Gender differences and temperaments affective, impulsivity, sensation seeking and traits of schizotypal personality

Abstract

Background

In the literature, the growing interest to the gender such as variable expression and treatment of psychiatric disorders, it is emerged in a considerable number of fields. Gender differences have become the subject of numerous investigations, in order to verify how the sex variable might affect the psychopathology.

Aims

We propose to evaluate the role of gender differences in the development of traits of schizotypal personality, impulsivity, SS and their influence in the definition of temperamental component.

Materials

We recruited 173 healthy subjects, between 18 and 65 years, who completed the following tests: BIS-11; SPQ; SDS; SAS; HCL-32; TEMPS-A; SSS.

Results

The bivariate analysis by gender shows scores for the hyperthymic temperament significantly higher among males compared to the scores for the female sex, which, in turn, presents higher scores for cyclothymic. The levels of anxiety and depression are higher among women while levels of sensation seeking are higher among men. Although the male gender is associated with a greater sensation seeking, compared to women, it is not showed a higher correlation with the different types of impulsivity. We can find significant differences to the subscales for the SPQ between the two genders.

Conclusions

The examination of these data may suggest the existence of differential specific features of gender that, in the presence of psychopathology, become more easily detectable; particularly in the male gender, it seems to emerge more impulsive behavior and activation compared to the female gender in which instead it seems to prevail a tendency to emotionality and introversion.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.