Correlation study between personality traits and cognitive distortions

Abstract

Personality is the unique way in which the individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life. In psychological terms, personality refers to our characteristic way of responding to individuals and situations. It is a general principle of psychology that people operate in the world based on, to a large extent, assumptions about themselves, others, the environment, and the future. When these assumptions or attributions are inaccurate, unnecessarily negative, and interfere with optimal functioning, they often are referred to as cognitive distortion or dysfunctional thinking patterns. With the help of the present study, the relationship between personality dimensions on NEO-FFI and the dimensions on the Cognitive Distortion Scale (CDS) will be assessed in undergraduate and postgraduate students, in the age group of 18-24 years, with 200 sample size, using purposive sampling. To investigate whether the corresponding components of NEO-FFI and CDS are correlated or could predict the other domains by analyzing the results. All the big five factors of personality and domains of cognitive distortions were found to be correlated and males and females differed in the domains of neuroticism, extraversion etc. Majorly neuroticism predicted the dimensions of cognitive distortions.