Influence Of Symptom Feedback And Personality Trait On Psychological Symptoms Perception

The extreme phenomenon in psychological help-seeking that some individuals need but not seeking psychological help and others without problems but frequently seeking is because they may reduce symptom perception or exaggerate symptom perception in the first phase of Phases-Decision-making Model of psychological help-seeking psychological symptom perception phase. Physical symptom perception research and the symptom perception model indicate that the bias of symptom perception is related to personality traits. The purpose of this study was to explore and demonstrate which personality trait leads to symptoms perception bias.The study consists of two parts: Study 1 look for the correlation of personality traits and psychological symptoms to explore the possible personality trait that leads to symptoms perception bias. However, does the high correlation indicate accurate symptom or symptom perception bias? Study 2 use social psychology experiments to demonstrate the influence of personality trait on psychological symptom perception bias. In order to separate the perception bias from true symptoms, researcher introduce symptoms feedback variable. Study select depression representative of psychological symptoms, and use a pretest-posttest design. Researchers expected that the severe and normal feedback not based on the actual measurement results will lead to the symptoms of depression increased or reduced. If this personality trait would really give rise to symptoms of perceived bias, in severe feedback group, the individuals whose score is higher in this personality trait will increase further, and in the normal feedback group, who have low scores will be reduced even lower.Study 1 use 16PF and SCL-90 for the correlation research, correlation analysis showed Emotional Stability, Social Boldness, Perfectionism have significantly high negative correlation with all symptom factors, and Vigilance, Tension, Apprehensiveness have significantly high positive correlation. Multiple regression analysis showed Anxiety trait and symptom factors related to the maximum, and the difference with Tension trait is significant. Study 2 demonstrates the influence of Anxiety on depression perception. Covariance analysis showed that the main effect of symptom feedback is significant. Severe feedback aggravates perceived symptoms; normal feedback and real feedback alleviate symptoms, not without feedback. Correlation analysis showed that Anxiety trait have high significantly correlation with the margin of pre-test and post-test.Conclusion: Anxiety exaggerates psychological symptoms perception.