Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/95131267379
Omri Riss Chbarbi
Omri Riss Chbarbi is a sophomore music major whose interests lie in keyboard performance, musicology, cultural exchange and mental health awareness. During his time at Wesleyan, Omri has explored his interests in a diverse range of disciplines and found himself truly enamored with psychology, music and education/pedagogy. In addition to these academic interests Omri enjoys participating in mindfulness practices such as tai-chi and buddhist meditation as well as various musical ensembles such as the Indonesian Gamelan and some student led groups. Throughout his life a multitude of circumstances and events has led Omri to be an avid propagator of mental health openness and awareness and he greatly looks forward to presenting his findings on the association between diagnosed generalized anxiety/panic disorder and optimism!
Abstract: In the field of psychology, personality is assessed through the five-factor or “big five” personality test. There seem to be relationships between certain areas of this “big five” personality assessment and various anxiety disorders. Currently, research has shown that many anxiety disorders are linked with a higher presence of personality traits in the neurotic area as well as a lower presence of traits in the conscientious area. Optimism is a personality trait that is difficult to define using the current “big five” model and despite there being existing research associating personality areas and anxiety disorders, this research is unable to definitively answer whether there will be a relationship between anxiety disorders and optimism and what that relationship might be. The present study aims to test these questions by using data from the AddHealth Wave V dataset which contains questions measuring participants’ attitudes towards good/bad things happening to them using a Likert scale to create a composite optimism score as well as a question that records whether participants have been diagnosed with anxiety/panic disorder. Regression results reveal that after controlling for age, major depression diagnosis, and gender there is an association present between whether someone was diagnosed with anxiety/panic disorder and how optimistic they are. In addition to diagnosed anxiety/panic disorder, diagnosed major depressive disorder and gender also appear to be predictors of optimism. Although an association is found, the impact of the predictors on optimism is negligible in practice. In addition, this study is limited in the data only providing information on whether someone was diagnosed with anxiety/panic disorder by a medical professional which potentially leaves out individuals who have not/cannot receive an official diagnosis for various circumstances.