Behavioural cues of personality in Parkinson's disease

Abstract

Purpose: To determine if there were observable cues of personality to be found in the appearance and expressive behaviour of six men and six women with Parkinson's disease.

Method: Participants completed a personality measure and engaged in an individual, videotaped interview. Four trained raters measured the expressive behaviour demonstrated in the videotapes. A correlational design was used to explore associations between self-reported personality and measures of expressive behaviour.

Results: In this sample, more eyebrow furrowing indicated significantly higher levels of Neuroticism and less formal dress indicated significantly higher levels of Openness to Experience. These associations remained large and significant after controlling for the effect of disease severity.

Conclusions: Whereas previous research has focused on the detrimental effect of Parkinson's disease symptoms on first impressions, this study explored the potential for accurate first impressions of personality by identifying observable cues of personality. Findings suggest that in early stages of Parkinson's disease there may be plausible and intuitive cues of personality present in expressive behaviour.