| Harm avoidance | |
|---|---|
| Specialty | Psychiatry |
Harm avoidance (HA) is apersonality trait characterized by excessive worrying; pessimism; shyness; and being fearful, doubtful, and easily fatigued. InMRI studies HA was correlated with reduced grey matter volume in the orbito-frontal, occipital and parietal regions.[1][2]
Harm avoidance is a temperament assessed in theTemperament and Character Inventory (TCI), its revised version (TCI-R) and theTridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) and is positively related to the traitneuroticism and inversely toextraversion in theRevised NEO Personality Inventory and theEysenck Personality Questionnaire.[3] Researchers have contended that harm avoidance represents a composite personality dimension with neurotic introversion at one end of the spectrum and stable extraversion at the other end. Harm avoidance has also been found to have moderate inverse relationships withconscientiousness andopenness to experience in thefive factor model.[3]
The HA of TPQ and TCI-R has four subscales:
It has been suggested that HA is related to highserotonergic activity,[4]and much research has gone into investigating the link between HA and components of the serotonin system, e.g. genetic variation in5-HTTLPR in theserotonin transporter gene.[5]