The relationship of Bi/Polar personality patterns with self-esteem, stress, and satisfaction in dental school.

The Bi/Polar Inventory of Core Strength was administered to two senior dental classes. This inventory identifies preferences on three fundamental underlying dimensions of personality and yields eight personality patterns, which were subsequently correlated with the students' self-assessment of various aspects of the dental school experience. Individuals with preferences for risking, practical thinking, and independence consistently demonstrated higher self-esteem, higher ability to cope with the stresses of dental school, lower psychological distress in dental school, and higher satisfaction with dentistry than individuals with polar opposite preferences--thinking, theoretical thinking, and dependence--although only some of these comparisons reached statistical significance. Pattern III (thinking-theoretical-dependent) reported the lowest self-esteem, lowest ability to cope with stress, highest psychological distress, and lowest satisfaction with dentistry. Pattern III may represent a psychological profile exhibiting early warning signs of a potential tension with the task demands of clinical dentistry. Conversely, Pattern VII (risking-practical-independent) may represent a profile prone to high self-esteem, high-stress resistance, low psychological distress, and reasonably high satisfaction with dentistry.