Inferring personality traits of clients with Parkinson's disease from their descriptions of favourite activities.
OBJECTIVE
To explore the extent to which practitioners effectively use cues from clients' verbal descriptions of their favourite activities to form accurate impressions of the personality of clients with Parkinson's disease.


METHODS
Ninety-nine practitioners from disciplines of occupational, physical and speech therapy, nursing or medicine.


METHODS
Six men and six women with Parkinson's disease completed a self-report measure of personality and were individually interviewed regarding their favourite activities. The practitioners viewed 2-min segments of those videotaped interviews and provided judgements of the clients' personality.


METHODS
The NEO-Five Factor Inventory and a coding scheme to describe characteristics of clients' favourite activities.


METHODS
Clients' self-reported personality was correlated with the activity characteristics to identify the degree to which each characteristic was a cue of personality. Practitioners' judgements of personality were correlated with the activity characteristics to identify how heavily the practitioners weighted each cue. These two sets of weightings were compared using Pearson's correlations to determine whether practitioners used an appropriate cue strategy related to the activity descriptions.


RESULTS
Practitioners appropriately used the personality cues found in the clients' favourite activity descriptions to assess the traits of Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness (r = 0.66, r = 0.60, and r = 0.55, respectively, all p < or = 0.02). Practitioners appeared to use less effective cue strategies for the traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion.


CONCLUSIONS
Clients with Parkinson's disease appear to express their personality in their descriptions of favourite activities, and practitioners appear to make use of these expressive verbal cues effectively for some aspects of personality.
Lyons
Kathleen Doyle
KD
Center for Psycho-Oncology research, Dartmouth College Hanover, NH, USA. Kathleen.D.Lyons@Dartmouth.edu
Tickle-Degnen
Linda
L
DeGroat
Emily J
EJ
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007899:Leisure Activities; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D010552:Personality Assessment; D010555:Personality Inventory