The Relationship between Personality Traits of Temperament and Character and Professional Ethics: The Mediating Role of Psychological Defense Mechanisms

Introduction: Compliance with ethical standards by hospital staff plays a significant role in the treatment process of patients. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of personality traits of temperament and character on professional ethics with the mediating role of psychological defense mechanisms in hospital staff. Material and Methods: The method of this study was descriptive and correlational. The statistical population of the present study was employees of Al-Jazeera Hospital in Riyadh in 2024. Considering the number of the target population, 60 people were selected by simple random method. In this study, the professional ethics questionnaire of Armito et al. (2011), defense mechanisms of Anders et al. (1993) and the personality trait questionnaire of temperament and character of Cloninger (1994) were used. The data were analyzed using the Pearson correlation method and path analysis with SPSS18 and Amos23 software. Results: The findings showed that there is a significant negative correlation between immature mechanisms (-0.24) and neurotic mechanisms (-0.22) with professional ethics at a significance level of 0.01. There is a significant positive correlation between mature mechanisms (0.29), temperament (0.26), and character (0.28) with professional ethics at a significance level of 0.01. Also, psychological defense mechanisms play a mediating role in the relationship between personality traits of temperament and character on professional ethics. Also, the total coefficient of explanation in the direct and indirect paths by personality traits of temperament and character and psychological defense mechanisms on professional ethics was equal to 0.51. Conclusion: This study showed that cognitive and behavioral factors including psychological defense mechanisms and personality traits of temperament and character play a fundamental role in the level of professional ethics of hospital staff.