Personality : Concepts of Stress

Stress is a commonly used term today in society. Arising out of modernization and the need for people to catch up with the fast paced environment today. In personality and illness, the concepts of stress is the common variable that exist in many models. An important element but often a misunderstood phenomenon.

Stress is a subjective feeling produced by events that are perceived as uncontrollable and particularly threatening. These events overwhelms you and often leave a deep disconcerting feeling inside. These events are known as Stressors. Stressors are events perceived or evoked but ultimately lead to stress situations. Stressors oftens puts us at a place where we produce opposing tendencies, such as wanting and not wanting an object or an activity. E.g. knowing that you need to study as exams are closing in, but you put it off as long as possible. Stressors are outside of our power to control, such as the exam; hence, the exam is the stressor.

Stress response is a when a stressor appears, people typically experiences a pattern of emotional and physiological reactions. Imagine you see a suspicious looking person heading towards you at night in a quiet street,

at that moment, you experience higher heart rates, your palms gets cold and clammy, blood pressure goes up, and your feet and palms beging to sweat. That's is your body preparing itself for a fight-or-flight mode. These are briefly experiences that occurs "in the moment". However, if a person is exposed to a stressor daily, the fight-or-fight mode is just the first step in a chain reaction termed General Adaptation Syndrome(GAS) by Hans Selye(1976), pioneer in stress researching.

Image above depicts the stages a person undergo after being repeatedly exposed to a stressor.

A good example would be a hostage situation, fight-or-flight mode kicks in as the victim ready to challenge the stressor. Thereafter, locked up in a confinement with the uncertainty of what the aggressor might do, the victim is continously stressed even at the slightest sound. Every time the aggressor comes in to check, the victim is exposed to extreme stress, but eventually develops resistance towards the stressor. Note however as, resistance increase the bodily resources starts to deplete and the body heads for a breakdown and reaches the panic zone where physiological resources gone and the body is most suspectible to illness.

picture by National Geographic Locked Up Abroad Philippines

MAJOR LIFE EVENTS AND DAILY HASSLES

Major life events and daily hassles can also be our stressors, what's most important is how we perceive it. Remember, how we perceive and interpret an event do contribute to affecting our health and illness. Coping with stress is essential as it improves our well-being in the long term. How can we cope with stress? Some of the steps are:

a.Identifying the potential stressor/problem and start to systematically deal with it. E.g. Exams is in a months time, plan ahead and organized time with discipline
b.On the emotional plane, creating affirmations and telling positive things to yourself do result in positive outcomes as we have a change in perspective on the stressor

Personality types do have a major role in coping with stress. A conscienctious prone personality person tend to cope with stress better because they are naturally organized and eliminate most daily hassles. A scrupulous person may face accumulated stressors daily due to disorganized personality. With that in mind, we can identify our personality types and adjust our activities to reduce stress and allow us to cope better and lead a stress free life.

Personality : Stress, Coping, Adjustment and Health

In the adjustment domain of personality psychology, focuses here defers from the other domains. The other 5 domains discusses the collection of specific explaination of personality that causes individual personality differences. In this domain, we focus on adjustment because personality help us adjust to the daily demands and challenges of life. Major themes of this domain is physical and mental health. We will look into the the models of personality-illness connection and stress. Stress, the subjective feeling that is experienced by individuals produced by uncontrollable or even threatening events. However, stress is not in the even or situation but rather in how people choose to respond towards a particular situation.

INTERACTIONAL MODEL
Suggest that events that occurs in people's lives relies on personality factor of an individual on the ability to cope and personality effects on how people respond to an event. It is called interactional model because it talks of the relationship on how personalities moderate between stress and illness. Example of such relationship is when a student gets sick when exam approaches and happens particularly during stressful moments. Although we are exposed daily to microbes, it is believed that in the personality that determines how vunerable we are to falling sick. The student falls sick because of staying up too late because of anxiety, refusing to sleep, and does everything that prevents recovery unconsciously.

TRANSACTIONAL MODEL
The transactional model can be termed as the more complex and realistic model developed out of the interactional model. It serves three potential effects:
1. it can influence coping(as in interactional model)
2. it can influence how an individual appraise and interprets an event
3. it can influence the event and situation itself(outcomes of a personality)
In effect, this model views on how a person's interpretation of an event. Remember, earlier I mentioned that a stressful situation or event is not the event itself but rather how it's being interpreted as. For instance, when getting stuck in traffic, some people finds it a major frustration and responds with worry, stress, and anxiety but another person might look at it as an opportunity to relax, self-reflection time, listening to music, etc... .

This is how a personality plays a role in the interpretation of an event and also how personality can impact and event itself. People also creates situation through choice and actions, such as personalities that evokes situation. In other words, events doesn't just influence people, people too, influence events in a reciprocal manner. In contrary to interactional model, personality does not directly influence relationship between stress and illness but rather affects indirectly through promoting health degrading behaviours.

PREDISPOSITION MODEL
A model which stands differently that the previous 2 models. The other models are variations of the same themes but this model talks about the personality and illness are expressions of an underlying predispostion such as genetics. An example would be, enhanced sympathetic nervous system reactivity may be the cause of illness, behaviours, and emotions that makes a person neurotic. However, not much systematic study conducted on this model but there are associations found between illness and personality linked through underlying predisposition. Genetics may also likely be the cause of people developing drug addiction.

On a final note, we look at the illness model behaviour. It's not a model per se, but more of a model of illness behaviour. It's a degree which personality influences a person's perception to bodily sensations and interprets the sensations as illness. Illness behaviours are related to actual illness and sometimes, made believe illness. Due to personality, some people may try to fight illness by force but others, a simple bodily sensation may cause a person to take actions like visiting the physician although there's really nothing wrong with them. In this case, symptoms are normally more towards self-reports in illness behaviours. These however, are determined by a person perceives and labels their bodily sensations.

Looking at the models in this domain, we can now understand better how our personalities are related to our health and the importance of adjusting and coping with illness. It provokes us to ask ourselves questions, such as, "Am I really sick or just overly sensitive?" or "Is my personality affecting my work habits?". With that, we can work to tweak aspects of our lives to a personal well-being improvement. :)

Personality : Finding Depression in Sex Difference

When looking into depression, we often see it hand in hand with personality types, gender differences and the FFM. Let's look into how gender differences play out depression and what possible outcomes could arise.

Studies has shown that there is no differences in depression at childhood. Children is well adjusted and unable to understand depression as their worldviews are simple and abstract. However, after puberty, woman show two to three times depression rate than man (Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1993). This is probably due to the fact, that women in gender roles expectation in many cultures are expected to behave in an acceptable manner and inability to project emotional dissatisfaction physically causes onsets of depression.
It is also founded that roughly 25% of women have at least on depressive episode in their lifetime compared to only 10% of men in their lifetime.
Largest differences in depression shows between ages 18 – 44. After that both sexes starts to converge and see a lesser depression rate.


Below is a table that shows how different gender cope and act out in a depressive state.

Woman	Man
Excessive eating	Avoid eating
Cry	Aggressive behaviour
Likely, seek treatment	Men simply to miss work
Nervous activity	Inactivity
Hurt Feelings, decline self-esteem	Socially withdrawn, experience aches and pains
Suicide attempts “non-fatal”	Suicide “successfully”

By having an idea on how depression affects different genders, we can see tell tale signs of depression and perhaps help our friends or family to cope with such situation when it arises.

Personality : Sex, Gender and Personality

Finding differences of gender in the 5 factor model
- 3 facets of extraversion was examined for sex difference; gregariousness, assertiveness and activity:

- Gregariousness is defined as fond of companies and sociable. Woman is found to score higher than men. Personality study on 50 difference cultures revealed a small gender differences (McCrae et. Al., 2005b)

- Assertiveness is defined as confidence and forceful personality, shows men scored highly and have a medium difference from women. This is probable due to social status, where men tend to value dominance and power than woman do. This is reflected in a study of 127 samples in 70 countries (Schwartz & Rebel, 2005). This medium-size sex difference in assertiveness may show up in social behaviour in group context. This is reflected in a number of studies that men interrupt others in conversation more than woman in a mixed-sex group (Hoyenga & Hoyenga, 1993)

- Activity shows men scored slightly over women. This is probable due to the high assertiveness and wanting dominance and value of social status and power


Agreeableness

- 2 facts of agreeableness is examined ; Trust and tender-mindedness
- A study on 50 cultures revealed a small to medium gender difference, where woman score higher than men (McCrae et. Al. 2005; Schmitt et. al,2008)
- Women tend to me more trusting than men and have empathy and sympathy for those who are downtrodden
- Men mostly stand on the opposite end which is aggressiveness. This shows in personality test, in aggressive fantasies and in actual measures of behaviour (Hyde, 1986)
- However, after 50, aggressiveness in men and woman starts to decline


Conscientiousness

- The 50 culture study revealed negligible sex difference on level of conscientiousness (McCrae et. al, 2005 b)
- Only one facet is examined which is order, where woman score slightly higher than men
- Men and woman are essentially the same on this dimension
- Small difference in keeping home order in a marriage may result in large number of arguments


Emotional Stability

- The 50 culture study revealed the largest sex difference, where woman are moderately lower in emotional stability than men on this dimension (McCrae et. al. 2005b)
- Facets that was measured on was anxiety and impulsiveness
- Woman scored highly on the anxiety label, whereas, men scored slightly higher on impulsiveness


Openness

- Essentially no sex differences in this dimension (McCrae et. al, 2005b)
- Facet of openness examined on a label called ideas, which refers to range of thoughts, or concepts a person entertains

Personality: Extraversion vs Introversion

Looking into the biological domain of personality, some of the most interesting research is one the topic of Extraversion vs Introversion. This is something everyone can relate to in their everday activities, with the people we meet. On both extremities, we normally fall in between both, we will take a closer look on the differences between extroverted and introverted behaviours and what drives and motivates us.

The model of extraversion vs intraversion is measured normally using the Eysenck Personality Questionaire(EPQ). This questionaire will then determine which side of the table we sit on. The differences of these two is shown below;

Eysenck's theory is similar to Jung's theory meant in the same terms. The cause of extrovertedness or introvertedness in the biological domain is due to a neurological activity in a part of the brain called Ascending Reticular Activating Syndrome(ARAS).

It is shown that introverts have a high level of activity in the brain's ARAS, that is why, with such they avoid additional external stimulation. People strive to constantly keep the ARAS at an optimal level, that is why introverts work to decrease and avoid stimulation; extoverts works the opposite.

What motivates an extrovert and introvert? Personality is based on a two hypothesized brain systems, they are know as;

1. Behavioral Activation System(BAS)
- cues are rewards (regulates approach behavior, acts on impulses)
- sensation seeking behaviors = HIGH + Impulsivity

2. Behavioral Inhibition System(BIS)
- cues are punishment (regulates avoidant behavior, constant uncertainty)
- sensation seeking behaviors = LOW + Avoidance

By knowing what motivates us and which inclination arre we at, it will help us regulate behavior and choose our actions wisely with some predictability in the outcomes.

Personality : Defense Mechanism

Defense mechanisms are the protector of our Ego and the avenue to reduce anxiety and distress in a fight or flight situation. The picture below shows us the common 8 defense mechanisms;

Ego defenses are important in protecting our being and it's not necessarily unhealthy or negative. It helps us to get about and deal with threatening events in our daily lives. However, employing defenses at wrong times can create problems in life and overusing them can be very destructive to your social and mental wellbeing. More often than not, we come across over-defensive people who jumps at the slightest remark, taking it as an accusation. It's best that we always assess an event and situation before taking appropriate steps, now that we know the types of defense mechanisms.

Happy reading...

Personality: Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

When looking in to the Intrapsychic domain on psychology, the structure of personality developed by Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalysis theory comes to mind. Freud, a medical doctor born in Moravia, who started out in neurological research developed theories that portions of the human mind works outside the conscious awareness. In this domain, it is believed that we have 2 levels of personality, they are;

1. Unconscious - The major driving forces in which people are unable to control

2. Conscious - Awareness of everyday meanings

Freud termed this as instinct and where we draw our basic psychic energy that motivates all human activity. The unconscious parts of the mind lies unacceptable information, hidden from conscious view; these are memories, feelings, thoughts, or urges that are troubling and distasteful. These feelings dwells in the unconscious mind and is controlled by the conscious plane. Memories that are extremely distressing and painful is being pushed into the subconcious plane.

According to Freud, human basic structure of personality looks something like this;

For the benefit of understanding better, here's a brief description of ID, EGO, and Super Ego;

ID - defined as our inner child and the reservoir of psychich enery. ID oftens demands instant gratification to all our wants. It functions on primal urges and according to pleasure principles.

SUPEREGO - the upholder of societal values and ideals, the superego internalized ideals of society, moral and values that we have been brought up with. This is the part where functions to make us feel guilty, ashamed, and embarrassed when we do something wrong or pride when we do something right. Like ID, SUPEREGO practices instant gratification for high virtues and constantly pounding for the highest values into our subconscious. It's like an angel constantly whispering into your ears.

EGO - the executive of personality, which functions as the regulator that works to redirect pressure produced by IT and SUPEREGO instincts into acceptable or least problematic outcomes. For example, teasing someone is more acceptable than hitting them and it perhaps fulfill some aggressive urges but it's not all that simple as some urges are simply unacceptable in society.

More often, we tend to have a conflict within ourselves in everyday events. For instance, dissatisfaction with our bosses or colleagues. This creates a conflict between our ID and SUPEREGO and this causes us to develop anxiety. From anxiety and stressful events, we come up with what is known as defense mechanisms.

Defense mechanisms help us to cope with these anxiety situations and defends us from severe conflicts that evokes anxiety. This is where the EGO function comes to play, to balance out the id and superego and ultimately reduces anxiety in a situation that is threatening and poses danger to us. We can say that defense mechanisms serves 2 functions, which is to protect the ego and to minimize distress and anxiety.

Personality: Field Dependence & Field Independence

Some of the most interesting areas when looking into the cognitive/experiential domain of personality is perception, interpretation, and conscious goals. All this in the cognitive domain contributes to the way a person making sense or explaining various events that occurs to them, mostly by associating past experience or something of similar sorts. People mostly have different views towards events, for example, when you get involved in an accident. Some people may view it as a result of poor road conditions but some may view it as poor driving skill.

People often assumes that the reality out there is exact duplicate of what their perception of facts. In this case, it is untrue because a person can only create perception based on their mental representation but bearing in mind, that another person perceives the same reality differently. In this topic, we will further explore the processes and outcomes of field dependence and field independence of personality in the cognitive domain.

Some of the traits of field independence and field dependence types personality can be explained and compared in the table below;

Because of the differences in personalities, there is a blaring contrast on how people perceive and react to an event. Take for example the image below,

Some people on first glance will see an old looking lady but other people would see the back of a young woman.

Professor Herman Witkin devoted 30 years studying differences in perceptual styles. His research have founded certain traits within personality that determines whether a person is field independent or otherwise. Witkin devised a test called the Embedded Figures Test(EFT), this test shows that field dependent people have difficulty in discovering embedded images in comparison to field independent people who can quickly spot these images. This is because field independent people are able to see objects independently from the background. Scores and measures on field independence/dependence is stable over time and have consequences on educational and interpersonal relations (Witkin, 1977).

What type of personality are you? Take a test and see how long does it take to find all embedded images:

Solution:

Another research on field independence/dependence which correlates with the interpersonal relations, Witkin and Goodenough(1977) finds that field dependent people as might be predicted, relies on social information and frequently ask others opinion. They show strong interest in other people, attracted to social situations, likes getting physically close and get along well with others. In contrary, field independent people displays a more impersonal and detached orientation towards other. They keep distance from social situations, keep their distance from people and are not interested in others opinion.

Finally, lets look at the motivations that drives these two types of people;

By having an understanding between these two fields, we can reflect on which types of field do we belong to and by knowing, we can decide on issues such as career paths and understanding other people in our daily interactions.

Personality & Social Interactions

When talking about personality psychology, one of the important areas to look into are social interactions. Social interactions plays an important role in the shaping of one's personality. Zooming in, we'll find 3 mechanisms that governs social interaction. They are;

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.