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Personality
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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The Mystery Behind Love-Hate Relationships
Sep 17, 2006
We have often noted that people can love and hat the same person at different times. Sometimes these people can be sufferers from a personality disorder such as borderline personality disorder. But Yale researchers wondered if there could be something else that makes people do this.
One of the strange things that the Yale researchers found was that people who see their relationships as either all good or all bad tend to have low self-esteem. Their results were recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In two of the studies participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether each of 10 adjectives applied to their relationship partner, adjectives such as caring and warm or greedy and dishonest. Partners in this study included college roommates and mothers. Individuals low in self-esteem were considerably slower to respond when negative and positive adjectives were alternated than when similar adjectives appeared in blocks. Those high in self-esteem were equally quick to respond to the adjectives no matter how they were presented.
"This suggests it was hard for them to think of their partners as a mix of positive and negative characteristics at a given point in time," said Margaret Clark, a professor in the Department of Psychology and senior faculty author of the study. "We do not think these results are limited to any one type of relationship. We think they apply to any close relationship."
Clark said the effects were obtained only when people judged relationship partners. There was no delayed response when judging an object, in this case, their computer.
The researchers first measured self-esteem by asking participants to fill out the Rosenberg self-esteem inventory. The reaction time task was administered weeks later by an experimenter who did not know their evaluation results.
"Those low in self-esteem are chronically concerned about whether or not their close relationship partners will or will not accept them," Clark said. "In good times, those low in self-esteem tend to idealize partners, rendering those partners safe for approach and likely to reflect positively upon them. At the first sign of a partner not being perfect, however, they switch to focusing on all possible negatives about the partner so as to justify withdrawing from that partner and not risking vulnerability."
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Video Games Desensitize People to Real-Life Violence
Sep 17, 2006
Research led by a pair of Iowa State University psychologists has proven for the first time that exposure to violent video games can desensitize individuals to real-life violence.
They authored a paper titled "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence," which was published a recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In this paper, the authors define desensitization to violence as "a reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence."
Their paper reports that past research--including their own studies--documents that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors. Previous studies also found that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions.
Their latest study tested 257 college students (124 men and 133 women) individually. After taking baseline physiological measurements on heart rate and galvanic skin response--and asking questions to control for their preference for violent video games and general aggression--participants played one of eight randomly assigned violent or non-violent video games for 20 minutes. The four violent video games were Carmageddon, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat or Future Cop; the non-violent games were Glider Pro, 3D Pinball, 3D Munch Man and Tetra Madness.
After playing a video game, a second set of five-minute heart rate and skin response measurements were taken. Participants were then asked to watch a 10-minute videotape of actual violent episodes taken from TV programs and commercially-released films in the following four contexts: courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings and prison fights. Heart rate and skin response were monitored throughout the viewing.
When viewing real violence, participants who had played a violent video game experienced skin response measurements significantly lower than those who had played a non-violent video game. The participants in the violent video game group also had lower heart rates while viewing the real-life violence compared to the nonviolent video game group.
"The results demonstrate that playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence," said the researchers. "Participants randomly assigned to play a violent video game had relatively lower heart rates and galvanic skin responses while watching footage of people being beaten, stabbed and shot than did those randomly assigned to play nonviolent video games. It appears that individuals who play violent video games habituate or 'get used to' all the violence and eventually become physiologically numb to it."
Participants in the violent versus non-violent games conditions did not differ in heart rate or skin response at the beginning of the study, or immediately after playing their assigned game. However, their physiological reactions to the scenes of real violence did differ significantly, a result of having just played a violent or a non-violent game. The researchers also controlled for trait aggression and preference for violent video games.
The researchers' conclusion was that the existing video game rating system, the content of much entertainment media, and the marketing of those media combine to produce "a powerful desensitization intervention on a global level. It (marketing of video game media) initially is packaged in ways that are not too threatening, with cute cartoon-like characters, a total absence of blood and gore, and other features that make the overall experience a pleasant one," they said. "That arouses positive emotional reactions that are incongruent with normal negative reactions to violence. Older children consume increasingly threatening and realistic violence, but the increases are gradual and always in a way that is fun.
"In short, the modern entertainment media landscape could accurately be described as an effective systematic violence desensitization tool," they said. "Whether modern societies want this to continue is largely a public policy question, not an exclusively scientific one."
Read more in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Read more in Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2004)
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Which Personality Type Gets the Promotion?
June 6, 2005
When looking for help with a task at work, people turn to those best able to do the job. Right? Wrong. New research published in Harvard Business Online shows that work partners tend to be chosen not for ability but for likeability.
Drawing from their study encompassing 10,000 work relationships in five organizations, the researchers have classified work partners into four archetypes: the competent jerk, who knows a lot but is unpleasant; the lovable fool, who doesn't know much but is a delight; the lovable star, who's both smart and likable; and the incompetent jerk, who...well, that's self-explanatory.
Of course, everybody wants to work with the lovable star, and nobody wants to work with the incompetent jerk.
More interesting is that people prefer the lovable fool over the competent jerk. That has big implications for every organization, as both of these types often represent missed opportunities. Lovable fools can bridge gaps between diverse groups that might not otherwise interact. But their networking skills are often developed at the expense of job performance, which can make these employees underappreciated and vulnerable to downsizing.
The researchers claim that to get the most out of them, managers need to protect them and put them in positions that don't waste their bridge-building talents. In other words, there is a place in any organization for people whose main talent is relationship forming. They can be the glue which holds the organization together.
As for the competent jerks, many can be socialized through coaching or by being made accountable for bad behavior. We coach many of these-some of them in very senior positions.
As we have often said: in a business, like in any human organization, relationships are everything.
Read more in Harvard Business Online
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Test for Canine Personalities
March 1, 2005
Dogs show huge differences in personality, according to a scientist who has developed a test to assess canine character. Dr Sam Gosling, of the University of Texas, rates the dogs on four key traits with positive and negative extremes. He adds that his work suggests pets should be matched with owners who have similar personalities.
"We used approaches used to assess human personality and applied them to dogs," said Dr Gosling. "You do find personality differences between breeds. Indeed, many have been bred on that basis. But you also find enormous [personality] differences within the breeds themselves."
Gosling first asked pet owners to rate their pet on the four personality traits and then asked strangers to rate the animals on the same characteristics. The four dog personality factors were energy levels, affection-aggression, anxiety-calmness and intelligence-stupidity.
Anxiety-calmness was assessed by studying a dog's reaction as its owner walked away with another dog. The ability to retrieve a biscuit from beneath a cup was used as a measure of intelligence (the smarter ones, of course, having read this newsletter realized that the extra weight would lead to dementia and ignored the sucrose-lade tidbit). These traits were adapted from the five-factor model, used to assess human personality.
"If you can make a breed-based judgment that's fine. But you can also do behavioral tests. And one of the places that are very interested in this are dog homes. They have very high incentives to find out what these animals are like and how well-matched they are to their owners.
The results were presented to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Read more at the American Association for the Advancement of Science website
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Personality May Influence Fertility
August 4, 2004
A group of Italian researchers recently set out to evaluate the personality features of people who were infertile. Was there, they wondered, a causal link between infertility and certain kinds of personality traits? Could infertility be a psychosomatic problem?
To test their theory they assessed 142 infertile couples at a fertility clinic in Turin. They were divided into three groups: those who had obvious biological problems which prevented them from having children, those for whom no physical cause of their infertility could be found and those where there was some uncertainty. These latter were excluded from the study.
Personality traits of the remaining couples were assessed with the Temperament and Character Inventory, a standard personality measurement tool.
What they found was that there was a marked difference between infertile and fertile people. For example infertile women showed lower cooperativeness than fertile women. What's more women with functional (i.e. non-organic) infertility had lower scores in cooperativeness and self-directedness than women with organic infertility. Men belonging to the functional infertility group had a lower novelty seeking score than did those of the organic infertility group. Men and women in the functional infertility group showed higher harm avoidance than those in the organic infertility and control groups.
The researchers concluded that psychotherapy might be one of the best tools to use with couples whose infertility had no apparent organic origin.
Read more at Medline
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Prejudice from Thin Air
February 18, 2004
We are all prejudiced. Prejudice is built into us as a way of encouraging us to preserve and protect those genetically closest to us. A number of recent studies have shown just how pervasive this innate bias really is.
You may, in fact, be more prejudiced than you think, especially if you're angry and approached by someone of a different race, religion or creed. A study slated for publication in the Spring 2004 edition of Psychological Science by psychology professors David DeSteno and Nilanjana Dasgupta from Northeastern University and University of Massachusetts respectively, reveals that the experience of anger causes automatic, immediate prejudices against those who are not a part of one's social group.
The study has particular relevance for those in professions requiring quick assessment and action, especially for those in jobs like law enforcement and security. Study participants included New York City residents and college undergraduates who were assigned to novel groups--either as
individuals who tend to "over estimate" or "under estimate" numerical judgments--based on a bogus personality test they believed to be valid. They were then led to experience one of three emotional states--anger, sadness, or neutrality.
Once the emotions had been induced, participants completed rapid categorizations of faces of people in their in-groups or out-groups--people who were both like them and unlike them with respect to the created estimator groups--that were preceded by quickly displayed words that were either positive or negative in tone. These rapid response tasks provide a window into the spontaneous and non-conscious evaluations that individuals attached to the social groups.
The presence of anger caused the mind to shift its perceptions and evaluate out-group members negatively, event though they had never encountered this group before. This finding provides, for the first time, compelling evidence showing that specific emotional states influence basic, automatic processes in the brain that are tied to one of the central challenges of social living: inter-group interaction.
DeSteno explains the study by use of an example. "Much as the experience of fear leads individuals to adaptive behaviors to avoid dangers (e.g., quickly recoiling from a snake in one's path), the experience of anger, due its association with preparation for conflict, automatically shifts individuals' rapid appraisals of social groups outside of their awareness or control," he says. "When conflict is likely, different equals bad, and the brain prepares to shape our behavior accordingly."
Read more in Psychological Science
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Anger, Alcohol and Aggression
December 16, 2003
It seems to me that there are two forms of drunk: the angry drunk and the morose drunk (who may, however, at first get happy). Since alcohol is a depressant and both anger and moroseness are depressive symptoms this may not seem so surprising.
However new research carried out at the Universities of Georgia and Kentucky has thrown new light on the relationship between alcohol, anger and aggression and the link between them may not be as clear as it first seems.
The researchers have found that those whose behavior is angry anyway are more likely to become aggressive when they drink.
But the overall association among anger, alcohol and aggression is not as clear as it may first seem. A study in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research that teases apart three different components of anger--affective (angry moods), cognitive (angry thoughts) and behavioral (angry actions)--has found that it is behavioral anger that contributes the most to alcohol-related aggression among both men and women.
"We know that there's a link between alcohol and aggression," said Peter R Giancola, associate professor of psychology, director of the University of Kentucky Alcohol Research Laboratory, "but does it occur in everybody? No, there are plenty of people who drink a lot and they just get sleepy and happy, just as there are plenty of people who drink and they get out of control. That's the obvious part. The not-so-obvious part is figuring out what predicts who will and who will not become aggressive when they drink. Where do we start? You might think that people who are generally more angry when they are sober are likely going to become more aggressive when they drink, however, there are plenty of people who are very angry when they are sober and they do not become aggressive when they drink."
Amos Zeichner, professor and director of the Psychology Clinic at the University of Georgia, said the first step to understanding the relationship between anger and alcohol-related aggression is to recognize that there are different types of anger. "The term 'anger' comprises the experience of feelings, thoughts, and behavioral aspects just as, for instance, the experience of 'pain' has several components such as motivational, affective, sensory, and behavioral," he said.
Although aggression is a behavior motivated by the desire to injure another person, anger refers to a set of feelings that are not motivated by any particular goal. Trait anger is believed to have three basic components: affective, referring to emotions such as annoyance, frustration or irritation; cognitive, characterized by cynicism and distrust; and behavioral, which is the more "acting out" component of anger, such as yelling or "causing a scene" in a public place.
For this study, researchers examined 300 healthy social drinkers (150 males, 150 females) between 21 and 35 years of age. First, they measured the participants' three components of trait anger and then, following consumption of either an alcohol or a placebo beverage, measured their aggressive behavior within an experimental setting.
The results confirm previous findings that anger can be a risk factor for alcohol-related aggression, however, alcohol consumption does not increase aggression in all persons and in all situations. Alcohol-related aggression was greater among men with higher behavioral and cognitive anger scores, and among women with just higher behavioral anger scores.
"We know that women in society are, in general, less violent that men," noted Giancola. "Women tend to have a higher threshold for violence, which comes from society telling them to be good. In order to see violence occur in women, they either have to be environmentally provoked, a lot, or they have to be the type of person who, in the sober state, is already getting in your face, and knocking people around."
Read more in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
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What Makes a Psychopath?
September 21, 2003
Many people tell the odd white lie--taking a day off "sick" or halving the amount they spend on a shopping trip. But most feel a little bit guilty about the deception. Scientists have now found that twinge of conscience can be seen in increased activity in the brain. But people with psychopathic tendencies find lying as easy as telling the truth.
The reason is that when children develop the ability to deceive--around the age of three of four--they also develop the ability to empathize. But researchers say people with aggressive and antisocial personality disorders do not develop this ability, and therefore they have no moral compass.
The researchers say traumatic experiences and a lack of contact with understanding adults could be to blame.
Dr Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield has found parts of the frontal lobe area of the brain are more active when someone was lying than when they were telling the truth. This confirms earlier studies which showed the neurological activity involved in lying.
Dr Spence said: "When we're lying, there is a moral part of us that doesn't wish to manipulate others or take advantage of them. In psychopaths, there is no activity in that area of the brain, and deception is OK to them. They don't have any qualms about doing it."
He said a lack of adults displaying empathy towards them as children meant psychopaths could not learn from example, and developed the aggressive antisocial personality disorder.
"If they have experienced gross sexual abuse of severe physical violence, they may never have been in contact with the feeling of empathy."
Dr Spence said "good parenting" was a crucial part of preventing these tendencies developing.
"Even if people have had an experience such as sexual abuse, if they have had at least one good relationship with an adult figure, they don't become delinquent."
Childhood diets could also influence whether people develop psychopathic tendencies, experts say. Professor Adrian Raine, a psychologist from the University of California, gave a group of three-year-olds from Mauritius a program of an enriched diet, exercise and cognitive stimulation-- being read to and involved in conversation.
By the age of 11, they showed increased activity on brain scan readings, and by 23, they were 64% less likely than a group of children who had not been on the program to have criminal records.
Professor Raine said: "This is not a silver bullet to solving crime and violence, but I think it's certainly one of the ingredients. The take-home point is that the seeds of crime are sown early in life." Dr Spence added that alcohol or drug abuse could also cause damage to the brain and cause psychopathic behaviour.
But he said that even people who had never before shown any signs of psychopathic behavior could behave very cruelly in extreme situations. "In Rwanda, around 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. Most people doing the killing had been 'normal' before--it was something in their environment that changed."
Read more in BBC News Online
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Violence Is Learned Behavior
August 13, 2003
Children who witness their parents using violence against each other and who regularly receive excessive punishment are at increased risk of being involved in an abusive relationship as an adult, according to a 20-year study that followed children into adult romantic relationships.
In partner violence cases that result in injury, the study finds that being the victim of physical abuse and conduct disorders as a child are also important risk factors. The findings are reported on in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
Research shows that violent behavior toward a romantic partner is difficult to change and that more needs to be done to develop prevention programs that identify major risk factors for partner violence before adult relationships develop.
Results of the latest study indicate that child behavior problems (conduct disorder, or CD) are important predictors of adult partner violence and that exposure to violence between parents and harsh punishment are also risk factors that seem to predict later relationship violence.
"It appears that it is not necessary to develop conduct disorder in order for early family lessons of coercive, aggressive conflict resolution within intimate relationships to generalize to youth's own intimate relationships," say the researchers. "Punishment from mothers may serve as a model for physical expression of anger. This acceptance of coercive, power-based norms as ways of regulating conflict may have direct implications for young adults' means of conflict resolution with partners, independent of a disruptive behavior disorder."
The study also finds that a history of physical abuse by a caretaker appears to directly increase the odds of using similar tactics of conflict resolution in adult close relationships. However, in looking at factors that may predict being on the receiving end of partner violence, the researchers say they were surprised to find that being the victim of child abuse was not a significant risk factor once exposure to violence between parents and harsh punishment were included. "Exposure to violence between parents, which probably begins when a child is young seems to pose the greatest independent risk for being the victim of any act of partner violence," say the authors.
"If families are targeted for intervention before children reach late childhood, patterns of excessive punishment may be prevented from becoming entrenched and later reproduced in adolescents' fledgling romantic relationships," the conclude.
Prevention programs should not just target boys, since no sex differences were found in predictors of partner violence. Both males and females who were abused as children or displayed conduct disorders as adolescents were found to be at risk for partner violence. "Preventing women's partner violence as well as men's may be necessary to prevent adverse consequences of partner violence for women."
Read more in Intelihealth
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Opposites Do Not Attract
July 8, 2003
Researchers have found that people tend to chose partners who are similar--or at least who they think are similar--to themselves, both in looks and attitude.
Previous research has concluded that people prefer mates with qualities they think will be good at bringing up children--including financial solvency. The implication of this result is that in an open marriage market, individuals of low self-perception will find it hard to find and keep a satisfactory partner.
However the study, by a team from Cornell University in New York, suggests this is not necessarily the case, and that similar individuals tend to be attracted to each other because they are most likely to hold down a stable relationship.
The findings are based on questionnaires filled out by 978 college-aged men and women. First, respondents rated the importance of various attributes in a long-term partner. The attributes were grouped into four categories:
- wealth and status family commitment
- physical appearance
- sexual fidelity.
Next, the respondents rated perceptions of themselves on those same attributes.
The results showed that if people rated a particular attribute as important in a partner, they were likely to give themselves a high rating for the same attribute.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers Peter Buston and Stephen Emlen said their findings strongly suggested that a person's self-perception governed what they looked for in a mate. Any relationship can fall apart if you don't share similar values.
"Individuals who had a high self-perception of themselves were more discriminating in their mate preferences than were individuals with lower self-perception scores. The implication of this result is that in an open marriage market, individuals of low self-perception will find it hard to find and keep a satisfactory partner."
"If our findings are confirmed by future work, then this study will have major implications for marriage counselors and the public at large," write the researchers. "Our results suggest that individuals seeking stable long-term relationships should not seek the highest quality partner available but should simply look for partners who are similar to themselves."
The research also found particularly strong evidence that women who thought they were physically attractive tended to go for men who were wealthy, or high status. Conversely, men who thought they were successful tended to go for good looking women.
Read
more in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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Violent Music Lyrics Increase Aggressive Thoughts and Feelings
May 25, 2003
Songs with violent lyrics increase aggression related thoughts and emotions
and this effect is directly related to the violence in the lyrics, according
to a new study published the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
This contradicts popular notions of positive catharsis or venting effects
of listening to angry, violent music on violent thoughts and feelings.
In a series of five experiments involving over 500 college students,
researchers from Iowa State University and the Texas Department of Human
Services examined the effects of seven violent songs by seven artists
and eight nonviolent songs by seven artists. The students listened to
the songs and were given various psychological tasks to measure aggressive
thoughts and feelings.
One such task involved participants classifying words that can have both
aggressive and nonaggressive meanings, such as rock and stick. To control
for factors not related to the content of the lyrics, the violent and
nonviolent songs were sung by the same artists and were in the same musical
style in three of the experiments. In the two other experiments, the researchers
tested the arousal properties of the songs to make sure the violent-lyric
effects were not due to differences in arousal. Also, individual personality
differences related to hostility were assessed and controlled. The study
also included songs with humorous lyrics to see how humor interacted with
violent song lyrics and aggressive thoughts.
Results of the five experiments show that violent songs led to more aggressive
interpretations of ambiguously aggressive words, increased the relative
speed with which people read aggressive vs. nonaggressive words, and increased
the proportion of word fragments (such as hit) that were filled in to
make aggressive words (such as hit). The violent songs increased feelings
of hostility without provocation or threat, according to the authors,
and this effect was not the result of differences in musical style, specific
performing artist or arousal properties of the songs.
Even the humorous violent songs increased aggressive thoughts. The violent-song
increases in aggressive thoughts and feelings have implications for real
world violence, according to lead researcher Craig A Anderson, PhD
of Iowa State University. "Aggressive thoughts can influence perceptions
of ongoing social interactions, coloring them with an aggressive tint.
Such aggression-biased interpretations can, in turn, instigate a more
aggressive response--verbal or physical--than would have been emitted
in a nonbiased state, thus provoking an aggressive escalatory spiral of
antisocial exchanges," said Dr Anderson.
"One major conclusion from this and other research on violent entertainment
media is that content matters," said Dr Anderson. "This message
is important for all consumers, but especially for parents of children
and adolescents."
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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About the Author
Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Together with his wife and long-term collaborator Alicia Fortinberry, he is founder of the highly successful Uplift Program, and author of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).
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