1. Selection
We select people and environment we want to interact and social interactions which we expose ourselves to. A good example would be mate selecting, people worldwide look for mates that are dependable, emotionally stable and have a pleasing disposition. We also tend to select mates who are similar in personality with us, a process known as selective mating. These are favorable characteristics desired in a marriage that is found in a study carried out by Buss, 1990. The study was carried out on 10,000 participants from 37 samples, 33 countries, 6 continents, and 5 islands. The idea of complementary where people popularly believe that opposites attract, does not have empirical support. According to a research by Botwin, 1997; people are usually married to people who are similar in personality to their own. But, do people get the mate that they want? Unfortunately, we don't always get the mate that we want. Those who fail to get what they want and ends up with mates who are emotionally unstable or disagreeable tend to be unhappy and ends up in a break up or in a divorce than those who succeed in getting what they want. Personality, plays to key role in the selection process which is, determining mates whom we desire and whom we are attracted. Secondly, affecting satisfaction with one's mate which will result in either successful selection or determine the selective break up of couples. In the selection process, we also look further than just mate selection. The personality can also affect our selection process in terms of selecting risky situations. For example, a shy personality person may always try to avoid events that will lead them to social interactions because to them, it's a risky situation. Research have been done on personality and the selection of risky situations. Shyness also affects a person is willing to select risky situations in the form of gambles (Addison & Schmidt, 1999). An experiment done by Cheek (1983) on participants who were given choices to pick a gamble. One with high odds of winning with low payouts and other with low odds but high payouts, there was a big contrast in the result between shy and non-shy women. Non-shy women chose the riskier bets and vice-versa with the shy women. During the experiment, shy participants shows larger increase in heart rates, suggesting that fear might have led them to avoid risky gambles.
2. Evocation
Evocation is a second class process that sets in motion once we select others to occupy in our social environment. Evocation may be defined as features of personality elicit reactions from others or in layman terms getting a certain emotional feeling or reaction from other people, parallel to our own personality type. A good example would be, have you come across someone you know who is an aggressive person and that person tends to make you personally feel hostile and somewhat on the hot side? Well, that means that person has successfully evoked you to fit his/her social environment. Another good example of evocation would be, when somebody bumps into you in a mall. An aggressive personality person would interpret the incident as intentional and hostile, an agreeable person would interpret the incident as an accident. There are two ways a personality plays a role in evoking conflict, especially in a close relationship. A personality of one partner which, for example, dominant and forceful may evoke upset in the partner or a low conscientious partner with poor tidiness, messing up the house causing his wife to get upset. Second, would be a person elicit actions from their partner and in turn upsetting the original elicitor. For example, an aggressive husband might elicit silent treatment from his spouse and then getting upset because she wouldn't speak to him. Another interesting phenomenon in evocation is Expectancy Confirmation. This is where a person's belief of the personality of others causes them to evoke others, consistent with their initial beliefs. It is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy, for example, when you are told the person that is joining your group is an aggressive person and when introduced, there will be a tendency that you will evoke hostility in order to confirm what you believed that person to be. Through this process, people who knows you might unknowingly evoke in you behaviors that confirms their beliefs from time to time making it difficult if you are looking to make a change.
3. Manipulation
Not necessarily a negative thing, we tend to naturally manipulate to obtain what we want by intentionally influencing and exploiting others. Depending on personality, there are several manipulation tactics used in influencing others such as, charm, silent treatments, regression, coercion, reasoning and self-abasement. The usage of manipulation tactics is pretty much equal between men and women, except the regression tactic such as prolonged crying and whining which is used more often by women. Personality predictors in manipulation process is hinged on The Machiavellian Personality which is from the opinions of Niccolo Machiavelli separates two categories; "Low Mach" and "High Mach". Low Mach's have a worldview of empathy, trusting, clear moral values and views human nature are basically good. On the other hand, High Mach's worldviews are of cynical world, doesn't trust people, morality is a gray line, lack empathy, and views human nature as evil at any given opportunity. Generally, High Mach individuals will employ any tactics to get ahead and blatantly lie to escape consequences. Not only do high Machs lie and betray others trust more than low Machs, but there is also evidence that they make more believable liars (Exline et al., 1970; Geis & Moon, 1981). Manipulative tactics used by high Machs also extends to romantic and sexual domains, they are likely to feign love for sex. Nevertheless, high Machs runs into certain risks such as revenge and retaliation by those who were exploited.
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