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Personality
Written and researched by Bob Murray, PhD
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Personality Is Not Set by 30
May 25, 2003
Do peoples' personalities change after 30? They can, according to researchers
who examined 132,515 adults age 21-60 on the personality traits known
as the "Big Five": conscientiousness,
agreeableness, neuroticism, openness and extraversion. These findings
are reported in the May issue of the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
From this large sample of volunteers recruited and examined over the
Internet, lead researchers Sanjay Srivastava, PhD, and Oliver P John,
PhD, working at the University of California at Berkeley, found that
certain changes do occur in middle adulthood.
Conscientiousness increased throughout the age range studied, with the
biggest increases in a person's 20s; this trait is defined as being organized,
more adept at planning, and disciplined, and past research has linked
it to work performance and work commitments.
Agreeableness increased the most during a person's 30s; this trait is
defined as being warm, generous, and helpful, and has been linked to relationships
and to prosocial behavior. Neuroticism declined with age for women but
did not decline for men; this trait is defined in people who worry and
are emotionally unstable.
Neuroticism has been linked to depression and other mental health problems.
Openness showed small declines with age for both men and women. Finally,
extraversion declined for women but did not show changes in men.
Both neuroticism and extraversion scores were higher for younger women
than for younger men. But for both of these traits--and most strikingly
for neuroticism--the apparent sex differences diminished with age.
This study contradicts an often cited view that personality traits are
genetically programmed to stop changing by early adulthood. There is considerable
evidence against it, say the authors. In the study, "average levels
of personality traits changed gradually but systematically throughout
the lifespan, sometimes even more after age 30 than before.
Increasing conscientiousness and agreeableness and decreasing neuroticism
in adulthood may indicate increasing maturity--people becoming on the
average better adapted as they get older, well into middle age."
That personality changes as we get older should come as no surprise--the
doting grandparents may bear little resemblance to the abusive parents
of 20 years previously. However there is a difference between our personality
and our genetic and environmentally programmed habitual responses which
we call the “program” and which is put in place by the age
of six and which takes conscious effort and practice to change. We say
quite a lot about this program--and how you can change it--in our upcoming
McGraw-Hill book “Creating Optimism: 7 Steps to Building Relationships that Heal Depression.” BM
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Alien Abductees Show Real Symptoms
April 2, 2003
People who claim to have been kidnapped by aliens have a tendency to
believe in fantasies and suffer disturbing experiences in their sleep,
scientists have found.
But the researchers say "abductees" also believe in their experiences
so deeply that they display real stress symptoms similar to those of traumatised
battlefield veterans.
The latest research on the "taken" phenomenon
was unveiled at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in Denver.
"This underscores the power of emotional belief," Professor
Richard McNally, from Harvard University, told the BBC. "If you
genuinely believe you've been traumatised and recall these memories,
you'll show the same psycho-physiologic
emotional reactions as people who really have been traumatised."
A group of abductees told the BBC about their experiences. One of them
said: "I've
had several encounters with alien craft and I've had an alien implant
removed from my body." It was typical of the stories they all had
to relate. It is thought there are about four million Americans who believe
they have been abducted by extraterrestrials.
Scientists believe this clearly is not
true, so why do abductees believe they have been taken? Professor McNally
has found that many of them share personality
traits and sleep disorders. "Most of them had pre-existing new-age
beliefs--they were into bio-energetic therapies, past lives, astral
projection, tarot cards, and so on," he said. "Second, they have
episodes of apparent sleep paralysis accompanied by hallucinations."
These frightening
experiences usually prompted the individuals to visit therapists, who
would frequently suggest alien abduction as a cause--an
explanation which the abductees readily accepted, he said.
Professor McNally has come up with a rational explanation of alien abduction
experiences which was endorsed by other psychologists in Denver. He said
the individuals conformed to a "common recipe." But the researcher
stressed that many of the people really did believe what they were saying.
In laboratory experiments, individuals were asked to relate their experiences.
These stories were played back to them and their physical responses recorded. "When
a Vietnam vet has his experiences played back to him in the lab of some
combat event, his heart rate goes up and you see an increase in sweating.
If you don't have post-traumatic stress disorder, you don't react that way.
"The heart-rate responses and sweating responses were at least
as great in the alien abductees when they heard their memories of being
taken and molested by
space aliens and subjected to experiments as those of people with genuine
traumatic events."
Read more on BBC News Online
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Men and Women See Failure Differently
February 10, 2003
Edward Hirt, a social psychologist at Indiana University Bloomington has spent the last 10 years conducting research on this aspect of social psychology that involves the term self-handicapping.
"Self-handicapping is defined as an individual's attempt to reduce a threat to esteem by actively seeking or creating factors that interfere with performance as a causal explanation for failure," Hirt explained. "The goals of self-handicapping are to disregard ability as the causal factor for a poor performance and to embrace ability as the causal factor for a success."
His current study of several hundred subjects concentrated on gender differences in how self-handicapping is perceived. "What we found is that women have less tolerance for self-handicapping by men or women. They routinely made more negative evaluations of the self-handicapping targets and were less willing than men to excuse self-handicapping even when alternative explanations for effort withdrawal, such as peer pressure, were viable. We found that women not only are more suspicious of people who blow things off or withdraw effort, but also are more likely to think the person is just generally lazy, unmotivated or lacking in self-control," he said.
Hirt believes these findings reflect a fundamental difference between men and women in what they value in performance settings. "Men were far more lenient in their attributions of self-handicapping targets than were women and less likely to ascribe negative motivations to individuals who engage in self-handicapping behavior. Women, however, have little respect for individuals who lack motivation and fail to put forth the effort in important performance settings," he said. He noted an interesting paradox: those most inclined to engage in
self-handicapping behavior are less likely to attribute that motive to others.
Hirt said researchers want to develop a better understanding of the sources of such gender differences in value orientation. "It may be that the sex differences we have observed are simply another manifestation of broad gender differences in personality," he said.
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Subjective wellbeing May Be Inherited
November 12, 2002
Researchers at Arizona and Colorado State Universities seem to have come up with something interesting. In studies of chimpanzees they have found that subject wellbeing (SWB), an integral part of happiness, might be genetic in origin. What's more it seems to be connected to dominance, or status. You know a chimpanzee is one of the dominant ones by his or her level of extroversion and low level of neuroticism. They found that if you took chimps with similar genetic traits and put them in different environments their SWB will be similar. They speculate that the same may well be true of humans.
Read more in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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Americans' Self-esteem Undermined by Focus on Body Image
November 12, 2002
"Cross-cultural differences in the value placed on appearances and resulting sociocultural pressures are the most likely explanation," says lead author Antje Bohne of Harvard Medical School. Despite these differences in body image, the American students were no more likely to have severe enough body dissatisfaction to meet criteria for a psychological disorder, Bohne and colleagues say.
The study included detailed questionnaires administered to 101 American college students and 133 German students. Most of the participants were women. The study results are published in the November/December '02 issue of the journal Psychosomatics.
Three-quarters of the American students reported being concerned with the appearance of parts of their body, compared with fewer than half of the German students. Nearly 30 percent of the American students also reported being preoccupied with this concern, compared with 15 percent of the Germans. At the same time only four of the American students and seven of the German students appeared to suffer from body dysmorphic disorder, which is defined as excessive concern with an imagined or slight defect in appearance that leads to significant distress or functional impairment.
"Although Americans were more likely to develop body image concerns and to be preoccupied with them than their German counterparts, in many cases, these symptoms were not severe enough to cause significant distress or impairment in daily functioning," the researchers say.
They note, however, that their data suggests an association between poor body image and low self-esteem as well as symptoms of depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. "Our findings are consistent with prior findings that Americans are more likely to be concerned with their appearance and to place greater value on physical attractiveness in their judgment of others than do individuals from other cultures, such as Asians or Germans," Bohne and colleagues say.
Read more in Psychosomatics
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Schizophrenia May Be Many Diseases
November 12, 2002
Research carried out in the United States suggests there could be at least three different types. A study of more than 100 patients found distinctive brain patterns and clinical symptoms in people who have been diagnosed with the disease. Doctors suggested the finding could help to dramatically improve their understanding of schizophrenia and help in the development of new drugs to fight the disease.
Dr Bruce Turetsky and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania compared symptoms and brain patterns in 116 people with the disease and 129 healthy people. Both groups were assessed using the California Verbal Learning Test, which examines learning and memory skills and their recall ability. They also underwent scans to examine the physical make-up and chemistry of their brain.
The tests revealed three distinct types of schizophrenia. In the first group, parts of the brain called temporal lobes were smaller. They also transmitted fewer chemicals in these areas, which are linked to language and memory. They had problems paying attention, organizing their thoughts and expressing ideas in a logical and coherent way. They were mostly young males who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at an early age. It affected almost one in five of those with the disease involved in the study.
In the second group, doctors discovered changes in the frontal-striatal region of the brain. They had less grey matter in the frontal lobes and had enlarged ventricles. This area affects cognition and motor function. Their temporal lobes were normal. Almost one in three of those with the disease who were involved in the study fitted into this category.
More than half of the remaining patients had mild memory problems. Damage to their temporal lobes or frontal lobes was not as great as those included in the other two groups. The doctors suggested that their findings may explain why a broad range of symptoms can be diagnosed as schizophrenia. They added that their study may also indicate why scientists have found it difficult to identify the causes of the disease -- particularly if they believe it is just one disease.
Dr Turetsky said: "One of the reasons we haven't been successful in identifying 'the cause' of schizophrenia may be because we are studying mixed groups of individuals who don't really have the same thing wrong with them."
Read more in Neuropsychiatry
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Nature or Nurture Revisited
November 12, 2002
According to an article published recently in The New York Times, neuroscientists have found an evocative solution to a classic problem: which is more important in shaping the human brain, nature or nurture?
The answer they have come up with is: both. The brain is not primarily the product of genes, they say, but neither is it simply the sum of one's experiences. Rather, they say, each human brain is constructed of complex neural circuits that start taking shape before birth and continue to grow and change throughout life as genes and cells are influenced by environment, experience and culture.
There is widespread agreement that genes and environment interact in brain development, said Dr. Terrence J. Sejnowski, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute in San Diego, and a leading proponent of the new synthesis. The new idea, he said, is that human cultures, which teach children what to believe and what to expect in life, interact with cell biology and molecular genetics to assemble the highly social human brain.
Though everyone's brain begins with "a basic scaffold of connectivity that is formed according to genetic blueprints," said Dr Carla Shatz, a developmental neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School, "a baby's brain is not a miniature of the adult's, but rather is a dynamically changing structure." Experience alters brain structure, chemistry and gene expression to sculpture immature neural circuits into adult circuitry, she said. In short, the theory's advocates say, while the brain directs people's activities in everyday life, the activities themselves shape the brain throughout life.
"The attempt to separate genes and environment is a mistake," said Dr Steven R Quartz, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology. "What makes us who we are is a complex interplay of early experiences, parenting, birth order, friends, genes and how these forces interact."
Humans are born with temperaments arising from genetic variations in brain chemicals called neuromodulators, Dr. Quartz was quoted in the Times as saying. These differences may lead one baby to avoid novelty and another to seek it. But the experiences that result help construct the growing brain. Humans are also born with a very large prefrontal cortex, a higher brain region involved in planning that taps into an ancient system for predicting what is rewarding and making decisions to maximize rewards and avoid punishments.
Neuroscientists are finding that this circuit, which fully matures in late adolescence, is an internal guidance system that fills each person's world with values, meaning and emotional tone, taking shape according to a person's culture. In other words, culture contributes not just to the brain's contents but to its wiring as well.
Funnily enough, we have been saying much the same thing for the last five years. It just seemed obvious from the previous research. BM
Read more in The New York Times
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From the Same Planet After All
October 22, 2002
Which would upset you more: (A) Finding out that your romantic partner was having passionate sex with someone else, or (B) Finding out that your partner was falling in love with someone else?
If you answered, "both," you are not alone; many people find it difficult to disentangle sexual and emotional infidelity. But when people are forced to choose, clear sex differences emerge. Studies consistently find that, across cultures, age groups and populations with varying amounts of sexual experience, women are more likely than men to choose "B," the option corresponding to emotional infidelity.
Psychologists disagree over the cause of the difference. Some, like David Buss, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and Todd Shackelford, PhD, of Florida Atlantic University, believe that jealousy is an evolutionary adaptation to the different reproductive challenges faced by men and women. According to this theory, men are most concerned about sexual infidelity because of the risk of inadvertently raising another man's child, while women are most concerned about emotional infidelity because of the threat of losing their mate's support.
Both sexes, the theory suggests, should have evolved special sensitivities to the type of infidelity -- sexual or emotional -- that threatens them most. The theory has been widely accepted since Buss first provided evidence for it in 1992, but some psychologists continue to question it. Northeastern University psychologist David DeSteno, PhD, and University of California, San Diego, psychologist Christine Harris, PhD, among others, have argued that the evidentiary basis of the theory is weak.
Now, DeSteno and Yale University psychologist Peter Salovey, PhD, have suggested that some of the strongest evidence in favor of the theory -- answers to forced-choice questions like the one at the beginning of this article -- may be a methodological artifact. The study was co-authored by Northeastern University graduate students Monica Bartlett and Julia Braverman and will appear in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"What we found is that the same people on a forced-choice questionnaire will show a sex difference, and on every other type of questionnaire that we give them will not show a sex difference," says DeSteno. He and Salovey also found that the sex differences disappeared when participants had to perform a second task simultaneously. "What you find is that, under cognitive load, women reverse," says DeSteno. "All of a sudden, women, like men, are saying, 'Sexual infidelity bothers me more than emotional infidelity.' And that brings women's response into line with all the other measures."
Buss and Shackelford are skeptical of the study. They see it as a flawed contribution to a debate that, they believe, still leans in favor of the evolutionary account. "The way to evaluate these things is always to look at the weight of the scientific evidence," says Buss. "I think what they do in this paper is they take a very, very narrow view and ignore the bulk of the scientific evidence that's out there."
DeSteno believes that the evolutionary forces that shaped jealousy are unlikely to have differed between men and women. "If there is a biological trigger, or part of jealousy shaped by evolution, it's probably not going to operate differently among the sexes, because the benefits from both romantic and nonromantic relationships are important to men and women at all stages of their lives," he says.
In 1996, DeSteno and Salovey suggested that gender differences in jealousy exist not because of specific, evolved mechanisms, but because the sexes have different expectations about the implications of sexual and emotional infidelity. According to this "double-shot" hypothesis, women believe that men can have sex without emotional commitment, but not emotional commitment without sex, while men are evenly split on whether the same applies to women. Those expectations, the theory suggests, explain why an individual of either sex would find one type of infidelity more upsetting than the other.
Read more in Monitor on Psychology
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Introverted Persons More Likely to Become Tired At Work
September 30, 2002
Introvert people have a higher risk of becoming tired than their extravert colleagues. This was revealed in the first large-scale and systematic study into the influence of personality on tiredness, which was carried out by researchers from Tilburg University. The researchers followed more than 700 people for a period of two years. Every six months these employees completed questionnaires concerning personality, styles of coping with problems, (work-related) stress and social support. Demographic aspects, such as having a child, were also included in the study. The study revealed that after two years, introvert persons have greater a chance of becoming tired than extrovert persons. The degree to which people experience their workload is also significant. Employees who think that they are busy have a greater chance of becoming tired than colleagues who do not think they are that busy.
The Tilburg study also revealed that the manner in which an individual copes with problems does not influence tiredness. For example, an employee who acts as if a problem does not exist is not more susceptible to tiredness than somebody who is the same in almost every aspect, but approaches and deals with problems in a systematic manner. Contrary to what was expected, it turns out that physical and mental tiredness are inextricably linked to each other. One cannot be physically tired without being mentally tired and vice versa. The researchers therefore recommend that company doctors include physical tiredness as well as mental tiredness in their investigations.
Read more at the Tilburg University web site
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"Jolly Fat" Hypothesis Doesn't Carry Weight.
September 4, 2002
A team of researchers asks in a new health journal article, "Are the Fat More Jolly?" What they found was that obesity does not protect people from mental health problems.
"The answer," they write, "is a most emphatic 'No.'" Looking at eight different indicators of mental health problems, the researchers examined whether the stereotype of the "jolly fat" is accurate. It's not, they say. The researchers looked at data from a long-term study of residents of Alameda County, California, gleaning information for 1,739 people who were at least 50 years old in 1994 and who provided information on body mass index and mental health. They used data from that year as well as 1999, when participants were questioned again. Measures of mental health included questions about overall happiness, life and relationship satisfaction, positive or negative mental state, feeling loved, depression and optimism. The researchers also looked at respondents' social support, level of financial strain, number of recent stress-inducing life events, chronic medical conditions and frequency of exercise. Researcher Robert E Roberts, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and his colleagues, wrote "There was either no observed association between obesity and psychological dysfunction or the obese were worse off, In no case did we observe better mental health among the obese. In sum, the obese were not more jolly."
Read more in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine
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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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