Happiness, Health, Wealth Flashcards
Does more money make you happier?
Does losing money make you more unhappy?
Not having money makes people quite unhappy
Overall, income is a small but very robust predictor of life satisfaction
-having more resources (to an extent)
But losses are larger than gains (sting way more)
Therefore, need to consider losses as well as gain
-Prospects Theory assumes these are universal
Prospect Theory and Loss Aversions:
We treat losses more salient than wins!
When looking at if personality traits affect the way we feel towards gains and losses which trait predicts how life satisfaction responds to losses versus gains in income?
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness, Loss Aversion and happiness (Boyce, Wood & Ferguson, 2015)
Study had high external validity
Found: the relationship between losses and conscientiousness
People with high C rated a greater loss of function
People with low levels of C showed an insensitivity to the losses
In the workplace:
-Performance and Training
-Within job changes
America especially are beginning to use Psychometric testing for identifying specific personality traits that are seen as more useful in the work place when hiring someone for a job.
The nature of the job is likely to change as technology develop and as your skills as an employee change and you are promoted.
What are the top 5 traits that employers look for when wanting to know how well someone will perform in their job?
1) Cognitive ability
Perceptual
Numerical
Verbal
5) Spatial
Individual Differences in Loss Aversion:
Conscientiousness predicting how life satisfaction responds to losses versus gains in income:
Conscientious individuals place great value on which type of values?
Economic values
-although usually adaptive, C is also characterized by a rigidity of thought and obsessiveness.
-problematic when a desired outcome is not achieved or is lost.
-C individuals put more effort into achieving their goals
thus the loss of that outcome might be appraised as due to lack of their own ability (stable and general cause of failure) as opposed to a lack of effort
Therefore, losses should loom larger for those higher in conscientiousness? -hyp proposition was C should be associated with higher severe loss functions (feel losses more)
Loss Aversion deemed a …….. in Prospect Theory?
‘universal’
When people get married does this affect their personality and responses to their life changes?
For better or for worse: Personality, Marriage and Happiness (Boyce, Wood & Ferguson, 2016)
This study measured pre-Marriage Personality to predict life satisfaction before and during marriage using Socio-Economic P panel data
A very large study of German households (cultural limitations)
Running since the 1980s (lacks temporal validity)
Refreshed over time, but some people tracked it for many years
What were the findings for Men and/ or Women?
For Women Only:
High conscientiousness is linked to increased satisfaction over the years of marriage.
Why?
-Conscientious individuals place more value on relationship goals
may strive harder to ensure success (plus individualistic culture shares similar values)
High introversion is associated with increased satisfaction across marriage
For Men Only:
High extraversion rates
Why?
-Women and men may have different motivations or extraversion
is linked to status (men’s role as providers high status)
In the workplace:
-Performance and Training
-Within job changes
What are the top 3 traits from FFM that employers look for when wanting to know how well someone will perform in their job?
1) Cognitive ability:
1.5) conscientiousness
2/3) Neuroticism
low levels are desirable
In the workplace:
-Performance and Training
-Within job changes
What are the top 5 traits that employers look for when wanting to know when going through job training (picking up skills)?
1) Numerical
Cognitive abilities/ Perceptual
Verbal
Spatial
Info slide on ways personality can affect health:
Beginning: when we start to feel symptoms of illness
Actual awareness of symptoms
Level of antibody response
Treatment options (selecting certain treatment options)
Some patients confide solely in their doctor (comply/ adhere to public treatment)
Longevity & Mortality:
Our personality traits and individual differences affect the rate we pass away
C and IQ Survival Curves show the probability of survival/ death rate. Which trait is associated with a higher death rate?
Low levels of conscientiousness (C)
as well as the gender effect (usually men die first)
Low C= greater risk-taking (men) leads to accidents
Longevity & Mortality:
Our personality traits and individual differences affect the rate we pass away
C and IQ Survival Curves show the probability of survival/ death rate. Which trait apart from low C is associated with a higher death rate?
Lower levels of Cognitive Function
eg. Alzheimer’s affects cognitive function leads to higher chance of mortality
Which 2 traits (high levels) are seen as a protective factor against morality?
High levels of Conscientiousness and Cognitive Function =
lower death rate
C and IQ Survival Curves show the probability of survival/ death rate. Which trait apart from low C and low cognitive function is associated with a higher death rate?
Mroczek found:
High Neuroticism (extreme increase in mortality) then increase over time throughout life they die quicker
-may be due to indirect factors such as people’s mental health worsening
-consequence of chronic illness
Which personality traits are linked with longevity?
High Conscientiousness
High Cognitive Function
Low Neuroticism
Which personality traits are linked with mortality?
Low Conscientiousness
Low Cognitive Function
High Neuroticism
The effect of personality when considered against different health related behaviours is very high on the spectrum of risk factors.
What 3 lifestyle factors are associated with higher morality rates?
Smoking
Inactivity
Obesity
Molloy, O’Carroll & Ferguson, 2014 Meta-analysis studied health-related and individual difference factors associated with Treatment compliance of Patients.
More conditions require the use of long-term medication
(midlife prescription onwards)
More people struggle to maintain treatment compliance
With acute conditions, patients often stop taking medication due to feeling better, allowing our bodies to become immune to the antibiotics given due to not finishing the course
Which chronic conditions, patients tend to forget as memory worsens
What were the findings?
People with High Conscientiousness find it easier to comply with treatment/ medication
C is more predictive of compliance than other factors such as
Behavioural and educational interventions
Depression measures
Family conflict
Effect size of these interventions is almost half compared to C measures
However, all can be used to create treatment plans
People with low … find it harder to comply with treatment/ medication?
Conscientiousness
Personality affects the way we fight disease:
Studies that have administrated vaccines to people (covid) have measured the level of ……. response of the successful vaccines?
Antibody
High antibody responses are
Beneficial when fighting illness.
Personality affects the way we fight disease:
Studies that have administrated vaccines to people (covid) have measured the level of antibody response of the successful vaccines.
Results show that for those high in ……….. antibody responses are lower than those lower in ………..?
Neuroticism (N)
People who have a greater level of N have a higher or lower antibody response compared to others?
N= Lower antibody response
(Philips et al, 2005)
Making it harder to fight disease
Why might high Neuroticism increase the chances of morality?
N is associated with greater reactivity to stress
and
Antibody Response to Hepatitis B Injection in Healthy Young Adults.
(Marsland et al)
The other side:
Some traits that are typically perceived as good (Conscientiousness) may be negative in which environments?
loss aversion
(how outcomes are interpreted as gains and losses where losses are subject to more sensitivity in people’s responses)
or medical training
Larsen (1992): Encoding and/or recall of symptoms
Asked people to record symptoms of disease at one-time point. Period of delay.
Then follow up at a different time point on how they felt retrospectively.
What were the findings of Neuroticism?
People high in N recall symptoms
as worse than they actually were
High N levels were NOT directly associated with symptoms when it was reported at the time of encoding but when asked to recall information about their feelings at the time of the study, they reported greater levels of symptom and severity then at time of encoding. = Retrospective bias
Suggests it is the way these memories are retrieved and reinterpreted that is driving this retrospective bias rather than the increased susceptibility to the feelings of symptoms at the time.
How this change with chronic illness (James & Ferguson, 2019; Psychological Medicine)
This questionnaire measured pain, cognitive function, and depression before, during, and after the emergence of disease in 3 waves of data over 6 years.
In each domain, people’s depression/ pain was predicted by their past reports of those (highly correlated)
Effects also emerged cross domain.
What were the results?
People diagnosed with arthritis at W2, so pain before, at, and after.
IQ protects against pain at diagnosis:
People with higher levels of Cognitive Function reported lower pain when going to the doctors to seek help. Thus cognitive function protects against some of the negative impacts coming on so rapidly.
Cross relationship between Depression and Pain as
D = a sensitising factor in the experience of pain
This leads to higher reporting of pain at the time of arthritis
Both affect future IQ (cognitive performance)
-Higher reporting’s of D and P
Could be due to pain and high levels of negative affect impacting performance (eg. the pain is distracting when performing)
or maybe the effect of a disease on peoples cognitive functioning
