title: Personality attributes of Iranian people who stutter.
abstract: Two recent studies from Australia and Germany have both shown that people who stutter (PWS) have elevated Neuroticism scores on the widely used NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) compared to individuals in a control sample. The two studies showed opposite results, however, for the personality traits Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. One reason for these opposing findings could be that the two studies were conducted in different cultural settings. Given that the effect of different cultural background on the relationship between the NEO-FFI and stuttering remains an open question, we investigated the NEO-FFI scores from 98 PWS and an age- and sex-matched control-group from a less widely studied cultural background (Iran). Overall, the present study showed, in line with a study from Germany, higher Agreeableness, but not Neuroticism, in PWS compared to normally fluent controls. To get further insights into these findings, we also contrasted both samples from Iran with a healthy matched sample from Germany. The resulting cross-cultural differences from these analyses are also discussed in the present paper. Although the present study is limited by a cross-sectional design, and so no causal conclusions can be drawn, the authors discuss whether the replicated elevated Agreeableness scores in PWS might represent a self-defense mechanism to cope with one's own speech handicap.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Language Pathology, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jafari
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Language Pathology, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baziar
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bleek
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reuter
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany. Electronic address: christian.montag@uni-ulm.de.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Montag
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010551:Personality; D010556:Personality Tests; D013342:Stuttering / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Case–control; Cross-cultural study; Germany; Iran; Personality; Stuttering