Category: Personality

How Facebook updates can reveal narcissism and low self-esteem.

People habitually posting to Facebook about exercise, diets and accomplishments are more likely to be narcissists, a study finds.

And bragging about accomplishments does tend to attract more attention from friends.

The study’s first author, Dr Tara Marshall, said:

“Although our results suggest that narcissists’ bragging pays off because they receive more likes and comments to their status updates, it could be that their Facebook friends politely offer support while secretly disliking such egotistical displays.

Greater awareness of how one’s status updates might be perceived by friends could help people to avoid topics that annoy more than they entertain.”

The study also found that people who post updates about their current romantic partner are more likely to have low self-esteem.

People who are more conscientious tended to write more updates about their children.

Here are some other associations the study found between personality and Facebook use:

“…extraverts more frequently updated about their social activities and everyday life, which was motivated by their use of Facebook to communicate and connect with others.

People high in openness were more likely to update about intellectual topics, consistent with their use of Facebook for sharing information.”  (Marshall et al., 2015).

The conclusions come from surveys of 555 Facebook users.

Dr Marshall continued:

“It might come as little surprise that Facebook status updates reflect people’s personality traits.

However, it is important to understand why people write about certain topics on Facebook because their updates may be differentially rewarded with ‘likes’ and comments.

People who receive more likes and comments tend to experience the benefits of social inclusion, whereas those who receive none feel ostracised.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Marshall et al., 2015).

There are two types of extroverts, each with distinct brain anatomies.

There are two different types of extroverts — ‘agentic’ and ‘affiliative’ — each with distinct brain structures, research finds.

Agentic extroverts are ‘go-getters’: the kind of outgoing people who are persistent, assertive and focused on achievement.

The other kind of extroverts have a softer side.

Affiliative extroverts tend to be more affectionate, friendly and sociable.

Both types of extroverts share distinct brain anatomy as well as displaying distinct differences, the new research finds.

Dr Tara White, the study’s first author, said that extroverts in general are keen to share:

“These are people just sharing with you how they tend to experience the world and what’s important to them.

The fact that that’s validated in the brain is really exciting. There’s a deep reality there.

This is the first glimpse of a benchmark of what the healthy adult brain looks like with these traits.”

Scanning for types of extrovert

For the study, researchers scanned the brains of 83 people to look for similarities and differences in key areas of the brain.

They found that both types of extroverts had more gray matter in the medial orbitofrontal cortex.

This area of the brain has been linked to making decisions based on rewards.

Agentic extroverts, though, had larger volumes in some other areas as well.

These were related to learning and memory for reward, cognitive control of behaviours and planning and execution.

The study can’t tell us whether these areas are the cause of the personality differences or the result of them, or perhaps some combination of the two.

The study’s authors concluded:

“[The] findings provide a developmental benchmark from which to better understand the etiology of problems in agentic extroversion and affiliative extroversion, such as can occur in normal aging and neurodegenerative disease.”

The study is published in the journal Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience (Grodin & White, 2015).

Blood pressure can be treated with medication and/or a series of relatively simple lifestyle changes, including exercise and diet.

High blood pressure can make people more neurotic, a study finds.

Neuroticism is one of the five major aspects of personality — it is characterised by heightened levels of anxiety and worry.

Treatment of this common condition, therefore, could help to reduce common neurotic tendencies, such as worry, hostility and depression — not to mention its more usual benefit of heart health.

Blood pressure can be treated with medication and/or a series of relatively simple lifestyle changes, including exercise and diet.

While the link between neuroticism and high blood pressure has already been identified, it was not clear which causes which.

The study’s authors write:

“Individuals with neuroticism can be sensitive to the criticism of others, are often self-critical, and easily develop anxiety, anger, worry, hostility, self-consciousness, and depression.

Neuroticism is viewed as a key causative factor for anxiety and mood disorders.

Individuals with neuroticism more frequently experience high mental stress, which can lead to elevated [blood pressure] and cardiovascular diseases.

Appropriate surveillance and control of blood pressure can be beneficial for the reduction of neuroticism, neuroticism-inducing mood disorders, and cardiovascular diseases.”

Diastolic blood pressure

The genetic study examined millions of samples of blood pressure and psychological states from 8 different studies including many hundreds of thousands of people.

The results showed that diastolic blood pressure caused high levels of neuroticism.

Diastolic blood pressure is the second number in the measurement and it reflects the blood pressure in your arteries when your heart rests between beats.

However, there was no link between blood pressure and depressive symptoms, anxiety or happiness.

It is not known exactly why blood pressure has this effect on personality, but clearly heart and brain are linked.

Other studies on the link between personality and blood pressure have shown that:

• Thinking positive is linked to lower blood pressure.
• People with high levels of the personality trait of neuroticism are at a greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.

→ Read on: how to spot the common signs of high blood pressure

The study was published in the journal General Psychiatry (Cai et al., 2022).