Category: Personality

Toxic personalities can survive and even prosper in the workplace, and elsewhere, if they have one critical ingredient.

People with toxic personalities have a mixture of arrogance and deceitfulness.

People with toxic personalities:

1. are willing to flatter others to obtain favours,
2. to take advantage of others by cheating,
3. enjoy showing off their higher status to others,
4. act in an entitled way,
5. and want to have things others do not.

However, toxic personalities can survive and even prosper in the workplace, and elsewhere, if they have one critical ingredient: social skills.

Social skills help those with toxic and dark personalities to hide their deceitful nature.

The toxic person continues to abuse trust and trick others behind a smokescreen of harmlessness.

Unfortunately, the study also revealed that others tend to view those who are good at office politics as ripe for promotion, despite their negative traits.

The good news for those who lack social skills is that honesty and humility are highly valued as well.

Dishonest and entitled

The conclusions come from research that reveals how people with dark personalities get ahead in the workplace.

Professor Gerhard Blickle, study co-author, said:

“Such personalities tend to focus on themselves all the time.

Good social skills enable them to deceive others.”

For the study, the researchers interviewed 203 small groups, each containing three people who were colleagues.

They provided data on one another about their personality and social skills.

The results showed that people who were dishonest and entitled could succeed at work if they had good social skills.

They tended to have better jobs and to be seen as more capable by their superiors.

However, those without social skills could still succeed at work with honesty and humility.

Professor Blickle said that rooting out toxic personalities means placing less emphasis on good impressions and more on performance:

“In order to slow down the ascent of toxic personalities, more attention should be paid to actual performance and less to the good impression when selecting staff and making assessments.

Here, it makes sense for instance to also look at the sickness and notice rate of employees, or customer loyalty.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Kholin et al., 2020).

People with this personality trait live an average of two to four years longer.

Conscientious people, those who are self-disciplined and aim for achievement, have stronger immune systems and live the longest lives.

Highly conscientious people live an average of two to four years longer.

They are also less likely to smoke or drink and tend to experience lower levels of stress.

Two aspects of conscientiousness have the strongest link to a long life:

• a preference for order,
• and an orientation towards achievement.

Now, a study finds that the link is at least partly explained by the immune system.

People higher in conscientiousness have lower levels of a biological marker called interleukin-6, which is linked to inflammation in the body.

Dr Páraic Ó Súilleabháin, the study’s first author, said:

“Our personality is critically important throughout our lives, from early stages in our development, to the accumulation of the impact of how we think, feel, and behave across our lives, and in the years preceding our death.

It is also becoming increasingly apparent how important personality actually is for our long-term health and resulting longevity.

For instance, it has been shown that people scoring lower on the personality trait of conscientiousness (a tendency to be responsible, organized, and capable of self-control) can be at a 40% increased risk of future death compared to their higher scoring counterparts.

What is not clear is how this could happen, and importantly, what biological pathway might be responsible for this link.”

The study included 957 adults who were tracked over 14 years.

Dr Ó Súilleabháin explained the results:

“We found that part of the reason why people who score higher on the personality trait of conscientiousness live longer is as a result of their immune system, specifically due to lower levels of a biological marker called interleukin-6.

There are likely further biological mechanisms that are yet to be discovered which will give a clearer picture of all the different ways that our personalities are so critical to our long-term health.”

Other personality traits linked to a stronger immune system include extraversion and being emotionally stable.

Related

• 16 Personality Traits That Predict Your Happiness, Success, Long Life, IQ & Income (P)

The study was published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (O’Súilleabháin et al., 2021).

People with this personality trait believe they can control their lives and make improvements.

Optimism aids the recovery of stroke survivors.

More optimistic stroke survivors have lower levels of inflammation and less physical disability after three months.

In general, the personality trait of optimism is linked to a very much longer life.

Being optimistic — a trait that can be boosted — can increase the odds of reaching 85-years-old by up to 70 percent.

The power of optimism to lengthen life may be partly down to its enhancing effect on the immune system.

Optimistic people tend to expect positive outcomes in the future.

Critically, optimists believe they can control their lives and make improvements.

Being optimistic is frequently linked to improved health outcomes.

For example, optimism has been previously linked to better heart health.

Dr Yun-Ju Lai, the study’s first author, said:

“Our results suggest that optimistic people have a better disease outcome, thus boosting morale may be an ideal way to improve mental health and recovery after a stroke.”

The study included 49 people who had had strokes.

They were asked about their levels of optimism and these were compared with their recovery.

The results showed that more optimistic people tended to have lower levels of bodily inflammation, as evidenced by interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein levels.

The more optimistic people were, the lower their levels of these inflammatory markers.

Chronic inflammation tends to harm the brain and impairs the body’s ability to recover.

Dr Lai said:

“Patients and their families should know the importance of a positive environment that could benefit the patient.

Mental health does affect recovery after a stroke.”

Increase your optimism

Exercises such as visualising your ‘best possible self‘ have been shown to increase optimism.

Visualising your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic.

Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well.

You have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself.

Then, to help cement your visualisation, you commit your best possible self to paper.

Related

• 10 Life-Changing Benefits Of Optimism (P)

The study was published in the journal Stroke (Lai et al., 2020).

People high in one trait are less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to dementia.

Self-disciplined and highly organised people are at a reduced risk of dementia.

These are both aspects of conscientiousness, one of the five major aspects of personality.

Conscientious people tend to be goal-directed and hard-working as well as responsible and organised.

People who are high in conscientiousness are less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to dementia, researchers have found.

In contrast, being emotionally unstable is linked to an increased risk of dementia.

Known as neuroticism, the personality trait is linked to anxiety and depression as well as a greater experience of negative emotions.

Dr Tomiko Yoneda, the study’s first author, said:

“Personality traits reflect relatively enduring patterns of thinking and behaving, which may cumulatively affect engagement in healthy and unhealthy behaviors and thought patterns across the lifespan.

The accumulation of lifelong experiences may then contribute to susceptibility of particular diseases or disorders, such as mild cognitive impairment, or contribute to individual differences in the ability to withstand age-related neurological changes.”

The study involved almost 2,000 people enrolled in the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a long-term study tracking older adults in Illinois.

The results showed that higher conscientiousness was linked to a lower risk of dementia and higher neuroticism was linked to an increased risk of dementia.

Dr Yoneda explained:

“Scoring approximately six more points on a conscientiousness scale ranging 0 to 48 was associated with a 22% decreased risk of transitioning from normal cognitive functioning to mild cognitive impairment.

Additionally, scoring approximately seven more points on a neuroticism scale of 0 to 48 was associated with a 12% increased risk of transition.”

Eighty-year-olds high in conscientiousness were likely to live around two years longer without cognitive impairment.

They were also more likely to recover to normal cognition after receiving a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment.

High neuroticism, though, was linked to a year less living without cognitive impairment.

Related

• 10 Science-Backed Ways To Slash Your Dementia Risk Today (P)
• 12 Brain-Boosting Strategies That Protect Against Mild Cognitive Impairment (P)

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Yoneda et al., 2022).

No, it’s not intelligence! How could you think such a thing?

Mothers value outgoing personalities in their children above intelligence.

Apparently, Mom prefers a little show-off to a smarty-pants!

Dr Sophie von Stumm, study co-author, said:

“Given that higher levels of intelligence and conscientiousness are both linked to positive life outcomes such as success at school, at work, and in relationships, it’s surprising that only 1 in 10 mothers valued them as the most important characteristics for their child.”

The results come from a survey of 142 mothers of young babies in the UK.

Over half chose extraversion as the top trait they desired in their children.

Dr von Stumm said:

“While extraversion can have many benefits it is also associated with negative behaviours in adulthood, such as higher alcohol consumption and illegal drug use.

Understanding how mothers view personality is vital as their values influence their parenting and, through this, how their child’s personality traits develop.”

Agreeableness was the second most-desired personality trait for their children, followed by openness to experience, intelligence and conscientiousness.

Unsurprisingly, no mother wanted a neurotic baby.

Dr Rachel Latham, the study’s first author, said:

“We focused on the views of mothers, as they typically spend more time with their children than fathers, but it would be useful to examine the personality values of fathers too.

It would also be interesting to examine if mothers’ preference for extraversion changes over time as children grow older and enter formal education.

“In the long run we hope studies such as these can help us to understand how parents’ values shape a child’s personality and how this impacts on how children develop and learn and their future health, happiness, and success.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Latham & von Stumm, 2017).