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)