Social aspects of venereal disease. II. Relationship of personality to other sociological determinants of venereal disease.

With increasing recognition of venereal infection as a behavioural disease, considerable interest has been focused on the relationship of various psychosocial parameters to these diseases. Eysenck's (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1964) refinement of the personality inventory has provided a useful tool for obtaining quantitative indicators of one such parameterpersonality. The personality of venereal disease patients has been assessed by this inventory (Wells, 1969, 1970) and more recently the personality inventory was included in a more comprehensive sociological assessment of this group of patients (Hart, 1973). The present paper analyses the relationship of personality to the other sociological parameters considered in this last study. In particular, it was designed to investigate the hypothesis that certain sociological factors often associated with venereal disease may merely be other manifestations of a particular personality type, which renders a person more susceptible to exposure to venereal infection. This hypothesis is in line with the theory of Eysenck (1972): 'extroversion constitutes a major dimension of personality which is positively related to criminal and generally anti-social behaviour'. In addition, it was considered that the determination of personality scores for a wide variety of sociological variables may give useful indicators for further application of the personality inventory in other behavioural studies.