applications

Relationships: Deal-Makers

• Deal-makers: Traits that promote good relationships.

• Extraversion and agreeableness (Ozer & Benet- Martinez,2006; Meir et al., 2010; Diener & Seligman,2000)

• Being liked is associated with being high on communal traits (Worthman & Wood, 2011)

• Number of friends and degree of agreement or conflict (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998)

• Success in relationships and at speed-dating (Joel et al., 2017)

• 

  Relationships: Deal-Breakers, Compatibility

  •

  • •

  Deal-breakers: Traits that prevent or undermine relationships.

  Inverse of traits for deal-makers
  Untrustworthy and anger issues (Jonason et al., 2015)

  •Dispositional Contempt Scale (Schriber et al., 2017)

  

  •

  Rejection sensitivity (Downey & Feldman,1996)

  • Anxiously expect, perceive, and overreact to rejection

  • Can lead to jealousy and hostility

  • Situation Specific (Levy et al., 2001)

    Compatibility
    Do birds of a feather flock together or opposites attract?

  • Personality traits appear to have limited explanatory power (Rholes et al., 2001; Eysenck,1990)

  • •

  

  Relationships: Love and Attachment, John Bowlby

  • Attachment theory

  • Attachment is a trait.

    • John Bowlby

  • Saw attachment as the basis of love

  • Based on evolutionary theory

  • Desire for protection leads to attachments

  • Working models of others and working models of the self are based on childhood experiences.

  • Children learn lessons from early experiences with adult caregivers.

  

  Relationships: Love and Attachment

  • Attachment patterns are self-fulfilling.

  • Change is difficult but not impossible (see Arriaga & Kumashiro,2019).

  • Even people with secure attachments can have relationship problems.

  • Two dimensions of attachment insecurity :anxiety and avoidance

    • Can be low or high on either. Lower=more secure

    • In addition to a ‘global’ (or trait) attachment style, adults have relationship-specific styles based on their different long-term relationships

    • attachment styles are organised in a hierarchy

    • Global/trait style is the most cognitively available and accessible

  • Evidence of unconscious priming of attachment figures (Mikulincer et al., 2002)

  • Security priming (Liao et al., 2017; Carnelly & Rowe, 2007)

  

  Work and Business

  Occupational success

  

  Employers want employees with certain traits.

  Employee selection can be based on personality assessments.

  Work and Business:

  Conscientiousness and Job

  Performance

  • Predictive validity of supervisor ratings = .41 or 70 percent accuracy (Ones et al., 1993)

  • Predictive validity of absenteeism = -.33 or 67 percent accuracy (Ones et al., 2003)

  • Predicts all criteria for all occupations (Mount & Barrick,1998 but see Willmot & Ones, 2019; Dudley et al., 2006)

  • Related to citizenship performance (Borman & Penner, 2001)

  • Related to success of one’s spouse (Solomon & Jackson, 2014)

  • Use to alleviate bias in testing

  

  

  Work and Business: Personality and Economics

  • Economic success

  • Consciousness and life outcomes (relationship stability,

  health related behaviours Bogg & Roberts, 2004)

  • Other constructs include grit, self control and achievement motivation (Jachimowicz et al., 2018; Crede et al., 2017; Sackett et al., 2017; de Ridder et al., 2012 )

  • Conscientiousness and grit

  • Teacher ratings of personality at age 8 combined with self- ratings at age 30 predict income at ages 40 and 60 (Terman, 1992).

  Work and Business: Leadership and Management

  • Get people to do things with persuasion, counseling, and suggestion

  • Predictors of management performance: emotional stability, consciousness, extraversion, openness (Judge et al., 2002)

  • Dark triad—leadership styles are selfish, impulsive, exploitative, and toxic

    • Furtner et al. (2017)

    • Dark triad types have a need for power and dominance

    • Mutschmann et al. (2021)

      • Examined 837 managers working in finance.

      • Dark personality traits associated with a higher prevalence of fraudulent practices

  

  

  Work and Business: Occupational Choice

  • Occupational choice

  • Hierarchy of needs—employee

    motivation

  • Personality-job fit —find the best niche for your personality

    • Holland’s (1996) six types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional

  

  

  People Are Different

  

  Personality psychology addresses how and why people are different.

  This is a good thing.

  Consequences for mental and physical health

  

  Is there a relationship between personality traits and Health care use?

  • Goodwin et al. (2006; 2002) investigated the use of mental health services

  • Neuroticism associated with an increased likelihood of service utilisation

  • Conscientiousness and extraversion associated with a decreased likelihood

  • Friedman et al. (2013)

  • Extraversion, lower openness & lower conscientiousness associated with more ED visits in older adults

  

  Physical

  Health

  • Connectionsbetweenpersonalityandhealth • Healthisoftenassessedwithself-report.

  • Someitemsonpersonalitytestsand health assessments overlap.

  • Ldata:medicalrecords,deathcertificates

  • I-data

  • Challenge:explainingtheconnections

  • Twopossiblepathways:biologicaland behavioral

  

  

  Personality and physical health • Friedman (2000) reviewed links between personality and physical health

  1. 2.

  3.

  Certain personality types may be associated with physiological mechanisms that lead to certain diseases (e.g. heart disease, cancer) Personality traits may set a trajectory towards health or disease (E.G.

  more sociable may be more likely to develop better support networks than others)

  Personality may be associated with certain motivational factors that could

  predispose people towards more risk

  Only conscientiousness predictor of good health (more likely not to smoke, moderate alcohol consumption, adhere to medical treatments and have job stability)

  • Concluded little evidence to support the notion of ‘disease-prone’personality. Causal processes not personality needs to be taken into account

  when offering health care advice

  Physical Health: The Type A Personality

  • Cardiovascular disease is a frequent cause of death and illness.

  • Most people are aware of the physiological risks for heart disease:

  • Obesity
  • Smoking
  • High blood pressure • Family history
  • Sedentary lifestyle
  • High cholesterol

  

  Type A Personality & Cardiovascular disease

  • What about other risk factors?

  • Some doctors and medical researchers found that some patients did not fit the traditional profile of a person at risk for heart disease.

  • The differences they identified appear to be personality driven.

  • More active, energetic and driven.

  

  

  Type A Personality & Cardiovascular disease

  • This personality dimension was initially called coronary prone behaviour pattern.

  • But later revised to Type A-Type B or just Type A.

  • This name seems to indicate that it is a dichotomous personality dimension.

  • People are either Type A or Type B
  • However it became widely recognised that it is a continuum.

  

  Type A Personality & Cardiovascular disease

  • Characteristics of Type A people • Strongly motivated
  • Driven to achieve
  • Attracted to competition

  • Enjoy power and recognition
  • Efficient and dislike time wasting

  • Characteristics of Type B people
  • Relaxed unhurried
  • Less likely to seek competition

  

  

  Type A Personality & Cardiovascular disease

  • Although it was initially studied from a medical perspective, it was not long before psychologists became interested in studying Type A behaviour.

  • Identified three major components thought to make up the Type A trait (Glass, 1977).

    • Highly competitive achievement striving

    • Time urgency

    • More likely to react with anger and hostility

  

  

  Type A Personality &

  Cardiovascular disease

  • Early studies indicated that Type A was a good predictor of heart disease.

    • In an 8.5 year study, Type A men had more than twice the rate of heart disease as Type B men (Rosenman et al., 1975).

    • Type A was found to be a better predictor of heart attacks than smoking and cholesterol level

  • However, it has since been suggested that the relationship between Type A and health is not that straightforward(Kuper et al., 2002;Langeeluddecke & Tennant, 1986; Miller et al., 1991).

  

  Type A Personality & Cardiovascular disease

  • Research has indicated that general Type A personality may not predict heart disease.

  • Instead it seems that the trait of hostility does.

  • Questionnaire measures of hostility are a better predictor of heart disease than questionnaire measures of Type A (Dembrowski & Costa, 1987;Williams,2001; but see Myrtek, 2001 for discussion of effect size).

  • Cynical distrust (Ranjit et al., 2007)

  

  Hostility and Hypertension

  • The CARDIA study recruited 3,000+ healthy young adults, (18-30 years) & evaluated their psychosocial factor scores.

  • Then they tracked their blood pressure for 15 years.

  • It was found that TUI & hostility were the only two psychosocial factors associated with risk for hypertension.

    Yan LL, Liu K, Matthews KA, Daviglus ML, Ferguson TF, Kiefe CI. 2003. Psychosocial factors and risk of hypertension: the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study. JAMA. 2003 Oct 22;290(16):2138-48. PMID: 14570949

  

  

  Type C

  • “Cancer-prone personality”

  • Suppression of emotion

  • Compliant and conforming

  • Arousal➔Heightened activity➔No outlet ➔ Remain in state of heightened activation ➔ Reduction of immune system functioning ➔ Greater vulnerability to disease

  

  

  Type D

  • High negative affectivity (Big 5 high neuroticism) • Increased vulnerability to anxiety and depression

  • Dysphoria, anxiety and irritability
  • Negative view of self; attentional biases

  • High social inhibition (Big 5 low extraversion)

  • Increased vulnerability to interpersonal distress and failure to

    adapt

  • Inhibit expression of emotions, tense and insecure with others

  • Avoid disapproval of others

  

  Type D
  • How do you think Type D personality might affect health?

  • Type D Personality has been found to put cardiac patients at risk for another heart attack (Denollet et al., 2006; Schiffer et al., 2008).

  • However this trait has also failed to live up to its initial promise (Coyne and De Voogd, 2012).

  

  Physical Health: Emotionality

  • Negative and positive
  • Related to extraversion and neuroticism
  • Negative emotionality is associated with poor physical health. • The connection is likely not direct.
  • Unclear direction of the relationship
  • Behaviour and stress

  

  Physical Health: Emotionality Cont’d

  

  Neuroticism canbe beneficial to health.

  Positive
  emotions and Therelationship

  optimism is complicated.

  Physical Health: Conscientiousness

  • Clear, positive relationship

  • Related to quality and length of life

  • Better able to handle stress

  • Related to behaviours that make good health more likely

  • Related to employment

  

  

  Physical Health: Prospects

  for Improving Health

  Some possibility of changing personality

  More direct routes are likely to be better.

  

  

  Personality and health outcomes

  • Vollrath and Torgersen (2000) effects of extraversion not clear cut

  • More optimistic but also high risk takers
  • Cameron et al. (2005) patients with negative affectivity may be

  less likely to benefit from self management interventions

  • Watson and Pennebaker (1989) –negative affect impacts satisfaction with health care could this impact adherence?

  • Walker et al. (2006) examined negative affect in patients with chronic low back pain. Negative affect consequence of illness and social problems as well as a cause

  • Importance of person centered care?

  

  Personality Disorders

  • Configurations of traits that are socially undesirable and taken to the extremes

  • There is not an exact point that differentiates between normal and disordered personality.

  • Create severe problems

  • Prevalence Irish Context: • 6.5%BPD

  • 14% Avoidant PD
  • Hylandetal.,2022

  

  Personality Disorders: The DSM

  • The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) • First edition: 1952

  • Controversy
  • Current edition: DSM-5 in 2013 and DSM-5-TR in

  2023

  • Twosystemsforpersonalitydisorders • Purposes

  • Makediagnosismoreobjective

  

  Personality disorders• What is a disorder?

  • A pattern of behaviour or experience that is distressing and painful to the person, that leads to disability or impairment in important life domains and that is associated with increased risk for further suffering, loss of function or confinement (APA, 1994).

  

  Defining Personality Disorders

  • Unusually extreme personality attributes• In terms of cultural context
  • Denial of reality

  • Problematic
  • For the person: anxiety, depression, confusion• For others

  

  Defining Personality Disorders • Affect social relationships and interactions

  • Stable over time
  • Can begin in adolescence or childhood
  • Difficult to change with therapy or other means

  • Ego-syntonic
  • Symptoms are seen as normal and valued aspects of personality

  by the person with the disorder
  • They think others are the ones with a problem.

  

  The Major Personality Disorders

  • Old system
  • 10 major disorders in three clusters
  • Cluster A: odd and eccentric patterns of thinking
  • Cluster B: impulsive and erratic patterns of behavior • Cluster C: anxious and avoidant emotional styles

  The Major Personality Disorders

  • More useful to think in terms of basic beliefs
  • Goal of cognitive-behavioral therapy is to change beliefs

  • New system
  • Six major disorders (four deleted); no clusters

  

  

  Prevalence of Personality Disorders

  

  Taken from

  Winsper C, Bilgin A, Thompson A, et al. The prevalence of personality disorders in the community: a global systematic review and meta-analysis. The British Journal of Psychiatry. 2020;216(2):69-78. doi:10.1192/bjp.2019.166

  Prevalence of Personality Disorders

  • Generally the prevalence of personality disorders is equal in men and women.

  • Antisocial personality disorder has the most disparate gender distribution

  • 4.5%ofmen
  • 0.8% of women

  

  

  Schizotypal Personality Disorder

  • Extremely odd thoughts, strange ideas, unconventional behaviour, superstitious beliefs, difficulty in close relationships

  • Slightly more common in men

  Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

  • Belief that one is superior
  • Expects and needs recognition from others • Expects special treatment and feels entitled • Lack of empathy

  

  

  Antisocial Personality Disorder

  • Illegal activities
  • Impulsive and risky behaviours
  • Irritable, aggressive, and irresponsible
  • Problems caused to others do not bother them
  • Associated with low economic status and urban settings • Much more common in men

  Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

  • Most severe personality disorder

  • Hallmark symptom: emotional instability

  • Suicide attempts are common.

  • Self-mutilation and self-harm

  • Identity disturbance

  • Interpersonal relationships are confusing, chaotic, noisy, unpredictable, and unstable.

    • Partlyduetosplitting

  • Possible origins

  • Treatment: dialectical behavioural therapy

  • Much more common in women

  

  

  Avoidant Personality Disorder

  • Expect the absolute worst from others
  • Need constant reassurance of uncritical acceptance • Active inhibition of emotional expression
  • Deep cravings for affection and social acceptance
  • Similar prevalence in men and women

  Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD)

  • Bound by rituals and rules
  • Severely judgmental of others
  • Lacks a sense of proportion
  • Workaholism
  • Inability to throw things away
  • Can be ego-syntonic
  • Not the same as obsessive-compulsive disorder

  

  Organizing and Diagnosing

  Disorders with the DSM-5

  New way of organization • Negative affectivity • Detachment
  • Antagonism

  • Disinhibition • Psychoticism

  

  Organizing and Diagnosing

  Disorders with the DSM-5

  • Diagnosis
  • Follow three steps

  • Assesswhetherpersonalityfunctioningisseriouslyimpairedandrate degree of dysfunction.

  • Assesswhetheratleastoneofthedefinedtypesofpersonalitydisorderis present.

  • Assessdegreeofthefivemaladaptivepersonalitytraits. • No sorting into a single diagnostic bin

  

  Personality and Disorder: Mental Health

  • Pathologizing tells us almost nothing about the nature of mental health

  • Positive psychology aims to promote meaningful and happy living

  • The health person can be defined in terms of the Big Five traits

  • Improving mental health requires an understanding of normal personality

  

  

  Personality and Disorder: Labeling

  • Misleading

  • Canlimitunderstanding

  • Notanexplanation

  • Canbeusefulandare necessary

  

  

  Personality and Disorder:

  • There is not a sharp dividing line.
  • Having a mild degree of a few characteristics does not imply

  having a disorder.

  • Disorders may be thought of as exaggerated versions of traits that are advantageous when in the normal range.

  • Unusual,original,andcreative:schizotypal • Self-confidentandproud:narcissistic

  

  A Dark Triad?

  • Paulhus and Williams (2002)

  • Machiavellianism (manipulating others for one’s own benefit)

  • Narcissism (grandiose pride; grossly over-valuing one’s abilities or personal qualities)

  • Psychopathy(remorselessaggression).

  • Paulhus and Williams (2002) observed that mild versions of Psychopathy, Narcissism and Machiavellianism can be found in the general population.

  • Muris et al. (2017) One trait or three? Machiavellianism and Narcissism may each measure Psychopathy to some extent

  • Vernon et al. (2008) more evidence for heritability of Psychopathy and Narcissism than Maciavellianism

  

  Machiavellianism

  • Machiavellianism scales sometimes predict everyday behaviour – for example bullying in the workplace (Pilch and Turska, 2015)

  • Cheating on one’s partner (Brewer and Abell, 2015)

  • What about its relationship to big 5?

  • Machiavellianism can be very substantially (negatively) correlated with Agreeableness when a Big Five questionnaire is administered to students (r=–0.62; DeShong et al., 2017).

  

  Narcissism

  • Narcissism is excessive interest in oneself – being self- absorbed, having ‘inflated, grandiose, or unjustified favourable views of self’ (Bushman and Baumeister, 1998).

  • 40-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI-40; Raskin and Hall, 1981)

  • Narcissism and other personality traits

  • Narcissism correlates 0.46 with Extraversion (Lee and Ashton, 2005) and Ackerman et al. (2011) also found a correlation of –0.35 with Agreeableness but not with the other Big Five traits.

  

  Psychopathy

  • Psychopathyisapersonalitytraitwhichisthoughttoliebehindseriouscriminal offending, the prototypical psychopath being someone who is impulsive, cares only about themselves, is indifferent to the feelings of others and who does not feel that society’s rules apply to them.

  • FirststudiedbyHerveyCleckley

  • Moremodernresearchisbasedonthedefinitionof‘antisocialpersonalitydisorder’

  • Hare’s(1991)PsychopathyChecklist(Revised)isa20-itemratingscaledesignedfor use by trained professionals with male prisoners which was based on the DSM-III definition of ASPD.

  • TheLevensonSelfReportPsychopathyScale(Levensonetal.,1995)isdesignedfor use with groups such as students or community samples, and is freely available. It has been revised several times, most recently by Christian and Sellbom (2016),

  • BoduszekandDebowska(2016)someofthebehavioursmeasuredbythese instruments are outcomes of Psychopathy (having a criminal record, etc.)

  • Five years after their release 35% of low-Psychopathy offenders had re-offended, as compared to 78% of those with high scores (Serin and Amos, 1995)

  

  HEALTHY