People who are low on this trait can improve it over time.
Study tests if depression changes people’s personality.
Study tests if depression changes people’s personality.
People who are depressed become more neurotic, more dependent on others and more thoughtful in the short-term.
After recovering from depression, though, people’s personality returns almost completely to its pre-depression state.
Depression does not change people’s personality in the long-term, the study found.
Indeed, people’s personality may become slightly more healthy after recovering from an episode of depression.
However, depression does affect people’s personality somewhat while they are experiencing an episode.
There was some evidence, though, that people lose some of their social confidence after an episode of depression.
It may also be that multiple, severe bouts of depression can have a long-lasting effect on personality.
The conclusions come from thousands of people, some with and some without depression, who were followed across six years.
The study’s authors explain the results:
“None of the scales for which negative change would be
predicted by the scar hypothesis (increased neuroticism, emotional reliance, and lack of social self-confidence; decreased ascendance/dominance, sociability, and extroversion) showed such change.In general, scores on these scales remained stable from time 1 to time 2; if they changed at all, they changed numerically in the direction of healthier scores at time 2.”
The results showed no evidence of the so-called ‘scar hypothesis’.
The authors explain that…
“…the “scar” or “complication” model, suggesting that the depressive episode is the cause of lasting change in personality.”
Instead, the study supports the idea that certain personality types are vulnerable to depression.
Negative emotionality is the strongest risk factor for depression among personality traits, research finds.
Negative emotionality is essentially being highly neurotic and involves finding it hard to deal with stress and experiencing a lot of negative emotions and mood swings.
People who are neurotic are more likely to experience negative emotions like fear, jealousy, guilt, worry and envy.
The study was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry (Shea et al., 1996).
Around 80 percent of people are thought to be optimists, but does that make you happier?
Around 80 percent of people are thought to be optimists, but does that make you happier?
Realists are significantly happier than both pessimists and optimists in the long-run.
Pessimism and optimism are personality traits that lie at opposite ends of a spectrum.
Realists, meanwhile, sit halfway in between, occupying the middle ground.
Optimists may suffer in the long-term because they are often disappointed.
The regular disappointment can end up being a stronger emotion than the pleasure gained from anticipating positive outcomes.
The most optimistic people are 13.5 percent less happy than realists, the study found.
Around 80 percent of people are thought to be optimists.
The problem for pessimists is perhaps more obvious: they are constantly dreading the worst.
This dread can overtake any benefits gained from things turning out better than expected.
The most pessimistic people are 21.8 percent less happy than realists, the study also found.
Both optimists and pessimists make decisions based on biased false beliefs.
Dr Chris Dawson, study co-author, said:
“Plans based on inaccurate beliefs make for poor decisions and are bound to deliver worse outcomes than would rational, realistic beliefs, leading to lower well-being for both optimists and pessimists.
Particularly prone to this are decisions on employment, savings and any choice involving risk and uncertainty.
I think for many people, research that shows you don’t have to spend your days striving to think positively might come as a relief.
We see that being realistic about your future and making sound decisions based on evidence can bring a sense of well-being, without having to immerse yourself in relentless positivity.”
The study included 1,601 people who were tracked for over 18 years.
They reported their life satisfaction and any psychological distress each year.
People were also asked about their finances and their tendency to over- or under-estimate them.
The results showed that realists were most satisfied with their lives (life satisfaction is a measure of overall happiness, in contrast to momentary pleasure).
The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (de Meza & Dawson, 2020).
What your diet says about your personality.
What your diet says about your personality.
Eating more meat is a sign of being extraverted.
Vegetarians and vegans, meanwhile, are more likely to be introverted.
However, vegetarians also tend to be slimmer than their meat- eating peers.
This is probably because avoiding animal foods reduces the intake of fat and sugar.
Dr Veronica Witte, study co-author, is not sure exactly why vegetarians tend to be more introverted:
“It could be because more introverted people tend to have more restrictive eating habits or because they are more socially segregated because of their eating habits.”
The conclusions come from a study of 8,943 people in Germany who were given a test of personality, along with other measures.
The researchers had expected to find a link between diet and neuroticism, but did not.
Dr Witte said:
“Earlier analyses had found that more neurotic people were generally more likely to avoid certain groups of foods and to behave more restrictively.
We focused here solely on the avoidance of animal products and could not observe any correlation.”
People who are neurotic are more likely to experience depression and anxiety.
Indeed, some research finds that plant-based diets are linked to depression.
However, there was no evidence of this in the current study.
Dr Witte said:
“It is possible that in previous analyses other factors had blurred the results, including the BMI or conspicuous personality traits that are known to be associated with depression.
We accounted for them.”
The lower weight of vegetarians and vegans is less mysterious.
Ms Evelyn Medawar, the study’s first author, said:
“Products that are excessively rich in fat and sugar are particularly fattening.
They stimulate the appetite and delay the feeling of satiety.
If you avoid animal foods, you consume fewer such products on average.
People who eat predominantly vegetable foods may therefore absorb less energy.”
The study was published in the journal Nutrients (Medawar et al., 2020).
Discover which Big Five traits drive people to give or volunteer.
Acting out this personality trait makes people feel happier.
Acting out this personality trait makes people feel happier.
Acting like an extravert makes people feel happier — even natural introverts.
Both extraverts and introverts report greater well-being after a week spent being more talkative, assertive and spontaneous.
It is the first study to report the benefits of acting like an extravert over such an extended period.
The study also demonstrates that people who are naturally introverted can enjoy this exercise as much as extraverts.
‘Faux’ extraverts (people who are really introverts) reported no problems acting as extraverts.
Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, the study’s first author, said:
“The findings suggest that changing one’s social behavior is a realizable goal for many people, and that behaving in an extraverted way improves well-being.”
For the study, 123 people were asked to act like extraverts for one week and introverts for another week.
During the extravert week, participants were told to be talkative, assertive and spontaneous.
During the introvert week, they were told to be more deliberate, quiet and reserved.
People were informed that acting like an introvert and like an extravert is beneficial.
This was to try and dampen the effects of participants’ expectations.
The results showed that people felt better after a week acting as an extravert and worse after the week as an introvert.
The positive effect on well-being is the largest known among happiness interventions.
Surprisingly, acting like an extravert seems to cause people’s personality to shift in that direction.
Professor Lyubomirsky said:
“It showed that a manipulation to increase extraverted behavior substantially improved well-being.
Manipulating personality-relevant behavior over as long as a week may be easier than previously thought, and the effects can be surprisingly powerful.”
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Margolis & Lyubomirsky, 2019).
Research uncovers when perfectionism is a strength and when it is a liability.
One personality trait is linked to understanding other people’s feelings.
This personality trait increases the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.
Around one-in-five people are thought to have this personality type.
Around one-in-five people are thought to have this personality type.
People who experience a lot of negative emotions and do not express them have more mental and physical health problems.
This is known to psychologists as a ‘type D’ personality: the ‘D’ stands for distressed.
People with a type D personality are likely to agree with statements like, “I am often down in the dumps”.
They are also likely to demonstrate social inhibition by agreeing with statements like, “I am a closed kind of person”.
Type D people are fearful of rejection if they express their negative emotions.
Around one-in-five people is thought to have a type D personality.
The study found that people who were type D tended not to report their health problems to a physician or nurse.
The study’s authors write:
“Type D patients were shown to report lower levels of health status, more cardiac symptoms, and more feelings of disability, when compared with non-Type D patients high on positive affect.”
The study involved 276 heart failure patients.
The results showed that heart failure patients who also had a type D personality were six times more likely to be in a worse state of health.
The study was published in the journal Quality of Life Research (Pelle et al., 2009).
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