Category: Personality

It is possible to change a neurotic personality, results of 207 separate studies find.

People become significantly less neurotic after undergoing therapy, research finds.

After only three months of treatment, people’s emotional stability had improved by half as much as it would over their entire adulthood.

People who were anxious changed the most in the course of therapy, the researchers found.

After having psychotherapy and/or taking medication, people were also slightly more extraverted.

Both reduced neuroticism and increased extraversion were maintained in the long-term.

Professor Brent Roberts, who led the study, said:

“This really is definitive evidence that the idea that personality doesn’t change is wrong.

We’re not saying personality dramatically reorganizes itself.

You’re not taking an introvert and making them into an extravert.

But this reveals that personality does develop and it can be developed.”

The conclusions come from 207 studies including over 20,000 people.

Changing the personality trait of neuroticism is the key to treating many people with depression and anxiety.

Professor Roberts said:

“Some clinical psychologists see neuroticism at the core of every form of psychopathology, whether it’s drug and alcohol abuse, psychopathy, depression or panic disorder.

The fact that we saw the most change in neuroticism is not surprising because, for the most part, that’s what therapists are there to treat.”

Many people incorrectly think personality cannot change, said Professor Roberts:

“It is very common for individuals to think of personality as that part of them that is really distinct and enduring in a way that is recognizable

[however] there never has been any evidence that people are perfectly unchanging, perfectly stable.”

The study’s authors explained the results:

“Interventions were associated with marked changes in personality trait measures over an average time of 24 weeks.

Emotional stability was the primary trait domain showing changes as a result of therapy.”

The personality changes were dramatic, considering how difficult it can be, Professor Roberts said:

“In terms of our expectations, this is a remarkable amount of change.

In about 50 of the studies, the researchers tracked the people down well past the end of the therapeutic situation, and they seemed to have held onto the changes, which is nice.

So, it’s not a situation where the therapist is just affecting your mood.

It appears that you get a long-term benefit.”

→ Read on: How to change your personality

The study was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin (Roberts et al., 2017).

There are two psychological traits that help people resists the connection between stress and biological aging.

Stress makes people age faster, a study confirms.

Even among relatively young and healthy people, those who had experienced more stress displayed biological markers of greater aging than their actual years.

Avoiding stress, therefore, can potentially help you live longer.

Self-control and resilience

There are also two psychological traits that help people resists the connection between stress and biological aging.

Both resilience and self-control help people defy the aging effects of stress on their bodies.

Self-control refers to the ability to manage our actions and emotions — indeed, higher self-control is linked to looking younger.

Psychological resilience is the ability to overcome challenges and return to a stable frame of mind relatively quickly.

Both of these factors are potentially powerful as they allow people to avoid some of the ravages of stress on their body.

Prolonged stress has been shown to increase the risk of:

• mood disorders like depression and anxiety,
• heart disease,
• addiction,
• post-traumatic stress disorder,
• and obesity.

Stress also stops people thinking clearly and regulating their emotions efficiently.

Dr Zachary Harvanek, the study’s first author, said:

“These results support the popular notion that stress makes us age faster, but they also suggest a promising way to possibly minimize these adverse consequences of stress through strengthening emotion regulation and self-control.”

Epigenetic clock

The study included 444 people who had their biological age measured and compared to their actual, chronological age.

Biological age is revealed  by natural chemical changes that occur to DNA, which are known as ‘epigenetic clocks’.

The results showed that these epigenetic clocks had run slower in people who had experienced less prolonged stress.

However, psychological resilience and self-control made a longer and healthier life more likely, even in the face of stress.

Professor Rajita Sinha, study co-author, said:

“We all like to feel like we have some agency over our fate.

So it is a cool thing to reinforce in people’s minds that we should make an investment in our psychological health.”

The study was published in the journal Translational Psychiatry (Harvanek et al., 2021).

The signs of a reserved personality can be seen at 14-months-old.

People who are inhibited as children tend to grow up into reserved introverts, research finds.

Inhibition as a child involves cautious, fearful and avoidant behaviour towards unfamiliar objects, people and situations.

Children who show this sort of behaviour are at a greater risk for anxiety disorders and social withdrawal later on.

People showing this pattern early on were also likely to have fewer romantic partners and lower social functioning, the study found.

However, being reserved had no negative effects on people’s success in education or employment.

Dr Daniel Pine, study co-author, said:

“While many studies link early childhood behavior to risk for psychopathology, the findings in our study are unique.

This is because our study assessed temperament very early in life, linking it with outcomes occurring more than 20 years later through individual differences in neural processes.”

The study involved 165 infants who were tracked first at 14 months-old, then at 15-years-old and later at 26-years-old.

Dr Nathan Fox, study co-author, said:

“It is amazing that we have been able to keep in touch with this group of people over so many years.

First their parents, and now they, continue to be interested and involved in the work.”

In adolescence they were given a wide variety of psychological and neurophysiological tests.

One test was for people’s ‘error related negativity’ — in other words, how sensitive they were to making mistakes.

People who are highly sensitive to their mistakes tend to develop anxiety-related problems.

Those who are not sensitive enough to their mistakes are at risk of problems like substance abuse and impulsive behaviour.

The results showed that infants who were inhibited tended to grow up into reserved adults.

Dr Fox said:

“We have studied the biology of behavioral inhibition over time and it is clear that it has a profound effect influencing developmental outcome.”

• 8 Superb Signs You Have An Introvert Personality

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Tang et al., 2020).

Why punishment fails to deter people with these personality traits.

Being impatient and able to tolerate risk are personality traits that are strongly linked to criminal behaviour, a study finds.

However, it is being able to tolerate risk easily that is one of the strongest personality predictors of crime.

People who are risk tolerant tend to be less worried about being caught and punished.

Other studies have frequently linked a lack of self-control, personality disorders, psychopathy and childhood physical or psychological abuse with criminal behaviour.

Professor Claus Thustrup Kreiner, study co-author, said:

“The propensity to commit crime is twice as high for the most risk-tolerant individuals compared to the least risk-tolerant.”

Along with these personality traits, people low in cognitive skills are also more likely to commit a crime.

This may be at least partly because people with low intelligence tend to be restricted to very low-paid jobs in many countries.

Taking risks linked to property crime

The conclusions come from a study of over 7,000 young Danish men who were given a variety of tests that were cross-referenced with information about their socioeconomic conditions and any criminal record.

Professor Kreiner said:

“We have chosen to focus on crime among young men aged 15-20 because it is a group where a lot of crime is committed compared with other men and women in general.”

The results showed that different traits predicted different crimes, said Professor Kreiner:

“If we look at different types of crime, willingness to take risks is particularly relevant when it comes to predicting property offenses, such as theft.

If we are talking about violent, drug or sexual offences, problems with self-control are common among the individuals.”

Why punishment fails to deter crime

The irony of the study is that it shows that the kinds of people who are most likely to commit crimes are also the least likely to be worried about being caught or going to prison.

The criminal justice system supposedly relies partly on its deterrent effect, which is much weaker for the typical criminal.

Professor Kreiner said:

“Our study may be able to help explain why there is limited empirical evidence that increasing punishment works to reduce crime.”

Crime prevention should focus on changing these traits, Professor Kreiner said:

“Our study clearly shows that preferences such as risk tolerance, impatience and altruism predict the propensity to commit crime.

Other research suggests that it is possible to influence these behavioral parameters in children and young people, which can be very important in relation to the development of criminal behavior.”

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Epper et al., 2022).

People who are prone to this emotion feel more responsibility towards others.

People who are prone to anticipate feeling guilty are the most trustworthy, research finds.

Compared with other personality traits like openness, neuroticism and extraversion, it is guilt-proneness that best predicts people’s trustworthiness.

Anticipating guilt is key, because it means a person is considering how guilty they will feel if they do something wrong…

…and this stops them doing it.

This is different from feeling guilt after doing something wrong, which encourages people to try and make up for the transgression.

People who are prone to anticipating guilt, though, feel more responsibility towards others and are much less likely to behave exploitatively.

The results come from a series of six studies in which people played economic games that tested their behaviour.

In these games, people more prone to anticipating guilt were more likely to return money to others.

The authors write:

“Trust and trustworthiness are critical for effective relationships and effective organizations.

Individuals and institutions incur high costs when trust is misplaced, but people can mitigate these costs by engaging in relationships with individuals who are trustworthy.

Our findings extend the substantial literature on trust by deepening our understanding of trustworthiness: When deciding in whom to place trust, trust the guilt-prone.”

Dr Emma Levine, the study’s first author, said:

“Our research suggests that if you want your employees to be worthy of trust, make sure they feel personally responsible for their behavior and that they expect to feel guilty about wrongdoing.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Levine et al., 2018).

People with this trait tend to have larger brain volumes in critical areas, a study finds.

Conscientious people tend to have larger brain volumes in critical areas, research reveals.

People who are careful, efficient and self-disciplined, have more gray matter in their frontal and medial temporal brain regions.

These areas are critical for many functions, including reasoning, taking action and controlling the emotions.

The link could be explained by conscientious people being more likely to look after their health: so, their brains shrink less with age.

In contrast, neurotic people — those who tend to get nervous or sad — have smaller brain volumes in these regions.

This link may be due to chronic stress causing brain shrinkage.

The conclusions come from a study including 79 people aged 44 – 88 who were given personality tests and brain scans.

Dr Denise Head, study co-author, explained the results:

“Our data clearly show an association between personality and brain volume, particularly in brain regions associated with emotional and social processing.

This could be interpreted that personality may influence the rate of brain aging.”

One of the ways being neurotic may affect brain volume is through stress.

Chronic stress does all sorts of damage to the brain over the years.

Dr Jonathan Jackson, the study’s first author, explained:

“We assumed that neuroticism would be negatively related to structural volume.

We really focused on the prefrontal and medial temporal regions because they are the regions where you see the greatest age changes, and they are also seats of attention, emotion and memory.

We found that more neurotic individuals had smaller volumes in certain prefrontal and medial temporal parts of the brain than those who were less neurotic, and the opposite pattern was found with conscientiousness.”

It is not clear from this study that being neurotic, or lacking conscientious, causes reduced brain volume.

One theory is that the early stages of Alzheimer’s may prompt a change in personality.

Dr Jackson said:

“It might be that changes in personality track onto those people more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.

We know that there are degenerative processes going on before the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

We want to be able to see if the subtle personality changes might be particular to an early clinical picture and possibly see if one can predict who will become demented based on personality changes.”

The study was published in the journal Neurobiology in Aging (Jackson et al., 2012).