Personality traits : classifications, effects and changes

162 Pages·2010·5.072 MB·English

by  Villanueva, John Paul

PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS

P T :
ERSONALITY RAITS
C , E
LASSIFICATIONS FFECTS AND
CHANGES

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P E , M
SYCHOLOGY OF MOTIONS OTIVATIONS
A
AND CTIONS

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PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS

P T :
ERSONALITY RAITS
C , E
LASSIFICATIONS FFECTS AND
CHANGES

JOHN PAUL VILLANUEVA
EDITOR

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Personality traits : classifications, effects, and changes / editor, John
Paul Villanueva.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-61209-101-3 (eBook)

Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.  New York
CONTENTS

Preface vii
Chapter 1 The Contribution of Personality to Positive Psychology 1
Ashley B. Love and Mark D. Holder
Chapter 2 Study of Male Body Image and Factors in the Development of
Eating Disorders in Fraternity and Non-Fraternity Males 25
Kylee K. Ferris and F. Richard Ferraro
Chapter 3 Efficacy at Fulfilling the Need for Closure: The Construct and Its
Measurement 47
Yoram Bar-Tal and Małgorzata Kossowska
Chapter 4 Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Traits: Their Relationship
with Childhood Abuse Experiences in a Student
Population in Japan 65
Hiromi Igarashi, Chieko Hasui, Masayo Uji, Masahiro Shono,
Toshiaki Nagata, Zi Chen, and Toshinori Kitamura
Chapter 5 The Imaginary Companion Experience in Adults:
Asset, Disorder or Personality Feature? 83
Lino Faccini
Chapter 6 How ―To Be or Not To Be‖: The Answer is in Identity 95
Lino Faccini
Chapter 7 Is Developmentally Informed Therapy for Persons with ID and
Criminal Personality/Offenses Relevant? 99
Lino Faccini
Chapter 8 Aggregating Personality Constructs to Second-Order Categories for
Acquiring Insights to a Field of Fragmentation: The Case of
Entrepreneurship Research 105
Joakim Wincent and Daniel Örtqvist
Chapter 9 Personality Traits and Lay Conceptions of Intelligence 109
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Georgia Dissou, Adrian Furnham
and Amber Bales
vi Contents
Chapter 10 Personality Traits and Daily Moods 125
Cristina Ottaviani, David Shapiro, Iris Goldstein
and Valerie Gofman
Index 139
PREFACE

In psychology, trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait
theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as
habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are
relatively stable over time, differ among individuals, and influence behavior. This book
presents data on personality trait research including narcissistic and borderline personality
traits and their relationship with childhood abuse experiences; personality disorders and
subjective well-being; male body image and eating disorders; personality traits in relation to
entrepreneurship research and the relationship between lay conceptions of intelligence and
personality traits.
Chapter 1 - Traditionally, psychology has adopted the medical model and focused on the
diagnoses and treatments of illness and dysfunction. Recently, there has been a renewed
interest in positive psychology, which emphasizes personal strengths and how they contribute
to subjective well-being including happiness and life satisfaction. Personality theory and
assessment have played important roles in positive psychology. One of the most consistent
findings is that personality traits are among the strongest predictors of happiness and life
satisfaction. For example, extraversion is an important positive correlate of happiness while
neuroticism is an important negative correlate. The link between happiness and personality is
so strong that researchers have argued that happiness can be viewed as a type of stable
extraversion. The assessment of personality in positive psychology research has additional
important roles. Assessing personality can provide insights into individual differences in the
efficacy of programs designed to promote subjective well-being. Additionally, personality
differences play a role in which strategies a person chooses to enhance their well-being and
whether these strategies are effective. Furthermore, assessing personality allows researchers
to estimate the predictive strength of different factors (e.g., spirituality and friendship quality)
over and above the variance accounted for by personality traits. Researchers can then
determine if the measurement of other factors is important, or if it is sufficient to focus on
personality. Future research in positive psychology would benefit from a continued
consideration of the role of personality. This consideration should include studying
personality at the facet level (current work focuses largely at the broader trait level) and an
examination of the subjective well-being of people with personality disorders. Individuals
with personality disorders account for a relatively high percentage of prison populations and,
even if they are not incarcerated, they may be involved in other antisocial, high risk
behaviours (e.g., extramarital affairs or excessive gambling). Unfortunately, individuals with
viii John Paul Villanueva
personality disorders have proven resistant to treatment, often due to their lack of desire to
adhere to a treatment plan. Examining the relation between personality disorders and
subjective well-being may lead to the development of effective treatments by taking into
account what contributes to the well-being of these individuals, increasing their motivation to
comply with a course of treatment.
Chapter 2 - Issues of body image and eating disorders are more prevalent in women.
However, there is a growing incidence of these issues in males. Unfortunately, even though
men are suffering from body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, there have not been many
studies conducted on these topics with men. Therefore, there may be men who are not being
diagnosed because the risks factors for men are not as defined as they are for females. The
purpose of this study is to investigate male risk factors. More specifically, this study is
designed to determine if being a member of a fraternity during the individual‘s undergraduate
career is a risk factor for body dissatisfaction, perfectionism and eating disorders. This
specific dimension was chosen because there have been studies done to show that a female‘s
participation in a sorority may place them at greater risk for developing an eating disorder and
experiencing body dissatisfaction. In order to examine male attitudes, six measures were used
in a survey and administered to both 97 undergraduate males in a fraternity and those who are
not, at the University of North Dakota. Results indicated non-fraternity males had a higher
drive for thinness and degree of perfectionism on the Eating Disorder Inventory-3 than
fraternity males, indicating they are more at risk for developing an eating disorder. Fraternity
males were more likely to report regular exercise compared to non-fraternity males. Non-
fraternity males showed that they are at greater risk for experiencing obligatory exercise. This
study extends the literature on male eating disorders and the risk factors which apply to
males. Further research is needed to understand other risk factors.
Chapter 3 - Since the introduction of the conceptualization and the scale of "The Need for
Cognitive Closure" (NFC) by Kruglanski and Webster, it has generated a lot of research (for
review see: Kruglanski, 1996; Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). According to Kruglanski, NFC
predisposes individuals to freeze their epistemic process and thus to achieve greater certainty
in their inferences. NFC has been found to foster the use of a large variety of cognitive and
motivational biases. One of the basic assumptions behind the NFC is that epistemic freezing
is the easier default option and that all people are capable of achieving cognitive closure if
only the appropriate cognitive structure is available to them. Thus, NFC (and other similar
concepts) has a relatively unique status in psychology as a source of motivation, in that it is
assumed that cognitive closuring behavior can appear regardless of perceived or actual ability
to carry it through. The authors however, maintain that the use of epistemic freezing depends
not only on the person's needs but also upon his/her perceived ability to perform the freezing.
In this chapter the authors introduce a new construct: the "Efficacy at Fulfilling the Need for
Closure (EFNC). EFNC is defined as the extent to which individuals perceive themselves
capable of using information processing methods which are consistent with their level of
NFC. Thus, the authors maintain that EFNC moderates the effect of NFC on cognitive closure
behavior. The authors also present three studies in which they describe the creation and
validation of a scale to measure the new concept. Study 1 describes the scale‘s item
generation and factor structure. Study 2 investigates the EFNC construct validity. Study 3
examines the EFNC scale‘s predictive validity. The results of the three studies demonstrate
that the EFNC Scale measures a unitary construct, achieves good psychometric properties,
correlates only with constructs representing ability to use a preferred epistemic process, and