Harm avoidance

In psychology, harm avoidance (HA) is a personality trait characterized by excessive worrying; pessimism; shyness; and being fearful, doubtful, and easily fatigued. In MRI studies HA was correlated with reduced grey matter volume in the orbito-frontal, occipital and parietal regions.

Harm avoidance is a temperament assessed in the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), its revised version (TCI-R) and the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) and is somewhat related to the trait "neuroticism" in the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, &mdash; all regarded as anxiety-related traits.

The HA of TPQ and TCI-R has four subscales:
 * 1) Anticipatory worry (HA1)
 * 2) Fear of uncertainty (HA2)
 * 3) Shyness/Shyness with strangers (HA3)
 * 4) Fatigability/Fatigability and asthenia (HA4)

It has been suggested that HA is related to high serotonergic activity, and much research has gone into investigating the link between HA and components of the serotonin system, e.g., genetic variation in 5-HTTLPR in the serotonin transporter gene.