Category: Personality

The personality trait is usually seen as a positive one and at low levels even necessary.

Perfectionism is a bigger risk factor in suicide than is often thought, according to research.

Perfectionism involves being highly self-critical, constantly striving to meet the standards of others (typically parents or mentors) and being unsure about the efficacy of one’s own actions.

While a certain amount of perfectionism is adaptive and necessary, when it becomes an obsession, it can lead to a vicious cycle.

People in professions which have a strong emphasis on perfectionism — like lawyers, architects and physicians — are at a higher risk of suicide.

Professor Gordon Flett of York University, who co-authored the study, said:

“Perfectionism is the need to be – or to appear – perfect.

Perfectionists are persistent, detailed and organized high achievers.

Perfectionists vary in their behaviors: some strive to conceal their imperfections; others attempt to project an image of perfection.

But all perfectionists have in common extremely high standards for themselves or for others.”

It’s not hard to see how setting impossibly high standards for yourself would sometimes lead to negative feelings when these standards are not met.

Professor Flett continued:

“We summarize data showing consistent links between perfectionism and hopelessness and discuss the need for an individualized approach that recognizes the heightened risk for perfectionists.”

The research finds that people who feel strong social pressure to be perfect are at increased risk of experiencing suicidal thoughts (Flett et al., 2014).

At the same time, perfectionists are adept at hiding these feelings from others — after all, it would contradict their perfectionist persona to admit to suicidal thoughts.

Perfectionists like to maintain a mask of cool invulnerability to others, while inside their thoughts and emotions are anything but calm.

Professor Flett continued:

“They also tend to experience hopelessness, psychological pain, life stress, overgeneralization, and a form of emotional perfectionism that restricts the willingness to disclose suicidal urges and intentions.”

Ironically, if they decide to commit suicide, their perfectionism can lead to very thorough and precise plans for suicide.

* Ten Signs Your a Perfectionist

Professor Flett gives these tell-tale signs of perfectionism:

1. You can’t stop thinking about a mistake you made.
2. You are intensely competitive and can’t stand doing worse than others.
3. You either want to do something “just right” or not at all.
4. You demand perfection from other people.
5. You won’t ask for help if asking can be perceived as a flaw or weakness.
6. You will persist at a task long after other people have quit.
7. You are a fault-finder who must correct other people when they are wrong.
8. You are highly aware of other people’s demands and expectations.
9. You are very self-conscious about making mistakes in front of other people.
10. * You noticed the error in the title of this list.

→ Related articles:

• How parents turn their children into problematic perfectionists
• The 2 types of perfectionism: one helps while the other sabotages you
• How to spot a toxic perfectionist
• The best remedy for a perfectionist personality

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Grandiose narcissism is just one of the personality traits that’s elevated in geeks.

Geeks are more likely to have grandiose narcissistic self-views, a study finds.

The narcissism is accompanied by being extraverted, more open to experience and more prone to (non-clinical) depression.

The results come from a survey of 2,354 people published in the journal PloS ONE.

The study’s authors explain:

“…individuals may engage in geek culture in order to maintain narcissistic self-views (the great fantasy migration hypothesis), to fulfill belongingness needs (the belongingness hypothesis), and to satisfy needs for creative expression (the need for engagement hypothesis).

Geek engagement is found to be associated with elevated grandiose narcissism, extraversion, openness to experience, depression, and subjective well-being…”

This may be because:

“…narcissistic individuals who are unable to receive the admiration and praise to which they feel entitled (whether because of failure, or because their grandiose fantasy is impossible to live out in the real world) may turn to a fantasy world where such praise is more easily obtained.”

Of course this doesn’t explain the personality of all geeks, but it may explain a tendency within that culture.

Geekiness is also about wanting to belong, as the researchers explain:

“…geeks gain belongingness by rallying around the resources that are currently available: consumer goods and cultural artifacts.

…geeks use knowledge of geek interests (e.g., Star Trek trivia) and collections (e.g., model spaceships) as social currency.

…people who are outcast or rejected as children devote more energy to exploring solitary interests, including obscure interests, and eventually form ties to others with the same specialized interests, thereby forming a network of relationships based around previously solitary activities.”

So, what is geek culture?

“Geek culture is a subculture of enthusiasts that is traditionally associated with obscure media (Japanese animation, science fiction, video games, etc.).

However, geek culture is becoming increasingly mainstream; for example, in the past year alone, Dragon*Con, a major Geek convention in Atlanta, Georgia, attracted an attendance of over 57,000 members.”

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE (McCain et al., 2015).

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is considered one of the most serious personality disorders, but it does respond to treatment.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is thought to affect between 1 percent and 6 percent of the population.

It is more common in women than men.

While many believe that BPD is not treatable, this is not true.

Psychotherapies and even time can both help to heal the disorder.

The most telling sign of BPD is a long history of instability in personal relationships.

This is partly caused by unstable and impulsive emotions.

At one time people with BPD can idolise someone else, and soon after they hate them.

As a result those with BPS often have very intense relationships with others.

Signs of borderline personality disorder

Here are 7 other signs of borderline personality disorder to look for:

1. Intense fear of abandonment or being alone, whether real or imagined.

2. The tendency to take risks without thinking about the consequences. Especially when the results hurt the self e.g. car crashes, risky sex or substance abuse.

3. Attempting to self-harm or thinking about suicide. People with borderline personality disorder are not usually trying to kill themselves when self-harming. Rather they are expressing feelings of anger towards the self or trying to feel ‘normal’.

4. Having an unstable sense of self. People with borderline personality disorder may often feel they are different people depending on who they are with. They often describe feeling lost and empty.

5. Paranoid thoughts and zoning out. Believing in things that are not true or sometimes zoning out so that it appears the person with borderline personality disorder is not really there.

6. Feeling intense anger — possibly over relatively trivial matters — and acting out physically in response.

7. People with borderline personality disorder are often on a kind of emotional roller-coaster. Intense anxiety could give way to intense depression, then to another strong emotion. These bouts can last a few hours or even a few days.

Mental health professionals usually look for a majority of these symptoms in order to diagnose someone with borderline personality disorder (there are some slightly different systems and related diagnoses).

BPD and empathy

People with borderline personality disorder find it difficult to empathise, research finds (Haas & Miller, 2015).

Dr Brian Haas, the study’s lead author, said:

“Our results showed that people with BPD traits had reduced activity in brain regions that support empathy.

This reduced activation may suggest that people with more BPD traits have a more difficult time understanding and/or predicting how others feel, at least compared to individuals with fewer BPD traits.”

Dr Joshua Miller, who co-authored the study, said:

“Borderline personality disorder is considered one of the most severe and troubling personality disorders.

BPD can make it difficult to have successful friendships and romantic relationships.

These findings could help explain why that is.”

Treatment for borderline personality disorder

The psychological treatment for borderline personality disorder often involves training in regulating the emotions.

Sometimes people with borderline personality disorder are given antidepressants.

This is because they are frequently depressed or suffering with other mental problems, such as posttraumatic stress disorder.

However, the personality disorder generally improves over time even without specialised treatment (Sharp et al., 2021).

Still, early intervention in young people is the best approach.

Currently, the best treatments for borderline personality disorder are mentalisation-based therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy.

The majority of people can recover from a borderline personality disorder given time and the right treatment.

Causes of BPD

The cause of the condition is still not well understood.

However, it is likely a combination of genetic and environmental factors — as with many mental health problems.

People who experienced a trauma as children are 13 times more likely to have borderline personality disorder (Porter et al., 2019).

Physical neglect was the most common form of trauma experienced, followed by emotional abuse and sexual abuse.

The study found that 71 percent of those diagnosed with borderline personality disorder had experienced at least one childhood trauma.

Dr Filippo Varese, study co-author, said:

“During childhood and adolescence, our brain is still undergoing considerable development and we are also refining strategies to deal with the challenges of everyday life, and the negative feelings that come with them.

In some people who have experienced chronic, overwhelming stress in childhood, it is likely that these responses do not develop in the same way.

People can become more sensitive to ‘normal’ stress.

They are sometimes unable to deal with intense negative thoughts and feelings, and they might resort to dangerous or unhelpful measures to feel better, such as taking drugs or self-harming.

This can lead to various mental health difficulties, including the problems commonly seen in people who receive a diagnosis of BPD.”

→ Read on: How to change your personality

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It takes as little as five minutes to feel someone’s charisma bursting through.

People who are charismatic have a magic combination of being courteous and approachable as well as being able to influence others.

That is why we associate charisma with leadership and with making people feel comfortable.

Research finds there are six signs of a charismatic person (Tskhay et al., 2018):

1. Makes people feel comfortable.
2. Smiles at people often.
3. Can get along with anyone.
4. Has a presence in a room.
5. Has the ability to influence people.
6. Knows how to lead a group.

The first three are related to putting other people at their ease and the other three are related to leadership and presence.

Charisma seems to have little to do with intelligence, the researchers also found.

Highly intelligent people can be highly uncharismatic and relatively unintelligent people can have magnetic personalities.

Generally, though, charismatic people were quite agreeable — they are usually empathetic, warm and considerate.

This helps explain their ability to make people feel comfortable.

The study found that it can take as little as five minutes for people to pick up on someone’s charisma.

Speed is of the essence for charisma

People who are mentally quick on their feet are seen as more charismatic by friends, research finds (von Hippel et al., 2015).

Speed is of the essence, though, the researchers found, while IQ and mental agility were not as vital as they expected.

Professor William von Hippel, who led the research, said:

“Our findings show that social intelligence is more than just knowing the right thing to do.

Social intelligence also requires an ability to execute, and the quickness of our mind is an important component of that ability.”

Professor Hippel was fascinated by why some people exude more charisma than others.

He said:

“We decided to take a slightly different approach to the problem by trying to get a handle on what enables charisma.

When we looked at charismatic leaders, musicians, and other public figures, one thing that stood out is that they are quick on their feet.”

The study included 417 people who were rated on their charisma by friends.

They also took tests of personality and intelligence.

Each was then asked 30 questions which are common knowledge, such as: “Name a precious gem.”

People who were quicker to come up with easy answers like this were perceived as more charismatic by their friends, the results showed.

This was even true when people’s personality and intelligence was taken into account.

Professor Hippel said:

“Although we expected mental speed to predict charisma, we thought that it would be less important than IQ.

Instead, we found that how smart people were was less important than how quick they were.

So knowing the right answer to a tough question appears to be less important than being able to consider a large number of social responses in a brief window of time.”

Being mentally agile also allows people to consider different social responses on the spot.

This enables charismatic people to rule out inappropriate actions as well as pick out potentially witty responses.

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Graphology, or handwriting analysis, claims to reveal people’s personalities and more, but the science is very doubtful.

Graphology is the analysis of handwriting to try and extract information about personality, psychological states, marital compatibility, personnel selection and even medical conditions.

Unfortunately, it is total baloney.

Graphology is now considered by scientists to be a pseudoscience with little to recommend it.

Scientific research finds that graphology really reveals very little about a person, other than whether they are man or woman and rich or poor.

The attraction of graphology

At first glance the myth that our personalities might be hidden in our handwriting is attractive.

The way each of us writes is so personal, apparently in just the same way our personalities are so individual.

Handwriting is also a mode of personal expression, a creative act we have been developing our whole lives.

Sure, people can guess the author’s gender from a handwriting sample about 60 percent to 70 percent of the time, bearing in mind that 50 percent is pure chance.

People also perform better than chance at guessing an author’s socioeconomic status from their handwriting.

But can you really read any deep psychological truths into a person’s handwriting?

Maybe people who have fast handwriting are impulsive?

Maybe untidy handwriting means depression?

Graphologists (not to be confused with forensic document examiners) have gone much further, though, in interpreting handwriting.

They have made all sorts of claims, including that graphology can help you:

• Select your perfect marriage partner.
• Find out whether your partner is cheating on you.
• Identify which potential employees will become violent on the job.
• Decide which applicants for a loan are credit-worthy.

Impressive claims, no?

Let’s check them out…

Putting graphology to the test

Geoffrey Dean has reviewed two hundred different studies into whether graphology can tell us anything about personality (Dean, 1992).

Adding up the effect of each of these studies showed that graphology has a combined power of about…wait for it…zero.

Well, not quite zero but still very, very small – so small as to be insignificant.

That’s not to say that some of the plentiful studies on graphology don’t find more positive results, some of them do, even though they’re usually still small.

But, unsurprisingly, these studies are published by graphologists themselves in sources that cannot be considered reputable.

For example they paid for it to be published.

Of the studies that are published in peer-reviewed journals that use rigorous scientific methodologies, hardly any show an effect.

As a result, the respectability of graphology within the scientific community has now been all but wiped out.

Using graphology in personnel selection

Of course, the simple fact that empirical studies show it has no validity hasn’t stopped graphologists continuing to make all sorts of claims for their ‘science’.

Professor Barry Beyerstein, a scientific sceptic who was well-known as an investigator of questionable psychological techniques and products, points out that claims about the validity of graphology are potentially damaging.

Beyerstein (2007) explains how he was once told by a graphologist that he had been sexually molested by his parents and that he had a drug problem.

Needless to say neither of these ‘interpretations’ were true.

Perhaps one of the most widespread, and potentially damaging uses, is in recruitment.

It is thought between 5 percent and 10 percent of businesses in both the US and the UK use graphology as part of the recruitment process.

In other parts of the world the figure is even higher.

Astonishingly between 38 percent and 93 percent of businesses in France use graphology – probably because one of graphology’s pioneers, Jean Hyppolyte Michon, was French.

Still, it’s difficult to know exactly how many companies still use graphology because many deny it, despite probably using it (Bradley, 2005).

They’re right to keep it secret: it’s embarrassing.

A recent review of the literature on the use of graphology specifically in recruitment was carried out by the British Psychological Society.

They found that graphology has exactly the same validity in personnel selection as astrology, i.e. none.

Accepting the evidence

The reason people tend not to think too critically about graphology is probably because it seems so intuitive.

Indeed studies have shown that people know how to change their handwriting so as to affect other people’s impression of them (Loewenthal, 1975).

In other words, we seem to share some beliefs in common about what certain features of handwriting signify, although these connections are merely illusory.

Despite the intuitive nature of the connections between handwriting and personality, we have to bow to the sheer weight of evidence against graphology.

And this evidence keeps telling us that it doesn’t work.

Consequently, people who believe in graphology should rightly be treated with the same suspicion as those who believe in astrology.

Humour them if you wish, educate them if you can, but don’t take them seriously.

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People with these personality traits as teenagers are likely to live longer.

Empathy, calmness and energy are among the personality traits that predict a long life, research finds.

These teenage personality traits predicted people’s longevity five decades later.

Along with these, people who are tidier, intellectually curious and more mature also live longer.

In contrast, people who were impulsive as teens were not likely to live as long.

Impulsive people tend to act without thinking or controlling themselves.

The conclusions come from a study that followed 26,845 people for almost 50 years, on average, starting in 1960.

All were asked about their personality, family background and later income and jobs.

The results showed that six personality factors were linked to a long life:

• energy,
• empathy,
• calmness,
• tidiness,
• intellectual curiosity,
• and maturity.

Only impulsiveness was linked to a shorter lifespan.

Personality may affect lifespan in a number of ways, the authors write:

“Life course mechanisms linking personality to poorer health outcomes include the adoption of poor health behaviours and long-term effects of wear and tear on the immune, endocrine and cardiovascular systems.

Maladaptive traits also appear to limit later educational attainment, impede mid-life occupational advancement and increase risk of divorce-social and socioeconomic factors linked to later death.”

However, it’s surprising how predictive adolescent personality can be, the study’s authors write:

“In one sense, the tracing of personality-mortality associations back to adolescence is surprising because the high school years are widely seen as a time of personality development and malleability.”

So, although people may change over the years, it is not enough to wipe out the effects of personality on longevity.

The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health (Chapman et al., 2019).

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

Outgoing, sociable people also have the strongest immune systems, a study finds.

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

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

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

Conscientious people are systematic and dutiful and are 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 study, published in the snappily titled journal Psychoneuroendochrinology, gave personality tests to 121 health adults (Vedhara et al., 2014).

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?”

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What message are your shoes sending to the world about your personality — psychology research reveals all.

People make surprisingly accurate guesses about other people’s personalities from relatively little information, a psychology study reveals.

Shoes are often said to be a good indicator of a person’s personality — and psychology research agrees.

A study of 208 people looking only at pictures of shoes has found people could pick out some personality traits of their owners.

The shoes in the pictures were the ones the owner wore most often.

So, here is your guide to reading someone’s personality just by looking at their shoes (and what your shoes are telling other people).

Practical shoes = agreeable personality

To spot a more agreeable person, look for affordable and practical shoes.

People wearing shoes with pointy toes, those that are obviously branded or expensive, mean the wearer is likely to be less agreeable.

Anxiously attached people tend to wear shoes that look brand new.

‘Anxiously attached’ is psychologist-talk for people who are needy.

Needy people want your approval and perhaps their shiny, new shoes are one way they hope to get it.

The psychology study’s authors explain:

“People with anxious orientation constantly desire caring and attention.

One strategy for achieving attention is to decorate oneself in an expressive way, so that others would easily detect one’s style.

Thus, it is possible that anxiously attached people tend to wear shoes that are more in line with their personal characteristics, which makes them more observable and means they will more easily stand out.”

Worn out shoes = extraverted personality

Naturally, people with more money tend to wear more stylish shoes.

Women, in general, also tend to wear more expensive, branded shoes than men.

People wearing worn out shoes and/or high tops are more likely to be extraverted.

High-topped shoes are also linked to being more conscientious.

In general, people are pretty good at reading personality from shoes, the psychology study’s authors write:

“Observers agreed on many of the shoe owner characteristics, and they were reasonably accurate; observer ratings were correlated with the shoe owners’ self-ratings.”

Errors about personality and shoes

However, the people in the study also made some consistent mistakes when trying to read personality from shoes.

Colourful, bright shoes did not necessarily belong to extraverted people.

Attractive shoes in good condition did not necessarily belong to conscientious people.

Shabby shoes did not necessarily belong to a liberal!

In fact, you can tell very little about someone’s politics from their shoes, apparently.

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Gillath et al., 2012).