This is one of the best psychological predictors of how much someone will earn.
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, research finds.
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).
How does personality predict success in writing, the visual arts, invention, music, dance and science?
How does personality predict success in writing, the visual arts, invention, music, dance and science?
Being open to experience and intelligent are linked to greater creative achievement in life, new research finds.
People high on these traits are more likely to have professional (paid) success in writing, the visual arts, invention, music, dance and science.
People who are open to experience are more likely to be imaginative, sensitive to their feelings, intellectually curious and seekers of variety.
Openness to experience also measures how much you like trying out new ideas or activities.
Intelligence and openness, though, bias people towards different domains:
The link between intelligence and science, as well as openness and the arts, was also seen at the genetic level.
The study’s authors explain:
“While both openness and intelligence were correlated with creative achievement in both domains, the correlation between openness and artistic achievement was twice as strong as that between openness and scientific achievement.
At the same time, the correlation between intelligence and scientific achievement was more than twice that between intelligence and artistic achievement.”
The results come from a Swedish study of 9,537 twins.
All were given personality tests, along with being asked about their creative achievements in areas including writing, visual arts, invention, music, dance and science.
Twins were included in the study to test the influence of genetics and the environment on creativity.
The authors explain the genetic results:
“Genes associated with intelligence, however, played a significantly greater role in scientific achievement than in artistic achievement.
In fact, the majority of genetic influences on intelligence were also involved in scientific creative achievement.”
The varying importance of intelligence and openness across scientific and artistic domains probably comes down to the different demands, the authors write:
“…artistic and scientific domains will generally place different demands on […] creative problem solving.
For example […] scientific creativity, on average, operates under greater constraint and requires greater top-down cognitive control than does artistic creativity, while artistic creativity, in contrast to scientific creativity, depends more on spontaneous associations, emotional involvement and the expression of affect.”
The study was published in the journal Intelligence (Manzano & Ullén, 2018).
It is possible to change a neurotic personality, results of 207 separate studies find.
It is possible to change a neurotic personality, results of 207 separate studies find.
People become significantly less neurotic after undergoing therapy, new research finds.
After only three months of treatment, people’s emotional stability had improved by half as much as it would over their entire adulthood.
People who were anxious changed the most in the course of therapy, the researchers found.
After having psychotherapy and/or taking medication, people were also slightly more extraverted.
Both reduced neuroticism and increased extraversion were maintained in the long-term.
Professor Brent Roberts, who led the study, said:
“This really is definitive evidence that the idea that personality doesn’t change is wrong.
We’re not saying personality dramatically reorganizes itself.
You’re not taking an introvert and making them into an extravert.
But this reveals that personality does develop and it can be developed.”
The conclusions come from 207 studies including over 20,000 people.
Changing the personality trait of neuroticism is the key to treating many people with depression and anxiety.
Professor Roberts said:
“Some clinical psychologists see neuroticism at the core of every form of psychopathology, whether it’s drug and alcohol abuse, psychopathy, depression or panic disorder.
The fact that we saw the most change in neuroticism is not surprising because, for the most part, that’s what therapists are there to treat.”
Many people incorrectly think personality cannot change, said Professor Roberts:
“It is very common for individuals to think of personality as that part of them that is really distinct and enduring in a way that is recognizable
[however] there never has been any evidence that people are perfectly unchanging, perfectly stable.”
The study’s authors explained the results:
“Interventions were associated with marked changes in personality trait measures over an average time of 24 weeks.
Emotional stability was the primary trait domain showing changes as a result of therapy.”
The personality changes were dramatic, considering how difficult it can be, Professor Roberts said:
“In terms of our expectations, this is a remarkable amount of change.
In about 50 of the studies, the researchers tracked the people down well past the end of the therapeutic situation, and they seemed to have held onto the changes, which is nice.
So, it’s not a situation where the therapist is just affecting your mood.
It appears that you get a long-term benefit.”
→ Read on: How to change your personality
The study was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin (Roberts et al., 2017).
How to change your personality for the better.
How to change your personality for the better.
Being more physically active makes people more extraverted, conscientious, agreeable and open to new experience, new research finds.
A few of the benefits of these personality changes include:
These changes to personality have been documented over years and decades.
Naturally, remaining sedentary is linked to the opposite pattern in personality.
Sedentary people have the tendency to become less agreeable, more introverted, less open to experience and less conscientious.
The good news is that only relatively small amounts of exercise are enough, over the years, to lead to positive changes to personality.
The study followed over six thousand middle-aged people for over two decades.
All completed personality surveys and gave details of how much physical activity they did.
There are all sorts of ways that exercise is probably linked to personality change.
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.”
Depression is also linked to an inactive lifestyle, they write:
“It is possible that the long-term functional limitations and depressive symptoms that result from a physically inactive lifestyle may be reflected in a lower tendency to experience positive emotions, be enthusiastic, and be agreeable.”
→ Read on: How to change your personality
The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Stephan et al., 2018).
The personality traits of people who wear glasses.
…and this is the personality trait that keeps you thin…
The traits that people find hardest (and easiest) to spot in themselves.
The traits that people find hardest (and easiest) to spot in themselves.
People are worst at judging their own levels of intelligence, attractiveness and creativity, research finds.
However, they are good at judging their own levels of anxiety and sadness.
The reason is that people are good at judging internal feelings because they have direct access to them.
However, people are worse at evaluating themselves in comparison to others.
The research underlines that we are not always at our best when judging ourselves.
Dr Simine Vazire, the study’s author, said:
“I think that it’s important to really question this knee-jerk reaction that we are our own best experts.
Personality is not who you think you are, it’s who you are.
Some people think by definition that we are the experts on our personality because we get to write the story, but personality is not the story — it’s the reality.
So, you do get to write your own story about how you think you are, and what you tell people about yourself, but there still is reality out there, and, guess what?
Other people are going to see the reality, regardless of what story you believe.”
We leave traces of our personality all around us, said Dr Vazire:
“Everything you touch you leave a mark of your personality.
You leave traces unintentionally.
You give off hints of your personality that you don’t even see yourself.”
For the study, 165 people were given tests of personality, intelligence and of how they reacted to various social situations.
The results showed that people were best at judging their own levels of anxiety.
Dr Vazire said:
“You probably know pretty well your anxiety level, whereas others might not be in the position to judge that because, after all, you can mask your inner feelings.
Others, though, are often better than the self in things that deal with overt behavior.”
Where people had difficulties, though, was in judging desirable personality traits in themselves, such as attractiveness, intelligence and creativity:
“…there is so much at stake, meaning your life is going to be so much different if you are intelligent or not intelligent, attractive or not.
Everybody wants to be seen as intelligent and attractive, but these desirable traits we’re not going to judge accurately in ourselves.”
Dr Vazire explained why these traits are so hard to judge in ourselves:
“We look in the mirror all the time, yet that’s not the same as looking at a photo of someone else.
If we spent as much time looking at photos of others as we do ourselves we’d form a much more confident and clear impression of the other’s attractiveness than we would have of our own.
Yet after looking in the mirror for five minutes we’re still left wondering, ‘Am I attractive or not?’ And still have no clue.
And it’s not the case that we all assume that we’re beautiful, right?”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vazire, 2010).
The disorder affects between 1 and 6% of the population.
The disorder affects between 1 and 6% of the population.
People with Borderline Personality Disorder experience very stormy emotions, commit self-destructive acts and are sometimes aggressive.
Often considered the most severe personality disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder is linked to a long history of instability in personal relationships.
The personality disorder causes very strong mood swings as a result of brain abnormalities in two key regions, according to a host of neuroscience studies.
Dr Lars Schulze, the study’s first author, said:
“Our results highlight brain abnormalities in the amygdala and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
The amygdala is known to process emotional arousal and is hyperactive in BPD.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which has a key role in the regulation of emotions, is less active during the processing of negative emotional stimuli in BPD.”
The researchers pooled the results of 19 different studies including hundreds of people, to compare those with the personality disorder to health controls.
Professor John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry, explained the brain abnormalities they found:
“In order to understand these findings, it might be useful to imagine that the brain was a like a car.
The gas pedal for emotion might be the amygdala and the emotional brake might be the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
The current findings seem to suggest that, in borderline personality disorder, the brain steps on the gas yet does not as effectively brake emotion.”
The study was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry (Schulze et al., 2016).
In 30 years this trait has increased by up to one-third.
In 30 years this trait has increased by up to one-third.
Perfectionism in mind, body and career is on the rise in the young, new research finds.
The current crop of college students is more obsessed with being perfect than they were 30 years ago.
Making comparisons on social media could be one important driver for the rise in perfectionist tendencies.
The change could be having a dramatic negative effect on their mental health.
Dr Thomas Curran, the study’s first author, said:
“Meritocracy places a strong need for young people to strive, perform and achieve in modern life.
Young people are responding by reporting increasingly unrealistic educational and professional expectations for themselves.
As a result, perfectionism is rising among millennials.”
The study included 41,641 people from the US, Canada and Britain.
All were asked about three types of perfectionism:
Between 1989 and 2016, the type that had increased the most was socially prescribed — that which is imposed by society (up by 33%).
Other-oriented had increased 16% and self-oriented by 10%.
Dr Curran said:
“These findings suggest that recent generations of college students have higher expectations of themselves and others than previous generations.
Today’s young people are competing with each other in order to meet societal pressures to succeed and they feel that perfectionism is necessary in order to feel safe, socially connected and of worth.”
Competition among young people may be harming them, the researchers think.
There is competition over grade point averages, careers and how they look.
In the face of these pressures it can be hard to maintain good mental health.
This may help to explain why levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are higher among young people than a decade ago.
The study was published in the journal Psychological Bulletin (Curran & Hill, 2017).
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