Panacea Journal of Medical Sciences

Correlation of phoria with personality: A pioneering study

Full Text PDF

Article Type : Original Article

Author Details: Parthasarathi Roy, Asim Chakrabarti

Volume : 7

Issue : 2

Online ISSN : 2348-7682

Print ISSN : 2249-8176

Article First Page : 72

Article End Page : 76

Abstract

The development of concomitant squint is a function of personality trait of a child. It is also a known fact that the personality trait of a child is carried forward to his adult personality. Therefore a hypothesis that phoria is correlated with personality was postulated. The objective of the study is to examine how exophoria is correlated with neuroticism- Stable and Extravert- Introvert dimensions of personality. After taking proper informed consent, fifty-eight undergraduate and postgraduate medical students with atleast -2.00 D spherical equivalent myopia were evaluated in a tertiary eye hospital in West Bengal for their Personality on Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E) scales by Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI) 48 questionnaires. Maximum and minimum possible scores on each scale was 48.00 and 0.00 respectively. Their Phoria status (hetrophoria/ orthophoria) was also evaluated. Out of a total of fifty eight (58), thirty two (32) students were male and twenty six (26) were female. The age range of the 58 students was 18-30 years (24.53 +/- 3.45). 37 (thirty-seven, 63.79%) of them had exophoria and the rest 21 (twenty-one, 36.20%) had orthophoria. Mean, Standard Deviation of the scores on Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E) scale for 58 students were23.82+/- 8.45 and23.06 +/- 8.78 respectively. The students were grouped into two, one with ‘Phoria’ (n=37) and other with ‘No Phoria’ (orthophoria, n=21) and were compared with two outcomes, N-scores 24 (neurotic personality tendency, n= 21) by Fisher Exact Test. The test showed exophorias were correlated with stable personality pattern (P =0.0005). However phoria was not found to be correlated with Extraversion-Introversion dimension of personality (P = 0.2836). Exophoriais correlated with stable personality pattern, a fact, which to authors’ belief, is probably discovered for the first time by this study.

Keywords: Phoria, Exophoria, Orthophoria, Maudsley Personality Inventory(MPI), Personality, Neuroticism-Stable, Extraversion-Introversion.

Doi No:-10.18231