Can Hearing Loss Affect Your Personality?

Research has shown that hearing loss can affect many aspects of life, ranging from physical health to mental wellbeing and even cognitive ability. How about effects on your personality? At first, it might seem far-fetched to consider that hearing loss might be able to modify something as innate as your personality, but audiologists and speech-language pathologists have observed different types of hearing loss at different phases of life and the relationship with behavioral and psychological states. The simple answer to this question, as with many hearing-related questions, is “it depends,” and indeed the nature of hearing loss can vary quite a lot along with other psychological dynamics. Let’s consider how some different types of hearing loss can relate to personality. 

Childhood Hearing Impairment and Loss

Children who are born with hearing impairment have quite unique paths toward sociability. Some of these children are diagnosed quite early and can receive the social tools they need to play and communicate with others. Some other children who are not diagnosed right away can struggle with behavioral issues related to hearing impairment. Of course, these behavioral and psychological issues depend quite a lot on the extent of hearing impairment or loss. 

Those who have total deafness will need to rely on sign language or other tools to be able to communicate, while some children with milder hearing loss will be able to communicate through spoken language. Speech-language pathologists have noticed quite a wide range of relationships between hearing impairment or loss and personalities. Some children become shy, reserved, and withdrawn, while others can act out with behavioral challenges to the social dynamic at school. Many other children integrate naturally into the social world at school that they discover. As these children grow up and develop social skills, they follow unique trajectories, as well, just as do children without hearing impairments. 

Adult Hearing Loss

When adults experience hearing loss later in life, the relationships with personality follow a quite different trajectory. For children who have a hearing impairment or loss, social skills and personalities are still in development, so hearing conditions are inextricable from the child’s self. For adults, however, the personality can be fully formed before hearing loss occurs. When a person experiences hearing loss later in life, it can interact with the preexisting features of personality in a variety of ways. 

First of all, some people find hearing loss to be a frustrating or even anger-inducing condition. Those who were not likely to express frustration might be seen to suddenly lash out in anger when they are not able to communicate as fluidly as they once did. Whether that frustration is directed inward toward oneself or outward toward the others who just aren’t “talking loudly enough,” this new feature of the personality can be surprising and concerning for friends and family members. 

In other cases, those who develop hearing loss later in life can recede from social life, becoming seemingly shyer, withdrawn, or even depressed. Those who might have had a vivacious social presence can become saddened by their inability to keep up quick-witted banter in social situations, simply due to the limitations on hearing others. With these obstacles in place, some of these people would prefer to socially isolate themselves rather than show their conversational limitations, and the result can seem like a change in personality altogether. 

Although these changes in personality can come as a surprise to those who have hearing loss and their loved ones, the good news is that treatment can help a person reverse course. 

Treating Hearing Loss

When someone receives assistance in the form of hearing aids, they can reintegrate into social settings that had become difficult. This return to fluid social engagement can feel like a return to form for many adults. Children who receive treatment and assistive technology can also develop a new set of social skills and communication abilities that can assist social integration. If you have undiagnosed hearing loss, why not take the opportunity to schedule a hearing test right away? 

Our hearing health professionals can provide your thorough diagnosis and pair. you with the right hearing aids to suit your individual needs and lifestyle. With this assistance, your social presence and even your personality can remain present in ways that are familiar and comfortable to you.