Category: Personality

These two personality types choose high-status cars.

Two different personality types are attracted to driving a high-status cars, like an Audi, Mercedes or BMW.

The first group fits a familiar stereotype: argumentative, disagreeable, and unempathetic men.

The second type, though, is a conscientious man or woman: someone who wants others to know they are respectable, reliable and well-organised.

Those are the results of a study inspired by the common observation that drivers of high-status cars are more likely to break traffic regulations.

Professor Jan-Erik Lönnqvist, the study’s lead author, was inspired by his own observations on the road:

“I had noticed that the ones most likely to run a red light, not give way to pedestrians and generally drive recklessly and too fast were often the ones driving fast German cars.”

The fast and the reckless

Indeed, studies have shown that people driving more expensive cars are more likely to break the rules.

Wealth, psychologists have argued, has a corrupting effect on people, making them less law-abiding.

That may be so, but Professor Lönnqvist and colleagues thought the link could be partly explained by personality.

To test this, the researchers surveyed 1,892 car owners in Finland, asking about their cars, wealth and consumption habits.

The results revealed that men who are disagreeable, argumentative and stubborn are more likely to own a high-status car.

Professor Lönnqvist said:

“These personality traits explain the desire to own high-status products, and the same traits also explain why such people break traffic regulations more frequently than others.”

While disagreeable men showed the strongest link to luxury vehicles, Professor Lönnqvist noted a broader trend:

“But we also found that those whose personality was deemed more disagreeable were more drawn to high-status cars.

These are people who often see themselves as superior and are keen to display this to others.”

A second, less obvious group that was attracted to high-status cars was men and women high in conscientiousness.

Conscientious people tend to be well-organised, reliable, ambitious and respectable.

Professor Lönnqvist said:

“The link is presumably explained by the importance they attach to high quality.

All makes of car have a specific image, and by driving a reliable car they are sending out the message that they themselves are reliable.”

One puzzle was why high-status cars do not particularly appeal to self-centred women.

Professor Lönnqvist thinks one possibility is that women do not see cars as significant status symbols as do men.

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• 10 Powerful Ways Conscientiousness Shapes Your Mind, Body & Behaviour (P)

The study was published in the International Journal of Psychology (Lönnqvist et al., 2019).

Outgoing or introverted? Which personality types are best at fighting off infection?

Outgoing, sociable people tend to have the strongest immune systems.

Extraverts typically seek out new experiences, prefer to take charge and are outgoing and talkative.

Extraverts tend to have better social skills and feel more positive emotions and they are more motivated.

Those who are the most conscientious and careful, though, are more likely to have a weaker immune system response.

Conscientious people are systematic and dutiful and more likely to follow through on their plans than their less conscientious peers.

The research found no evidence, though, that a tendency towards negative emotions was associated with poor health.

The researcher gave personality tests to 121 healthy adults.

Along with assessing the five major personality factors — extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness — participants had blood samples taken to measure genetic factors known to be important in immune function.

Professor Kavita Vedhara, who led the study, explained the results:

“Our results indicated that ‘extraversion’ was significantly associated with an increased expression of pro-inflammatory genes and that ‘conscientiousness’ was linked to a reduced expression of pro-inflammatory genes.

In other words, individuals who we would expect to be exposed to more infections as a result of their socially orientated nature (i.e., extraverts) appear to have immune systems that we would expect can deal effectively with infection.

While individuals who may be less exposed to infections because of their cautious/conscientious dispositions have immune systems that may respond less well.

We can’t, however, say which came first.

Is this our biology determining our psychology or our psychology determining our biology?”

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The study was published in the journal Psychoneuroendochrinology (Vedhara et al., 2014).

What you do in this moment says everything about you.

Being in a hurry makes people reveal their true personalities even more clearly.

Time pressure makes selfish people more selfish and it makes good-hearted people even nicer.

This is because, when in a rush, people tend to make the same choice they have made before.

Dr Ian Krajbich, study co-author, said:

“People start off with a bias of whether it is best to be selfish or pro-social.

If they are rushed, they’ll tend to go with that bias.”

For the research, 102 people played an economic game, Dr Krajbich explained:

“The participants had to decide whether to give up some of their own money to increase the other person’s payoff and reduce the inequality between them.”

Sometimes people were given two seconds to decide, other times it was 10 seconds.

Dr Krajbich explained the results:

“We found that time pressure tends to magnify the predisposition that people already have, whether it is to be selfish or pro-social.

Under time pressure, when you have very little time to decide, you’re going to lean more heavily than usual on your predisposition or bias of how to act.”

Being forced to wait changed people’s decisions, said Dr Krajbich:

“People may still approach decisions with the expectation that they will act selfishly or pro-socially, depending on their predisposition.

But now they have time to consider the numbers and can think of reasons to go against their bias.

Maybe you’re predisposed to be selfish, but see that you only have to give up $1 and the other person is going to get $20.

That may be enough to get you to act more pro-socially.”

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The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Chen & Krajbich, 2018).