Personality - Page 28 of 32

The Major Personality Trait Linked To Mating Success

The personality trait linked to ‘getting lucky’ more often.

People who are extraverted have more ‘mating success’, new research finds.

The more extraverted men and women are, the more often they ‘get lucky’ with the opposite sex.

For men, those with certain combinations fare even better.

Men who are both extraverted and agreeable or extraverted and conscientious are especially fortunate.

Introverted men should not despair — they still do well if they are high on both agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Both extraverted men and women have more offspring, the study found.

Dr Stephen Whyte, the study’s first author, said:

“Throughout history, competitive advantages have helped men and women achieve increased success in their occupation, sport, artistic endeavours, their ability to acquire and secure resources, and ultimately, their survival.”

The conclusions come from a study of almost 4,500 heterosexual people.

They were given personality tests and asked about their private lives and any children they had.

Dr Whyte explained:

“The results showed certain trait combinations appear to result in higher mating frequency and more offspring for select males.

The combinations producing higher frequency for select males being high extraversion and high agreeableness, high extraversion and high conscientiousness, and high agreeableness with high conscientiousness.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Whyte et al., 2019).

The Personality Disorder Linked To Social Media Use

The modern way to develop a personality disorder.

Posting too many pictures to social media can turn you into a narcissist, new research reveals.

People posting pictures heavily to social media became 25% more narcissistic in the four months of the study.

The increase pushed many across the cut-off for having a narcissistic personality disorder.

However, those posting mostly text to social media, such as Twitter, did not see a rise in narcissism.

There has been much debate about whether social media can increase narcissism, explained Professor Phil Reed, who led the study:

“There have been suggestions of links between narcissism and the use of visual postings on social media, such as Facebook, but, until this study, it was not known if narcissists use this form of social media more, or whether using such platforms is associated with the subsequent growth in narcissism.

The results of this study suggest that both occur, but show that posting selfies can increase narcissism.”

The study followed 74 people aged 18 to 34 for four months.

Their social media use was tracked, along with narcissistic personality traits.

People used social media for an average of three hours per day, although some used it for up to 8 hours per day.

Professor Reed said:

“Taking our sample as representative of the population, which there is no reason to doubt, this means that about 20% of people may be at risk of developing such narcissistic traits associated with their excessive visual social media use.

That the predominant usage of social media for the participants was visual, mainly through Facebook, suggests the growth of this personality problem could be seen increasingly more often, unless we recognise the dangers in this form of communication.”

Professor Roberto Truzoli. study co-author, said:

“The use of visual social media may emphasise the perception of narcissistic individuals that they are the main focus of attention.

The lack of immediate ‘direct’ social censure, may offer them the opportunity to inflict aspects of their narcissistic personality, present themselves in a grandiose manner, and realise fantasies of omnipotence.”

The study was published in The Open Psychology Journal (Reed et al., 2018).

The Personality Trait Linked To Bankruptcy

People with this trait are 50% more likely to be declared bankrupt.

Being kind and trusting is linked to financial hardship, especially for the poor, new research finds.

In general, people who are more agreeable are at greater risk of bankruptcy and lower credit ratings.

The reason is that people who are agreeable tend to care less about money.

For those who have an adequate income, caring little about money is not as big a problem.

With greater financial resources to fall back on, richer people can afford to give money a low priority.

For those at the lower end of society, though, being nice and trusting can be financially problematic.

Dr Sandra Matz, the study’s first author, said:

“We were interested in understanding whether having a nice and warm personality, what academics in personality research describe as agreeableness, was related to negative financial outcomes.

Previous research suggested that agreeableness was associated with lower credit scores and income.

We wanted to see if that association held true for other financial indicators and, if so, better understand why nice guys seem to finish last.”

The study analysed data from over 3 million people.

It used bank account data, a national survey, two online panels and publicly available data.

Dr Joe Gladstone, study co-author, explained the results:

“Not every agreeable person is at equal risk of experiencing financial hardship.

The relationship was much stronger for lower-income individuals, who don’t have the financial means to compensate for the detrimental impact of their agreeable personality.”

The results also revealed that agreeableness in childhood predicted financial problems 25 years later.

Dr Matz said:

“Our results help us to understand one potential factor underlying financial hardship, which can have serious implications for people’s well-being.

Being kind and trusting has financial costs, especially for those who do not have the means to compensate for their personalities.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Matz & Gladstone, 2018).

2 Personality Traits Linked To Negative Thoughts

The best strategy for getting rid of negative thoughts.

People high in neuroticism are more likely to experience negative thoughts, research finds.

In addition, being introverted is linked to spontaneously remembering more negative life events.

Together, both personality traits — neuroticism and introversion — are linked to depression and anxiety.

On the other hand, people with stable emotions who are more extraverted are at lower risk of depression and anxiety.

Neuroticism and introversion are two of the ‘big 5’ personality traits, that also include agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience.

The study included 71 people who were given personality tests and asked to recall some personal memories.

Dr Florin Dolcos, study co-author, explained:

“We’re looking at traits that are associated with the way that people process the emotional world and the way that they respond to it.

We wanted to look not only at how personality traits might influence what and how people remember, but also to examine how that impacts their (subsequent) emotional state.”

The results showed that both men and women who were more introverted tended to recall more negative memories.

Neurotic women had a tendency to repeatedly return to the same memories, the study revealed.

Psychologists call this rumination.

Dr Dolcos explained:

“Depressed people recollect those negative memories and as a result they feel sad.

And as a result of feeling sad, the tendency is to have more negative memories recollected.

It’s a kind of a vicious circle.”

Neurotic men, though, recalled a higher proportion of negative memories.

Getting rid of negative thoughts

To get rid of negative thoughts, people use a variety of strategies.

For women, trying to suppress negative thoughts did not work, as they returned stronger than before.

(See: the problem with thought suppression.)

Men who made an effort to think differently about their memories — what psychologists call ‘reappraisal’ — recalled more positive memories.

Suppression was not linked to any differences for men.

One of the best ways of getting rid of negative thoughts is using flexible emotional control strategies.

The study was published in the journal Emotion (Denkova et al., 2012).

The Thought Pattern That Reduces Pain (S)

The less the ‘default network’ is activated, the less pain people felt, the study showed.

The less the 'default network' is activated, the less pain people felt, the study showed.

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The Trait That Predicts A Higher Salary (S)

This is one of the best psychological predictors of how much someone will earn.

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The Ways Depression Changes People’s Personality

Study tests if depression changes people’s personality.

People who are depressed become more neurotic, more dependent on others and more thoughtful in the short-term, research finds.

After recovering from depression, though, people’s personality returns almost completely to its pre-depression state.

Depression does not change people’s personality in the long-term, the study found.

Indeed, people’s personality may become slightly more healthy after recovering from an episode of depression.

However, depression does affect people’s personality somewhat while they are experiencing an episode.

There was some evidence, though, that people lose some of their social confidence after an episode of depression.

It may also be that multiple, severe bouts of depression can have a long-lasting effect on personality.

The conclusions come from thousands of people, some with and some without depression, who were followed across six years.

The study’s authors explain the results:

“None of the scales for which negative change would be
predicted by the scar hypothesis (increased neuroticism, emotional reliance, and lack of social self-confidence; decreased ascendance/dominance, sociability, and extroversion) showed such change.

In general, scores on these scales remained stable from time 1 to time 2; if they changed at all, they changed numerically in the direction of healthier scores at time 2.”

The results showed no evidence of the so-called ‘scar hypothesis’.

The authors explain that…

“…the “scar” or “complication” model, suggesting that the depressive episode is the cause of lasting change in personality.”

Instead, the study supports the idea that certain personality types are vulnerable to depression.

Negative emotionality is the strongest risk factor for depression among personality traits, research finds.

Negative emotionality is essentially being highly neurotic and involves finding it hard to deal with stress and experiencing a lot of negative emotions and mood swings.

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

The study was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry (Shea et al., 1996).

The Amazing Ways Exercise Changes Your Personality

How to change your personality for the better.

Being more physically active makes people more extraverted, conscientious, agreeable and open to new experience, new research finds.

A few of the benefits of these personality changes include:

Higher conscientiousness is linked to more success in life,
more extraverted people experience more positive emotions,
and being open to experience is linked to creativity and intelligence.

These changes to personality have been documented over years and decades.

Naturally, remaining sedentary is linked to the opposite pattern in personality.

Sedentary people have the tendency to become less agreeable, more introverted, less open to experience and less conscientious.

The good news is that only relatively small amounts of exercise are enough, over the years, to lead to positive changes to personality.

The study followed over six thousand middle-aged people for over two decades.

All completed personality surveys and gave details of how much physical activity they did.

There are all sorts of ways that exercise is probably linked to personality change.

The study’s authors write:

“A physically inactive lifestyle has a range of long-term
biological, health and cognitive outcomes, such as higher risk of frailty, worse mental and physical health and declines in
memory and executive functions.

Such outcomes, in turn, may have a long-term impact on personality, such as reductions in the tendency to be self-disciplined and organized or to be exploratory and curious.

Indeed, cognitive decline, greater frailty, and more
depressive symptoms and disease burden have been associated with reduced conscientiousness and openness over time.”

Depression is also linked to an inactive lifestyle, they write:

“It is possible that the long-term functional limitations and depressive symptoms that result from a physically inactive lifestyle may be reflected in a lower tendency to experience positive emotions, be enthusiastic, and be agreeable.”

→ Read on: How to change your personality

The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Stephan et al., 2018).