Coping can be defined as the reaction to harm or distress individuals take to reduce stress [1]. Depending on the form of distress and the method of coping, coping may be efficient and able to reduce stress, or it may be unsuccessful and sometimes cause even more stress [2]. There are many variables that dictate what kind of coping strategy people use. Coping strategies that express emotions were associated with situations that focused on loss, and wishful thinking was associated with situations involving facing a threat [3]. Vitaliano et al. [4] reported that men may use more emotion-focused coping strategies, although their findings were not consistent with those of other studies. Older people tend to use more emotion-focused coping strategies, while younger adults may use support seeking or problem-focused coping strategies [5]. Among the various factors related to choosing a coping strategy, personality plays a major role [6-10].

Personality is, broadly speaking, described as a series of common behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns in an individual that stems from biological and environment aspects [11]. Although there are multiple viewpoints and ways to quantify personality, one widely used model is Cloninger’s Psychobiological Model of Personality [12]. Cloninger proposed that personality consists of two parts; temperament, the biological part that is moderately heritable, and character, the psychological part moderately based on the individual’s experience in life [13]. Temperament can be further divided into four parts [12]. High novelty seeking (NS) can mean impulsive and exploratory behavior, high harm avoidance (HA) can mean cautious and apprehensive behavior, high reward dependence (RD) can mean sympathetic and sentimental behavior, and high persistence (P) can mean ambitious and overachieving behavior [12]. Character can be divided into three parts [12]. High self-directedness (SD) refers to being responsible and self-accepting, high cooperativeness (C) to being empathic and helpful, and high self-transcendence (ST) to being spiritual and idealistic [12].

Personality and coping strategy both play independent and interactive roles in influencing physical and mental health [14]. Moreover, recent studies have suggested that personal temperament and character could be closely associated with the coping strategy in response to stress [15,16] and progression of medical diseases [16,17]. In An et al.’s study [18], NS, SD, and cooperativeness were associated with stress level in Korean medical school students. In addition, NS was associated with an avoidance coping strategy [18]. Briskness, perseverance, sensory sensitivity, emotional reactivity, and endurance were associated with the exacerbation of clinical symptoms in patients with asthma [17]. Relative to alcoholic patients with short term abstinence, alcoholic patients with long term abstinence showed a higher level of HA and emotion-oriented coping [19].

Although it is well known that personality is a factor in coping, the extent of that relationship is unclear [14]. There is evidence that coping strategies are moderately stable in a given situation [20,21]. There are also studies that show that people might have a tendency to choose coping strategies out of habit [22]. Whether coping strategies are dynamic, everchanging processes or there is a coping strategy that individuals tend to use regardless of their situation, there is no doubt that personalities have a significant influence on the type of coping strategy one uses [14]. Unfortunately, the current evidence base for the relationship between personality and coping strategies is based on studies with a relatively small number of participants, and these studies usually focus on very specific groups or situations. Therefore, in order to further elucidate the relationship between personalities and coping strategies, we expanded the number of study participants and examined a large group of office workers in Korea.

In summary, high persistence, high cooperativeness, high self-transcendence, as well as low harm avoidance were associated with using a problem-focused coping strategy. Being female, and having high novelty seeking, high reward dependence, and high self-transcendence were associated with usinga support-seeking coping strategy. In addition, having high novelty seeking, high self-transcendence, and low self-directedness were associated with using emotion-focused coping strategy. Lastly, being female, and having high novelty seeking, high persistence, cooperativeness, and high self-transcendence were associated with using a hopeful-thinking coping strategy.

People that mostly use PRO may be confronted by the stress itself [14,25]. They should make steps to remove the stress or diminish its impact [14,25]. As reported in the current study, the coping trends of people with PRO are associated with lower HA, as well as higher P and ST scores. The HA score of TCI represents avoidance of risky or stressful situations [12]. This result is consistent with a past survey of 4,355 Korean individuals that found that lower HA and higher P to be associated with a better stress response [26]. PRO is known to be mostly used adaptively in workplace situations and was associated with better job satisfaction and mental well-being in nurses and public servants [27-30]. This may mean that people with lower HA and higher P might be suitable for working in situations with high stress.

In contrast to PRO, people that mostly use EMO aimed to minimize distress triggered by stressors [14,25]. For reducing distress or escaping from stressful situation, people utilizing EMO used a wide range of response from self-soothing (relaxation) to the expression of negative emotions (e.g., yelling or crying) [14,25]. The coping methods of EMO are associated with higher NS and lower SD temperament scores. The NS scores of the TCI are known to be associated with the expression of emotion, being quick tempered, and impulsivity [31]. The SD scores of the TCI were reported to be negatively associated with mood changes in patients with major depressive disorder [32]. There are multiple studies that show that emotional exhaustion, which is one of the major symptoms of burnout, is related to EMO [33,34]. There has been debate on whether emotional exhaustion causes people to use EMO or situations or people that use EMO have a high chance of emotional exhaustion [35]. Devebakan et al. [36] showed that low SD scores were significantly associated with burnout, and those with low scores often thought of themselves as worthless. Furthermore, Yazici et al. [37] showed that high NS was positively correlated with burnout. This may mean that people with high NS and low SD scores on the TCI are already a vulnerable group for burnout; the use of EMO might be one of the factors that make them vulnerable to the situation. Further research is needed to determine whether this coping strategy is maladaptive in burnout situations.

People using SUP may handle their situation by asking for help from their friends, family, or colleagues [25,38]. This type of coping strategy is known to be effective in relieving stresses from the workplace [39,40]. Our study found high NS and RD to be associated with SUP, with SUP having a stronger correlation with RD. This is to be expected as a previous study showed RD to be associated with social attachment [13]. It is noteworthy to mention that although there are many studies that show SUP helps reduce the symptoms of burnout [41-44], NS has been positively associated with burnout and RD has had mixed results [37,45].

People using HOP focus on managing the negative emotions caused by the problem rather than the problem itself [46]. Although there is evidence that HOP results in higher levels of negative mood and stress in the work environment [47,48], HOP is not harmful if the situation cannot be changed [49]. HOP is said to be maladaptive only when it prevents usage of more adaptive coping strategies [49]. Our study found that HOP is positively associated with high NS, P, C, and ST. Josefsson et al. [50] found that high NS, P, and ST are the main factors in predicting changes in personality with age. As personality tends to mature with age, these trait and character groups can be seen as most likely to mature [50]. Furthermore, high C and SD is said to show psychological maturity [50], although our data failed to show a correlation with high SD. This seems to show similar properties with hope theory, which states that hope is an important factor in change and maturation [51,52]. To summarize, our data show that individuals with the temperament and character that are most likely to lead to maturation may have a tendency to use coping strategies involving hope, which is also a core factor in maturity [50-52].

Our study is significant in that it shows the correlation between the trait and characteristics or personality and coping strategies using linear regression in a large number of subjects. Our results show that there may be specific personality features guiding what kind of coping strategy an individual might use in a given situation. There are particular jobs where some coping strategies are more or less preferred than others [27,30,33,34,39-45,47,48]. With this information, an individual’s personality can be used to guide the person to a more stress-free work environment where they may have a better chance of using adaptive coping strategies than in other situations. Furthermore, some diseases have specific coping strategies that are correlated with a better outcome [1,17,20,24,53]. Personality information could be used to enhance a doctor’s judgment in predicting the patient’s outcome.

Our study has a few limitations. First, coping is a complex phenomenon with varying definitions and evaluation methods depending on the researcher [54]. Our study is based on the works of Folkman and Lazarus [23], which may make it difficult to compare our results with other studies based on different coping theories. Second, this is a cross-sectional study. For a better understanding of the relationship between temperament, character, and coping strategies, a longitudinal study may be needed.

In conclusion, our study showed the influence of temperament and character on coping strategies using hierarchical linear regression analyses. Multiple subscales of temperament and character were significantly able to influence the coping strategies, explaining a moderate proportion of the variance. This information can be used to guide people to jobs better suited to their personality or coping strategy and predict patient outcomes in specific situations.