Exploring the interplay between personality dimensions: A comparison of the typological and the dimensional approach in stress research

Research on the combined effects of the personality dimensions of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness on stress have increased in recent years. Personality typologies, which are based on combinations of high and low scores of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness, have been used. However, the typological approach has been criticized on methodological grounds, because dichotomization of continuous variables produces loss of information and predictive power. The combined effects of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness are still unclear. Because the typological approach is clinically useful, we applied both the typological and the dimensional approaches to a sample of 371 Norwegian physicians in their internship year, to explain stress. The dichotomization of the personality dimensions in the typology produced only a small loss of predictive power when there was a curvilinear relationship between neuroticism and the stress measure. These findings support the usefulness of typologies in predicting stress when compared with dimensional statistical models. Loss of predictive power should be accounted for, and the implications of using the typological approach should be discussed in future studies.