The pattern of highP and low HA could be a more adaptive reaction to trauma in ourmiddle age sample. Skodol (2009) further theorizes that persis-tence could be considered a potentially protective aspect withinthe concept of resilient personality.

Older exposed people showed a different pattern of responsecharacterized by low SD and trend toward higher HA than theirnon-exposed counterparts. SD taps personality aspects related toidentity, responsibility and achievement motivation: high scoreson SD can be seen as indicative of mature and well-integrated per-sonality functioning (Cloninger, Svrakic, & Przybeck, 1993). SD isnegatively correlated to trait anxiety and neuroticism. HA reflectsa personality dimension associated with inhibition of behaviorand it is correlated with anxiety and neuroticism (De Fruyt, Vande Wiele, & Van Heeringen, 2000; Jiang et al., 2003). In this casethe personality response seems to be more maladaptive.

Even if we have no pre-earthquake data for the sample popula-tion, the comparison group living in a closer socio-economical andgeographical status, could constitute the best comparison groupavailable.

Interestingly, there were no differences between exposed andnon-exposed populations as a whole, but statistically significantdifferences emerged when age was taken into account: older peo-ple being more sensitive to the distressing event as also reportedby Ticehurst, Webster, Carr, and Lewin (1996). It is not surprisingthat citizens of different age experience differently the same kindof disaster. Changing perceptions, cognitions, resources, roles andresponsibilities, all of them related to personality development,are likely to influence reaction to natural trauma.

Interestingly, current findings are in line with an independentstudy assessing the pharmacoepidemiology of drug prescriptionsthrough an administrative database after L’Aquila earthquake.Comparison of variation between the semester before and afterthe earthquake revealed a 37% increase in new prescriptions ofantidepressants and a 129% increase of antipsychotics, especiallyin older people and females (Rossi, Maggio, Riccardi, Allegrini, &Stratta, 2011). These two findings identify the same parallel andperhaps related conditions such as dysfunctional psychologicaladaptation in older people after trauma.

The different pattern of adaptive/maladaptive TCI variation sup-ports the view that age could differentially affect personality adap-tation to a traumatic event.

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