Health, Wealth, and Wellbeing Flashcards
Does money make you happier?
- Overall, income is a small but very robust predictor of life satisfaction (Boyce et al, 2010)
- But losses loom larger than gains (Loss aversion: Kahneman & Tversky, 1979)
- Therefore, need to consider losses as well as gain
Does losing money make you more unhappy? Not having money makes people quite unhappy (Boes & Winkelmann, 2010)
what is prospect theory?
a psychology theory that describes how people make decisions when presented with alternatives that involve risk, probability, and uncertainty
what is loss aversion?
a cognitive bias that describes why, for individuals, the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining
Conscientiousness Predicts how Life Satisfaction responds to losses versus gains in Income, Boyce, Wood and Ferguson (2015)
- Loss Aversion deemed a ‘universal’ in Prospect Theory
- Conscientiousness, although usually adaptive, is also characterized by a rigidity of thought and obsessiveness.
- Conscientious individuals place great value on economic outcomes
- Conscientious individuals put more effort into achieving their goals
- 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
based on a representative sample of 105,558 Germans, looses loom larger and more so for those high in conscientiousness
Personality, marriage and happiness, Boyce, Wood and Ferguson (2016)
- Pre-Marriage Personality to predict life satisfaction before and during marriage
- Again uses SOEP panel data: very large study of German households, running since 1980s, refreshed over time, but some people tracked for many years.
- For Women only: High conscientiousness linked to increased satisfaction over the years of marriage.
- This is because conscientious individuals place more value on relationship goals may strive harder to ensure success
- For women introversion is associated with increased satisfaction across marriage, for men its extraversion
How can personality influence the performance and training in the work place?
We are interested in performance (how many calls you take, how much money is made) or are we interested in training (how well you learn to do the job).
How can personality influence within job changes in the work place?
The nature of the job is likely to change as technology develop and as your skills as an employee change and you are promoted
Conscientiousness and IQ survival curves
- see OneNote for graphs
- men die sooner than women
- affect of conscientiousness, people with lower levels of conscientiousness die sooner
- could be due to lower conscientiousness take more risks so at higher risk being in an accident
- high cognitive function protective of mortality
- Higher IQ is a protective factor against certain diseases which would lower IQ like alzheimer’s
Neuroticism and mortality
- higher levels of neuroticism are associated with sharp increases in mortality
- could be indirect through the impact that neuroticism has on mental health
Traits and compliance with taking medication
- Conscientiousness people tend to take their treatment as they are supposed to and for the full amount of time
- compared to someone with depression who will tend to stop once they feel better
Compliance when neurotic and taking medication, Molloy, O’ Carroll and Ferguson (2014)
- People with high levels of neuroticism show lower levels of antibody response than others
- meaning they get a disease it is more difficult to fight
what is a viral challenge study in terms of health and personality?
- Expose 50% to a pathogen and 50% to a placebo. Keep in isolation. Examine for 1 to 2 weeks
- Randomized controlled trial
- Can make causal inference
what is a quasi experiment in terms of health and personality?
Examine people at high and low stress times. Usually done on the same students during exams and vacation times
what is case control designs in terms of health and personality?
Compare different high stressed and low stressed groups (e.g., carers vs. general population)
what are some ways of measuring signs of disease?
- Signs (clinical blood tests)
- Symptoms (what people report)
what are some covariates that affect people getting?
age, time of year, nutrition, depression etc. all of which will affect susceptibility to diseases and its progression
Viral challenge study, Feldman et al (1999)
- Viral challenge study – 50% of subjects given a virus and observed and measured for objective as well as subjective markers of illness
- symptoms: interactions with objective illness status
- Those high in Neuroticism report more symptoms and more severe symptoms whether or not they are actually ill.
- Those high in Openness report more symptoms than those low in Openness only when objective colds are present
How does emotional style affect reporting of illness?
- High negative affect, akin to neuroticism, leads greater reporting of symptoms but not
more actual colds - higher levels of neuroticism report subjectively higher levels of illness
- Positive affect is related to better sleep and diet and lower cortisol also
Encoding and/or recall of symptoms, Larsen (1992)
- asked people to record symptoms of disease each day for 3 months
- and then after a delay period recall the number and severity of symptoms from the pervious 3 months of recording
- people with high neuroticism recall symptoms as worse than they actually were
Pain and negative affect
- Pain is mediated by internal states and dispositions: Depression, Neuroticism, Anxiety, Catastrophizing
- These all MAGNIFY the expression of pain
Can also cause people to feel pain in the absence of physical injury (neuropathic pain)
Pain and Intelligence
- Cognitive epidemiology: IQ associated with better health outcomes
- Direct effects: Longevity, risk of various kinds of disease, widespread pain
- Indirect effects: following public health interventions, less likely to smoke, drink, eat poorly
How does personality change with chronic illness, James and Ferguson (2019)
- people diagnosed with arthritis at W2, so pain before, at and after
- IQ protects against pain at diagnosis
- Depression is a risk factor, but pain makes it worse too
- both affect future IQ
how do people have different coping strategies according to their personality, Connor-Smith and Flachsbart (2007)
- Extraversion (r = .15), Conscientiousness (r = .11) and Openness (r = .10) are linked to overall engagement coping strategies (e.g., problem solving) which are generally beneficial to health
- Neuroticism (r = .27) is associated with disengagement strategies (e.g., substance use) which are not beneficial to health
Health Behaviours and Risks: IQ
- Physical and social disadvantage
- Physiological system integrity
- Health behaviours
- Entry to safe jobs
Health Behaviours and Risk: Personality
- Neuroticism = Traffic risk
- Extraversion = Exercise, sex
Openness to experience = Drug taking, sex
Agreeableness = Accident control
Conscientiousness = Wellness behaviours
UPPS model of Impulsiveness, Whiteside and Lynam (2001)
- Urgency and premeditation preservence seeking
- Lack of Premeditation – Low C
- Lack of Perseverance – Low C
- Sensation Seeking – High E
- Negative Urgency – High N, low A & C
- Positive Urgency – High N, low A and C (Cyders & Smith, 2008)
- Similar approach to FFM/Big Five – took lots of measures of impulsivity, and entered them into a factor analysis to identify distinct traits
Addictions - Meta analysis of drinking, Coskipinar Dir and Cyders (2013)
- Low perseverance linked with amount drank
- ALL predict drinking frequency
- Problem drinking predicted by urgency
- Alcohol dependence predicted by NU and premeditation
Addictions - smoking, Munfado et al., (2007) - Eysenckian Model
High extraversion and Neuroticism predicts smoking
Behaviour addications e.g. smartphone addiction, Hitchman, Jackson and James (2023)
Negative Urgency predicts higher levels of smartphone, internet, social media addictions. Consistent at re-test
Gambling disorder
- Addictive behaviour
- Clinical disorder in DSM and ICD
- Around 0.5-1% of population in past year meet criteria for disordered gambling
- Varies by individual differences
- Higher N, Lower A and C (Brunborg et al 2016, Addiction)
- Higher Negative Urgency and lower Premeditation (MacLaren et al., 2011, Clin Psych Review)
- Many of these apply to other behavioural addictions
- But they measure individual differences at the expense of the behaviour! (James & Tunney, 2017, Clin Psych Review)
Addictive behaviours cluster – impulsivity, James, O’Malley & Tunney (2016)
- People with severe problem gamblers more likely to be: younger, male, smokers, drinkers
- ALL of these are markers of impulsiveness – individual difference associated with personality.
- Acting without thinking, not being able to inhibit actions etc.
Impulsivity and associative learning, James, O’Malley and Tunney (2016b)
- Participants trained up on different kinds of slot machine (varied in payout rate and gaps between plays)
- Eventually thrown into extinction (no wins)
- Continued gambling in the face of losses predicted by: Payout (less reinforcement, greater perseverance)
Depression (more depressed, less perseverance)
Impulsiveness (more impulsive, greater perseverance)
