Category: Personality

There are three things that naturally happen to people’s personality with age.

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

The finding 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).

The study examined the brain scans of 500 volunteers.

The researchers found that typical changes in brain structure that occur with age were linked to changes in personality.

Dr Roberta Riccelli, the study’s first author, said:

“Our work supports the notion that personality is, to some degree, associated with brain maturation, a developmental process that is strongly influenced by genetic factors.”

These changes in personality suggest a genetic influence, explained Professor Nicola Toschi, a study co-author:

“Of course, we are continually shaped by our experiences and environment, but the fact that we see clear differences in brain structure which are linked with differences in personality traits suggests that there will almost certainly be an element of genetics involved.

This is also in keeping with the notion that differences in personality traits can be detected early on during development, for example in toddlers or infants.”

Dr Luca Passamonti, a study co-author, said:

“Linking how brain structure is related to basic personality traits is a crucial step to improving our understanding of the link between the brain morphology and particular mood, cognitive, or behavioural disorders.

We also need to have a better understanding of the relation between brain structure and function in healthy people to figure out what is different in people with neuropsychiatric disorders.”

The study was published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Riccelli et al., 2016).

Shiny brain image from Shutterstock

Better mental and physical functioning among people high in this personality trait.

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

Not only that, but optimists also live longer.

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.

Dr Maruta said:

“Our study provides documentation for beliefs commonly held by patients and health care practitioners about the importance of optimistic and pessimistic attitudes.

However, questions remain about the practical significance of these findings for health care practitioners.”

Naturally, though, the study cannot tell us if optimism causes these benefits or is a result of it.

Dr Maruta said:

“Explanatory style may have implications for prevention, intervention, health care utilization and compliance with treatment regimens.

Well formulated studies are essential to warrant the extra time, effort and costs associated with efforts to intervene in a patient’s explanatory style or to personalize the care specific to explanatory style.”

Previous research has also revealed that both extroverts and optimists are more likely to live longer than introverts and pessimists.

As I wrote previously:

“Optimists have healthier hearts than pessimists, a new study of over 51,000 adults finds.

Optimists also had healthier body mass indexes, were more physically active and less likely to smoke.

Researchers found that the more optimistic people were, the greater their overall physical health.

The most optimistic people were 76% more likely to have health scores that were in the ideal range.”

The study was published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Maruta et al., 2012).

Your personality can be read from your choice of smartphone.

Users of iPhones are more interested in their phone as a status object, new research finds.

Users of Android, though, the operating system from Google, were generally more honest and also less interested in wealth and status.

The results come from from a survey of 500 smartphone users.

It also revealed that iPhone users are:

• Younger
• More than twice as likely to be women
• More likely to see their phone as a status object
• More extraverted
• Less concerned about owning devices favoured by most people

Set against this, users of android phones were more likely to be:

• Male
• Older
• More honest
• More agreeable
• Less likely to break rules for personal gain
• Less interested in wealth and status

Dr David Ellis, one of the study’s author, said:

“In this study, we demonstrate for the first time that an individual’s choice of smartphone operating system can provide useful clues when it comes to predicting their personality and other individual characteristics.”

Ms Heather Shaw, the study’s first author, said:

“It is becoming more and more apparent that smartphones are becoming a mini digital version of the user, and many of us don’t like it when other people attempt to use our phones because it can reveal so much about us.”

The study was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking (Shaw et al., 2016).

Smartphone image from Shutterstock

How to fight the negative thinking at the heart of neuroticism.

Falling in love helps to stabilise the personalities of people who are neurotic, a study finds.

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.”

The researchers followed 245 couples aged between 18 and 30 over a period of 9 months.

They were asked how they would react to a series of fictitious scenarios and what they meant for their own relationships.

Being in a relationship helped neurotic people to see the world less negatively, the results showed.

Slowly but surely, as relationships blossomed, the neurotic people developed a more positive outlook.

The less neurotic partner also benefited from the changes, the researchers found.

Dr Finn said:

“The positive experiences and emotions gained by having a partner change the personality — not directly but indirectly — as at the same time the thought structures and the perception of presumably negative situations change.

[…]

“It is difficult to reform a whole personality but our study confirms: Negative thinking can be unlearned!

Professor Franz J. Neyer, a study co-author, said:

“Of course everyone reacts differently and a long, happy relationship has a stronger effect than a short one.

But generally we can say: young adults entering a relationship can only win!”

→ Read on: How to change your personality

The study was published in the Journal of Personality (Finn et al., 2014).

Sexual assault linked to these personality traits.

High levels of pathological narcissism have been linked to men carrying out sexual assaults in a new study.

A survey of 234 male university students found that 20% had committed some kind of sexual assault.

4% had committed rape.

Pathological narcissism, along with sexual promiscuity and aggression in men have all been linked to sexual assaults [see: narcissistic rage].

Pathological narcissism can cause difficulties in relating to others.

Dr Emily Mouilso, study co-author, said:

“As we predicted, the aspects of narcissism that we thought would be related were (related) — the lack of empathy, the entitlement aspects of narcissism.”

Date rape drugs and alcohol were more likely to be used by those with narcissistic traits, the researchers found.

Professor Karen Calhoun, study co-author, said:

“I think people don’t realize how prevalent drinking is…

It’s not so much how much they drink in total for women that makes them vulnerable; it’s how much they drink at a time, the binge drinking, the getting drunk and just not being alert and aware of their surroundings or the risks involved.

That really puts women at risk.”

Both promiscuity and aggression were linked to sexual assault, Dr Mouilso explained:

“…people who have higher levels of sexual interest and more frequent sexual partners, they’re more OK with impersonal sex.

That’s one stream of risk factors.

The second path is the hostile masculinity path.

That has more to do with how you look at women, so having a hostile and angry orientation toward women in general and thinking that relationships are adversarial … it’s more about, what can I get out of this person that I want?

I don’t really care all that much about what they want.”

Perpetrators are not normally strangers, despite the societal belief about ‘stranger danger’, Dr Mouilso said:

“It’s less likely to be a stranger who jumps out of the bush.

It’s more likely to be someone you know like the guy sitting next to you in your intro psych class.”

The study was published in the journal Violence Against Women (Mouilso & Calhoun, 2016).

The immune system was thought to have little effect on the brain — until now.

The immune system is directly responsible for social behaviour and even our personalities, new research finds.

The conclusion comes as a shock to scientists and raises questions about the cause of mental health problems like schizophrenia and autism.

A malfunctioning immune system could be at the heart of these disorders.

Professor Jonathan Kipnis explained why the finding is so shocking to scientists:

“The brain and the adaptive immune system were thought to be isolated from each other, and any immune activity in the brain was perceived as sign of a pathology.

And now, not only are we showing that they are closely interacting, but some of our behavior traits might have evolved because of our immune response to pathogens.

It’s crazy, but maybe we are just multicellular battlefields for two ancient forces: pathogens and the immune system.

Part of our personality may actually be dictated by the immune system.”

For the research in mice and other animals, the scientists blocked a critical immune molecule called interferon-gamma.

The mice (and other animals) then became much less social than they had been before.

The study follows on from findings published last year that there is connection between the brain and the immune system previously thought not to exist.

The link between the immune system and social behaviour makes sense, though, as being social is important but also raises the risk of disease.

Dr Anthony J. Filiano, the study’s lead author, explained:

“It’s extremely critical for an organism to be social for the survival of the species.

It’s important for foraging, sexual reproduction, gathering, hunting.

So the hypothesis is that when organisms come together, you have a higher propensity to spread infection.

So you need to be social, but [in doing so] you have a higher chance of spreading pathogens.

The idea is that interferon gamma, in evolution, has been used as a more efficient way to both boost social behavior while boosting an anti-pathogen response.”

Professor Kipnis said:

“Immune molecules are actually defining how the brain is functioning.

So, what is the overall impact of the immune system on our brain development and function?

I think the philosophical aspects of this work are very interesting, but it also has potentially very important clinical implications.”

The study was published in the journal Nature (Filiano et al., 2016).

Personality image from Shutterstock

Some perfectionists are also toxic to others.

Wanting to do everything perfectly and appear perfect to others can be bad for the health, research has found.

Perfectionists can suffer health problems because they are under continuous stress.

Professor Gordon Flett, an expert on perfectionism, explains:

“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.”

Here are ten signs that you are a perfectionist, as devised by Professor Flett:

“Ten Top Signs Your a Perfectionist**

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.”

Sadly, perfectionism has been linked to many emotional and behavioural problems, such as eating disorders, relationships problems and even suicide.

Professor Flett said:

“Perfectionism is not officially recognized as a psychiatric disorder.

However extreme forms of perfectionism should be considered an illness similar to narcissism, obsessive compulsiveness, dependent-personality disorder and other personality disorders because of its links to distress and dysfunction.”

Psychologists have found that there are, broadly, three types of perfectionists:

1. Self-oriented perfectionists strive for perfection for themselves and set their own high standards.
2. Socially prescribed perfectionists strive for perfection because it is important to other people.
3. ‘Other-focused’ perfectionists, though, expect others to be perfect and are extremely critical if they do not meet these high standards.

The worst type of perfectionists are those who expect others to match their own impossibly high standards.

→ Read on: How To Spot a Toxic Perfectionist

The perfectionism scale is published by MHS (Hewitt & Flett, 2004).

Perfectionism image from Shutterstock

People prefer to interact with others who move in the same way as they do.

The way people move could provide a unique insight into their personality, a new study finds.

In the future it may allow health professionals to diagnose and treat mental health problems.

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

This includes things like the weight of their movement and speed.

In the study people played a mirror game in which they had to copy each other’s movements.

They found that people who moved in similar ways also displayed better collective behaviour.

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

Professor Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Although human movement has been well studied, what is far less well understood is the differences each of us displays when we move — whether it is faster, or lighter, or smoother for example.

This study shows that people who move in a certain way, will also react in similar ways when they are performing joint tasks.

Essentially, our movements give an insight into our inherent personality traits.

What we demonstrate is that people typically want to react and interact with people who are similar to themselves.

But what our study also shows is that movement gives an indication of a person’s behavioural characteristics.

This could therefore be used in the future to help diagnose patients with certain conditions by studying how they move and react to others.”

The study was published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface (Słowiński et al., 2016).

Mental work image from Shutterstock

Eye colour could reveal an aspect of your personality, study finds.

Lighter eyes have been linked to more egocentric, competitive, skeptical individuals, research finds.

Darker eyes, though, are linked to sympathy, altruism and a higher altruistic behaviour.

The study, which was conducted in Australia, only held for those with Northern European ancestry, though, the study’s authors explain:

“A competitive person is characterised by a tendency to be antagonistic, egocentric, and sceptical of others’ intentions rather than cooperative…

…light-eyed people, whatever their sex, would be more competitive psychologically than dark eyed people if they are of north European descent.”

The authors provide an evolutionary explanation for the difference:

“…the rare-color advantage of light eyed females, is likely to increase the chance of being noticed by a male.

Moreover, competitive personality traits (such as wanting to beat others and being sceptical of others’ intentions) secure the long-term commitment necessary for self and off-spring survival.

Whilst some may argue that it is unlikely that a male would choose a disagreeable female we argue that mating is not the sole choice of males and that the disagreeable traits of competitive women are directed primarily at other female competition rather than towards males.”

The study was published in the journal Current Biology (Gardiner & Jackson, 2010).

Eyes image from Shutterstock