Traits and Life Outcomes Flashcards
What is the Somatogenic approach?
Physical factors as the cause of psychological differences in personality
- E.g Galen and Hippocrates 4 humors
What is a modern example of the somatogenic approach?
Hypertension can lead to symptoms of depression ans anxiety
What is the Psychogenic approach?
How psychological differences may affect us physically e.g. chronic stress has serious implications for physical health (Heilmayr et al., 2019)
Who categorised the 3 ways personality may influence health?
Contrada, Cather and O’Leary (1999)
What are intrinsic characteristics?
May be associated with psychological processes that have negative physical outcomes
What are the 3 theories that link personality and health?
Intrinsic characteristics, risky behavioural choices and prevention/reaction
What are risky behavioural choices?
Smoking, unhealthy diet and substance abuse
What is an example of preventing health problems?
Coscientious individuals are more likely to see the doctor if they are concerned
What does Meehl’s diathesis stress model of schizophrenia (1962,1989) suggest?
That personality factors which precede later symptomology include anxiousness, submissiveness, introversion and eccentricity
What did Zuckerman, 1999 find?
High neuroticism and low extroversion may contribute to a number of different psychiatric disorders
What did Quirk find out about the Big 5 and several indicators of psychopathology?
Big 5 may provide info relevant to clinical concerns such as self-perception, interpersonal functioning, treatment response, and outcome prediction
What personality trait is strongest in predictive romantic outcomes?
Neuroticism
What did a study on heterosexual couples find?
300 couples over 50 years found that high neuroticism in one spouse predicted levels of dissatisfaction in the marriage and divorce
What else are key predictors of relationship outcomes?
Agreeableness and conscientiousness
What study discussed agreeableness and conscientiousness?
20k married couples in 3 countries - found associations between high agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability and higher marital satisfaction - 7 point Likert scale
What is the effect of extroversion on life?
Mixed impacts - extroverts tend to experience more positive emotions and have more social connections but high extroversion has also been associated with short term mating and mate poaching
How does OCEAN link to Sternberg’s triangular theory (1998) ?
- Agreeableness correlated with all 3 dimensions due to interpersonal interactions
- Conscientiousness was positvely associated with intimacy and commitment
- Extraversion was linked to higher levels of passion
What is triangular theory of love?
Intimacy, passiona and commitment
What is personality similarity of relationships?
Couples who ‘fall in love at first sight’ tend to show less similarity in personality traits than those who get to know eachother more slowly
- Research has shown that personality similarity does not predict relationship satisfaction or life satisfaction
What do most relationship studies tend to rely on?
Self report
What is happiness related to?
High self esteem, relationship quality, income, productivity, sociability, and creativity (Tucker et al., 2001)
What environmental influences do personality traits intercat with?
Positive life outcomes - graduation, marriage, children
Adverse life outcomes - deaths, divorce, ill health
Surrounding social and political factors
What 3 ways did Diener, Oishi and Lucas (2003) theorise the ways personality traits can influence happiness?
- Baseline effect - extraverted and stable individuals have higher baseline levels of positive affect
- Emotional reactivity - IDs affect the degree to which people to specific life events
- Information processing - IDs predict people’s interpretation of events
What did Webb do?
Conceptualised persistence of motives as an important personality trait for predictinf academic success
What did Webb combine with intellect?
Stability of emotions (1915)
What have recent views on personlity and educational performance found?
The most consistent personality correlate of exam and continuous assessment performance is conscientiousness (Bratko et al., 2006)
What are conscientious individuals more like?
More likely to attend class, complete assignments on time and revise
What sub-facets of conscientiousness are most strongly correlated with academic achievement?
Self discipline and achievement striving (O’Connor and Paunonen, 2007)
How can neuroticism lead to test anxiety?
State anxiety (test) interacts with external stressors to enhance the subject component of stress, affecting individual’s perceptions of stressors and their ability to cope
What did Bratko et al (2006) suggest about anxiety?
A certain level can act as to motivation to study and prepare for exams
What have meta analytic studies suggested about openness to experience and intelligence?
Moderately correlated to crystilised intelligence - well known correlate of academic performance
What have associations between extraversion and academic performance shown to be affected by and by who?
Type of assessment, Furnham and Chammoro-Premuzic, 2005
What did a meta analysis by O’Conner and Paunonen (2007) show?
- Conscientiousness consistently predicted academic performance (0.22-0.4)
- Openness was sometimes correlated with academic success (0.05-0.3)
- Extroversion - weak effect
What did research suggest about job performance?
FFM is most useful for predicting job performance - Concientiousness is strongest and most consistent predictor of job performance
What did Schmidt and Hunter find about conscientiousness and job performance?
Medium strength correlations (0.31), 1998
What is the correlation between concientiousness and job performance weaker than?
Work samples (0.54), IQ tests (0.51) and structured interviews (0.31)
What can extroversion predict in terms of job type?
Success in management and sales
What can extroversion and openness predict in terms of job type?
Training performance
What did Hermelin and Robertson (2001) find about conscientiousness and occupation?
Less advantageous for role requiring creativity or flexibility
What is prosocial behaviour?
Voluntary behviour intended to benefit another (Eisenberg et al., 2006)
What traits are associated with prosocial behaviour?
High extraversion and agreeableness
What did Penner identify to underly prosocial behaviour?
Empathy (agreeableness) and helpfulness (extraversion)
What is antisocial behaviour?
Actions that violate social norms in ways that reflect disregard for others or violate the rights of others
What are major predictors of antisocial behaviour?
Low conscientiousness and low neuroticism
What did Hepp et al., 2002 find with economic games?
- A Study using the Dictator game and the Faith game to explore links between personality traits and prosocial behaviour
What was the Dictator game?
Ps who play the role of the dictator can exploit other players by taking their money without negative consequence
What is the Faith game?
Ps must choose between:
- Recieving a fixed (unknown) amount of money fom experimenter
- Recieving an unknown amount of money from an unknown person
What were the findings of Hepp’s study?
- Measured maladaptive personality traits associated with personality disorder diagnosis, including negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition and psychoticism, based on the DSM-5 and ICD-11 systems
- Antagonism was associated with greater levels of exploitation
What is antagonism defined as?
Callous antipathy toward others and unawareness of others’ needs and feelings, as well as a willingness to use others in the service of self-enhancement
How did early theorists categorise criminals?
Physical features
What did Goring (1913) find about criminals?
3000 criminals and 3000 non-criminals - no systematic differences in facial and cranial characteristics between 2 groups
What did Lombroso study?
Italian criminals and thought they displayed physical features characterising the ‘Criminal man’ (1876)
- Described as having racial undertones
What is the ‘halo effect’?
Where we expect people that we view as pleasing to the eye to also possess positve characteristics
What did Eysenck find about the PEN model and crime?
Low E and N least likely to engage in anti-social behaviour
- Low E and high N (and vice versa) at a mid point
- High E and N most likely to engage in anti-social behaviour - will develop poor personal, leading to crime
What did high psychoticism relate to?
Offending, particularly with crimes involving hostility to othersW
What did Barton and Barton (2005) find? (PEN)
Compared to non-offenders, offenders tend towards High N and High P
What is the main strength of Eysenck’s PEN model of crime?
Emphasis on interactions between hereditary, biological functioning, the environment and child development
What are the limitations of Eysenck’s PEN theory of Crime?
- Theory not applicable to all crime - diff. personality traits may predict diff. types of crime
- The emphasis on classical/operant conditioning does not include other types of learning (role modelling)
What are the two types of crime?
Social-conventional transgressions (don’t cause direct harm)
and Moral transgression (cause harm to others)
What did a systematic review of literature identify - 3 major personality types?
- Psychopathy
- Low self-control
- Difficult temperament
What is the Dark Triad and who was it by?
Paulhus and Williams (2002) - Machiavellianism, Narcissism and Psychopathy
What are some other factors associated with crime?
Alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty, ASPD, Policing, Legislation
What did research surrounding personality of a jury find (2007) ?
- 17 juries deliberated on a verdict (n=285)
- Ps all completed Big 5 Inventory
- High levels of juror extraversion was associated with not guilty verdicts
- Extraversion also associated with being selected as jury foreperson = higher influence
