Personality - Page 13 of 32

These Two Personality Traits Indicate A Strong Immune System

A stronger immune system helps fight off disease and is linked to living longer.

Both being extraverted and conscientious are linked to having a stronger immune system, two studies have found.

Conscientious people tend to be self-disciplined and they aim for achievement.

People who are conscientious have, among other things, a preference for order, responsibility and self-control.

Meanwhile, people who are extraverted tend to be focused on the world around them and are most happy when surrounded by people and when active.

Extraverts have much lower levels of an inflammatory chemical called interleukin-6 in their blood stream than introverts.

Low levels of interleukin-6 are often a marker that the immune system is functioning better.

In the first of the two studies, 100 people’s interleukin-6 levels were compared with their score on the five major personality traits: openness to experience, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Dr Benjamin Chapman, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Our study took the important first step of finding a strong association between one part of extroversion and a specific, stress-related, inflammatory chemical.
The next step is to determine if one causes the other.”

In the second study, 957 adults were tracked over 14 years.

Dr Páraic Ó Súilleabháin, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“We found that part of the reason why people who score higher on the personality trait of conscientiousness live longer is as a result of their immune system, specifically due to lower levels of a biological marker called interleukin-6.
There are likely further biological mechanisms that are yet to be discovered which will give a clearer picture of all the different ways that our personalities are so critical to our long-term health.”

The studies were both published in the journal Brain Behavior and Immunity (Chapman et al., 2009; O’Súilleabháin et al., 2021).

What Your Musical Taste Says About Your Personality

A 15 second clip was enough to reveal aspects of personality.

People who like more sophisticated music, like opera and jazz are higher in openness to experience, research finds.

People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.

Openness to experience, one of the five major facets of personality, is also linked to higher intelligence.

The study also found that those who like music that is unpretentious, relaxing and acoustic, like folk and country, tend to be more extraverted.

Extraverts are outgoing and energetic.

The final personality trait linked to musical taste was agreeableness.

Agreeable people tended to like all types of music more.

The study based its findings on putting music into one of five categories:

Mellow – romantic and relaxing, like R&B, soft rock and adult contemporary.
Unpretentious – relaxing country, folk and acoustic.
Sophisticated – complex and dynamic, like opera, classical, jazz and world.
Intense – loud, distorted and aggressive music, like rock, punk and heavy metal.
Contemporary – includes electronic, dance, rap and Euro-pop.

Only the ‘sophisticated’ and ‘unpretentious’ types were related to personality, the researchers found.

Liking contemporary, intense or mellow music, therefore, does not tell us anything in particular about your personality.

The conclusions come from a survey of 22,252 people who were played unfamiliar clips of music just 15 seconds long and asked to rate them.

These were then compared with tests of the five personality factors: openness to experience, neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

The study’s authors write that…

“…people who have a need for creative and intellectual stimulation prefer unconventional and complex musical styles, and that people who are sociable and enthusiastic prefer musical styles that are energetic and lively.”

The authors conclude:

“These results corroborate that music – a form of self-expression that is ubiquitous across human cultures – communicates meaningful information about basic psychological characteristics.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Nave et al., 2018).

The Personality Traits Linked To Higher Social Status

These personality traits are universally linked to higher social status.

The traits that help a person climb the social ladder include honesty, intelligence and being hard-working, research finds.

Across 14 different countries and societies, researchers found that the traits linked to higher social status were remarkably consistent.

Similarly, being knowledgeable, making sacrifices for others and being kind increased a person’s social status.

Having a long-term mate is also seen as positive for social status for both men and women.

The traits that universally decreased a person’s social status are, unsurprisingly, being unclean, a thief and mean and nasty.

Professor David Buss, the study’s first author, said:

“Humans live in a social world in which relative rank matters for nearly everything — your access to resources, your ability to attract mates, and even how long you live.
From an evolutionary perspective, reproductively relevant resources flow to those high in status and trickle slowly, if at all, to those lower on the social totem pole.”

The researchers surveyed 2,751 people in 14 countries about 240 different factors that might affect a person’s social status.

The results showed that certain factors were widely perceived as positive, said Professor Buss:

“From the Gypsies in Romania to the native islanders of Guam, people displaying intelligence, bravery and leadership rise in rank in the eyes of their peers.
But possessing qualities that inflict costs on others will cause your status to plummet, whether you live in Russia or Eritrea.”

There were some interesting kinks in the results.

Men gain more status from taking risks and being physically brave.

Women gain more status from their appearance and domestic skills.

Apparently, not enough has changed in the gender wars in this respect.

A sense of humour, meanwhile, is generally positive for social status, but less so in East Asian countries like China, South Korea and Japan.

Practising witchcraft is only a problem for your social status if you happen to live in Eritrea or Zimbabwe, the research found.

Finally, catching a sexually transmitted disease, along with being dirty, unclean and nasty decrease a person’s social status, Professor Buss said:

“Although this study was conducted prior to the current pandemic, it’s interesting that being a disease vector is universally detrimental to a person’s status.
Socially transmitted diseases are evolutionarily ancient challenges to human survival, so humans have psychological adaptations to avoid them.
Lowering a person’s social status is an evolutionarily ancient method of social distancing from disease vectors.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Buss et al., 2020).

How To Turn Negative Personality Traits To Advantage (M)

One way to deal with less attractive personality traits.

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This Personality Trait Is A Sign Of High Empathy

Empathic people are likely to have this personality trait.

People with the personality trait of agreeableness are more likely to be highly empathic, research finds.

Agreeable people tend to be friendly, warm and tactful — always taking into account other people’s feelings.

Agreeable people also tend to be trusting, modest, straightforward and compliant.

Psychologists have found that agreeable people are more likely to help others out — and this is partly down to empathy.

In one experiment, participants read stories about someone else having a difficult time.

Afterwards, they rated how likely they would be to help out and how much empathy they would feel for them.

The results showed that people high in agreeableness were more likely to feel empathy for the victim and to be motivated to help them out.

Interestingly, the study also found links between empathy and being neurotic, although neurotic people were more focused on themselves, while agreeable people focused on the other person.

Dr Meara Habashi, the study’s first author, said:

“It is common for persons to experience distress on seeing a victim in need of help.
That distress can lead some people to escape, and to run away from the victim.
But distress does not need to block helping because it may be one first-appearing aspect of empathy.
Distress can actually contribute to helping, but the way it contributes depends on personality.”

Less agreeable people seem to need more reminders that they should help out, said Dr Habashi:

“Personality matters.
It matters in how we structure our request for help, and it matters in how we respond to that request.
Helping is a result of several different processes running in sequence.
Each process contributes something different.
The way we ask for help -perspective taking — can influence our chances for getting it.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Habashi et al., 2016).

This Personality Trait Cuts Alzheimer’s Risk In Half

A study of hundreds of nuns and monks reveals which trait cuts Alzheimer’s risk in half.

Being conscientious cuts the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease in half, research finds.

People who are conscientious tend to be more organised, responsible and in control of their impulses.

The study’s authors explain:

“Conscientiousness (eg, “I am a productive person who always gets the job done”) refers to a tendency to be self-disciplined, scrupulous, and purposeful.”

They are also more likely to follow through on their duties and obligations.

The study of hundreds of nuns and monks found that those who were more productive and reliable were less likely to be affected by Alzheimer’s.

People high on conscientiousness were also more likely to experience a slower cognitive decline with age and lower risk of mild cognitive impairment (a risk factor for Alzheimer’s).

The results come from a study of 997 elderly nuns, priests and monks, none of whom had dementia at the start of the study.

Many were followed up for more than a decade.

The brains of those that died were examined for markers of Alzheimer’s.

The study revealed that those with the highest levels of conscientiousness were at an 89% lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s compared to those with the lowest levels.

Surprisingly, the results could not be explained by conscientious people living more healthily.

Instead, the authors write that it could be partly down to education:

“…conscientiousness is a consistent predictor of academic and occupational performance.
Both level of educational and occupational attainment and the nature of occupational experiences have been associated with risk of AD.
Highly conscientious people may have a more intensive exposure to these educational and occupational experiences than less conscientious individuals and thereby derive additional benefit.”

Being conscientious may also buffer against life stress, they write:

“Conscientiousness is associated with a higher level of resilience and greater reliance on task-oriented coping.
These factors might lessen the adverse consequences of negative life events and chronic psychological distress, which have been associated with risk of dementia in old age.”

The study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry (Wilson et al., 2007).

The Simplest Of All Personality Tests Is Surprisingly Accurate

This easy test reveals your personality accurately.

People are surprisingly accurate at judging their own personality, research finds.

Simply rating your own personality produces reasonably accurate results — certainly in line with how others likely view you.

When people judge themselves on the five basic personality traits, they are mostly accurate.

The five basic personality traits are:

Openness to experience: curiosity and inventiveness.
Conscientiousness: efficient and organised.
Extraversion: outgoing and energetic.
Agreeableness: friendly and compassionate.
Neuroticism: nervous and sensitive.

Have a go at rating yourself on these factors right now — you probably won’t be far off.

Simply give yourself a score out of 10 for each of the five factors.

Scoring 5 is average, 1 is very low and 10 is very high.

Clue: most people tend towards the middle of the scale.

Dr Brian Connelly, study co-author, said:

“It’s widely assumed that people have rose-coloured glasses on when they consider their own personality.
We found that isn’t necessarily the case, that on average people don’t show any trend in rating themselves more favourably than they’re rated by their peers.”

The conclusions come from 160 different studies of personality.

The researchers were looking for evidence of self-enhancement.

Dr Connelly explained the results:

“We make personality judgements of ourselves and others all the time, and a popular notion is that self-reports are more positively biased … but we find little support for that in the literature.”

One reason people may not self-enhance is that they are kept in line by others, Dr Connelly said:

“People are generally attuned to the impressions they convey.
Some people may stray toward self-enhancement, or in the opposite direction with self-effacement, but there are social costs associated with both that makes the general trend for people to be accurate.”

Next, Dr Connelly plans to look at self-enhancement at work:

“It’s important to know if self-enhancers perform worse on the job or have more trouble in school.
It could be they don’t internalize negative information about themselves or even totally forget about it altogether, both of which could have negative outcomes.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Kim et al., 2018).

5 Warning Signs Of A Toxic Personality

How to spot people with a toxic personality.

Toxic personalities can survive and even prosper in the workplace, and elsewhere, if they have one critical ingredient.

People with toxic personalities have a mixture of arrogance and deceitfulness.

People with toxic personalities:

are willing to flatter others to obtain favours,
to take advantage of others by cheating,
enjoy showing off their higher status to others,
act in an entitled way,
and want to have things others do not.

However, toxic personalities can survive and even prosper in the workplace, and elsewhere, if they have one critical ingredient: social skills.

Social skills help those with toxic and dark personalities to hide their deceitful nature.

The toxic person continues to abuse trust and trick others behind a smokescreen of harmlessness.

Unfortunately, the study also revealed, others tend to view those who are good at office politics as ripe for promotion, despite their negative traits.

The good news for those that lack social skills is that honesty and humility are highly valued as well.

The conclusions come from research that reveals how people with dark personalities get ahead in the workplace.

Professor Gerhard Blickle, study co-author, said:

“Such personalities tend to focus on themselves all the time.
Good social skills enable them to deceive others.”

For the study, the researchers interviewed 203 small groups: each contained three people who were colleagues.

They provided data on the others about their personality and social skills.

The results showed that people who were dishonest and entitled could succeed at work if they had good social skills.

They tended to have better jobs and to be seen as more capable by their superiors.

However, those without social skills could still succeed at work with honesty and humility.

Professor Blickle said that rooting out toxic personalities means less emphasis on good impressions and more on performance:

“In order to slow down the ascent of toxic personalities, more attention should be paid to actual performance and less to the good impression when selecting staff and making assessments.
Here, it makes sense for instance to also look at the sickness and notice rate of employees, or customer loyalty.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Kholin et al., 2020).

The Personality Trait Linked To Looking Younger

People high on this personality trait look younger and are able to walk faster.

Self-control is linked to aging more slowly, a study finds.

People who are better able to control their thoughts, feelings and behaviours have biologically younger brains and bodies at age 45.

This means that people with higher self-control look younger and are able to walk faster.

Those who find themselves somewhat lacking in self-control, though, should not despair.

Self-control is not set in stone and can be learned.

In addition, midlife is not too late to make changes like starting to exercise and quitting smoking.

The conclusions come from a study of almost 1,000 people in New Zealand who were tracked from birth.

The aim of the study was to see whether self-control helped people prepare for old age.

Dr Richmond-Rakerd, the study’s first author, explained:

“Our population is growing older, and living longer with age-related diseases.
It’s important to identify ways to help individuals prepare successfully for later-life challenges, and live more years free of disability.
We found that self-control in early life may help set people up for healthy aging.”

The people in the study were tracked from around the age of 3-years-old until they were 45.

As children their self-control was measured and as adults their brains and bodies were tested for physiological signs of aging.

The results revealed that people with higher self-control as children walked faster, had younger looking faces and healthier bodies overall as adults.

Professor Terrie Moffitt, study co-author, said:

“Everyone fears an old age that’s sickly, poor, and lonely, so aging well requires us to get prepared, physically, financially, and socially.
We found people who have used self-control since childhood are far more prepared for aging than their same-age peers.”

Improve your self-control

There are a variety of science-backed ways to improve your self-control.

These include positive affirmations, keeping busy, feeling grateful, abstract thinking, avoiding the ‘license to sin’, and not trying too hard.

→ Here are 10 more studies on what self-control can do for you.

→ Read on: How to change your personality.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Richmond-Rakerd et al., 2021).

The Most Socially Attractive Personality Trait

What trait people find attractive on first impression and over the long term.

Optimists are seen as more socially attractive than pessimists, research finds.

But this is just when people meet for the first time and do not know each other.

In long-term relationships, optimists are best matched with other optimists and pessimists get on with both other optimists and pessimists.

In other words, optimists mix well in long-term relationships with everyone, but pessimists can be a downer on other optimists — although they don’t seem to bother other pessimists.

The results come from a study of 248 people who read a series of vignettes that described either optimistic or pessimistic people.

Most people found the optimists more socially attractive.

However, people who were themselves optimists liked the other optimist even more.

On the other hand, people who were pessimists were not quite as keen on the optimist, but still preferred them to the pessimist.

Pessimists also had a sneaky liking for the other pessimist.

The results were more nuanced, though, when people considered their own long-term relationships.

Optimists were more satisfied when in a relationship with another optimist, and pessimists were happy with another pessimist or an optimist.

The authors write:

“…optimists may perceive a pessimistic partner as a burden, which may in turn affect their perceptions of relationship quality negatively.
Interestingly, this was not the case for pessimists, who reported the same levels of relationship quality regardless of whether they perceived their partners as pessimistic or as optimistic.”

The results support a psychological theory about interpersonal attraction called the ‘similarity-attraction hypothesis’.

The study’s authors write:

“Such a similarity attraction effect has been shown to be characteristic in the field of attitudes.
The similarity-attraction hypothesis claims that people tend to perceive others who are similar to themselves as more attractive than dissimilar others.”

The study was published in The Journal of Positive Psychology (Böhm et al., 2010).