The relationship between personality and mood: comparison of the BDI and the TCI

The complex relationship between personality and mood remains undefined. The Unified Biosocial Theory of Personality, proposed by Cloninger, integrates social and biological components of personality into a theory which accounts for personality variations between individuals along dimensions of temperament and character. The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was developed as a psychometric instrument to measure temperament and character factors. Cloninger’s theory postulates that all aspects of personality interact influencing the development of depression. The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) is a widely used psychometric component in the diagnostic process. The present study investigated the relationship between the TCI, as a measure of personality, and the BDI, as a measure of depression, in a sample (N=472) of undergraduate psychology students. In particular, the personality scales of Harm Avoidance (HA) (r=0.44, P<0.001), Self-Directedness (S) (r=−0.54, P<0.001), and Cooperativeness (C) (r=−0.26, P<0.001) are significantly correlated with BDI scores.