People with certain pathological personality traits may have more luck in love.
People who are low on this trait can improve it over time.
People who are low on this trait can improve it over time.
Conscientiousness is the personality trait that tends to lead to satisfying and well-paid careers.
Conscientious people are disciplined, dutiful and good at planning ahead.
However, people who are not conscientious can develop the trait over time, the researchers found.
People who are most successful at changing a personality trait tend to actively change their behaviours to fit their goal.
In other words: find a way to act conscientious first so as to become more conscientious later.
The conclusions come from a study of almost 2,000 adolescents in Iceland who were tracked for 12 years, from around the age of 17 through to 29.
Researchers looked at personality and how it changed over time as well as how this was linked to their careers.
Dr Kevin Hoff, the study’s first author, said:
“Results revealed that certain patterns of personality growth predicted career outcomes over and above adolescent personality and ability.”
Young people who are conscientious and emotionally stable tend to have the most objective success through the early part of their careers, the results showed.
However, young people were able to change aspects of their personality, said Dr Hoff:
“The study showed you’re not just stuck with your personality traits, and if you change over time in positive ways, that can have a big impact on your career.”
Young people who felt they had become more conscientious, extraverted and emotionally stable were more likely to be satisfied with their careers and income.
Dr Hoff said:
“Adolescent trait levels also predicted career success, highlighting the long-term predictive power of personality.
Overall, the findings highlight the importance of personality development throughout childhood, adolescence and young adulthood for promoting different aspects of career success.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Hoff et al., 2020).
As little as four minutes of chit-chat is enough to start people cooperating more closely.
Doppelgängers share both some DNA and some behaviours, despite often coming from different countries.
The study compared 18 different mental health problems and substance use disorders.
The study compared 18 different mental health problems and substance use disorders.
Personality disorders and schizophrenia are the two most disabling mental health conditions, research finds.
The most disabling condition, schizophrenia, is one of the most serious types of mental illness.
It can cause delusions, hallucinations, confused thinking and dramatic changes in behaviour.
People diagnosed with schizophrenia lost 73 percent of their healthy lives per year to the disease, on average.
The figure is so high because people with schizophrenia often have other problems at the same time, such as a substance use disorders.
After schizophrenia, personality disorders are the next most disabling condition.
Personality disorders affect around one- in-six people in the U.S..
People with a personality disorder behave, think and feel very differently from the average person.
There are three types of personality disorder:
The conclusions come from a study that examined the relative impact of different mental health conditions on people’s lives.
Professor John McGrath, study co-author, said:
“Traditionally the impact of mental disorders has been presented for an entire nation, but in this study, we focussed on people with different types of mental and substance use disorders at an individual level.
We found that schizophrenia and personality disorders were the most disabling mental conditions and showed how disorders like autism, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia contribute to disability at different ages.
Our new measure known as the Health Loss Proportion (HeLP) allows us to measure the average disability for different disorders at the individual level, which means that individuals who experience more inherent disability, and more comorbid conditions, will have a higher HeLP weighting, and therefore a higher measure of disability.”
The study included data from almost 7 million people in Denmark.
It looked at 18 different mental health problems and substance use disorders.
Professor McGrath said:
“People with mental disorders lead valued and productive lives, despite a lack of social and economic support for their unmet needs.”
The study was published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry (Weye et al., 2021).
What your profile picture says about your personality.
Dramatic people love to gossip, stir up trouble and they constantly think they are victims.
Dramatic people love to gossip, stir up trouble and they constantly think they are victims.
People who enjoy getting others riled up and who can’t hold their opinion back have a high need for drama, research finds.
Other aspects of a ‘need for drama’ include saying things just to see how others react and feeling like a victim all the time.
The conclusions come from a study which validates a 12-point scale to measure need for drama.
People who score high on the ‘need for drama’ scale also typically have high but non-clinical levels of psychopathy and narcissism.
The typical life of dramatic individuals is described by the study’s authors:
“People with drama-prone personalities generally live chaotic lives and inflict contrived crises on family, friends, and co-workers.
In our interpersonal relationships, we would likely identify “dramatic” individuals with their histories of failed relationships and their conflicts with friends and family.
Often this interpersonal drama becomes public on social networking sites.
In the workplace, dramatic individuals are likely to engage in gossip to influence others, create conflicts among co-workers and management, and feel that they are the victims of others’ gossip and conflicts.”
The study found that three factors make up the need for drama:
- Interpersonal manipulation: “characterized by a person’s willingness to influence other people to behave in a manner serving of the manipulator’s goals.”
- Persistent perceived victimhood: “the propensity to constantly perceive oneself as a victim of everyday life circumstances that many people would dismiss as benign.”
- Impulsive outspokenness: “characterized by a person’s compulsion to speak out and share opinions, even when inappropriate and without regard to social consequences.”
The more that you agree with these statements the higher your need for drama:
Agreeing with the following statement, though, is linked to lower levels of need for drama:
The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Frankowski et al., 2016).
Genetics is important for giving us our start in life, but effort is required to reach our full potential.
Genetics is important for giving us our start in life, but effort is required to reach our full potential.
Skills above and beyond IQ are vital to success, genetic research finds.
Many ‘non-cognitive skills’ are linked to higher educational attainment, earning more money and even living longer.
Persistence, motivation and self-control are all examples of non-cognitive skills.
Similarly, personality traits like emotional stability, curiosity and being industrious and orderly are linked to success.
Inheriting these types of traits is just as important as inheriting raw brain power, if not more so, the researchers found.
The conclusions come from a large genetic analysis, Dr Daniel Belsky, study co-author, explained:
“Genetic studies of educational attainment were initiated with the goal of identifying genes that influenced cognitive abilities.
But it turns out they’ve also identified genetics that influence a range of other skills and characteristics.
What was most surprising to me about our results was that these noncognitive skills contributed just as much to the heritability of educational attainment as cognitive ability.”
The study analysed genetic and cognitive test data from almost 1.5 million people.
It found that 43 percent of the influence of genes on educational attainment comes from cognitive abilities.
The remainder — 57 percent — is from noncognitive abilities.
Professor Paige Harden, study co-author, said:
“Motivation, persistence, grit, curiosity, self-control, growth mindset—these are just a few of the things that people have suggested are important noncognitive skills.
For personality and risk behavior, we saw relationships we expected; noncognitive skills genetics were associated with less risky behavior and a personality profile we associate with maturity, and social and professional competency.
But the results for mental health were a surprise.”
Professor Harden is referring to the finding that genes linked to educational attainment were also associated with mental health problems.
These genes increased the risk of OCD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and anorexia.
Professor Harden said:
“This is an example of what geneticists call pleiotropy.
Our result warns us against a simplistic view of genetic variants being good or bad.
The same genetic variant that predisposes someone to go further in school might also elevate their risk of developing schizophrenia or another serious mental disorder.”
While genetics is important for giving us our start in life, effort is required to reach our full potential.
Professor Harden said:
“Genetic influence must always be understood through the lens of history and social structures.
These results tell us about what is, not what could be.
Nothing about our study should discourage investments in ensuring that all children reach their maximum potential.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics (Demange et al., 2021).
People with this personality trait lived an average of four years longer.
Focusing on how habits are initiated is key to getting regular exercise.
Focusing on how habits are initiated is key to getting regular exercise.
Exercise makes people more extraverted and agreeable, research finds.
These are just two of the positive changes that modest amounts of exercise can have on personality.
Exercise also increases people’s conscientiousness and makes them more open to experience.
A few of the benefits of these personality changes include:
In contrast, those who remain sedentary tend to see the opposite pattern of changes to their personality.
These include reduced agreeableness, being more closed to experience and less conscientious.
The conclusions come from a study of over six thousand people who were followed for more than twenty years.
They each completed surveys that asked them about their personalities and levels of exercise.
The results showed that only relatively small amounts of exercise were linked to positive changes in personality over the years.
The study’s authors write:
“A physically inactive lifestyle has a range of long-term
biological, health and cognitive outcomes, such as higher risk of frailty, worse mental and physical health and declines in
memory and executive functions.Such outcomes, in turn, may have a long-term impact on personality, such as reductions in the tendency to be self-disciplined and organized or to be exploratory and curious.
Indeed, cognitive decline, greater frailty, and more
depressive symptoms and disease burden have been associated with reduced conscientiousness and openness over time.”
Focusing on how habits are initiated is key to getting regular exercise, studies have found.
It’s all about making sure there are regular cues which prompt you to automatically exercise.
To create good exercise habits, you should focus on what starts you exercising, not what type of exercise you do.
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Stephan et al., 2018).
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