The Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire: changes during psychological treatment of social phobia.

Thirty-nine individuals completed 12 weekly group sessions of psychological therapy for social phobia (social anxiety disorder). Before and after treatment, participants filled out the Tridimensional Personality Questionnnaire (TPQ, [Cloninger C.R., 1987a. A systematic method for clinical description and classification of personality variants. Archives of General Psychiatry, 44, 573-58]) and measures of social anxiety and depression. Treatment led to a significant reduction in social anxiety, depression, harm avoidance, and reward dependence. However, only pre-post changes in harm avoidance and depression were significantly correlated with pre-post changes in social anxiety. These results suggest that harm avoidance shows state-dependent changes during the course of treatment for social phobia. The implications of these findings for the trait/state distinction of the TPQ scales are discussed.