Personality Profiles: A Person-Centered Approach to Assessing Personality Traits and Links to Emotion Regulation Processes.

Abstract

This study aimed to identify personality profiles using dimensions of the five-factor model and examined whether resultant profiles were associated with emotion regulation processes. The participants included a normative sample of 383 (201 females and 182 males) Turkish university-attending emerging adults who were 18 to 25 years old. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was employed to identify distinct patterns of Big Five personality traits. The findings demonstrated that the 3-profile solution proved best-fitting: Resilient (higher openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness and lower neuroticism; N = 183 (97 females), 47.8%), overcontrolled (higher neuroticism and agreeableness, moderate conscientiousness, and lower openness and extraversion; N = 153 (80 females), 39.9%), and undercontrolled (higher neuroticism, extraversion, and openness and lower conscientiousness and agreeableness; N = 47 (24 females), 12.3%). The findings demonstrated that resilients, compared to overcontrollers and undercontrollers, were more likely to engage in cognitive reappraisal. On the other hand, overcontrollers tended to use the expressive suppression strategy more than resilients.