Social Investment and the Big 5

by Luis Gomez, Kenyon ’17

As a sophomore in college, the real worry for a job, work, and the various societal obligations I will have as an adult has not set in yet, but I see my senior friends stress out about it all the time. At the age of entering the real world what Roberts, Wood, and Caspi (2008) coined as “the maturity principle” is to set in and they will find jobs, settle down, and being responsible, functional members of society.

Sointu Leikas from the University of Helsinki and Katariina Salmela-Aro from the University of Jyväskylä conducted a study on how these life events that lead to maturing and becoming this responsible adult influences the changes in personality over time in young Finns. Taking a sample of 707 ninth graders (367 males, 332 female, 8 unspecified), they lead a longitudinal study but only taking data when the young adults were 20 and 23.

A Japanese Sample: Are Changes in Adolescence Observed Cross-Culturally?

by Angela Lee, Kenyon ’15

As a senior in college, I like to believe that I am not the same person that I was when I first arrived on campus as a freshman. But even more than that, I like to believe that I am not the same person I was my freshman year of high school. We all can recall our elementary school days and wonder why we felt it necessary to cry outside of our kindergarten classrooms for two hours because we couldn’t find the ring we had wanted to bring to school. Nowadays, you would be hard pressed to get me to raise my voice at all in public.

Personality as a Predictor of Obedience

by Sydney Engelstein, Kenyon ’18

Society values certain kinds of personalities over others. Being a kind parent and a high achieving student, being low in aggression and high in mental health. A new study, however, has shown that the type of personality that creates these desirable traits can also lead to “destructive and immoral obedience” in the right situations. Begue, Beauvois, Courbet, Oberle, Lepage, and Duke created an extension of the famous Milgram experiment, designed to see if certain personality types were more susceptible to blindly following authority.

Do Funny People Like Funny Things More?

By Kyra Baldwin, Kenyon ’17

Humor is an elusively defined but perennially important part of our lives as humans. It is therefore extremely interesting when researchers attempt to empirically determine what exactly makes people funny and what our laughter is actually signifying. Joseph Moran, Marina Rain, Elizabeth Page-Gould, and Raymond A. Mar carried out a study in 2014 which sought to figure out what separates the comedians from the rest of us, particularly looking into if there is a relationship between making humorous jokes and finding jokes humorous. They concluded that, perhaps contradictory to social intuition, funny people don’t find things funnier.

Anxiety at Its Best

by Karen Salas, Kenyon ’17

We’ve all told a lie at some point in our lives, and if you disagree, then you are probably lying. Odds are you’ve also encountered a person who is uncannily good at spotting lies. Could there be something rooted in a person’s personality that allows them to detect deceit far more easily than others? According to researchers Tsachi Ein-Dor and Adi Perry, this may actually be the case. The findings from their recent study suggest that anxiously attached people tend to be better skilled at detecting lies.

Altruism, Emotion, and Morals: Can They Coexist?

by Oscar Anderson, Kenyon ’16

Can altruism, emotion-driven selfishness, and high morality all coexist within the same person? Barasch, Levine, Berman, & Small (2014) believe that they can based off a series of tests they conducted. However, altruism and high morality should not be able to exist with emotion-driven, selfish behaviour according to the provided definition of altruism: “Altruism is characterized by a motivation to increase another person’s welfare and is presumed to be driven by a selfless concern for others,” (Barasch et al., 2014). In order to test this definition, the researchers looked to emotion-driven prosocial behaviour, or anonymously aiding others based off the feelings of intrapsychic rewards. These intrapsychic awards can range from feeling good about having done a good deed to relieving distress caused by witnessing the suffering of others (Barasch et al., 2014).

Is Social Phobia Distinct from Avoidant Personality Disorder?

by Indigo Eisendrath, Kenyon ’16

Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD) is generally considered a more extreme version of Social Phobia (SP). However, new research does not support this viewpoint and instead suggests that AvPD and SP are distinct types of General Social Phobia (GSP).

Lambe and Sunderland (2015) aimed to determine the differences between AvPD and SP, hypothesizing that there are “qualitative differences between AvPD and SP that are undermined by limiting research to participants with SP” (p. 115). Therefore, Lambe and Sunderland used three participant groups, AvPD only, SP only, and AvPD+SP to study the differences in conditions.

Is Praise in the Classroom Doing More Harm Than Good?

By Evie Kennedy, Kenyon ’16

In the American school system, it has been ingrained in parents and teachers that we need rewards and praise to motivate children to work hard, behave properly, and perform well in school. At face value, this makes sense. If Sally performs well on a test, and her teacher tells her “good job,” won’t that make her feel good? Many parents and teachers would say yes—praising Sally will make her feel smart and motivate her to keep up the good work. Recent studies suggest, however, while praise for Sally’s performance might make her feel good momentarily, there could be some unseen adverse effects of certain types of praise. Mueller and Dweck’s (1998) experiments suggest that “good job” is more sinister than it seems.

Personality Development in the Workplace

By Katja Shimkin, Kenyon ’17

Personality is commonly considered personal identity’s constant factor. People stay the same, they have one personality; it’s what makes them who they are. Recent research into development of trait expression however, suggests personality may not be quite so simple. Instead, traits continue to be shaped throughout life by individuals interactions within their given environments. Although analyses of such trait reshaping did not appear extreme (effect sizes were small), the results of a longitudinal study by Le et al. clearly indicated a relationship between workplace conditions and adult personality development.

Self-Control and Daily Stress

By Indigo Eisendrath, Kenyon ’17

A new study on adolescents found that the trait self-control can predict and influence the effects of daily stress.

Those with high levels of self-control report fewer incidences of daily stressors, express less severe stress, and are better able to cope with stress. Individuals with higher self-control reported greater mindfulness in response to daily stress compared to those with less self-control.

Studying the trait self-control is based on a dual-process model, which breaks self-control into two subtypes, behaviors that are automatic processes and those that are reflective mental processes (Strack & Deutsch, 2004). Automatic processes involve no external thought, they “can be carried out with little to no conscious awareness” (Galla & Wood, 2015, p. 70). Reflective mental processes involve higher mental processing and they are consciously used to influence behaviors and actions.