Can I change my personality?

Question 1

Why is it hard to change personality and emotions?

Answer 1

• hard to control impulses and desires
• genes predispose us to certain behaviors
• environments reinforce certain behaviors
• adapt to circumstances

Question 2

How does divorce influence personality and emotion change

Answer 2

• attachment more influenced by environment than genes

- children whose parents were divorced were more likely to be insecurely attached at age 18

Question 3

How do social relationships affect personality and emotion change?

Answer 3

• with right social relationship, insecurely attached infants could become securely attached by age 21
• no difference in relationship quality for those that were securely attached at age 1 and those who became securely attached

Question 4

Does being kind to others improve well-being?

Answer 4

• 5 acts of kindness throughout week or 5 acts in one day

- increase in well-being for those who did the act of kindness in one day

Question 5

Cutural differences in happiness enhancing strategies (Boehm, Lyubomirsky, Sheldon)

Answer 5

• expressing optimism, conveying gratitude, control
• Anglo americans showed increase in life satisfaction for optimism (best) and gratitude
• Asian Americans showed no differences
• interventions more effective for anglo americans than asian americans

Question 6

Is meditation related to happiness?

Answer 6

• meditators show more value of LAP, and non meditators value HAP
• no difference in actual affect

Question 7

Can meditation lead you to value LAP more?

Answer 7

• meditation versus improv class
• no differences in actual affect
• but increase in valuation of LAP for both meditation classes

Question 8

Antidepressants

Answer 8

• connection between psychopathology and personality (people said drug made them feel more like themselves)
• making people feel how they wanted to feel

Question 9

Do anti-depressants change personality? (Knutson, 1998)

Answer 9

• healthy volunteers given placebo or anti-depressant
• participants who took SSRI had: less hostility, less negative affect, more affiliative behavior,
• suggests that personality and psychopathology are on a continuum or share similar mechanisms

Question 10

James Goodwin, “cosmetic psychopharmacology”

Answer 10

-argued that everyone should be on anti-depressants

Question 11

Botox and happiness

Answer 11

• based off of facial feedback hypothesis
• one study showed depressed women showed reduction of symptoms after botox
• other study (with placebo) showed minimal effects of botox

Question 12

Changing your environment

Answer 12

• different regions have different conceptions of happiness

- “Hedonic refugees” move to a new place because they are happier there