Childhood Hearing Impairment, Gender, and Trait Neuroticism as Independent Predictors of the Occurrence of Hearing Problems in Adulthood

The possible association between personality and hearing problems may occur for various reasons. Personality traits may manifest themselves in a lifestyle that can adversely affect hearing. Equally early hearing loss could affect personality development. This study explored psychological, biomedical, and social factors in childhood and adulthood associated with the occurrence of self-reported hearing problems in adulthood.

In total, 4828 participants with complete data on parental social class at birth, childhood hearing impairment measured at age 7 years and cognitive ability accessed at age 11 years, educational qualifications obtained at age 33 years, the Big-Five-Factor personality traits measured at age 50 years, current occupational levels and self-reported hearing problems at age 54 years were included in the study. The authors first examined the characteristics of the study population. Second, correlation matrix of all the variables used in the study was examined. Third, they carried out the logistic regression analysis using STATA version 14 using self-reported hearing problems in adulthood as the dependent variable.

Descriptive analysis showed that cohort members who had professional or managerial family background and had highest educational qualification (university degree) with current professional occupation tended to report less hearing problems. There were also sex differences: men reported more than women on hearing problems (12.7% and 7.9% respectively). Also, participants who had hearing impairment in childhood were more likely to have hearing problems in adulthood. Parental social class, current occupational levels, personality traits Emotional Stability (low Neuroticism) and Conscientiousness as well as gender were all statistically significantly associated with the occurrence of hearing problems in adulthood (p < 0.05 to p < 0.001).

Logistic regression analysis showed that among all psychological, biomedical and socio-demographic factors in childhood and adulthood examined, gender, childhood hearing impairment, and trait Neuroticism were the only significant and independent predictors of the outcome variable.

In conclusion, this study showed there were few demographic or personality trait predictors of adult hearing problems. Indeed, the only correlate in the data was trait Neuroticism, or low Emotional Stability which inevitably might have been affected by a lifetime of communication difficulties associated with hearing impairment of many kinds.

Article by Helen Cheng and Adrian Furnham, from UK and Norway.

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