Type D Personality Scale (DS14) Test

People who notice recurring worry, low mood, or restraint around others may use the Type D Personality Scale (DS14) Test to organise those experiences into two related dimensions. It is intended for people seeking a clearer picture of their emotional and interpersonal patterns. A Type D personality assessment can show whether either tendency is relatively low or elevated, while keeping the result focused on patterns rather than labels.

What This Assessment Explores

The questionnaire examines two tendencies in social and emotional experience. One concerns holding back in social situations, limiting expression, and finding communication difficult. The other concerns anxiety, irritability, depressed mood, worry, and a gloomy outlook. Together, they describe Type D personality in the DS14 framework. A DS14 test result can help reflect on relationships, group situations, and emotional strain.

The result is organised into these scales:

• Social Inhibition (0-28) indicates restraint or difficulty initiating contact; bands are Low inhibition 0-9 and Elevated inhibition 10-28.
• Negative Affectivity (0-28) indicates anxiety, irritability, low mood, or worry; bands are Low 0-9 and Elevated 10-28.

Together, the scores describe tendencies, not a whole personality. Higher Social Inhibition scores may be associated with cardiovascular disease risk or adverse cardiovascular outcomes, while higher Negative Affectivity scores may be associated with cardiovascular disease risk and reduced quality of life.

Methodology and Scientific Basis

Each statement asks respondents to judge how well it describes them on a five-point format from false to true, with an intermediate option. The items address contact with others, conversation, distance, worry, irritability, unhappiness, low mood, and a gloomy outlook. This is a self-report, not an observation by another person.

Responses are combined into dimension totals, and the bands show whether each tendency is low or elevated. A Type D questionnaire result is best read as a profile of tendencies, with current mood, context, and self-awareness taken into account.

The online questionnaire is conceptually consistent with DS14 (Denollet, 2005), the published 14-item instrument for assessing these dimensions and Type D personality. Emons, Meijer, and Denollet (2007) examined the instrument using item response theory in cardiovascular disease research. This online presentation has no independent norms or standardisation stated for it; the displayed bands describe the reported profile and do not establish cardiovascular disease or a clinical diagnosis. Honest responding and circumstances can influence scores, so the result is best considered alongside the situations in which these patterns occur.