The tridimensional personality questionnaire in eating disorder patients

Abstract

The Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) was developed to measure a variety of personality variants on three biosocial dimensions, harm avoidance (HA), novelty seeking (NS), and reward dependence (RD), which are thought to be related to serotonin (5‐HJ), dopamine (DA), and norepinephrine (NE) function, respectively. Patients with eating disorders have been reported to have abnormalities in all of these systems, as well as personality variants described by these dimensions. We therefore administered the TPQ to 147 patients with DSM‐III‐R defined eating disorders (110 bulimia nervosa [BN], 27 with anorexia nervosa [AN], and 10 with BN±AN) and compared their scores to those of 350 female controls. When significant, post hoc Bonferroni t tests were performed using alpha = 0.05. All subtypes of eating disorder patients scored significantly higher on HA than controls (p ≤ .0001, analysis of variance. Only patients with BN (±AN) had significantly higher degrees of NS (p ≤ .0001), particularly on the impulsiveness subscale (NS2), although this may, in part, be due to age. No significant differences in total RD were found, although BN patients scored lower on RD3 (attachment vs. detachment) and higher on RD4 (dependence vs. independence) than controls. In addition, AN patients had significantly higher RD2 (persistence vs. irresoluteness) subscale scores. These data support a theory of 5‐HT dysregulation in both types of eating disorders and suggest that further research be done on the role of DA and NE in BN. A© 1993 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Personality characteristics in obesity and relationship with successful weight loss

“…Conversely, patients with anorexia nervosa score high in persistence and have very strict and rigid patterns of food intake. [17][18][19][20][21] Obese persons who sought treatment at our weight management program scored higher in reward dependence and cooperativeness than our sample of obese persons from the community. These personality characteristics are found in people who tend to be dedicated and sociable (high reward dependence score), tolerant, fair and supportive (high cooperativeness score).…”

“…For example, a high score in novelty seeking was associated with binging or overeating, whereas a low score was associated with a low appetite and decreased food consumption. [17][18][19][20][21][22] Moreover, the TCI was able to identify specific components of personality that were associated with a rapid and sustained response to cognitive behavioral therapy for bulimia. 23 The purpose of the present study was to use the TCI to (1) identify differences in personality characteristics between lean and obese persons, (2) determine whether personality characteristics in obese patients seeking weight loss therapy are different from those not seeking weight loss therapy and (3) determine whether specific components of personality are associated with successful behavioral therapy-induced weight loss.…”

Altered Insula Activity during Visceral Interoception in Weight-Restored Patients with Anorexia Nervosa

“…This idea is particularly applicable to anorexia nervosa (AN), a devastating condition with the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness (Harris and Barraclough, 1998). AN is associated with somatic preoccupation with visceral gut sensations (eg, fullness; Perez et al, 2013), as well as heightened fear and anxious rumination (Frank et al, 2012;Startup et al, 2013), and enduring anxiety-related personality traits such as harm avoidance (Brewerton et al, 1993;Fassino et al, 2002). Because of this, influential theoretical accounts about the neurobiology of AN have recently highlighted the likely role of interoceptive regions in the insula in the pathophysiology of the disorder (Kaye et al, 2009(Kaye et al, , 2013Nunn et al, 2011).…”

Temperament, mood, dietary restraint, and bulimic symptomatology in college women

“…However, conflicting findings have been reported with regard to BN and other dimensions of temperament. For example, some studies have reported higher levels of impulsive tendencies in individuals with BN than in non-symptomatic control individuals (Brewerton, Hand, & Bishop, 1993;Bulik, Sullivan, Weltzin, & Kaye, 1995;Waller et al, 1993), but others have not replicated this finding (Casper et al, 1992;Lilenfeld et al, 2000;Pryor & Wiederman, 1996). Thus, a complete understanding of the relationship between temperament and BN remains a challenge.…”