Personality - Page 17 of 32

This Personality Type Is Most Likely To Cheat

Between 40 percent and 76 percent of people cheat on their partners over the course of their relationship.

Men with performance anxiety and who like to take risks are most likely to cheat, a study finds.

Women, though, tend to cheat if they are dissatisfied with the relationship.

The standard of a man’s relationship does not have much effect on whether he cheats.

Instead, it is a man’s personality that is especially important in whether or not he cheats.

The study supports the stereotype that men who are cheaters will continue to cheat, whatever kind of relationship they are in.

Risk-takers tend to be impulsive and can have problems controlling themselves.

Gambling, drug-taking and aggressive behaviour can all be signs of someone who is a risk-taker.

Cheating is one more way for this type of man to find excitement.

The pattern is different among women, where unhappiness in their current relationship predicts cheating.

In fact, women who are dissatisfied with their relationship were twice as likely to cheat on their partner than those who were satisfied.

The study included almost one thousand men and women in (supposedly) monogamous relationships.

The results showed that 23% of men and 19% of women admitted being unfaithful at some point.

Men’s infidelity was predicted by personality factors like risk-taking.

Professor Milhausen, who led the study, said:

“All kinds of things predict infidelity.
What this study says is that when you put all of those things together, for men, personality characteristics are so strong they bounce everything else out of the model.
For women, in the face of all other variables, it’s still the relationship that is the most important predictor.”

The study was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior (Mark et al., 2011).

How To Develop A More Conscientious Personality

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

Being more conscientious is simply a matter of faking it until you make it, a study suggests.

Far from being impossible to change, people can increase their conscientiousness by starting to behave in more hard-working and organised ways until it becomes second nature.

People in the study did things like make to-do lists and tidy up their homes.

Increased conscientiousness is one of the changes to personality that people desire the most, along with increased extraversion and emotional stability.

Conscientiousness is one of the five major aspects of personality.

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

Conscientious people are also are more careful, efficient and self-disciplined — and they aim for achievement.

Personality change, though, is often seen as something that is very hard or even impossible.

Dr Nathan Hudson, the study’s author, begs to differ:

“The idea of personality trait change – especially other people trying to change an individual’s personality – can sound scary.
But whether we recognize it or not, society is filled with interventions designed to try to change our personality traits.
For instance, elementary school is a giant intervention designed to help children become more intelligent, yes, but also kinder and more sociable, responsible and hardworking.”

For the research, Dr Hudson tested college student’s ability to change two aspects of their personality: increase their conscientiousness and increase their emotional stability.

The results showed that conscientiousness could be increased through simple practice, whether or not the students were motivated to change.

Dr Hudson said:

“Motivation is largely irrelevant to interventions targeting conscientiousness, as long as participants adhere to the intervention.”

However, emotional stability could not easily be increased when the students were not motivated.

Dr Hudson thinks it comes down to the nature of negative emotions:

“For many people, it can be difficult to ‘just stop feeling angry’ or ‘just stop being stressed.
My hunch is that indirect strategies for changing someone’s emotions, such as writing in a journal or thinking about positive things, can only really work when people want to use those techniques to change their emotions.”

Dr Hudson thinks organisations and schools could help people improve some personality traits:

“This provides promising evidence that schools, companies, or other organizations could ask people to make relatively minor changes that could help improve their lives by making them more organized and responsible over time.
In contrast, it appears that emotional stability might require a bit more investment from the people who partake in an intervention.”

→ Read on: How To Change Your Personality

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Hudson, 2021).

2 Personality Traits Linked To Chronic Anxiety

The two personality traits can interact with each other to produce chronic anxiety problems.

People who are both neurotic and introverted are more likely to experience anxiety problems, research finds.

Signs of introversion include preferring to be in a quiet, relaxing environment and having a rich mental life.

Neurotic people have a tendency towards sadness, irritability and self-consciousness.

The two personality traits can interact with each other to produce chronic anxiety problems.

It may be because people who are both introverted and neurotic tend to pay more attention to things going wrong, rather than to potential rewards.

Over the years, focusing on problems rather than rewards may condition people with these personality traits to experience more anxiety.

This is hardly surprising if all a person sees is problems everywhere.

Another contributing problem could be that introverted and neurotic people are less likely to get help from others, the study’s authors write:

“…perhaps an introverted neurotic person is prone to experiencing greater anxiety because of a lack of social support to aid in the amelioration of such anxiety (an introverted person may not seek much interaction with others).
Thus, an introverted person may not have the coping strategy of seeking social support as an option, which then maintains and potentially exacerbates anxiety…”

The conclusions come from a study of 466 young adults who were assessed twice over three years.

The results showed that those who were both neurotic and introverted were more likely to be experiencing high levels of anxiety issues three years later.

The study’s authors write:

“Low extraversion and high neuroticism relate to greater susceptibility to negative affect, less susceptibility to signals of reward, greater susceptibility to signals of punishment, and higher vulnerability to arousal and anxiety.”

On their own, being neurotic or introverted may not cause a major anxiety problem.

For example, people who are highly neurotic, but also outgoing and extraverted, may be protected from anxiety, the authors write:

“Even if an individual is highly neurotic, this same individual with high extraversion would more likely also be sensitive to signals of reward, which may offset or mask feelings of extreme anxiety.”

People who are just introverted, but with a stable personality (non-neurotic), were no more likely to be anxious, the study found:

“…even if an individual is highly introverted, this same individual with low neuroticism and low emotional reactivity would be less likely to react to signals of punishment with negative affect such as anxiety.”

The study was published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (Gershuny & Sher, 1998).

7 Signs You Have A Wise Personality

Wisdom can protect us from loneliness, anxiety and depression.

Wisdom — a modifiable personality trait — is linked to greater happiness, resilience, and mental well-being.

It is also linked to less depression, anxiety and loneliness.

Here are seven signs that you are a wise person:

You remain calm under pressure.
You do not postpone making major decisions.
You engage in self-reflection to understand myself.
You approach situations where your help may be needed.
You find it easy to give helpful advice to others.
You enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints.
Your spiritual beliefs give you inner strength.

Professor Dilip V. Jeste, study co-author, said:

“There are evidence-based interventions to increase levels of specific components of wisdom, which would help reduce loneliness and promote overall well-being.
Like the COVID-19 vaccine protects us from the novel coronavirus, wisdom can aid in protecting us from loneliness.
Thus, we can potentially help end a behavioral pandemic of loneliness, suicides and opioid abuse that has been going on for the last 20 years.”

The results come from a survey of over 2,000 people who were asked about seven major aspects of wisdom.

These are:

self-reflection,
pro-social behaviors (such as empathy, compassion and altruism),
emotional regulation (understanding and controlling your emotions),
acceptance of diverse perspectives,
decisiveness,
social advising (such as giving rational and helpful advice to others)
and spirituality.

Increase your wisdom

Like many other personality traits, wisdom can be difficult to change, but not impossible.

Here are two examples of ways to increase components of wisdom.

1. Increase emotional control

One method that has been tested scientifically is to practice referring to yourself in the third-person (Weng et al., 2013).

Instead of saying “I feel hurt and angry,” a person might say to themselves, “He feels hurt and angry.”

The simple technique helps people distance themselves from the strong emotions they are feeling in the moment.

2. Increase compassion

Compassion, another component of wisdom, is also not something you either have or you don’t — it can (and should) be learned and nurtured.

Participants a one study took part in one-day course in loving kindness meditation to improve their self-compassion.

This helps foster benevolent and loving feelings towards the self and others.

After the self-compassion training, people felt better in themselves, were more compassionate towards others and there was more activation in the areas of the brain associated with love, affiliation and positive emotion.

→ Related: Decision-Making Skills: 16 Ways To Improve

The study was published in the journal International Psychogeriatrics (Thomas et al., 2021).

The Personality Trait Linked To Positive Aging

This personality trait is linked to living almost 8 years longer on average.

Optimists are most likely to hold positive beliefs about aging, researchers finds.

Critically, optimists believe they can control their lives and make improvements.

This means that believing in a healthy, engaged old age is a self-fulfilling prophecy — people with these views tend to experience better health and are more active and social.

Ms Shelbie Turner, the study’s first author, said:

“How we think about who we’re going to be in old age is very predictive of exactly how we will be.”

People who imagine themselves more positively at 50-years-old tend to have better health 40 years later, studies have found.

They are less likely to suffer a heart attack, have better memory, greater will to live and are less likely to die prematurely.

Professor Karen Hooker, study co-author, said:

“Previous research has shown that people who have positive views of aging at 50 live 7.5 years longer, on average, than people who don’t.”

For the study, 244 people were tested for their optimistic traits and for how they saw themselves in the future.

Each person listed two ‘hoped-for’ future selves and two ‘feared’ future selves.

For example, people feared being chronically sick and in pain and hoped to be healthy and active.

The results revealed that optimistic people were more positive about aging.

Overcoming ageist stereotypes

Older people are often stereotyped as suffering memory problems, having difficulty exercising and being poor drivers.

Professor Hooker said:

“Kids as young as 4 years old already have negative stereotypes about old people.
Then, of course, if you’re lucky enough to live to old age, they eventually apply to you.”

Even older people sometimes reinforce these stereotypes themselves in the way they behave and think about aging.

Professor Hooker said:

“People need to realize that some of the negative health consequences in later life might not be biologically driven.
The mind and the body are all interwoven.
If you believe these bad things are going to happen, over time that can erode people’s willingness or maybe even eventually their ability to engage in those health behaviors that are going to keep them as healthy as they can be.”

The social mixing of young and old would help generate positive views of aging, says Professor Hooker:

“The more you’re around older people, the more you realize that it’s not all bad.
Older people can do some things better than young people do. Increasing opportunities for intergenerational relationships is one way we can make people more optimistic about aging.”

Increase your optimism

People naturally become more optimistic with age, studies have found.

However, exercises such as visualising your ‘best possible self‘ have been shown to increase optimism in the short-term.

Visualising your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic.

Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well.

You have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself.

Then, to help cement your visualisation, you commit your best possible self to paper.

The study was published in the The International Journal of Aging and Human Development (Turner & Hooker, 2020).

This Personality Trait Protects Against Loneliness

People like this enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and others look to them for advice.

Wisdom protects people against loneliness, a study suggests.

People high in two particular components of wisdom — empathy and compassion — were especially unlikely to become lonely, the researchers found.

Wisdom is a personality trait: typically, wise people enjoy being exposed to diverse viewpoints and other people look to them for advice.

Wise people are also skilled at filtering negative emotions and do not postpone major decisions.

Professor Dilip Jeste, the study’s first author, said:

“An important finding from our study was a significant inverse correlation between loneliness and wisdom.
People with higher scores on a measure of wisdom were less lonely and vice versa.
Loneliness was consistently associated with poor general health, worse quality of sleep and less happiness, whereas the reverse was generally true for wisdom.”

The study included older adults in a relatively isolated, rural area of Italy.

The researchers also surveyed people living in San Diego, an urban/suburban area in the US.

All were asked about various components of wisdom, including compassion, empathy, emotional regulation and self-reflection.

The results showed that people who were high in empathy and compassion were particularly unlikely to feel lonely.

Professor Jeste said:

“Both loneliness and wisdom are personality traits.
Most personality traits are partially inherited and partially determined by environment.”

Like many other personality traits, wisdom can be difficult to change, but not impossible.

Dr David Brenner, study co-author, said:

“If we can increase someone’s compassion, wisdom is likely to go up and loneliness is likely to go down.
At UC San Diego, we have considerable interest in enhancing empathy and compassion to reduce levels of stress and improve happiness and well-being.”

Professor Jeste said:

“So how do you increase compassion? Utilizing approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy or writing in a gratitude diary can help someone become more compassionate.”

The study was published in the journal Aging and Mental Health (Jeste et al., 2020).

The Best Remedy For A Perfectionist Personality

When a perfectionist slips up, they criticise themselves too much and can experience burnout and depression.

Being self-compassionate is one of the best remedies for a perfectionist personality, research finds.

Learning self-acceptance helps protect the type of perfectionists who are highly self-critical from depression.

Some perfectionists are very worried about making mistakes and push themselves too hard to succeed.

When a perfectionist slips up, they criticise themselves too much and can experience burnout and depression.

However, perfectionists who are self-compassionate and self-accepting are less likely to get depressed.

The conclusion comes from a study of 541 adolescents and 515 adults.

All were given tests of perfectionism, depression and self-compassion.

Dr Madeleine Ferrari, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Self-compassion, the practice of self-kindness, consistently reduces the strength of the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and depression for both adolescents and adults.”

The study’s authors explain how self-compassion is helpful:

“…self-compassion is ‘a useful emotion regulation strategy, in which painful or distressing feelings are not avoided but are instead held in awareness with kindness, understanding, and a sense of shared humanity’.
Thus, instead of avoiding social comparisons or overcompensating for negative feelings about the self through futile attempts to attain a higher social rank, the cultivation of self-compassion might help individuals to unconditionally accept ones’ failings.”

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE (Ferrari et al., 2018).

The Major Personality Type Linked To Depression Risk

Among the major personality traits, it shows the strongest link to depression.

Negative emotionality is linked to a higher risk of depression, data from millions of people finds.

Negative emotionality, or being neurotic, involves a tendency towards fear and worry.

People who are neurotic are more likely to experience negative emotions like fear, jealousy, guilt, worry and envy.

The good news is that a depressive personality can be changed, contrary to what many people think.

The study’s conclusions come from analysing data from over two million people.

Their DNA revealed 269 genes related to depression.

Certain genes were also related to some lifestyle choice, like smoking.

The study shows that experiencing depression is linked to personality, which is partly controlled by genes.

Dr Raliza Stoyanova, of Wellcome, who funded the study, said:

“This large study is an important advance in understanding how genetic variability might contribute to risk for depression.
Given that current treatments work for only half of those who need them, the study provides some intriguing clues for future research to follow up — for example that biological pathways involved in developing the condition may not be the same as those involved in responding to treatment.”

Dr Sophie Dix, Director of Research at mental health charity MQ, said:

“This study adds to the weight of evidence that genes are one of the key risk factors in depression, which is also impacted by life events such as social environment and trauma.
The value of this could really be seen when looking into the development of personalised treatments — a welcome step given the dearth of innovation in identifying new approaches.
We have seen very little advancement in nearly 50 years for people living with depression and right now the avenues available are not working for everyone.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience (Howard et al., 2019).

11 Surprising Facts About Personality

Facts about personality include that people can smell your personality, helpful people have more sex and what underlies personality disorders.

The psychological study of personality reveals patterns in how we behave and interact with other people and experience the world ourselves.

Many of the facts from personality psychology are surprising.

Here are a few fun facts that psychological research has uncovered:

1. People can smell your personality

People can guess your personality by simply smelling your t-shirt.

The study showed that people were as accurate at guessing personality when smelling their clothes as when watching a video of them.

Not all personality traits were easy to spot, though.

The researchers found that people were good at identifying these three personality traits:

neuroticism,
extraversion,
and dominance.

2. Helpful people have more sex

People who help others out have more sex.

The more altruistic people are, the more sexual partners they have and the more frequently they have sex.

Could it be, then, that being nice to other people is the ultimate aphrodisiac?

Who would have thought this was a fact about personality?

Professor Steven Arnocky, the study’s first author, said:

“It appears that altruism evolved in our species, in part, because it serves as a signal of other underlying desirable qualities, which helps individuals reproduce.”

3. Fact: optimists report higher quality of life

Optimists report higher levels of mental and physical functioning than pessimists, research reveals.

Dr Toshihiko Maruta, the study’s first author, said:

“The wellness of being is not just physical, but attitudinal.
How you perceive what goes on around you and how you interpret it may have an impact on your longevity, and it could affect the quality of your later years.”

Researchers studied 447 people who were followed over 30 years.

Their personality was assessed, along with their physical and mental functioning.

It turned out that pessimists had a lower quality of life, on average.

4. People read personality in your movement

The way people move could provide a unique insight into their personality.

People who move in similar ways display better collective behaviour.

The researchers think this means that people who move the same way will be able to interact more effectively as well.

This interesting study suggests that each person has an ‘individual motor signature’ which defines how they move.

5. Being in love reduces neuroticism

Falling in love helps to stabilise the personalities of people who are neurotic.

Love helps people who think pessimistically to approach life with more confidence and see events in a more positive light.

Neuroticism is explained by Dr Christine Finn, the study’s first author:

“Neurotic people are rather anxious, insecure, and easily annoyed.
They have a tendency towards depression, often show low self-esteem and tend to be generally dissatisfied with their lives.
However, we were able to show that they become more stable in a love relationship, and that their personality stabilizes.”

6. Feeling entitled leads to disappointment

The personality trait of entitlement can lead to chronic disappointment.

Entitlement is believing you are better than others and deserve more than them.

Unfortunately, people who feel entitled often enter a spiral of habitual behaviour that is toxic.

From anger they tend to lash out at others, blaming them.

At the same time they continue to tell themselves that they are special.

7. People get nicer as they get older

People get nicer as they get older, in contrast to the stereotype of the grumpy senior.

The fact may be a surprise to those that believe people never change.

They do — even if only a little.

The three main changes to personality that occur, on average, with age are that people get:

more conscientious,
more agreeable,
and less neurotic (moody).

8. Fear of the unknown related to anxiety disorders

Fear of the unknown is the personality trait that underlies many anxiety disorders.

Social anxiety, panic disorder and specific phobias all have fear of the unknown at their heart.

Someone who is sensitive to uncertainty may spend a lot of time worrying what is going to happen to them.

For example, people with panic disorder are constantly worrying that they are going to panic.

9. People read our personalities with one glance

People read a surprising amount into our faces, just from one glance.

Men who have large noses, square jaws and small eyes, are apparently telling the world they prefer short-term relationships, research finds.

Women with larger lips and wide eyes are sending the same short-term relationship signal — whether they like it or not.

10. Narcissists like bitter foods

Having a preference for bitter tastes is linked to psychopathy, narcissism and everyday sadism.

This fun fact about personality suggest that a predilection for tonic water or coffee, therefore, could indicated some psychopathic tendencies in a person’s personality.

In contrast, people who dislike bitter tastes tend to be more agreeable, the researchers discovered.

11. Optimists live longer

Being positive has been linked to living longer by research.

People lived longer if they were more:

optimistic about the future,
closer to other people,
decisive,
and felt more useful and relaxed.

Those who scored in the top sixth for being positive were 18 percent less likely to die over the next four years.

Other facts about a person linked to living longer included getting married and having a degree.

Nasty People Lack This One Vital Quality — Which Leads To Misery

There are three ways to find meaning in life, all of which dark personalities deny themselves.

Patience is one vital trait lacking in psychopaths, narcissists and people with ‘dark personalities’, research finds.

Without patience, people with dark personalities find it hard to obtain satisfaction from their work and love lives.

Impatience means they move from one partner to another and do not commit fully to their work.

Without committing to work and other people, it is very difficult to find meaning in life.

Patience helps people get through difficult situations without being aggressive — something that dark personality types cannot often manage.

Psychopaths, in particular, are highly impulsive, often acting without thinking or controlling themselves.

The study’s authors explain:

“Psychopathy features impulsivity, antisocial behaviors, and lack of empathy; those who score high on psychopathy scales are prone to seeking thrills.”

Similarly, narcissists find criticism very difficult to deal with — they hold grudges and will lash out.

The study’s authors explain:

“Narcissism refers to a feeling of grandiose self-worth such
that those who score high on narcissism often appear dominant and egotistical.
Narcissists commonly experience feelings of superiority over others and can be quite aggressive when they sense that their self-esteem is under threat.”

The conclusions come from 434 people working for a Chinese company.

All were surveyed about their patience, how much meaning they experienced in life and any dark personality traits.

People with any of the so-called ‘dark triad’ of personality traits of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism had low levels of patience and experienced reduced meaning in life.

The authors write that there are three critical ways to find meaning in life:

“…the first is “creating a work or doing a deed”, which is supported by the finding that meaning is positively related with work engagement; the second is love, which is supported by the finding that meaning in life has a significant positive correlation with nourishing relationships; and the last is enduring unavoidable suffering…”

The Chinese study discussed the importance of patience within Buddhism.

Buddhism defines patience as involving three elements:

“The first is the patience to endure suffering, willingly, namely to accept both mental and physical suffering with gratitude.
The second is the patience to not retaliate against harm, namely to withstand harm caused by others, and respond with forgiveness and loving-kindness rather than anger or hatred.
Third, the patience to thoroughly scrutinize phenomena, namely to bear with uncertainty and insecurity, and to see things as they truly are…”

The study was published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life (Wang et al., 2018).