Task 6 Flashcards
Are spouses similar in personality?
o Researcher compare scores of traits between the spouse
o Tend to be very slightly similar
Marital satisfaction (others)
Higher emotional stability, higher agreeableness and higher conscientiousness of the spouse are associated with marital satisfaction
Marital satisfaction (self)
people who reported higher marital satisfaction tended to be higher in Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion
People with these traits are more likely to be happy in their marriage
similarity/dissimilarity (marital satisfaction)
: marital satisfaction is nearly unrelated to differences/similarities within a spouse
Influence of attachment style on personality
Anxious attachment negatively correlated with emotional stability & conscientiousness
Avoidant attachment weakly correlated to big 5
parenting style
High in openness & extraversion = more nurturing, less restrictive parenting style
Are friends similar in personality
o For most aspects of personality, friends are neither similar nor different
o There is similarity between friends in Honesty-Humility and Openness to experience (about .25)
These traits are also perceived to be more similar when you compare the other report for a friend else and an self-report for yourself (around .40)
So the tend to perceive more similarity than actually exist
Values: Might be caused by the fact that we tend to choose our friends based on same values (perceived similarity is higher than actual)
Popularity of children
Popular children: tended to be low in aggression and high in sociability
Rejected children: high in aggression low in sociability
Neglected children: score low in both categories
Controversial children: score high in aggression and sociability
Aggression is linked to being disliked and sociability with being liked (not sure if likability is cause or effect for these characteristics)
Likability of college students
Extraversion was associated with being liked (.40 among men and women)
Only for men emotional and physical attractiveness are similar strong related for likability
Likability of colleges (work)
hypothesized, that consciousness might important for likability
Substance use and personality
o Substance use disorder: is related to low levels on conscientiousness and ,more weakly, with low levels of emotional stability
o Predictability of Substance misuse by personality: 17 year olds who stayed “clean” had higher levels of conscientiousness and emotional stability compared to those who developed a use disorder until the age of 20
So personality traits can be predictive for drug misuse and not other way around
o Stopping drug misuse: people who stopped e.g. smoking have levels of conscientiousness somewhere between those who never started and those who still do it
Longevity and personality
o Conscientiousness: moderately related to longer lifespan, low level people had a 35% greater chance to die before the age of 70
Part of it is caused by the lower likelihood of drinking and smoking, the rest is probably caused by better ability to handle life stress, being better prepared and development of better social support networks (in case of high level in conscientiousness)
o Other slightly related traits: cheerfulness and optimism with a negative correlation
Might be caused by to much optimism about their heath and therefore neglection of any health problems that might arise
Heart disease and type A personality
o Type A behaviour pattern: characteristics including competitiveness, impatience, excessive job involvement, hostility and time urgency
Most people have intermediate levels between type A and B
Correlates to .20 with increased risk of heart disease
o Related to anger and hostility
Might be caused by poorer health habits, more stress creation, or most likely stronger physiological reaction to stress (increase in blood pressure, heart rates and levels of stress related hormones)
Predictors for academic performance
o Conscientiousness was the strongest and most consistent predictor (only moderately high correlation)
o Elementary school: good performance was associated with Conscientiousness but also with Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience, with correlations in each case around .20. But only in elementary school
The role of self control in criminality
o Criminals lack on self-control, so they are less able to inhibit criminal impulses than non-criminals
Psychopathy
o Secondary psychopaths: those who lack on self-control
o Primary psychopaths: those wo act more calculating and rational (low in emotionality)
Committing a crime relies on both secondary and primary psychopaths
o Score low in honesty-humility factor
general life satisfaction correlates
- Genetic influence (heritability around .40)
- Positive correlations: self esteem (.60) cheerfulness .40, assertiveness and sociability .30
- Negative correlations: depressiveness -.50, anxiety -.30 as well as anger
- Big Five: Extraversion and emotional stability are strongly associated with life satisfaction
Development of Honesty-Humility
o Decreases during teens and increases after late teens through late middle age
o Corresponds in the opposite direction to criminal behaviour (most prevalent in mid to late teens and then gets better)