Relationships Among Personality, Coping Style, and Negative Emotional Response in Earthquake Survivors

Abstract

We investigated the relationships among the severity of negative emotional response, personality, and coping style of adults affected by the Wenchuan earthquake. Participants completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, the Coping Style Questionnaire, and the Mental Health Scale 2 weeks after the earthquake. Most survivors in the high negative emotion group suffered property damage, saw corpses, had relatives who were killed, or witnessed houses collapsing. Compared with the low negative emotional response group, the high negative emotional response group demonstrated more prominent openness to fantasy, excitement seeking, tender-mindedness, and openness to feelings, and less prominent gregariousness, compliance, competence, deliberation, and optimism. Further, people in the high negative emotional response group tended to use the coping styles of avoiding problems, fantasizing, self-blaming, and asking for help. The traits of openness to fantasy and optimism and the coping styles of problem avoidance and self-blame predicted whether individuals experienced high or low negative emotional response. These findings can help governing authorities to make a timely intervention after a natural disaster in order to reduce the effects of negative emotional response for earthquake survivors.