Category: Personality

The traits that people find hardest (and easiest) to spot in themselves.

People are worst at judging their own levels of intelligence, attractiveness and creativity, research finds.

However, they are good at judging their own levels of anxiety and sadness.

The reason is that people are good at judging internal feelings because they have direct access to them.

However, people are worse at evaluating themselves in comparison to others.

The research underlines that we are not always at our best when judging ourselves.

Dr Simine Vazire, the study’s author, said:

“I think that it’s important to really question this knee-jerk reaction that we are our own best experts.

Personality is not who you think you are, it’s who you are.

Some people think by definition that we are the experts on our personality because we get to write the story, but personality is not the story — it’s the reality.

So, you do get to write your own story about how you think you are, and what you tell people about yourself, but there still is reality out there, and, guess what?

Other people are going to see the reality, regardless of what story you believe.”

We leave traces of our personality all around us, said Dr Vazire:

“Everything you touch you leave a mark of your personality.

You leave traces unintentionally.

You give off hints of your personality that you don’t even see yourself.”

For the study, 165 people were given tests of personality, intelligence and of how they reacted to various social situations.

The results showed that people were best at judging their own levels of anxiety.

Dr Vazire said:

“You probably know pretty well your anxiety level, whereas others might not be in the position to judge that because, after all, you can mask your inner feelings.

Others, though, are often better than the self in things that deal with overt behavior.”

Where people had difficulties, though, was in judging desirable personality traits in themselves, such as attractiveness, intelligence and creativity:

“…there is so much at stake, meaning your life is going to be so much different if you are intelligent or not intelligent, attractive or not.

Everybody wants to be seen as intelligent and attractive, but these desirable traits we’re not going to judge accurately in ourselves.”

Dr Vazire explained why these traits are so hard to judge in ourselves:

“We look in the mirror all the time, yet that’s not the same as looking at a photo of someone else.

If we spent as much time looking at photos of others as we do ourselves we’d form a much more confident and clear impression of the other’s attractiveness than we would have of our own.

Yet after looking in the mirror for five minutes we’re still left wondering, ‘Am I attractive or not?’ And still have no clue.

And it’s not the case that we all assume that we’re beautiful, right?”

The study was published in the  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vazire, 2010).

Focusing on how habits are initiated is key to getting regular exercise.

Exercise makes people more extraverted and agreeable, research finds.

These are just two of the positive changes that modest amounts of exercise can have on personality.

Exercise also increases people’s conscientiousness and makes them more open to experience.

A few of the benefits of these personality changes include:

• More extraverted people tend to have more positive emotions,
• greater conscientiousness can lead to more success in life,
• and being open to experience is linked to intelligence and creativity.

In contrast, those who remain sedentary tend to see the opposite pattern of changes to their personality.

These include reduced agreeableness, being more closed to experience and less conscientious.

The conclusions come from a study of over six thousand people who were followed for more than twenty years.

They each completed surveys that asked them about their personalities and levels of exercise.

The results showed that only relatively small amounts of exercise were linked to positive changes in personality over the years.

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.”

Focusing on how habits are initiated is key to getting regular exercise, studies have found.

It’s all about making sure there are regular cues which prompt you to automatically exercise.

To create good exercise habits, you should focus on what starts you exercising, not what type of exercise you do.

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

People reveal their true selves when in this situation.

Being in hurry makes people reveal their true personalities even more clearly, research finds.

Time pressure makes selfish people more selfish and it makes good-hearted people even nicer.

This is because, when in a rush, people tend to make the same choice they made before.

Dr Ian Krajbich, study co-author, said:

“People start off with a bias of whether it is best to be selfish or pro-social.

If they are rushed, they’ll tend to go with that bias.”

For the research, 102 people played an economic game, Dr Krajbich explained:

“The participants had to decide whether to give up some of their own money to increase the other person’s payoff and reduce the inequality between them.”

Sometimes people were given two seconds to decide, other times it was 10 seconds.

Dr Krajbich explained the results:

“We found that time pressure tends to magnify the predisposition that people already have, whether it is to be selfish or pro-social.

Under time pressure, when you have very little time to decide, you’re going to lean more heavily than usual on your predisposition or bias of how to act.”

Being forced to wait changed people’s decisions, said Dr Krajbich:

“People may still approach decisions with the expectation that they will act selfishly or pro-socially, depending on their predisposition.

But now they have time to consider the numbers and can think of reasons to go against their bias.

Maybe you’re predisposed to be selfish, but see that you only have to give up $1 and the other person is going to get $20.

That may be enough to get you to act more pro-socially.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Chen & Krajbich, 2018).

Discover the difference between healthy solitude and harmful isolation in this study.

Both extraverts and introverts need solitude to recharge — although introverts prefer to have more alone time, psychologists find.

Wanting to be alone is not necessarily a red flag for depression or isolation, the research concludes.

In fact, choosing solitude can be a sign of self-acceptance and personal growth.

Periods of solitude can provide spiritual renewal, critical self-reflection and even a chance for creative expression.

Professor Margarita Azmitia, study co-author, said:

“Solitude has gotten a lot of bad press, especially for adolescents who get labeled as social misfits or lonely.

Sometimes, solitude is good.

Developmentally, learning to be alone is a skill, and it can be refreshing and restorative.”

Wanting to be alone is not necessarily about shyness or loneliness, Professor Azmitia said:

“There’s a stigma for kids who spend time alone.

They’re considered lacking in social skills, or they get labeled ‘loners’.

It’s beneficial to know when you need to be alone and when you need to be with others.

This study quantifies the benefits of solitude and distinguishes it from the costs of loneliness or isolation.”

The conclusions come from a study of 979 young people who completed a survey about solitude.

The results showed that those who sought solitude because they felt rejected were at a higher risk of depression and anxiety.

However, those who sought solitude for positive reasons did not face any of these risks.

Dr Virginia Thomas, the study’s first author, said:

“These results increase our awareness that being alone can be restorative and a positive thing.

The question is how to be alone without feeling like we’re missing out.

For many people, solitude is like exercising a muscle they’ve never used.

You have to develop it, flex it, and learn to use time alone to your benefit.”

Dr Thomas said both introverts and extraverts need solitude:

“Introverts just need more of it.

Our culture is pretty biased toward extroversion.

When we see any sign of shyness or introversion in children, we worry they won’t be popular.

But we overlook plenty of well-adjusted teens and young adults who are perfectly happy when alone, and who benefit from their solitude.”

The study was published in the Journal of Adolescence (Thomas et al., 2019).