PREDICTABILITY OF PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS ON PERCEIVED STRESS AND COPING STYLES AMONG MIZO COLLEGE STUDENTS

Abstract

Personality has been believed to affect the way individuals perceive stress and how they cope with it. This paper reports the predictability of personality on perceived stress and coping styles among two hundred and forty Mizo students (120 extraverts and 120 neurotics), who were screened out using Maudsley Personality Inventory. Incorporating a between-subjects design, it was hypothesized that significant correlations among the measures as well as predictability of personality on the behavioral measures would be established. Contrary to previous researches, results failed to evince any significant gender effects on the measures. Extraversion is significantly and negatively related to neuroticism, perceived stress, emotion-oriented coping, and avoidance-oriented coping. Neuroticism is significantly and negatively related to stress, but positively and significantly related to task-oriented coping and emotion-oriented coping. Moreover, personality is found to significantly predict perceived stress and coping styles. Findings corroborate the link between personality, stress and coping styles and thus substantiate the already established connotation of the variables on the sampled Mizo population.