Personality - Page 30 of 31

The 2 Types of Perfectionism: One Helps While The Other Sabotages You

A certain type of perfectionism can lead to depression, anxiety and eating disorders.

A certain type of perfectionism can lead to depression, anxiety and eating disorders.

A dark type of perfectionism focusing primarily on anxieties about being perfect can hurt many areas of people’s lives, a new review reports.

Perfectionism of this type involves constantly worrying about reaching impossibly high standards and making mistakes.

It also involves worrying about letting others down.

The psychologists found that the personality trait was most strongly linked to burnout at work.

This may be because high performance in the workplace can often go unrewarded.

The ‘good’ type of perfectionism

In contrast, a related personality trait which focuses on striving for perfection is linked to more positive outcomes.

People who set themselves high goals and work towards them pro-actively do better than those who focus more on their anxieties.

The conclusions come from a review of 43 different studies conducted over 20 years.

Dr Andrew Hill, the study’s lead author, said:

“Perfectionistic concerns capture fears and doubts about personal performance, which creates stress that can lead to burnout when people become cynical and stop caring.
It also can interfere with relationships and make it difficult to cope with setbacks because every mistake is viewed as a disaster.”

Being an anxious perfectionist has been linked to all kinds of health problems including depression, anxiety, eating disorders and even early death.

Most people have some tendencies towards perfectionism in some parts of their lives.

Dr Hill said:

“People need to learn to challenge the irrational beliefs that underlie perfectionistic concerns by setting realistic goals, accepting failure as a learning opportunity, and forgiving themselves when they fail.
Creating environments where creativity, effort and perseverance are valued also would help.”

The research was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review (Hill & Curran, 2015).

• Read on: How To Spot a Toxic Perfectionist

Perfectionism image from Shutterstock

This Eye Colour Linked to Higher Chance of Alcoholism

Link explained by similar set of genes coding for both eye colour and a tendency towards alcoholism.

Link explained by similar set of genes coding for both eye colour and a tendency towards alcoholism.

People with blue eyes have a higher chance of becoming alcoholics, a new study finds.

In fact, light-coloured eyes in general — whether green, grey or brown — are more strongly linked to alcoholism.

In comparison, people with dark brown eyes have a lower chance of becoming alcoholics.

The connection is likely down to a similar set of genes coding for both eye colour and a tendency towards alcoholism.

Dr Dawei Li, one of the study’s authors, said:

“This suggests an intriguing possibility — that eye color can be useful in the clinic for alcohol dependence diagnosis.”

The study was published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics (Sulovari et al., 2015).

Eyes image from Shutterstock

How To Spot a Toxic Perfectionist

The worst type of perfectionists are toxic to other people.

The worst type of perfectionists are toxic to other people.

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

‘Other-focused’ perfectionists tend to be antisocial, narcissistic and have an aggressive sense of humour, a new study finds.

The results come from research which compared the characteristics of three different types of perfectionists:

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

Both self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionists are highly critical of themselves, but not particularly of other people.

Of the three types, the self-oriented perfectionist gets on best with others.

They tend to care about others’ expectations and needs and prefer the type of humour that enhances relationships.

Socially prescribed perfectionists, however, tend to be low on self-esteem and feel inferior.

They tend to be unemotional and antisocial and mostly focus their humour on belittling themselves.

The other-focused perfectionists, though, have traits of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism, the survey of 229 people found.

Other-focused perfectionists feel they are better than other people and they are quite antisocial.

Their sense of humour is aggressive and tends to make other people feel worse about themselves.

Professor Joachim Stoeber, the study’s author, said:

“Other-oriented perfectionism is a ‘dark’ form of perfectionism positively associated with narcissistic, antisocial and uncaring personality characteristics.”

The study was published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. (Stoeber, 2015).

Cutting grass image from Shutterstock

Introverts Prefer Mountains: How Your Personality Affects Where You Should Live

Whether it’s better to live in the mountains, on the plains, by the ocean — and the city that’s best for you.

Whether it’s better to live in the mountains, on the plains, by the ocean — and the city that’s best for you.

‘Introverts prefer mountains’ is one of the conclusions of a series of recent studies on the link between personality and place.

People view mountainous areas as being more peaceful and calm.

Extroverts, meanwhile, tend to prefer flat, open areas.

These are viewed as more exciting, sociable and stimulating.

The study also found that introverts are, indeed, more likely to live in mountainous areas, while extraverts tend to live on the flat.

Dr Shige Oishi, who led the study, said:

“Some cities and towns have geography that is more accommodating for some people than for others…if you know you’re introverted, then you may be rejuvenated by being in a secluded place, while an extrovert may be rejuvenated more in an open space.”

People’s preferences also changed depending on how they were feeling.

When they wanted to socialise, people thought of the ocean 75% of the time.

Personality match

Another study on personality has found that people may be better off in cities which match their personalities.

Dr Wiebke Bleidorn, who led this study, said:

“Individuals low on openness to experiences had significantly lower self-esteem in open cities, like New York City, but relatively higher self-esteem in cities that score relatively lower on openness to experience, for instance, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.”

In other words, people may have higher self-esteem when their personality matches the city.

If you’re open-minded, you’re better off to live in an open-minded type of place.

Happy places

Some areas even seem to give off a special lustre of happiness which people are attracted to.

In a further study of life satisfaction and population growth, Richard E. Lucas found that happy places grow more quickly (Lucas, 2013).

He explained:

“This suggests that there is something about happier places that people recognize and that attracts people to live there.
It’s not clear from our research why this association exists.
It could be that people intentionally move to places that are happier, and the factors that attract people also contribute to happiness, or it may be that places that are growing feel more energetic.”

Where to buy image from Shutterstock

How Cynical Personality Traits Affect Dementia Risk

Cynicism has already been linked with worse physical health, but what is it doing to the brain?

People with high levels of cynicism are more likely to develop dementia, according to a new study published in the medical journal Neurology (Neuvonen et al., 2014).

It’s already been found that those who believe others are mainly motivated by selfish concerns — the definition of cynical distrust — have worse physical health; for example, cynicism has been linked to heart disease.

Now you can add dementia to the list.

In the study, conducted in Finland, 1,449 people were given tests of their cynicism that included questions like:

“I think most people would lie to get ahead.”
“It is safer to trust nobody.”
“Most people will use somewhat unfair reasons to gain profit or an advantage rather than lose it.”

The more people endorsed these statements, the stronger their cynical distrust was deemed to be.

They were also given tests of dementia and other factors that might affect their risk of developing dementia later on, like smoking and high cholesterol levels.

Eight years later, people were tested again to see if they had developed any symptoms of dementia.

Forty-six people had, and in that group, people who were high on cynical distrust were three times more likely to develop dementia than those low on that measure.

One of the study’s authors, Anna-Maija Tolppanen, PhD, said:

“These results add to the evidence that people’s view on life and personality may have an impact on their health.
Understanding how a personality trait like cynicism affects risk for dementia might provide us with important insights on how to reduce risks for dementia.”

Image credit: Daniela Vladimirova

What Your Coffee Order Says About Your Personality

Survey of 1,000 coffee drinkers reveals which type are “people-pleasers” and which are the most laid-back.

Black coffee drinkers are old-school purists who are patient and efficient but can be a little quiet and moody, finds a survey.

While latte drinkers were generous with their time but didn’t always take the best care of their health.

These are amongst the findings from a recent survey of 1,000 coffee drinkers conducted by clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula.

The survey looked at different facets of personality along with the types of coffee which people expressed a preference for.

Here are the highlights:

Frozen/blended coffee drinkers were trendsetters who liked to try new things. While they tended to be spontaneous and imaginative, they could also be reckless and fail to make healthy choices.
Latte drinkers were people-pleasers and comfort seekers who would go out of their way to help others. On the other hand they didn’t always take care of themselves and could get over-extended.
Decaf/specifically ordered coffee drinkers tended to be more obsessive and perfectionist. They made healthy choices but also tended to be worriers overly-focused on order and control.
Black coffee drinkers liked to keep things simple but tended to be resistant to changes.
Instant coffee drinkers were the most laid-back, but also tended to be poor planners and prone to procrastination.

As with any associational study, these are only patterns in the data which emerged over the large group of people surveyed.

Despite these associations, you could easily be a black coffee drinker who is highly imaginative and open to change.

Or you might be a latte drinker who is badly stuck in his ways but closely watches his health.

That said, our personalities do come out in the choices we make about hot beverages, just as they do in most of the other choices we make in life.

So, next time you’re at the counter about to order, why not try something new?

Image credit: Matthew Wicks

Why Haters Have to Hate

Are you an instinctive ‘liker’ or an instinctive ‘hater’?

Some people have the talent to find the bad in anything.

Mountains, brie, Greece, electric toothbrushes; you name it, they don’t like it. And they want to tell you exactly why.

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests this might be a newly identified aspect of personality: how much people are predisposed to like or hate stuff, even if they know almost nothing about it (Helper & Albarracin, 2013).

To investigate, the researchers asked people questions about loads of different things that weren’t connected.

They included everything from ‘abortion’, ‘America’, ‘antidepressants’ and ‘architecture’ down to ‘voluntary euthanasia’, ‘wearing clothes that draw attention’ and ‘wine’.

Imagine if you took five of your friends and asked them about subjects as varied as these; surely you’d get really varied responses. Some people like wine and wearing clothes that draw attention, other people dislike those things. Others couldn’t care less either way.

What the researchers found was that there was certainly lots of variation between what people liked and disliked. But, oddly, at a general level, people were split between likers and haters.

In other words, some people tended to like stuff even though they didn’t really know much about it, and some people had the tendency to hate stuff, whatever it was.

The authors of this article argue that this initial stance towards anything and everything is a facet of personality. In the same way that you can be either extroverted or introverted, you can also be a ‘liker’ or a ‘hater’.

So, the answer to why the haters have to hate is that it’s built into them at the level of their personality.

Now, how you might become a like or a hater in the first place, we don’t yet know. Likely, it’s got a lot to do with genetics. Some people are born haters, others born likers.

But there’s also likely a learning component: people probably learn to become haters—hating from an early age, and so forth.

It raises all kinds of fascinating questions: does being a hater run in the family? Can a liker and a hater be in a relationship together? Which professions have the most haters?

I’ll leave you to ponder these and more important questions!

Image credit: Minh Hoang

4 Qualities of Truly Horrible Managers

Fifty per cent of managers are incompetent, so how did that idiot get to be your boss?

Surveys keep telling us that between 65% and 75% of people rate their managers as the worst aspect of their jobs.

Is this just baseless moaning, or are they right?

Actually most are right since research into managers shows that around 50% of them are incompetent (DeVries, 1993).

The reasons they can’t do their jobs are pretty simple. When Leslie and Van Velsor (1996) looked at the research across different organisations and different employees, they found these four points summarised the problems with failed managers (research described in Hogan & Kaiser, 2005):

Poor interpersonal skills. Horrible managers look down on you from on high like irascible emperors. They are insensitive, cold and as likely to be nice to you as give their pay-checks to charity.
Can’t get the work done. They repeatedly set overly ambitious targets and then repeatedly fail to meet them. They don’t follow through on their promises and they’re likely to betray your trust.
Can’t build a team. It’s perhaps the most essential skill of being a manager. Team-building requires building trust, assigning roles and goals, promoting good communication and providing leadership. Terrible managers are totally incapable of any of this.
Can’t cope with promotion. Who knows how they got that promotion, but it’s clear the new job is beyond them. As soon as they’re settled in, everything starts to fall apart.

If 50% of managers are that bad, how do they become managers in the first place?

The answer is that horrible managers do have desirable qualities—that’s how they got hired in the first place—but they also have undesirable qualities, which often outweigh them.

Hogan and Hogan (1994) have looked at decades of research on this and they find that most horrible managers have a personality disorder. And the thing about personality disorders is:

Personality disorders are hard to detect

Many horrible managers are narcissists and, sadly, people like narcissists at first. They seem like fun people to be around.

In time, though, we come to notice that narcissists can’t learn from their mistakes and go around with a massive sense of entitlement.

What seemed charming on day one is revealed as arrogance over time. Unfortunately this usually doesn’t become obvious until too late.

Failure of the selection process

Managers are often recruited from outside the organisation using interviews.

Both narcissists and psychopaths are great at interviews: making a good impression in these sorts of situations is what they excel at.

Instead, more formal selection tools should be used with information collected about the person’s ability to be a manager from the people who know best: the manager’s subordinates.

In other words: you should vote for your boss.

Can you imagine?

Image credit: Victor1558

Can People’s Personalities Change?

Has one of the oldest questions about personality been answered?

For many years personality psychologists gave the same answer as any pessimist: no, people’s personalities don’t change.

This was even more true once they got to 30-years-old. By that time, it was thought that if people preferred their own company or were overly neurotic, they tended to stay that way.

In the last 15 years, though, this view has changed. Instead of personality being set in stone at 30, now evidence is emerging that there is some change. In fact people don’t give exactly the same answers to personality questionnaires at different times in their lives. But are these shifts meaningful? Could the differences be more about the tests than real life?

To settle this you’ve got to look at whether the typical changes in personality over time really affect people’s lives. For example, the personality trait of high neuroticism is associated with mental health problems. So, does a decrease in neuroticism lead to a significant increase in how satisfied a person is with their life?

This is exactly what Boyce et al. (2013) looked at for all five aspects of personality: extroversion, agreeableness, openness-to-experience, conscientiousness and, of course, neuroticism. What they wanted to see was if changes in these over the years translated into changes in well-being.

They used data from a large Australian survey of 8,625 people over two years. What kind of difference had two years made to their lives? Had there personalities changed? And if so, had their satisfaction with life changed with it?

Firstly, they confirmed that personality was the strongest predictor of satisfaction with life. This is well-established and helps explain why some people have everything and are never satisfied and some people have next-to-nothing and seem quite happy with life. It’s not just what you have that makes you satisfied (or not), it’s how you think about it. And those habits of thought are heavily influenced by personality.

Secondly, they confirmed that people’s personalities had shifted over the two-year period. Indeed the degree of personality change in those two years was equivalent to changes in other demographic variables such as marital status, employment and income.

Most importantly, though, they found that these changes in personality were associated with significant shifts in satisfaction with life. The strength of the effect was about twice that for all the other aspects of circumstances combined. In other words, the typical shift in personality has a greater effect on your satisfaction with life than all the typical changes in circumstances, like income or marital status, all added up together.

This shows quite convincingly that not only do people change over time, but that these shifts in personality can have significant effects on how we experience our lives.

Image credit: Marco Belluci

Are Men or Women More Cooperative?

Men edge out women in single-sex interactions, but women win in mixed-sex situations.

My guess before I read a new paper by Balliet et al. (2011) was that there’s no difference between men and women or maybe a slight advantage for women. But according to the latest thinking that’s not quite right.

The debate over whether men or women cooperate more has been going on for years. The research finds that men are more likely to help a stranger and are better at cooperating in larger groups, while women are often kinder, more agreeable and more supportive.

Still, the differences between the sexes are often grossly exaggerated (see: Men and Women are Psychologically Very Similar); men and women definitely don’t come from different planets.

So what Balliet et al. (2011) did was look across 50 years of research and hundreds of different studies to see what emerged. They broke studies down by situations and they found that overall, when you averaged everything out, there was little difference between men and women.

As ever, though, the devil is in the details, and they teased out some somewhat counter-intuitive findings:

In single sex interactions men are more cooperative than women. The difference is quite small but emerges consistently when men are working with other men and women with other women.
In mixed sex interactions, though, women cooperate more than men. Again, the difference is quite small but it’s there, in study after study.
When working together over time men are generally more cooperative than women. Once again the difference is quite small.

What’s going on here? There are a couple of theories:

When men and women are in mixed sex groups they tend to act in more stereotypical ways because of the presence of the opposite sex.
An evolutionary perspective would suggest that men are showing off to women how dominant they are in mixed sex groups, so this reduces their cooperation.

Whatever the reason, these findings fit in with much other research. Generally the differences between men and women’s social behaviour are quite small. If you want to know how much a person is going to cooperate with you forget about their gender and focus instead on their personality.

Image credit: Kerry Jardine