Background: Better understanding of factors associated with medical school performance is necessary to improve admission processes and to help students succeed in their career. This study follows a group of Iranian med students during their first 2.5 years of medical education, to evaluate their academic success in accordance with their demographic, cognitive and non-cognitive characteristics. ...

Recent studies have suggested a role of two polymorphisms of the dopamine D(4) receptor gene (DRD4 exon III and -521C/T) in the modulation of personality traits such as "novelty seeking" or "extraversion", which are supposed to be modulated by individual differences in dopaminergic function. However, several replication studies have not provided positive findings. The present study was performe...

The aim of this study was to determine the differences in personality traits between individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Bipolar Disorder (BD) during a depressive episode, when it can be hard to differentiate them. Data on personality traits (NEO-FFI), mental disorders (Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview Plus) and socioeconomic variables were collected from 245 respo...

We prospectively investigated the effect of personality on sexual quality of life (SQOL) in 49 epilepsy patients (23 women). Fifteen patients had generalised epilepsy and 34 had focal epilepsy. SQOL was determined using the Derogatis Interview for Sexual Function - Self Report Inventory (DISF-SR) and personality was studied using the NEO five-factor inventory (NEO-FFI). Lower extraversion and f...

INTRODUCTION This paper presents personality testing data from final stage applicants to the NASA astronaut program. Questions addressed include whether personality predicted final selection into the astronaut corps, whether women and men demonstrated typical gender differences in personality, and whether three characteristic clusters found in other high performance populations replicated in th...

BACKGROUND Alcohol dependence is associated with deficits in decision making and increased impulsiveness. Therefore, we compared decision making in abstinent alcohol-dependent people ("abstainers") and matched healthy individuals ("comparison group") to determine whether impulsiveness or personality traits play a role in decision making. METHODS Abstainers (n = 40) were recruited from treatme...

OBJECTIVES This article reports comparisons of the Giessen Test (GT) with the NEO-Five-Factor-Inventory (NEO-FFI) based on a dimensional as well as on a typological approach. METHOD Data were collected from 1673 subjects (aged between 18 and 96 years) constituting a representative sample of the German population. RESULTS The results indicate only moderate agreement (ranging from .25 to .61)...

The present study applied item response theory (IRT) to the NEO five factor inventory (NEO-FFI) completed by a community based sample of adolescents. The results revealed that many of these personality items may not be discriminating well, with some traits demonstrating greater reliability than others. Furthermore, the threshold values highlighted that the majority of the items had skewed respo...