Relationship of the 24-item dysfunctional attitude scale with the temperament and character inventory in healthy subjects.

Background: The 24-item Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS-24) has three subscales to evaluate dysfunctional attitudes predisposing to depression in the areas of achievement, dependency and self-control.

Aim: The purpose of the present investigation was to characterize the three subscales in relation to broad dimensions of personality.

Methods: The subjects were 528 healthy Japanese volunteers. Personality assessment was conducted by the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), which has seven dimensions. The correlations of the DAS-24 subscales with the TCI dimensions were examined by the multiple regression analysis.

Results: All DAS-24 subscales had negative correlations with the self-directedness dimension. However, the three subscales had differential patterns of correlations with the reward dependence, persistence, cooperativeness and harm avoidance dimensions.

Conclusions: The present study suggests that dysfunctional attitudes measured by the DAS-24 are closely related to low self-directedness of the TCI. Also, the differential patterns of correlations with some TCI dimensions support the content-specificity of the three subscales.