Temperament/personality can be assessed using a variety of methods, including self-report inventories, semistructured interviews, informants’ reports, and observations in naturalistic settings and the laboratory. Unfortunately, most of the literature examining the association between personality and depressive disorders has assessed personality via self-report. This is potentially problematic because self-reports of personality can be complicated by current mood state, limited insight, response styles, and the difficulty of distinguishing traits from the effects of stable environmental contexts (Chmielewski & Watson 2009). In addition, when the same individual provides information on both personality and depression, as has been the case in almost all studies in this area, common method variance can inflate associations. Hence, there is a need for greater use of informant report and observational measures.
