Animals as companions
Clive R. Hollin in An Introduction to Human–Animal Relationships, 2021
Gosling, Sandy, and Potter (2010) compared the personalities of 4,565 participants, divided into the four groups of self-identified dog person, cat person, both, or neither, using the self-report version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008). The Big Five personality dimensions are Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness. Gosling et al. found that the dog people scored higher than cat people on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion, and lower on Neuroticism and Openness: these differences remained when sex differences in pet–ownership rates were controlled. With the exception of Neuroticism, where they scored highest, the cat people group tended to be lower than the other three groups on the remaining four dimensions.
Successful Aging
Shamim I. Ahmad in Aging: Exploring a Complex Phenomenon, 2017
Finally, agreeableness—a tendency to be altruistic, friendly, and cooperative with others—is also an important trait for successful aging. Similar to extraversion, agreeableness includes traits focusing on interpersonal relationships and social interactions. Yet what separates agreeableness from extraversion is that agreeableness is conceptually linked to “motives for maintaining positive relations with others” (Jensen-Campbell and Graziano, 2001, p. 327). Thus, people who are more agreeable are more likely to adhere to a treatment plan to avoid conflicts when they are sick. Individuals high in agreeableness give and receive greater social support (Bowling, Beehr, and Swader, 2005). Their prosocial behaviors may make it easier to get involved in social activities, which in turn lead them to age successfully. They are also more likely to accept challenges rather than fighting them.
The aging mind
Jennifer R. Sasser, Harry R. Moody in Gerontology, 2018
An important element of continuity, over time, in who we are and how we move through the world is personality or basic temperament. According to the “hard plaster” hypothesis, personality traits will tend to stabilize by the age of 30, and this stability has been confirmed by both research and common sense. Investigators have specifically developed a Five-Factor Model of personality, described by Costa and McCrae and based on the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of human development. Costa and McCrae have identified neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. These factors have significant implications for aging. For example, extraversion is linked to positive feelings of well-being. Agreeableness tends to increase with age, while neuroticism tends to decrease. Peak conscientiousness in middle age is linked to longevity, which makes sense. People who are conscientious about their health habits are likely to take better care of themselves than people who simply have an optimistic outlook (“It will all work out”) toward the future. In sum, continuity in personality traits must be balanced by recognizing that change is always possible, as George Vaillant has documented in the longitudinal research reported in his book Triumphs of Experience, based on the Harvard Grant study, to be discussed in more detail below.
How Well Do Big Five Measures Capture HEXACO Scale Variance?
Published in Journal of Personality Assessment, 2019
Michael C. Ashton, Kibeom Lee
We summarize these results as follows. First, measures of the Big Five do differ widely in the extent to which they capture the variance of HEXACO Honesty-Humility (see also Miller et al., 2011). The NEO PI–R, and to a lesser extent the NEO–FFI, account for more variance in Honesty-Humility than do the BFI and the IPIP–50.6Note that the IPIP–50 and BFI measures are not entirely interchangeable. Even though the Agreeableness scales of both instruments contain much less Honesty-Humility variance than does NEO PI–R Agreeableness, they nonetheless differ in their content and their associations with HEXACO factors. The items of IPIP–50 Agreeableness mainly involve concern for others, and this scale tends to correlate at least as highly with HEXACO Emotionality as with HEXACO Agreeableness. By contrast, the items of BFI Agreeableness involve politeness and being “easy to get along with” as well as concern for others, and this scale tends to correlate much more highly with HEXACO Agreeableness than with HEXACO Emotionality. Thus, the Agreeableness factor as assessed by five-dimensional personality measures tends to differ widely in its content and correlates.
Secondary traumatic stress among physiatrists treating trauma patients
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2019
Jordan Teel, Megan Reynolds, Monica Bennett, Jacob W. Roden-Foreman, Evan McShan, Rita Hamilton, Simon Driver, Mark B. Powers, Ann Marie Warren
The Big Five personality factors form a series of traits that can be used to describe the primary aspects of human personality.10Openness is characterized by intellect, curiosity, and willingness to try new things. Conscientiousness is associated with self-discipline, taking obligations seriously, carefully planning before acting, and being goal-oriented. Extraversion is the inverse of introversion and is associated with being highly social, energetic, potentially assertive, and working well on teams. People with high levels of agreeableness are commonly described as trustworthy, modest, compassionate, and cooperative. Lastly, emotional stability, which is the inverse of neuroticism, is typified by emotional levelheadedness and the ability to control one’s urges. The Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) was used to measure the Big Five personality factors with two items for each factor. Each item is rated on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly).11 Despite its brevity, the TIPI has sound psychometrics and is commonly used when time is restricted.12–14
Nature and Impact of Reference Group Effects in Personality Assessment Data
Published in Journal of Personality Assessment, 2023
Madeline R. Lenhausen, Christopher J. Hopwood, Wiebke Bleidorn
Another consistent pattern was people’s tendency to compare themselves to other people rather than other aspects of themselves, even when they believed they were making self-comparisons. In other words, people make between- rather than within-person comparisons when reporting on their own personality. This suggests that personality assessment data primarily provides information on how people perceive and interpret their personality relative to others. This finding has implications for longitudinal studies of personality development, in that, for example, an observed increase in an individual’s agreeableness over time is assumed to represent an increase in agreeableness relative to this individual’s past levels of agreeableness, not relative to levels of agreeableness among other people. This present finding suggests that the multiple assessments of personality traits in longitudinal research may underestimate the changes in personality traits to the degree that people compare themselves to other people their age rather than to their previous self when reporting their patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Thus, when assessing personality change, it may be advisable to explicitly ask participants to consider their previous self or use measures that are explicitly designed to assess within-person change in traits (e.g., Bleidorn et al., 2021; Hopwood et al., 2022).
Related Knowledge Centers
- Altruism
- Big Five Personality Traits
- Cooperation
- Empathy
- Trait Theory
- Sympathy
- Personality Psychology
- Selfishness
- Dark Triad
- Manipulation