Category: Personality

Outgoing or introverted? Which personality types are best at fighting off infection?

Outgoing, sociable people tend to have the strongest immune systems.

Extraverts typically seek out new experiences, prefer to take charge and are outgoing and talkative.

Extraverts tend to have better social skills and feel more positive emotions and they are more motivated.

Those who are the most conscientious and careful, though, are more likely to have a weaker immune system response.

Conscientious people are systematic and dutiful and more likely to follow through on their plans than their less conscientious peers.

The research found no evidence, though, that a tendency towards negative emotions was associated with poor health.

The researcher gave personality tests to 121 healthy adults.

Along with assessing the five major personality factors — extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness — participants had blood samples taken to measure genetic factors known to be important in immune function.

Professor Kavita Vedhara, who led the study, explained the results:

“Our results indicated that ‘extraversion’ was significantly associated with an increased expression of pro-inflammatory genes and that ‘conscientiousness’ was linked to a reduced expression of pro-inflammatory genes.

In other words, individuals who we would expect to be exposed to more infections as a result of their socially orientated nature (i.e., extraverts) appear to have immune systems that we would expect can deal effectively with infection.

While individuals who may be less exposed to infections because of their cautious/conscientious dispositions have immune systems that may respond less well.

We can’t, however, say which came first.

Is this our biology determining our psychology or our psychology determining our biology?”

Related

• 9 Surprising Ways Sleep Shapes Your Personality, IQ, Brain & Mental Health (P)

The study was published in the journal Psychoneuroendochrinology (Vedhara et al., 2014).

What you do in this moment says everything about you.

Being in a hurry makes people reveal their true personalities even more clearly.

Time pressure makes selfish people more selfish and it makes good-hearted people even nicer.

This is because, when in a rush, people tend to make the same choice they have made before.

Dr Ian Krajbich, study co-author, said:

“People start off with a bias of whether it is best to be selfish or pro-social.

If they are rushed, they’ll tend to go with that bias.”

For the research, 102 people played an economic game, Dr Krajbich explained:

“The participants had to decide whether to give up some of their own money to increase the other person’s payoff and reduce the inequality between them.”

Sometimes people were given two seconds to decide, other times it was 10 seconds.

Dr Krajbich explained the results:

“We found that time pressure tends to magnify the predisposition that people already have, whether it is to be selfish or pro-social.

Under time pressure, when you have very little time to decide, you’re going to lean more heavily than usual on your predisposition or bias of how to act.”

Being forced to wait changed people’s decisions, said Dr Krajbich:

“People may still approach decisions with the expectation that they will act selfishly or pro-socially, depending on their predisposition.

But now they have time to consider the numbers and can think of reasons to go against their bias.

Maybe you’re predisposed to be selfish, but see that you only have to give up $1 and the other person is going to get $20.

That may be enough to get you to act more pro-socially.”

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The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Chen & Krajbich, 2018).

Blood pressure can be treated with medication and/or a series of relatively simple lifestyle changes, including exercise and diet.

High blood pressure can make people more neurotic.

Neuroticism is one of the five major aspects of personality — it is characterised by heightened levels of anxiety and worry.

Treatment of this common condition, therefore, could help to reduce common neurotic tendencies, such as worry, hostility and depression — not to mention its more usual benefit of heart health.

Blood pressure can be treated with medication and/or a series of relatively simple lifestyle changes, including exercise and diet.

While the link between neuroticism and high blood pressure has already been identified, it was not clear which caused which.

The study’s authors write:

“Individuals with neuroticism can be sensitive to the criticism of others, are often self-critical, and easily develop anxiety, anger, worry, hostility, self-consciousness, and depression.

Neuroticism is viewed as a key causative factor for anxiety and mood disorders.

Individuals with neuroticism more frequently experience high mental stress, which can lead to elevated [blood pressure] and cardiovascular diseases.

Appropriate surveillance and control of blood pressure can be beneficial for the reduction of neuroticism, neuroticism-inducing mood disorders, and cardiovascular diseases.”

Diastolic blood pressure

The genetic study examined millions of samples of blood pressure and psychological states from 8 different studies, including many hundreds of thousands of people.

The results showed that diastolic blood pressure was linked to high levels of neuroticism.

Diastolic blood pressure is the second number in a measurement and it reflects the blood pressure in your arteries when your heart rests between beats.

However, there was no link between blood pressure and depressive symptoms, anxiety or happiness.

It is not known exactly why blood pressure has this effect on personality, but clearly heart and brain are linked.

Related

• Thinking positive is linked to lower blood pressure.
• People with high levels of the personality trait of neuroticism are at a greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.

The study was published in the journal General Psychiatry (Cai et al., 2022).

What liking certain foods and drinks reveals about your personality.

Risk-takers and sensation-seekers prefer bitter drinks, such as bitter beer, research finds.

Pale ales, which are generally more bitter than lagers, are preferred by thrill-seekers.

Other bitter drinks, such as strong coffee along with spicy foods, are particularly attractive to sensation-seekers.

Sensation-seeking is an aspect of extraversion, suggesting that those who like bitter drinks are more extraverted.

In contrast, people who avoid bitter tastes, tend to have more agreeable personalities, previous research has found.

Dr John Hayes, study co-author, said:

“Traditionally, most researchers find that people who experience bitterness more intensely avoid bitter food or drink—so with heightened bitterness, they like it less, and therefore consume it less.

But here, we find that people who seek higher sensations and are more risk-taking, they like bitter beer such as India pale ales, if they also have greater bitter taste perception.”

For the study, 109 people rated their liking of two pale ales and a lager.

The results revealed that those with sensation-seeking personalities preferred the more bitter beer.

Ms Molly Higgins, the study’s first author, said:

“Our data contradict the classic view that bitterness is merely an aversive sensation that limits intake.

We found that increased bitterness perception does not always lead to decreased liking and intake—rather, it’s a positive attribute in some products for some consumers.”

Disliking bitter foods can be bad for health, said Ms Higgins:

“Avoidance of bitter foods can impact health negatively, because bitter foods such as cruciferous vegetables, green tea and grapefruit contain healthy compounds like flavonols, which are reported to have antioxidant and anticarcinogenic properties.”

Narcissists and psychopaths?

On the other hand, having a preference for bitter tastes is linked to psychopathy, narcissism and everyday sadism, some studies have found.

A predilection for bitter foods and drinks, therefore, could indicated some psychopathic tendencies in a person’s personality.

The study was published in the Food Quality and Preference (Higgins et al., 2020).