Week 10 Flashcards
How is personality in a multidimensional model of stress ?
Personality is involved in the processes that influences the relationship b/w inputs and outputs
What is personality?
Overall enduring pattern of thoughts, emotions and behaviours that define an individual
What makes up personality?
- Personality traits predispose a person to act in a certain way
- May be influenced by temperament and past experiences
- Different from states which are more temporary
- Not attitude: personal view, opinion
What are the 3 models of personality, stress, and health?
- Biological Predisposition Model: It’s not the personality per se, but the underlyinf temperament of that personality that determines stress and health outcomes
- Health-Related Behaviours Model: Personality determines healthy-related behaviours that then influences health outcomes
- Moderation Models: Personality intervenes to buffer or exacerbate the relationship b/w stress and health
What are the 3 models of personality?
- Type Model
- Eysenck’s PEN Model
- Big 5 Factor Model
What did the Western Collaborative Group study find ?
- 3,411 men free of CHD tracked for 8.5 yrs
- Structured interview to determine Type A/ Type B
- Type A were 2x more likely to develop CHD than Type B
What is a paradigm shift?
legitimizing personality as a medical risk factor for CHD
What is involved in Type A personality?
- “destructuve core” = Anger and Hostility
- Hostility: disposition of cynicism,. suspicion, and resentment toward others. Also includes overt and repressed anger and aggression
- Chronic anger (& hostility) is over-stimulating
What did Chide & Steptoe (2009) find?
Type Model Study
- meta-anlysis of 25 studies on healthy adults and 19 of studies on CHD patients
- In healthy: Abger/hostility associated with increased CHD events in the healthy population studies (19% increased risk) -> Stronger in Males than Females
- In patients: Anger/hostility associated with poorer prognosis in patients (24% increased risk of CV event or mortality)
How does hostility affect HPA function and Immune function?
- HPA function: High hostility group (relative to low) display blunted awakening response and flatter slope throughout the day
- Immune function: High hostile participants display slower wound healing and increased pro-inflammatory markers following conflict
What are the 3 types of anger expression?
- Constructive anger-expression (adaptive)
- Destructive anger-justification (WORST ONE; toxic, affects health, lashing out; explosive)
- Destructive anger-rumination (not healthy; type C or E)
What is the Type C model?
- “Anger in” or “cancer prone”
- characterized by a strong defense mechanism, inability to recognize negative emotions in self, being passive, feelings of hopelessness
- Correlated with Alexithymia: inability to recognize feelings of emotions and constricted image processing
- Prevalent in cancer populations (28-95%)
What is the Type D model?
- D: “Distressed
- High negativity affectivity and social inhibition
- Similar to destructive anger rumination
- More common among persons with HTN, CHD, and atopic disorder (chracteristics may change in accordance with symptoms)
- More stress reactive: larger cortisol response to acute social stress & more exaggerated BP response to cold pressor task
- Poorer lifestyle behaviours: poor diet, more sedentary, non-adherence to medication
What are the Big Three super traits in the PEN model?
- Psychoticism: reflects traits associated with non-conformity or social deviance (e.g., aggresive, cold, egocentric, impersonal, antisocial)
- Extraversion: generally a positive connotation (e.g., sociable, lively, assertive, care-free, venturesome)
- Neuroticism: associated with being tense, irrational, low self-esteem, depressed, guilt feelings
- PEN is an outward expression of temperament (biological differences hypothesis)
- Underlying differences in biological temperament - optimal lvl of arousal
What did Eysenck propose?
- proposed that reticular formation is more active in Introverts than Extraverts (less arousal to have that reaction for introverts)
- introverts: lower threshold of activation
- extraverts: higher threshold activation
- to reack peak performance: less activation (I); more stimulation (e)
Evidence - Intro vs Extra
* Greater salivation in Lemon Drop test
* Quicker pupillary response to bright light
* Increased brain activity to auditory stimuli
* Mixed results: Overall, lower threshold for low-moderate stimulation lvls
What systems are involved in the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory?
- Behavioural Activation System: Exaggerated positive affect to rewards, extraversion (higher BAS sensitivity)
- Behavioural Inhibition System: Exggerated negative affect to punishment; Neuroticism (higher BIS sensitivity)
What are the 5 factors in the Five Factor Model?
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
What ate the 5 processes in the neurotic cascade?
- Hyper-reactivity: biologically predisposed to react to stressors with more negative affect
- Differential exposure: tendency to set up scenarios that lead them to experience more hassles/negative life events
- Differential appraisal: more likely to appraise situations negatively when they are non-threatening and lack confidence to hain control (high primary appraisal and low secondary appraisal)
- Mood slipover: tendency for rumination leading to negative emotions beyond the event
- The sting of familiar problems: flawed solutions to problems are often repeated despite their ineffectiveness; lack of psychological flexbility
What did Reynaud et al. (2012) find?
Hyper-reactivity
- Study: Neuroticism modifies psychophysiological responses to fearful films
- Young adults; High and Low Neuroticism
- Viewed films that elicit an emotion: sadness, fear, disgust
- Measured skin conductance (electrodermal activity) and facial expressions (electromyography)
- Results: Those with high neuroticism showed higer reacitvity to fear inducing films than those with low neuroticism and the same results were present for frowning when fear was induced
What did Abbasi (2011) find?
Differential appraisal
- Participants: Undergraduate students
- IV: High and Low neuroticism
- DV: Perceived stress scale
- Procedure: Psychosocial stress-induction
- Results: those with high neuroticism had higher lvls of perceived stress before the stressor and that they had higher negative affect
What did Gunthert et al., (1999) find?
The stinf of familiar problems
- Participants assessed over 2-weeks: reported negative events, negative affect, stress and coping appraisal, and coping strategies
Results: compared with Low N and High N
* Reported greater interpersonal stress and greater negative affect
* Rated the event as more stressful with lower coping efficacy
* More likely to use “maladaptive” coping strategies: catharsis, self-blame, wishful thinking, and hostile reaction
* Negative affect dependent on: interaction b/w neuroticism and undesirable appraisal & neuroticism and coping efficacy
What did Conner-Smith & Flachsbart (2007) find?
the sting of familiar problems
Socring high on neuroticsm more likely to:
* use broad disengagement strategies: wishful thinking, withdrawl, denial, avoidance
* Use drugs and alcohol for coping
What did Kendler et al., (2004) find?
the sting of familiar problems
- Relationship b/w neuroticism, stress and risk of depression
- If high on neuroticism but low on stress you still have a high risk of developing depression
- gene-environment interaction (diathesis stress)
What is associated with neuroticism
- Decreased life satisfaction
- Depressive and anxiety symptoms
- Strongly associated with distressed oriented persoanlity disorders (e.g., BPD)
- Interpersonal and marital dissatisfaction
- Increased risk of cognitive decline with age
- Increased risk of mortality
- Greater amygdala activation
What did Turiano et al., (2012) find?
Vulerable Personality Traits
- looked at conscientiousness as a buffer in regards to alcohol use
- found that conscientiousness minimizes the likelihood of someone who is high on neuroticism to engage in alcohol use
- protective personality trait can potentially minimize the potential negative impact that high neuroticism can have
What are additional vulernable personality types?
- (Low) Self-esteem: confidence in one’s own worth, abilities, or morals
- (Low) Locus of control/self-efficacy: belief in one’s capacity to execute behaviours necessary to produce specific performance attainments
- Type A personality (Hostility)
What can having low self-esteem cause?
- more likely to be highly reactive
- habituation: non-habituators more likely to score low on self-esteem
- smaller hippocampal volume
What are protective personality traits?
- Conscientiousness and Extraversion
- Dispositional Optimism
- Traits involving perception of control
- Locus of control
- Hardiness: commitment, challenge, and control
What is conscientiousness associated with?
- Increased longevity
- Reduced likelihood of negative health-related beahviours (e.g., drinking, smoking)
- Increased mindfulness
- Increased immune function
- Reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease
What is extraversion associated with?
- Happiness and subjective well-being
- Greater satisfaction with intimate relationships
- Great post-traumatic growth
- Decreased sensitivity to punishment and high responsiveness to reward
- Extraversion and conscientiousness predict resiliency
What did Segovia et al., (2012) find?
Protective Personality Triats (dispositional optimism)
- WW2 vets in Vietnam
- Resilience = never receiving any psychiatirc diagnosis over 37-year follow up
- Results: Optimism was strongest predictor when exmining outcomes as continuous (17%) or categorical (14%)
- Outcome: resilience
What is locus of control?
Expectancies about our actions and reinforcements that follow them
What is internal LOC?
- actions will lead to predictable outcomes and reinforcements
- may be related to greater engagement in healthy behaviours and less psychological stress
What is external LOC?
reinforcements are influenced by external factors (fate, luck, etc)
