Pre-traumatic personality as a predictor of post-traumatic stress disorder among undergraduate students exposed to a terrorist attack: A prospective study in Israel

The present study addresses the issue of the role played by the pre-traumatic personality, as evaluated by Cloninger’s Tridimensional Personality Theory (1987), in predicting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following traumatic exposure. The initial sample consisted of 185 undergraduate students evaluated for a different aim two weeks prior to a terrorist explosion on a bus heading to their university. One week after the explosion, the sample was assessed to determine actual exposure: 81 reported being exposed and thus constituted the final cohort, re-evaluated at six months after the exposure both in terms of personality profile and to determine formal diagnosis of PTSD. A logistic regression analysis showed that age and the harm-avoidance personality dimension (i.e., avoiding novel stimuli) were positively associated with the risk for developing PTSD, and that the novelty-seeking dimension (i.e., seeking novel stimuli of excitement) was negatively associated with this risk.