Comfort Seeking: Validation of a new measure and its association with GPA

Abstract

Comfort seeking is defined as the pursuit of physical, mental and social ease. A measure of comfort seeking would theoretically correlate positively with measures of dependent personality traits (Dependent Personal Questionnaire, DPQ), anxiety symptoms (Beck Anxiety Inventory, BAI) and somatization (Somatization Scale of the Brief Symptom Check List 90, SOM). It was also hypothesized that comfort seeking would be negatively correlated with openness to experience (Big Five Inventory—Openness to Experience scale, BFI-OE), conscientiousness and emotional stability (Ten Item Personality Inventory, TPI-C and TPI-ES, respectively). Our research group generated a pool of twenty-two items based on four theoretical comfort domains: general, physical, mental and interpersonal comfort. The items were administered along with the proposed personality correlates to 178 undergraduates. Only items that correlated in the hypothesized direction with at least two of the other administered measures were included in a factor analysis. A principle axis factors analysis yielded a one-factor solution accounting for 21.3% of the variance. The final seven-item Comfort Seeking Scale (CSS) correlated positively with SOM, DPQ and BAI. The scale also correlated negatively with BFI-OE, TPI-C, TPI-ES, and contrary to prediction, a measure of extraversion (TPI-EX). Higher scores on the CSS were found to be negatively associated with cumulative grade point average. Further development of the CSS is discussed.