Relationship Between Personality Traits and Physical - Social Anxiety in Obese Women who are Applying for Bariatric Surgery

Obesity is a multifactorial disease defined by excessive adiposity, posing a health risk byincreasing the risk of noncommunicable diseases. We aimed to investigate the relationship between personalitytraits and physical-social anxiety in overweight women seeking bariatric surgery.

An applied and descriptive-correlational design was used in this cross-sectional study. Theparticipants were overweight women who had applied for bariatric surgery and went to the hospital; a totalof 110 people were selected through convenience sampling. The participants completed questionnaires ondemographic characteristics, personality (neuroticism-extroversion-openness [NEO] personality inventory),and physical-social features. Data were analyzed using SPSS software via regression and correlation analysisat a significance level of P≤0.01.

We found a positive relationship between neuroticism and physical-social anxiety (P≤0.01). Conversely,extraversion, agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness exhibited negative associations with physicalsocial anxiety (P≤0.01).

Our study indicates that neuroticism is a positive and significant predictor of physical-socialanxiety, while extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness are negative predictors of physicalstress. These findings highlight the importance of considering personality traits in understanding the physicalsocial anxiety of overweight women seeking bariatric surgery.