Psychosomatic Medicine 24:278-285 (1962)
© 1962 American Psychosomatic Society

Personal Traits and Maternal Attitudes in Relation to Blood Lipid Levels

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

A group of normal students with high fasting cholesterol levels on a fat-free diet appeared in a previous investigation to be driving and aggressively ambitious as compared with a low-cholesterol group. Although the former were not overtly anxious, their personal dissatisfaction included fears that such traits might alienate them from others. In the present experiment, a larger sample including students with "normal" as well as "high" and "low" cholesterol levels under these conditions was studied in order to rule out the possibility of any criterion contamination. A psychiatrist who was unaware of the lipid levels rated each subject for personality characteristics and prevailing defenses. He also tried to predict whether the student's cholesterol level would be high or not. There was a highly significant biserial correlation (r = 0.58) between the psychiatrist's estimate and the lipid level measured independently. There were also significant correlations between high lipid level and the psychiatrist's estimate of the traits of need for social achievement, autonomy, ambition, hostility, and inflexibility. In contrast, the students with high cholesterol levels considered themselves lacking in ambition.

The mothers of the subjects completed a questionnaire concerned with their child-rearing attitudes. In a preliminary analysis, five traits associated with ambition and hostility were correlated with six child-rearing attitudes toward toilet training, control of behavior, and aggression. Significant but low positive correlations were obtained between strictness of training and the aggressive ambitious student.