Quality of life and level of functioning in cancer patients: The roles of behavioural inhibition and approach systems

Psychosomatic medicine shows that individual differences in psychological factors are implicated in physical disease. However, the influence of personality on cancer-related psychological outcomes has not been clarified. The aim of this article is to contribute to this literature in terms of the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) approach to personality. Measures of the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) and the Behavioural Approach System (BAS) were examined in relation to quality of life (QoL) and level of functioning (LoF) in 48 cancer patients (compared with non-clinical controls). Personality differences were measured by the Carver and White (1994) BIS/BAS Scales; and QoL and LoF by the EORTC QLQ C30. Both BAS Fun Seeking (BAS-Fun) and BAS Reward Responsiveness (BAS-RR) interacted with the cancer-control factor on LoF, with higher scoring individuals on both sub-scales reporting higher LoF in the cancer group. BAS-RR interacted with cancer-control factor on QoL, with higher scoring individuals reporting a higher QoL in the cancer group. As expected, on both QoL and LoF, scores were significantly lower in the cancer group. Implications of this study for future personality-based cancer research are discussed.