Personality and Coping Styles

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between personality and coping styles in a sample of students from the University of Tehran. A correlational analysis was performed to assess the kind of association exist among five personality dimensionsincluding neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness with coping styles of problem-focused and emotional-focused. Three hundred and seventy eight students (176 boys, 202 girls) were included in this study. All participants wereasked to complete Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and Tehran Coping Styles Scale (TCSS). Analysis of the data involved both descriptive and inferential statistics including means, standard deviations, t-tests, pearson's correlation coefficients andregression analysis. The results revealed that neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness can predict changes of problemfocused positive emotional focused, and negative emotional focused coping styles; openness can predict changes of problem-focused and negative emotional focused coping styles; and agreeableness can onlypredict changes of negative emotional focused coping style. It can be concluded that personality characteristics will influence the way people cope with stressful life events. Results and implications are discussed.