Emotional and personality predictors that influence the appearance of somatic complaints in children and adults.

Background: Personality and emotional factors may be contributing to the emergence of somatic complaints. The purpose of this study was to analyse the combined contribution of emotional awareness, moods and personality to somatic complaints in children and adults.

Method: Participants were 1,476 children (M= 9.90 years, SD= 1.27, 52.10% girls) and 940 adults (M= 32.30 years, SD= 11.62, 64% women) who were administered self-reports. Analysis was performed using fuzzy qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), an analytical technique that enables in-depth analysis of how a series of causal conditions contribute to a given outcome.

Results: Emotional awareness, moods and personality account for 59% of high levels of somatic complaints in children and 69% in adults. In both samples, interaction between low levels of emotional awareness, high levels of negative moods and low levels of positive mood, high levels of neuroticism and low levels of the other personality factors appear to lead to high levels of somatic complaints (children: raw coverage = .18, consistency = .95; adults: raw coverage = .15, consistency = .97).

Conclusion: A similar contribution of emotional and personality components was found to explain somatic complaints in children and adults.