Chapter thirteen focuses on three motivational principles related to Personality Characteristics, with the first of those three being 'Happiness'. The section explains that generally most people are happy and that this is true almost "irrespective" of people's life circumstances. Human beings have two emotional set points, rather than just one. The first of those two is 'Positive Emotionality', or a person's happiness set point, which emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion. The second of the two set points is 'Negative Emotionality', or a person's unhappiness set point, which emerges mostly from individual differences in neuroticism. The section then focuses on connecting extraversion to happiness. The book explains that emotionally extraverts are happier than introverts and that they enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts. The book goes on to further explain that extraverts are happier than introverts because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions, and that extraverts have a stronger BAS (Brain Activating System) than introverts, which allows them to better detect and regulate signals of reward in the environment. Having a stronger BAS allows extraverts to anticipate situations with excitement, feeling happy, and wanting to approach situations. A later part of the section explains that there are two types of happiness, with the first type being 'Hedonic'. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one's pleasurable moments, it reflects a pleasant life and it represents what most people think of as happiness. The second type of happiness is 'Eudaimonic', which concerns self-realization. It involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing. It is the actualization of the self and it is realized through the pursuit and realization of personal authenticity and growth.
The second type of motivational principles related to Personality Characteristics is 'Arousal', which represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The book explains that there are four principles that explain Arousal's contribution to Motivation. The first principle states that "a person's arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is". The second principle states that "people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal". The third principle explains that when people are underaroused, they seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance. The fourth principle looks at the other end of the spectrum of arousal, so to speak, explaining that when people are overaroused they tend to decrease their arousal levels because increases are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. The section goes on to further explain that moderate levels of arousal result in the best performance, meaning that arousal and performance have an inverted-U relationship. The last part of the section focuses on 'Excessive Stimulation and Overarousal', explaining that over-stimulating, stressful environments upset emotional states, impair cognitive states, impair cognitive activity, and accelerate physiological processes.
The third type of motivational principles related to Personality Characteristics is 'Control'. The book explains that there are two main types of control, and those are two it focuses on. The first of those two is 'Perceived Control', which concerns differences in people's performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert, and that a person with high perceived control seeks out and selects relatively challenging tasks, sets relatively high goals, and generates sophisticated plans about how to succeed and what to do when progress is slow. The section further explains that perceived control is necessary for constructing beliefs about one's competence, efficacy, and ability. The book goes on to explain that there are two differences between perceived control and perceived competence, self-efficacy, and perceived ability. The first of those differences is that perceived control functions as the antecedent foundation on which these other beliefs are constructed. The second difference is that perceived control beliefs can emanate from any capacity, not just from one's own competence, efficacy, or ability. The second main type of control is 'Desire for Control', which concerns the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. The difference between the desire for control and perceived control is that high-desire-for-control individuals want control over their fates irrespective of how much control they currently have and irrespective of how structured or responsive the situation appears to be. I found that bit of information to be the most interesting part of the chapter, in part because most of the time, or maybe all of the time, I am the type of person that has a strong desire for control. Anyway, continuing on desire for control, high desire for control people are likely to: speak loudly, explosively, and rapidly; respond quickly to questions and comments, interrupt and talk over their partners, and end conversations when they want to. The last part of the section explains that desiring control is generally adaptive and productive when situations are controllable. The desire for control feeds into the illusion of control, meaning that in uncontrollable environments the desire for control works as a motivational liability, which I have personally experienced, and therefore can well relate to that information, meaning that I find it very useful to know that it has been proven by research.
Terms: 1) Happiness 2) Positive Emotionality 3) Negative Emotionality 4) Hedonic 5) Eudaimonic 6) Arousal 7) Excessive Stimulation and Overarousal 8) Control 9) Perceived Control 10) Desire for Control
Chapter 13 covers the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. Happiness is never clearly defined in the textbook but it states that most people are happy almost regardless of their life circumstances. The textbook also discusses how people who go through a very dramatic life event that produces large emotions there immediate happiness is affected but after a certain amount of time has passed their happiness level goes back to where it was before. This correlates to the concept of individuals having a happiness “set point”. Having a happiness “set point” means that regardless of your circumstance if you have a positive happy personality and happiness is in your genes you will be happy. The opposite is also true that if you do not have a positive happy personality you will not be happy regardless of your circumstance. This “set point” results from differences in individuals levels of extraversion and neuroticism. Chapter 13 states that extraversion is the personality characteristic most closely associated with happiness. Extraversion is defined in this Chapter by splitting it into three parts; sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is defined as the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations. An example of a person who has a high fulfillment of sociability would be someone who is known for being the life of the party. Assertiveness is defined as the tendency toward social dominance. An example of someone who is assertive would be a politician dominating a political debate. Venturesomeness is defined as the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. An example of an individual who has a high fulfillment of assertiveness would be a person who enjoys thrill seeking behavior such as sky diving. All of these things combined make extraverts different from introverts and allow them to be emotionally happier on average and enjoy more frequent positive moods. The personality characteristic that Chapter 13 associates with unhappiness is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Individuals who are high on neuroticism experience greater stress and more negative emotions than the average individual. The next motivational principle related to personality characteristics is arousal. Arousal is explained as representing a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Chapter 13 lists four principles to explain how arousal contributes to motivation. The first is a person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. The second is that people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. The third is that when underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal level, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance, whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance. The last is when overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. The last motivation principle related to personality characteristics is control. The textbook states that there are many possible personality characteristics that could be included under the category of control but perceived control and the desire for control encompass most of the spirit of control beliefs. Perceived control relates to the differences in an individual’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. The desire for control relates to the extent to which an individual will strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. Some negative effects of losing control or never having control are the individual becoming susceptible to depression and learned helplessness.
The thing that surprised me the most about this chapter was the effect that the different levels of neuroticism and extraversion can have on the overall happiness of an individual. I consider myself to be a very happy person and I operate on a very high level of extraversion so the correlation between the two does make sense. At the same time, I am surprised that it plays such a large role in the happiness of an individual compared to environmental influences.
M&E Terms:
Motivational, personality, happiness, arousal, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, Neuroticism, Arousal, environment
Chapter 13 discusses how personality characteristics can affect a person’s motivation and emotion for different events. There are three main motivation subjects that will be discussed: happiness, arousal, and control. Happiness obviously asks each person how happy they are and can be broken down into two different personality characteristics: extraversion and neuroticism. Extraverts are social, assertive, and full of adventure, which is associated with happiness; while introverts are the opposite and are associated with less frequent positive moods. Researchers have found that extraverts are happier because they respond stronger to positive situations in their lives due to biological differences in the behavioral activating systems in the body. The behavioral activating system is how the brain looks for rewards and the subsequent positive response. This mean the brain of an extrovert reacts more strongly to reward and anticipates reward more than in the brain of an introvert. The opposite of happiness is unhappiness, which is a characteristic associated with neuroticism. Neuroticism can be defined as emotional instability, as opposed to stable personalities. Interestingly, research has shown that neurotic individuals have a more sensitive behavioral inhibition system than do stable people. The behavioral inhibition system is what responds to punishment, and therefore associated with negative moods and emotions. This means the brain of a neurotic individual will respond more strongly to anything it feels is punishment, but will also anticipate punishment and respond accordingly.
The second motivation topic is arousal. Arousal represents the alertness and interest in performing a certain task. The book explains that arousal and performance have an inverted U relationship. As arousal is low and a person is bored their performance efficiency will be low as well. Other research also shows that low stimulation decreases cognitive abilities and makes a person prone to irritability. The inverted U relationship also shows that too much arousal is not good for a person. Too much stimulation increases stress, which also decreases cognitive abilities and performance efficiency. Another topic related to arousal is sensation seeking. This is a personality type which seeks out highly stimulating experiences which can be described as new, intense, and engaging. While this personality likes to take risks, it is better described as risk accepting, than risk taking. Due to the biological component of too little monoamine oxidase in the brain, which breaks down dopamine & serotonin, the person doesn’t have the best stopping system and therefore feel these experiences are worth the risk. The last part of arousal is affect intensity. This is defined as the strength an individual experiences emotion. An affect-intense individual reacts to situations with strong emotions, while an affect-stable individual reacts more evenly to situations.
The third motivation topic is control. The author believes “perceived control” and “desire for control” cover most of the control issues. Perceived control is the belief that a person can do what they need to do to be successful in a given situation. Learned helplessness occurs when a person feels they have lost control and no matter what they do they will not succeed. This low perceived control leads to low effort and the tendency to give up easily in difficult situations. The opposite is high levels of perceived control which makes a person more optimistic about the end result, leading to longer periods of effort and intensity. The desire for control is just how it sounds. A person with a high desire for control takes whatever action necessary to try and keep the end result what they want. The positive side is that the person achieves their goals, even if they are difficult, and has high levels of motivation. The negatives are that in situations that cannot be controlled, a person with a high desire for control gets extremely stressed and can’t function properly. People with low desires for control don’t need everything planned out and feel comfortable letting whatever happens, happen.
The most surprising thing learned in Chapter 13.
I was interested in the biological aspect of sensation-seeking. It is interesting to learn that they have high levels of dopamine and low levels of serotonin and monoamine oxidase. The book said that MAO breaks down dopamine and serotonin, but sensation seekers only have low levels of serotonin.
List of ME terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, inverted U curve, affect intensity, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control, learned helplessness.
Chapter 13 focuses on three aspects of individual differences, specifically in regard to a set of personality traits that causes changes and differences in our behaviors. The three main components discussed are happiness, arousal, and control. Several aspects of all of these are discussed.
The first section of the chapter focuses on happiness. There was a part in this section that I found to be somewhat surprising. The chapter talks about the differences between introverts and extraverts and how this personality trait affects the way we feel and act. It says that extraverts are typically happier than introverts because they have a larger capacity to experience positive emotions. The part of this section that was surprising to me was the discussion about how most people claim that they are happy. After reading the chapter it made sense that everyone has a happiness “set-point” and regardless of their surroundings and circumstances they are still happy. I think about people in areas of the world that have extreme misfortune and are still happy. This made me wonder if people are happy generally because they often to not know the difference between the life they are living and the life that other people live. However, I wondered if people have a happiness set-point how is it that so many people experience depression. Clearly there is a cultural aspect to this because of the high level of depression rates in the United States and the high level of prosperity and positive circumstances. So if depression is the opposite of happiness- I wonder if our set point impacts our likelihood of becoming extremely unhappy or depressed.
The most interesting part of the chapter to me was the discussion about perceived control and desire for control. The part of perceived control is something I had studied a lot as part of my I/O psychology courses. The way it can impact a person’s ability to be productive at work, show high job performance, and increase their engagement level is very interesting. I think that part of the challenges for organizations is to try to increase perceived control in employees so that they become more engaged and productive. There are ways to do this but it is no easy task. The other part of this section talked about desire for control. Desire for control is defined as the want or need for control over situations. As I read the examples the chapter presented it was not hard to think of people I know that fit into this category. I would say that I have a moderate desire for control as well. I constantly find myself working to control my environment and my future, and I also think I have a fairly high level of persistence. However, the chapter made me think of people that like to take risks in hopes of being able to control the outcome; the example that I think of is the gambler who constantly thinks he can control or predict the odds. I think that it is these people who find themselves in difficult situations due to their high need for control.
Lastly, the section about losing control is very interesting. When people are in situations in which they have little control it can cause a high level of stress and anxiety, especially for someone who has a high desire for control. The chapter gave the example of military life which I think really encompasses what losing control is all about. It is no wonder that people in the military often come home so traumatized by what they did and what they saw. The complete lack of control that people experience would be traumatizing for anybody, even those that do not have a high desire for control.
ME Terms: Personality, individual differences, happiness, arousal, control, perceived control, desire for control, persistence, losing control, engagement, productivity, outcomes, need for control, depression, happiness set-point, extraversion, introversion, positive emotions, cultural differences and performance.
Chapter 13 discusses the individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control when it comes to personality characteristics. The first discussed amongst these is happiness. I found it rather surprising that happiness could be seen as having a set point. When it comes to happiness, a "set point" will regulate happiness and subjective well being. We have two different set points, one being positive emotionality and the second being negative emotionality. The difference in set points arises from differences in personalities. These differences could be marked as extroversion (positive emotionality) and neuroticism (negative emotionality).
Extroversion encompasses three facets which are: sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. People who are characterized as extroverts tend to be happier and enjoy more positive moods than introverts. Reasoning behind this has somewhat to do with the fact that extroverts are more sensitive to the rewards that come in most social settings and because of this experience more positive feelings. It can also be said that extroverts have stronger behavioral approach systems (BAS). Due to this, they experience a "stronger incentive motivational state that energizes and directs their approach behavior".
The chapter notes that extroversion is not the key component of happiness. Happiness could be seen from two different aspects. The first is hedonic well being which is the totality of one's pleasurable moments. The second is, eudaimonic which is self realization which makes an individual engage in meaningful pursuits.
Neuroticism on the other hand, is the predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. People who are neurotic are more like to feel anxiety, fear, and irritability which is in most cases due to the harboring of disturbed and negative thoughts. They also have differing sensitivity levels in their behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which is strong and highly sensitive.
Arousal is the second aspect discussed in personality differences. Arousal can be seen as "representing a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation". The process of arousal is cortical, behavioral, and autonomic. It also has four principles. These principles include: (1) mostly a function of how stimulation the environment is (2) engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal (3) in light of under-arousement, people will seek out opportunities to increase arousal levels, which prove to be pleasurable and enhance performance, and (4) when over-aroused, people will take actions to decrease this. I found the study by Woodburn Heron to be rather interesting. After cutting off people's visual, auditory, and sensory information and making them stay in an unchanging environment. Upon participation, participants suffered from mental debilitation and found simple tasks to be challenging. This was due to being under aroused.
Arousal also brings about sensation seeking. Sensation seeking can be defined as, "seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of experience". Biologically, arousal stems from low levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO) which breaks down dopamine and serotonin.
Finally, the last aspect discussed is control. There are two different factors when it comes to control. The first is perceived control which examines the differences in people's performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Perceived control will centers around people's engagement, emotion, coping ability, and challenge seeking. Engagement is the "effort to gain control over an important outcome". This is important because the more willing someone is to engage in different environments the better their experiences will be. It helps produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. Perceived control also predicts how much effort a person is willing to exert given different circumstances and settings.
The second factor of control is desire for control. This is the "extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership, and being overly prepared". It is also how much a person is motivated when it comes to establishing control over the events in their lives and what happens. People with desire for control usually first like to establish their power, then restore whatever power they felt is lost. Desire for control can be over many things, one including communication with others. There are both positives and negatives when it comes to desire for control (figure 13.7; pg. 387), but the biggest downfall is that when a person with high desire for control feels as though they have lost control given the unchangeable circumstances of some environments, they are susceptible for learned helplessness and depression.
ME Terms: happiness, set point, extroversion, hedonic, eudaimonic, neuroticism, arousal, insufficient stimulation, sensation seeking, MAO, control, perceived control, engagement, desire for control
Chapter 13’s overall focus is on personality characteristics; happiness, arousal, and control in particular. These three motivational principles are closely linked to personality characteristics through subjective experiences, but there are individual differences between all three.
Happiness is experienced by everyone on this planet, no matter race, ethnicity or gender. Humans have two emotional set-points, not just one as previously thought. The first one is “positive emotionality.” The positive emotionality set point has to deal with one’s happiness, which comes from individual differences in extraversion. The second set point is “Negative Emotionality,” or one’s unhappiness set point. This comes from individual differences in neuroticism. The book then attempts to connect extraversion to happiness. The book states that extraverts are generally happier than introverts because they have a higher capacity for experiencing positive emotions. This is credited to the Brain Activating System that extroverts have a stronger mental capacity with than introverts. Having a stronger BAS allows extroverts to anticipate excitement and situations that accompany good moods better than introverts. The book uses the example of lottery winners vs. accident victims in terms of overall happiness. In both circumstances there is an event, whether positive (winning the lottery) or negative (suffering an accident) that affects happiness in the short term. But when evaluated a year after their life altering events, there was no significant difference in overall happiness. This shows that individual differences in people have more of an impact on happiness than significant events in the long term, whereas significant events control happiness much more in the short term.
The next personality characteristic in question is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Together the cortical (brain), behavioral (skeletal muscular system), and the autonomic (autonomic nervous system) constitute most of the motivational constructs of arousal. The book attempts to connect arousal and overall performance. An inverted-U curve is used to illustrate the differences between low, moderate and high levels of arousal on overall performance. Low levels of arousal produce relatively poor performances. And as arousal increases from low to moderate, both the intensity and quality of performance improves. But as the inverted-U curve demonstrates, too much arousal will ultimately lead to quality and efficiency decreasing. Therefore, what this means is that as humans, we must be aroused, but not too aroused to reach our optimal efficiency. Over-arousal, or excessive stimulation as the book calls it is equally detrimental as being under-aroused. Life is boring sometimes and when we are not being adequately stimulated our body “shuts down” to a degree. Same can be said if we are over-aroused. Too much stimulation and confuse our bodies, our cognitive way of thinking and many other things. A personal example of this would be Las Vegas. I went to Vegas last year with my family and girl-friend and was over stimulated from the beginning. Once I got off the plane there was more people and places to go than I was used to, I found myself becoming overwhelmed. And it never got better after that, there were so many eating options, gambling options, and entertainment options that I didn’t know what to decide on. Although choice is good, sometimes too much choice can make things too difficult. That is why when it comes to performance and life satisfactions, we must find the right amount of arousal and stimulation to be happy.
The third and final personality characteristic in question is control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. In order for someone to perceive that they have control, one must first be able or capable of attaining the desired outcome; second the situation itself must be somewhat predictable and responsive. If these two things are met, then perceived control is possible. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort someone is willing to put into a particular situation. Low perceived control will result in a low level of effort and a low success rate, on the other hand, high perceived control will lead to greater effort and a much higher success rate. Desired control is the second portion of the control section in this book. Desire for control is basically straight forward; it is someone’s desire to control any situation. A person with a high desire for control will do whatever it takes to succeed or control the situation. The negative aspect of this is that although someone may want to really control the situation, they are unable to do it through lack of skill or possibly lack or power. This can cause someone to become very frustrated and anxious, thus leading to failure. Control is a very slippery slope because we all want it but not everyone can handle it.
The most surprising thing I learned in chapter 13 was the section on losing control. When people have little to no control over situations, they tend to get very anxious and stressed, I am no different. Being put in situations where there is no control, or room for freedom I feel very uncomfortable and tend to “shut down.” The book uses the prison system as an example and it helps make a lot of sense out of this section. My father, a retired prison guard, would tell me stories about his job and how structured it was. There is structured time for everything in the prison system, you eat at the same time, exercise at the same time and sometime cannot freely use the bathroom as you please, depending on the circumstances. This would drive me crazy, I feel as though I would simply become a walking zombie and conform to that lifestyle forever. That is why I believe inmates struggle so much when they get out of prison; they become over stimulated with choices, and often times make the wrong ones.
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics focusing on happiness, arousal and control. The most interesting part of this chapter to me was happiness. People have a happiness set point regardless of their life experiences. Extraversion means being highly sociable, assertive, and venturesome. Extraverts are happier than introverts. They are more sensitive to the rewards of most social situations and therefore actively approach these situations. Extraverts are more capable of experiencing positive affectivity because of their stronger behavioral activating system which detects signals of rewards. The BAS motivates extraverts by energizing approach-oriented, goal-directed behavior. It has been found that extraversion is biologically based and is heritable as seen in twin studies.
On the other side of things, neuroticism is linked to negative affectivity. Neuroticism is a predisposition to experience negative affect and to fell chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions because of their strong and sensitive behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which detects signals of punishment. The BIS motivates neurotics by energizing avoidance-oriented, goal-directed behavior. Neuroticism is also linked to chronic feelings of fear, anxiety, irritability, distress, hostility, anger, depression and self-consciousness due to the sensitive BIS.
Arousal includes alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Level of arousal is an important aspect of motivation. People with a low level of arousal show a low performance. People with a high level of arousal also show a low level of performance due to increased anxiety and emotional disturbance. Performance is highest when one is moderately aroused. When underaroused, as seen by Heron’s study, people feel unable to think clearly, visions, and decreased problem solving abilities. Overarousal can cause confusion, forgetfulness, and impaired concentration. Overarousal can be very uncomfortable and aversive but there are people who are considered sensation seeking. These people like a continual external supply of brain stimulation. These people search for new experiences and take risks. They see new experiences and sensations as worth the risk. Sensation seekers have been found to have higher levels of dopamine which favors approach over inhibition and also have low levels of the enzyme that breaks down dopamine.
This chapter talks about control as perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations of a person that they can interact with the environment to produce desired outcomes or prevent undesired outcomes. Perceived control beliefs influence engagement. The more control you think you have the more effort you will put forth and the more positive the outcome will be. Desire for control is how motivated a person is to establish control over situations in their lives. People who have a high desire for control select harder tasks, set more realistic goals, show greater effort, achieve higher goals, complete difficult tasks, and remain motivated. They are also more likely to attribute failure to some unstoppable force, attempt too difficult of goals, develop performance inhibiting reactions, invest too much effort, and develop an illusion of control.
I don’t think I am extremely extraverted or neurotic. I think I’m probably in the middle as are most people. I might be slightly higher for sensation seeking but nothing too crazy. I really like rollercoasters, scary movies, and getting tattoos but nothing that seems abnormally risky. When it comes to power, I think I have a normal perceived control and a low desire for control. I like to think that whatever is going to happen will happen but at the same time I know I can control certain things in my life.
I like this chapter because it was easier to read and understand than some other chapters. On the other hand, it was kind of short and I think more could have been talked about. I know from a previous class that personality has been found to be basically 50/50 with biological and environmental influences. This chapter made it seem like personality is mostly biological.
Terms: personality, happiness, arousal, control, Extraversion, BAS, Neuroticism, BIS, underarousal, overarousal, sensation seeking, perceived control, desire for control
apter 13 Largely deals with personality characteristics. It delves into what traits make a person have a happy/sad disposition. It also mentions how arousal affects motivation and behavior. The last section deals with how control may affect a person’s life.
The most basic thing to know about happiness is that it is relatively stable throughout a person’s live. If I were to win the lottery, I would be extremely happy for a few weeks. However, the amount of happiness would eventually return to previous levels. Being extraverted will also cause a person to be happy in his/her life. Extraverted people tend to seek out more awarding opportunities in their environment. Introverted people tend to not attend to these opportunities as frequently. Extraverted people are also happier because they possess a greater capacity to experience positive emotions. This means that they get really happy when something good happens. It also means that introverted people just become content and not euphoric. Extraverted experience hedonic happiness, and introverted experience eudaimonic happiness. Neurotics are less happy then people who have different traits. This is because they have a greater capacity for experiencing negative emotions. They also tend to harbor disturbing and troubling thoughts that are brought on by bad life events.
Arousal represents a variety of purposes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Under arousal causes people to seek out behavior to get aroused, increase pleasure, and to improve performance. Over aroused people seek out less arousing behavior to increase pleasure and performance. A medium level of arousal has the maximum potential for pleasure, performance, and feeling good. Some people do sensation seeking to get more arousal. These people generally take more risks that can ruin different aspects of their life. To them, these risks are worth it, and they actively participate in risk acceptance. Affect intensity can also influence one’s overall state of being. Affect-intense people experience strong emotions that vary in situations on a daily basis. Affect-stable people experience neutral feelings that are typically the same no matter what day it is.
There are two types of control this chapter address. The first is the amount of perceived control an individual has, and how that predicts performance. The next is the need for control, and the extent people strive to achieve it. People with high perceptions of control are able to set high goals, generate plans, and plan about how to succed. People with low perceptions do the opposite of this.
Terms: Happiness, arousal, control, extroverted, introverted, eudaimonic, hedonic, Neurotics, under/over aroused, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, need for control,
Chapter 13 is all about personality characteristics, one of my favorite topics! This chapter focuses on three topics related to personality: happiness, arousal and control. There are different personality traits that affect the motivational actions of individuals. First, the text discusses happiness. I found it interesting when they mentioned there is little to no difference in happiness between accident victims and lottery winners. It shows how much happiness depends on personal life events and the interpretation of such events. It also mentions that we all have a happiness “set-point” which relates to the idea that if we are happy now we will be happy later in life, and if we are unhappy now we will probably be unhappy later in life. I think this is based again off the interpretation a person has on their life.
Happiness is associated with extraversion, which is based off sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. An extrovert seeks out these while an introvert would lack these characteristics. It’s interesting to know that extroverts tend to be happier since they are more likely to approach positive and rewarding situations. Extroverts are more likely to show joy while introverts would only show contentment. When I look at my group of friends and recognize the introverts, I can completely agree with this statement. Also, it is important to understand there are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudiamonic. Hedonic is the reflection of a pleasant life, or it represents what most associate as the stereotypical happiness feeling. While eudiamonic is more of the actualization of the self or a person living as one’s true self.
The next personality characteristic relates to “Who is unhappy” and that is neuroticism. This is defined as one’s tendency to experience a negative experience and become chronically unhappy or dissatisfied. A person high in neuroticism experiences higher levels of stress, anxiety, fear and irritability. The opposite of neuroticism is emotional stability. A bad experience to a person high in neuroticism is upsetting alone but also brings a number of upsetting thoughts even after the event is over. This helps us understand why extraverts are generally happier and neurotics are generally unhappy.
Next, the text discussed arousal which relates to the processes that govern alertness. Understandably, when arousal levels are low so are performance levels. As arousal increases, performance quality increases. But when a person is over-aroused they feel stress and frustration which could affect performance quality negatively . Also creating negative effects would be if a person is under-stimulated. This can occur if a person is in a certain environment for too long. Humans have the ability to counteract such feelings through social interactions or mental imagery. Over-stimulation can also occur from such events as a repetitive bad relationship or overcrowding. If this emotional feeling manifest it can become anxiety, irritability or anger. If this cognitive feeling manifest it becomes confusion, forgetfulness, or impaired concentration. Not surprisingly, when a person is over-stimulated and these feelings arise, people try to rid them or people generally try to avoid situations where these feelings would arise. Many people differ when it comes to their reaction to the environment stimuli. Sensation seeking is related to one’s level of arousal because a high level sensation seeker prefers more stimulation. These people would become bored easily when things become routine. Sensations seekers are often considered risk takers. Sometimes this trait can manifest into a criminal behavior.
The final characteristic is control, which includes locus of control, perceived control, causality orientations mastery versus helpless orientations, explanatory style, desire for control and self efficacy. The two that appear most important are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the belief or expectation a person holds about the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. The perceived control also predicts how much a person is willing to exert in effort. Overall, it appears to be conceptually similar to related constructs, such as perceived competence, self efficacy an perceived ability. If someone has a high desire for control, they will often approach situations asking whether they can control the situation or not. They are not content with the idea of taking whatever life throws at them.
This chapter was interesting to me. It is always interesting to read about the way each individual can vary. For me, it is hard to imagine what I am not. But this is the only way to understand something you are not!
ME: happiness, extraversion, introversion, neuroticism, arousal, insufficient stimulation, excessive stimulation, sensation seeking, risk taking, control, perceived control, desire for control.
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. There are three main motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. They are happiness, arousal, and control. When something happens, like a life changing event our emotions suddenly change. Eventually though we will go back to being the same amount of happy that we were before the event happened. People seem to have a happiness “set point”. We have two emotional set points. They are positive emotions and negative emotions. How often we have positive or negative emotions depends on our personalities. The personality characteristic associated with happiness is extraversion. People who are extroverts are much happier than people who are introverts. Extroverts like to be sociable, they are assertive, and are adventurous. The reason why extroverts are happier than introverts is because they have a greater capacity to experience positive emotions. There are two types of happiness. They are hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It represents a pleasant life and represents what most people think of when they think of happiness. Eudaimonic well-being is related to self-realization. It involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing.
Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation:
1) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is.
2) People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal.
3) When underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance.
4) When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance.
A personality characteristic related to arousal is sensation seeking. A high sensation seeker becomes bored with routine. They continually need an external supply of brain stimulation. A low sensation seeker prefers less brain stimulation. This type of person likes routine.
When it comes to control there are two main personality characteristics that adequately capture most of the spirit of control beliefs. These two characteristics are perceived control and the desire for control. The desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. Control is often times an issue in our daily lives.
Terms used: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter thirteen is based around personality characteristics. The book focuses on three main parts happiness, arousal, and control. Depending on the situation and the surroundings a different affect can occur.
Happiness is experienced by everyone at some point in time. The amount of money doesn’t make a difference in happiness; both lottery winners and lower-income families say that they are happy. People with little education say that they are also happy, as well as people that have suffered through a terrible accident. Taking the accident for example, at first this is a huge change, and it’s a negative change. The person is not happy and has very little happy thoughts. As a month or two pass they begin to have both negative and positive thoughts. A year later the positive thoughts and emotions are now higher than the negative ones.
When you are asking the question, “Who is happy?”, you are asking a question about extraversion. To really dig into what extraversion is, it’s good to know the three parts that make the definition. Sociability is the enjoyment of others, assertiveness is the leaning of social dominance, and last is venturesomeness which is seeking enjoyment. These three main factors make up extraversion. Another question can be asked, “Who is unhappy?” At times, people go through a period of unhappiness. Neuroticism is the tendency to have or experience negative emotions and feel unhappy and dissatisfied. People who go through this are usually stressed, have mood swings and higher levels of fear and anxiety.
The next factor is arousal. Arousal is what controls a person’s activation wakefulness, and alertness. The inverted-U tells us the relationship between arousal and one’s performance. It shows that when a person has low levels of arousal, the performance level will also be low, as it moves up a step or two performance increases. But when arousal levels get to high the efficiency of the performance will start to decrease.
Sensory deprivation causes underarousal. It is caused by an unchanged environment. Overarousal is caused by stress. When people are in an environment where they feel stress most people try and get out of there and to a less stressful place. When a person can not get away from this environment their performance level decrease, they may become confused, and they may contain some heath problems. That is why it’s a good thing to try and stay away from things that can have a negative effect.
People have a different arousal level. Sensation seeking is the characteristic that are related to both arousal and reactivity. It is defined as the seeking for experience, taking risk, and having the willingness. A person with high seeking get bored with everyday routines and are always looking for new ways to increase arousal by find new experience. Those with low seeking tend to stay on track with the everyday routine.
The last main focus is control. There are two different briefs to control: perceived control, and the want or desire for control. Perceived control is based on the different performances a person does to have a positive outcome. Desire for control is where a people want to make their own decision and take on the leadership role. Having control is great, but there are times when having the power of control is limited and on the low side. Some of these situations are: crowded areas, military life, prison, and living in a nursing home. When a person strives for control and are unable to obtain it they fall under depressing and hopelessness.
Terms: happiness, arousal, and control, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, neuroticism, inverted-U, sensory deprivation, underarousal, overarousal, sensation seeking, perceived control, desire for control.
About seventy percent of people score in the middle of emotion scales. Typologies are seen as oversimplifying the contribution of personality process in motivation. Happiness has a two set points that is where people return to the same level of happiness regardless of life events (happy/tragic) Those set points are either positive or negative they are not opposite of each other but rather independent. Extroversion is the trait that determines positive set point. Extroversion is classified by sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness(which I did not know was a word )Extroverts are more sensitive to rewards and are more eager to approach positive feelings they also posses a stronger BAS.
There are two types of happiness , Hedonic which is most often associated with happiness, which equates to an overall pleasant life, Eudaimonic is about self-realization, living one's true self basically living life to the fullest.
Neuroticism is what governs the set point of negative emotions (unhappiness). It is relative to the BIS. They posses a grater ability to sense negative emotions and harbor troubling thoughts.There driven towards avoidance behavior because of their sensitivity of negative emotions and their aversion to it.
Arousal level is function of how stimulating environment is, people engage in behavior to either increase or decrease level of arousal, under arousal people seek out opportunities to increase arousal levels for pleasure and the opposite is true for over stimulation since it is aversive. The upside down U (inward U) as proposed by Yerkes and Dodson best demonstrates how moderate arousal produces the best results in productivity. It is sort of like how organisms need stress to live, like eustress I learned about that in health psychology.
People with sensation seeking personalities have biochemical differences from people that are sensation avoiders. Sensation seekers actually have decreased levels of MAO(enzyme) which is basically like the cleaner(re-uptake) of neurotransmitters in nerves this creates an increase in DA(dopamine) and a decrease in 5HT(serotonin).
There are three different types of affects people have, either affect stable which means there emotions are fairly stable across time, affect intense where there are large variations in emotion from day to day, and lastly where the person is neither one nor the other, so just in between.
Perceived control is the building block for other forms of control and emanates from capacity. It is the belief that one has the ability to produce positive outcomes. It determines how much effort one is willing to put fourth. Desire for control is the second area of control covered in chapter 13. It is when people strive to make own decisions and behavior. Engagement captures the intensity and emotional.
What I thought was neat was the experiment with the three different groups of people and how you could visually take in the variations between the people and then I was able to think of people I know and kind of place them into some of the categories.
Terms used: engagement, control, perceived control, desire for control,sensation seeking, affect intense, affect stable, arousal, neuoticism, BIS, BIA, hedonic, eudaimonic, extroversion, introversion, happiness, venturesomeness, inverted u , over arousal, under arousal, aversive, antecedent.
Chapter 13
Individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control happiness.
Chapter 13 was one of my favorite chapters so far from the book. I enjoy learning about the inner quirks that make everyone different, even in the same situations.
As I said, I learned that people can be in the exact same situation but be in completely different motivational and emotional states than those around them. There are many factors contributing to this phenomenon. Happiness vs. Neuroticism is one of them. Happiness is associated with extraversion. When compared to introverts, extraverts, as you probably know, are more social, venturesome, have stronger behavioral activating systems, and have a greater capacity to experiences the positive emotions that are present in the environment. Neurotics, on the other hand, have a greater capacity to experience the negative emotions present in the area. They are more sensitive to behavioral inhibition systems and are eager to avoid these potentially punishing situations. This may lead a neurotic person to develop avoidance behavior and obtain emotional stress.
Both neurotics and extraverts battle with arousal—be it overarousal or underarousal. Arousal contributes to motivation in four main ways:
1. One’s arousal level is a function of how stimulating an environment is.
2. People engage in behavior to either increase or decrease arousal.
3. When underaroused, people want to increase their arousal level because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance while decreases are aversive and undermine performance.
4. Number four is the exact opposite than number three. People want to decrease arousal when overly aroused.
Being underaroused can stem from sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation is when one’s environment is ultimately unchanging. We know this is aversive because according to a recent study the brain and nervous system prefer for the environment to generate and stimulate arousal. Overarousal, on the other hand, is caused by stressful environments and can lead to three main side effects:
• Emotional disruption (anxiety, irritability, anger)
• Cognitive Disruption (confusion, forgetfulness, impaired concentration)
• Psysiological disruption (sympathetic, nervous system, hyperactivity)
Next, the book segways into sensation seeking behaviors. Sensation seeking is a topic of great interest to be because I feel like I relate to its qualities. Sensation seeking is defined as, “the seeking of varied novel or complex, intense sensation and experiences, the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences.” There is an actual difference in the brains of those who are sensation seekers and those who are not—amazing. The biological basis of sensation seekers is that they have low levels of monoamine oxidase, high levels of dopamine, and low levels of serotonin.
Last, but not least, is information about control. One’s perceived control—or,
expectations of one’s control over one’s behavior and environment in order to produce desirable outcomes, has a lot more riding on it than I ever thought. In order to have a high level of perceived control one must first believe, also, the situation needs to be somewhat predictable and responsive. Perceived control beliefs are very important because they effect a lot of things, such as: goals, choices, effort, concentration, persistence, emotional states, performance, and problem solving strategies. It is obviously better to have high perceived control. People who are engaged feel more involved with the outcome, so they are in turn reinforced to have a higher perceived control. The desire for control lies in how motivated we are for control. I often times find I have a high perceived control in some situations (mostly familiar ones) and low perceived control in others.
The focus of chapter 13 was on personality characteristics and more specifically individual differences that appear between people. The chapter broke down the individual differences into three main categories which included: happiness/well-being, arousal and control. The two main types of personality characteristics that are related to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is often thought of as the characteristic that explains who is happy. Extraversion can be broken down into three separate facets that include sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness is the tendency toward social dominance, and venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. Extraverts are happier than introverts, because they have a strong behavioral activating system (BAS) that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Neuroticism is often thought of as the characteristic that explains who is unhappy. As the contradiction to extraversion, neurotics often suffer emotionally, because they have a strong behavioral inhibition system (BIS) that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment.
Arousal includes a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation by processes that are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation can be organized in the “inverted-U” relationship between arousal and performance/well-being. This “inverted-U” shows that performance is low at both high and low arousal and performance is high at moderate levels of arousal. There are two personality characteristics related to arousal which include sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. Often times sensation seekers will use sex, drugs, and gambling to appease their need for new experiences. Affect intensity is the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. An individual who is affect-stable experiences emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions. Conversely, an individual that is affect-intense will experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion-eliciting situations.
Finally, control can be described by two personality characteristics that include perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent undesirable ones. When someone’s perceived control is weak they engage in tasks only half-heartedly, showing passivity and negative emotion. Desire for control is the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. An individual that is high in desire for control approaches situations by wanting to control what happens to them, so they strive to establish control and to restore it when control is lost or threatened.
I thought that the most interesting part of this chapter was the discussion about insufficient stimulation and underarousal. The study that was described on sensory deprivation in which participants just laid in a bed with very minimal to no sensory arousal was fascinating. The idea that you can’t think clearly when there is absolutely no sensory information being received seems to be very counterintuitive to what you would normally think. The fact that there are no distractions whatsoever would make you think that you could think more clearly than you ever have before, but the opposite was found. This extended into the fact that a lot of people reported dreams and visions while awake. This leads to the idea that our minds actually need to be aroused by our various senses to function normally. This made me think of the controversial issue that people today are constantly bombarded all the time by new technology and this could lead to sensory overload by constantly being “connected” to the computer/technology world. After reading this section of the chapter it actually made me feel good to think that our brains are much more capable of handling the constant stimulation that it receives in the modern world. Of course there are limits to how much our brain and senses can handle and the fact that our body did not evolve around or for this technology must also be considered.
Chapter 13 was about Personality Characteristics. These are what make up the different ways people deal with life events. These individual differences make up the different motivational and emotional states that people experience, even in the same situation. Some of these personality characteristics include: extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. Each person could have one (or more) of these characteristics that cause them to act a certain way in certain situations. Also, this chapter mentions the three motivational principles which are related to these characteristics: happiness, arousal and control.
People usually have a happiness “set point”. This means that people have a set point at which they are happy--they don’t get any happier than that set point. No matter what the circumstances are. I found this very interesting. There are certain things in life which could make a person very happy, and I never thought of us having a “set point” of happiness; something saying that we will never get happier. In this section, it also talks about extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion has three main facets: sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Generally, extroverts are happier than introverts and are in better moods more frequently. One of the reasons why extroverts are happier is because they are more sensitive to rewards and, therefore, have more positive feelings. They also have a stronger BAS, which is the source of their positive emotions. When I read this, I wasn’t sure that I agreed with what it was saying. I am a very introverted person, but would consider myself very happy. But it started to make more sense as I read through it again. By being extroverted and more social, you will more likely be more sociable. Usually being around other people, or being a social person in general, results in positive thoughts/feelings which would make a person happier.
Neuroticism is defined as experiencing negative affect and feeling chronically dissatisfied/unhappy. Throughout the days, they tend to experience more stress and steady moods of anxiety, fear, and irritability. Neurotics not only tend to experience bad events, but they also have upsetting/pessimistic thoughts that hang around even after that event has passed.
Arousal is a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There is an “inverted-U” shape between arousal and performance. This means that people who experience low stimulation (arousal) have poor performance because tend to be bored and restless. And people who experience high stimulation (arousal) also have poor performance because they experience tension and stress. To experience optimal performance, you need to be moderately stimulated. This was very interesting to me as well. I had always thought of having a lot of stimulation in your life, the better your well being. But it does make sense when I think about school. Having so much to keep you busy (class, studying, job, etc) can be overwhelming and actually hurt your performance.
Control is divided into perceived control and desire for control. Perceived Control is a persons beliefs and expectations that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. These control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert in certain situations. Desire for Control, on the other hand, reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. People who have a high desire for control are not content to take whatever life throws them, and they feel the motivation to influence life and what happens to them. After reading this, I would say that I do not have a high desire for control. I tend to “go with the flow” and don’t really feel the need to control what happens to me in life--I have learned that you can’t do that.
Overall, this was a really good chapter and I learned a lot. There were a lot of things I didn’t really know much about, and it was very interesting to learn more and see where I fit into the whole thing.
TERMS: personality characteristics; individual differences; happiness; arousal; control; set point of happiness; extraversion; neuroticism; behavioral activating system; perceived control; desire for control;
Chapter 13 Summary
The personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and or control are found subjectively within situational events or experiences. All situations vary in how stimulating, arousing, and controllable they are based in large part upon individual differences. Our individual differences and personality characteristics affect how we respond to situations or how we feel about situations, specifically happiness, if we felt arousal, or if we perceived control in the situation.
Despite life circumstances most people are happy and while people react strongly to events in life such as winning the lottery that the text talks about, they also return to the level of happiness or positive emotionality they had prior to the event. The text talks about having a “set point” in happiness much like our physical bodies have a genetic aspect to body type and weight and we can only alter them to a certain degree. It was interesting to consider the fact that we also have a set point in negative emotionality and how happy or unhappy we are independent indicators of our well-being rather than opposites.
I love the association with the question of “who is happy” to the personality characteristic of an extrovert! This makes it easier for me to remember because extroverts are very sociable, they are more assertive and venturesome risk takers. Naturally this stimulates excitement because the extrovert is biologically motivated with a stronger BAS than introverts. In the BAS signals are sent more intensely that build in excitement in anticipation of pleasure or feeling happy and this is how they approach situations.
On the topic of neuroticism, personality characteristics can be associated with the clever question of “who is unhappy” because neurotic individuals experience negative effects such as dissatisfaction and unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally by being sensitive to environmental signals of punishment and a prolonged negative affect after the actual experience. They are sensitive to the biological motivation system of BIS that inhibits their behavior through avoidance, escape and withdrawal.
The activity of the cortical brain, the behavioral mechanism of the skeletal muscular system and the ANS make up arousal. We are aroused by how stimulated an environment is then we engage in behavior to either increase or decrease our levels of arousal. If we are under aroused we will either be bored or stressed; of which both are found to be aversive, or we will seek out more stimulating pleasurable activities or behaviors. If we are over aroused we eventually become overwhelmed or we feel the situation to be aversive and we will seek to decrease our arousal levels.
The beliefs and expectations we hold about how we can interact with the environment to produce our desired outcomes and prevent the undesirable outcomes defines perceived control.
Control that is perceived needs to be somewhat responsive and predictable to generate plans strategically set to reach our goals because forethought allows us to focus on the persistence to reach our goals or adjust them according to feedback while maintaining a positive emotional state. Perceived control influences our engagement level, our emotional state, our coping strategies and how we seek out challenges. If we become dissatisfied, the beauty of an extrovert with high levels of perceived control will dismiss the issue and blame it on aspects that are out of there control.
Terms: personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, control, individual differences, set point in happiness and neuroticism, BAS, BIS, pleasure/punishment signals, perceived control, influences engagement, emotion, and coping strategies
Chapter 13 focuses on three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: 1. happiness; 2. arousal; and 3. control. The main question this chapter is trying to answer is, Why do different people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation? In the beginning of the chapter, the authors put heavy emphasis on being cautious when reading about specific individual differences and how relatively few people are at either extreme of the specific characteristic—most people are somewhere in between. The first main section of the chapter is titled Happiness. Happiness is never specifically defined within the section; however, the authors note that most people are happy. One thing I found interesting in this section was the idea that people who faced negative life events (e.g., life-threatening accident) reacted strongly to the event but then seemed to return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event after a few months. Next the text talks about two different ‘set points’ people have that regulate their happiness. The happiness set point is called extraversion. Extraversion has three parts that describe the term: 1. sociability; 2. assertiveness; and 3. venturesomeness. People who are extraverts have greater tendencies toward those three things. Extraverts are happier than introverts and have more positive moods compared to introverts because they have a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions compared to introverts. Also, the text talks about how extraverts have a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system) than introverts do. The BAS is a brain system that detects and regulates signals of reward in the environment. For extraverts, these signals of reward activate their BAS whereas with introverts their BAS would be mildly activated. The unhappiness set point is described as neuroticism. According to the text, neuroticism is defined as ‘a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” Basically, neurotics are emotionally unstable individuals. Neurotics have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions and constantly have disturbed and troubling thoughts. This differential capacity to experience negative emotions occurs because neurotics and emotionally-stable people have different levels of sensitivity to the BIS (behavioral inhibition system). The BIS is a brain system that detects and regulates environmental signals of punishment. Neurotics have a strong and very sensitive BIS whereas stable individuals have a weak and not so sensitive BIS. The BIS functions as a motivational tool by motivating people to engage in avoidance-oriented, goal-directed behavior (e.g., escape, withdrawal, avoidance).
The second main section is titled Arousal. There are four principles that explain what arousal contributes to motivation: 1. a person’s arousal is triggered by things in the environment; 2. people will engage in behavior that will increase or decrease their level of arousal; 3. when people are underaroused, they will find opportunities to increase their arousal level because increases are pleasurable and enhances their performance whereas decreases are negative and negatively affect performance; and 4. when people are overaroused, they will find opportunities to decrease their arousal level because increases are negative and negatively affect performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. These four principles are illustrated in the text on pg 375 Figure 13.3 which shows the inverted-U curve of the relationship between arousal level and performance/well-being. One really interesting study regarding insufficient stimulation and underarousal was one done by Woodburn Heron where he paid participants to stay in an unchanging environment with time for meals and bathroom breaks. Participants were deprived of any sensory information in order for Heron to study effects of sensory deprivation. It’s no wonder that he had a hard time keeping participants in the study for more than a couple days—I would go crazy!! The arousal section also touches on sensation seeking people who search for new experiences (they like change), engage in more risk taking, and have a biological basis to behave in the ways they do (they have high levels of dopamine which favors approach over inhibition; also have low levels of serotonin which doesn’t work to keep them from risks and new experiences). The last part of this section is affect intensity, or the capacity for a person to become aroused emotionally. People can either be affect-intense or affect-stable. Basically, affect-intense people are more sensitive to changes in arousal than affect-stable people.
The last main section is titled Control. There are two types of personality characteristics related to control discussed in the text: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control deals with differences in people’s “preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes.” Desire for control deals with “the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways.” Two things need to be true for perceived control: 1. the person must be capable of obtaining the desired outcome; and 2. the situation in which the person wants to obtain the desired outcome must be at least somewhat predictable and responsive.
Terms Used: personality characteristics ,happiness, extravert, introvert, neuroticism, personality characteristics, set points, happiness set point, unhappiness set point, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, avoidance-oriented behavior, goal-directed behavior, arousal, underaroused, overaroused, inverted-U curve of the relationship between arousal level and performance/well-being, sensory deprivation, sensation seeking, dopamine, serotonin, affect-intense, affect-stable, control, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter thirteen discusses personality characteristics and the three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. The three principles are happiness, arousal, and control. Every person has a different level of happiness, arousal, and control. With happiness, it seems that most people are generally happy. Although life brings about negative events that cause unhappiness, people seem to return to a happiness set point after a little while. A person’s happiness set point is similar to body weight. People have a point where they usually remain at, but can fluctuate due to other circumstances. There is also an unhappiness set point. These set points are derived from two personality characteristics: extraversion and neuroticism.
Extraversion is related to happiness. It’s a characteristic that results in sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. It’s not just these facets that make a person happy, however. A person that is extroverted tends to be more open and sensitive to positive feelings. Therefore, they approach situations that would bring about positive feelings, resulting in their label of extroversion. Introverts tend to do the opposite but avoiding situations like this and are sensitive to negative feelings. There are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness comes from positive events that happen in a persons’ life. Eudaimonic happiness comes from the self and their meaning of the events that happen to them, good or bad.
Neuroticism is related to unhappiness, or suffering. Neurotic people are predisposed to experienced negative affect and tend to be unhappy most of the time. They are emotionally unstable and center their thoughts on negative things rather than positive things. This instability leads to anxiety, depression, and anger. Unlike extroverts, neurotic people are sensitive to the punishing aspects of a situation rather than the rewarding ones.
The second motivational principle is arousal. This represents an array of processes “that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation” (374). It occurs within the brain, skeletal muscular system, and autonomic nervous system. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation: 1. A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. 2. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal level. 3. When underaroused, people seek opportunities to increase arousal because it produces pleasant feelings. 4. When overaroused, people seek opportunities to decrease arousal because it produces aversive feelings. These principles are present in a model called the “inverted-U” curve. This curve shows that low and high arousal equals low performance. This is because low arousal produces boredom and therefore no interest in performing well. High arousal produces stress, which people tend to avoid. It’s best to be moderately aroused because people perform well at this level.
Being underaroused can lead to some problems. A type of research called sensory deprivation has been done to show this. “Sensory deprivation refers to a person’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment”. A study was done in which male college students were paid a large amount of money to stay in a room that had no noise or any other distracters. The environment was unchanged, except to get food and go to the bathroom. As time went by, researchers would have the students do different types of problems. They noticed that the students progressively worsened as the time went by and that their moods were very irritable. Even though the students were being offered money to stay, most people left within 2 or 3 days. This shows that humans need a certain level of arousal to be happy and function and a good level.
On the other end, it’s also problematic to be overaroused. As stated before, it causes stress. There are three types if disruption that stress causes: emotion, cognitive, and physiological. Emotional disruption causes anxiety and anger. Cognitive disruption causes confusing, impaired concentration, and forgetfulness. Physiological disruption causes problems like high blood pressure. Being stressed can lead to all these things happening at once, which would not be a pleasant experience. If someone isn’t able to decrease the amount of stress they have, it can lead to negative affect and other problems.
Affect intensity can be defined as the amount of strength in which an individual experiences their emotions. Someone who’s very affect-intense experiences their emotions very strongly and portrays them easily. The opposite of affect-intense is affect-stable and these people experience their emotions milder. This can be measured by questionnaires. It’s a psychological difference, not physiological.
The third principle is control. The two concepts of control discussed in this chapter are perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is the control people believe that they have or will have over a situation. If a situation is known to be somewhat unpredictable or difficult, people react differently based upon how much control they feel they have over it. It depends on how much effort they’re willing to put forth. This perceived control affects their motivation and how they react to situations. Desire for control is the other concept. This refers to how much an individual is motivated to have control over their lives. People have are high in the desire for control like to make their own decisions, be leaders, plan ahead, and are independent. This is different from perceived control because people with a desire for control want to control over the things in their life and perceived control is thinking you have control. People who want to have control establish it by being loud and quick in conversation. They tend to end conversation after they say what they have to or if the person converts to their opinion. The negative part of having this characteristic is that they still believe they have control over a situation even when they don’t.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, happiness set point, unhappiness set point, extraversion, neuroticism, hedonic, eudaimonic, inverted-U curve, underarousal, overarousal, sensory deprivation, emotional/cognitive/physiological disruption, negative affect, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Arousal, happiness levels, and amount of control were keys in Chapter 13. A commonality within these three characteristics is that they all require a gentle balance in order to produce the best response. If there is too much or too little of any of these then people will not accomplish their desired outcomes. In addition, without accomplishing a moderate amount of each people will not be as encouraged to accomplish goals because mental and physical consequences will cloud their ability to do so.
For example, when someone is sitting in their home going through their emails they are focused. If a loud noise occurs from an unknown location, that person switches from being moderately aroused by their emails to over aroused by their flight or fight response due to the unknown loud noise. While being so aroused, the person may not act appropriately and may be unable to focus on what to do. In the same note, if someone is under aroused or bored by a situation they will not be as productive (such as answering questions to a phone survey when someone calls at midnight). Research has shown that people often prefer a stimulating environment that is consistent. When people do experience a high or low arousing environment, they always attempt to decrease/increase their arousal by engaging in emotional or behavioral changes (e.g. responding differently to a situation). By accomplishing a moderate state of arousal, people are more likely to be happier.
Overall, most people are neither very happy nor very unhappy; they are all moderately happy regardless of circumstances in their lives. This means that people who are rich and powerful are the same amount of happy as people who are living in a low SES area, working at a manufacturing plant. There is a “set point” that people gravitate back to after experiencing really awesome or really awful events. In addition, everyone falls (more or less) into two groups that affect happiness; extroversion and neuroticism. People who are extroverted have a more general inclination to be happier because they view events as opportunities. Within these opportunities extroverts find greater connection others (greater sociability), great influence over others (greater social dominance), and increased availability of fun events (greater venturesomeness). In general, extroverts benefit in numerous ways over neurotics. People who are neurotic constantly view events as negative and are consequently dissatisfied with many events in their lives. As a result of being displeased with multiple life events, neurotics avoid activities and therefore lose opportunities to thrive. However, people have the ability to make changes for themselves and choose their reactions to events. It will take practice, but learning to respond positively to events in life will lead to better outcomes every time.
Finally, control affects how people behave in relation to the future results they want to see. This means that people who perceive their control as being high will exert more energy, be more persuasive, and be able to face difficult aspects of an event better than people who think they have not control of their current situation. However, there is a major different between thinking you can accomplish a goal and needing to accomplish a goal by any means necessary. The latter description refers to people who have a high desire for control (DC). These type of people believe they can influence (whether this is true or not) the outcomes of events in their lives. When they receive the outcomes they desire, they compliment themselves on their hard work. However, when the outcomes are different than what they expect they react in a depressive manor. Therefore, having a high perception of control is beneficial and having a high desire for control is less desirable in the long run.
I feel like maintaining a balance in arousal, happiness, and control is something everyone strives to accomplish everyday. Through experience in different events and stressful situations, we all learn to react in a way that allows us to accomplish our expected outcomes. Trial and error are often the best ways to learn how to gauge each of these characteristics. When a moderate level is found for each of these in any given situation, the results are bound to be as expected.
Chapter thirteen is about personality characteristics, and it focuses on three motivational principles in relation to personality characteristics. They are happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter cautions that few people are at an extreme in a characteristic. Most people are not extremely extraverted or have no extraversion at all, but instead, most are somewhere in between these two poles.
The first motivational principle discussed is happiness. Most people say that they are happy no matter their life circumstances. There are two personality characteristics that relate to happiness: extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is the personality characteristic that discusses who is happy, and extraverts tend to be happier than introverts. This is because extroverts have a stronger BAS or behavioral activating system, which makes them more aware of signals of rewards around them. There are two different types of happiness. Hedonic well-being is all of the person’s pleasurable moments, and it is what most people think of when they think of happiness. Eudaimonic well-being is participating in worthy and meaningful events and behaviors. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic that discusses who is unhappy, and neurotics suffer emotionally. Neurotics have a stronger BIS or behavioral inhibition system, which makes them more responsive to signals of punishment around them. Generally, extraverts are happy and neurotics are unhappy. Results from several surveys and tests show that extraverts will be excited, enthusiastic, and happy about being in potentially rewarding situations, and neurotics will be inhibited, hesitant, and anxious about being in potentially threatening situations.
Arousal is the second motivational principle, and sensations seeking and affect intensity are two personality characteristics associated with it. There are four principles that explain how arousal relates to motivation: arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal, people seek out situations to increase their arousal when they are underaroused, and people seek out situations to decrease their arousal levels when they are overaroused. These four principles make up an inverted-U relationship, and optimal performance is when someone is moderately aroused. Sensory deprivation is an individual’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. People with sensory deprivation are more irritable and do worse on cognitive evaluations. Overstimulating is caused by stressful environments and shows itself through feelings of anxiety, irritability, anger, confusion, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, and high blood pressure. Sensation-seeking is the need for varied, different, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take social, legal, financial, and physical risks to gain that experience. Sensation seekers look for new experiences such as sex and drugs and participate in risky behaviors like skydiving, smoking, and gambling. Affect intensity is the strength at what individuals typically experience their emotions. Affect-intense people experience and show their emotions strongly and with much variation. Affect-stable people experience and show their emotions mildly and with minimal variations.
Control is the third motivational principle, and perceived control and desire for control are two personality characteristics associated with it. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations a person has that he or she can get a desired outcome and prevent an undesired outcome. In order for this to happen, the person has to believe they have control in that situation and the situation needs to be somewhat predictable and responsive. A person with high perceived control chooses more difficult goals and puts in more effort to reach them. A person with low perceived control chooses easier goals and effort and confidence decrease. Desire for control is the extent an individual is motivated to gain control over the events in his or her life. People with high desire for control ask themselves if they will be able to control the events when entering a situation. They prefer to make their own decisions, prepare in advance, avoid depending on others, and choose leadership positions. They speak loudly, respond quickly to questions, and interrupt frequently. They end conversations when they want to, usually after getting the other person to agree with their views. People with low desire for control avoid responsibilities and prefer others to make decisions for them. Desire for control is not dependent on their current level of control in a situation or how responsive the situation is. When people desire control but the environment doesn’t allow it such as in the military, at the dentist, and in traffic, people become vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.
Terms: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, behavioral inhibition system, sensations seeking, affect intensity, sensory deprivation, overaroused, underaroused, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discusses the topic of personality characteristics. There are 3 major principles that we attribute to personality characteristics including happiness, arousal and control. Almost any event has the potential to affect all 3 of these. The personality characteristics discussed in this chapter are extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control and desire for control. Although a few individuals experience extreme levels (either high or low) on any one of the characteristics discussed in this chapter, most people fall somewhere in the middle of each personality characteristic.
Overall, most people are happy. Researchers have used experiments that enabled subjects to record their emotions or moods throughout the day and found that although some people are happier than others, most people are happy despite their life circumstances. People do have a happiness “set point” for positive emotionality (found in individual differences in extraversion) and an unhappiness “set point” for negative emotionality (found in individual differences in neuroticism.
Extraversion is closely tied to happiness. Extraverts display assertiveness and tendencies for dominance, sociability and enjoy being around people and social situations and they are more venturesome and tend to seek out situations that stimulate them. They are happier than introverts and experience more positive moods. They can be happy alone as well. The reason why they are happier is because the are more sensitive to the rewards in social situations. They have a stronger behavioral activating system than introverts. Their brain systems actually detect signals of reward in the environment which causes them to benefit from those signals that make them feel excited and wanting to approach the situation. Studies show that extraversion is based more on genetic than environmental factors which has been found by twin studies.
Neuroticism is closely tied to unhappiness and is essentially a predisposition for more negative emotions and negative moods like anxiety, fear and irritability. They are more emotionally unstable. They have different levels of sensitivity to situations than extraverts due because they pick up signals of punishment which leave them feeling fear, anxiety and the desire to avoid the situation. They have a behavioral inhibition system which motivates them for avoidance behaviors.
Arousal processes control alertness, wakefulness and activation. A person’s arousal level is generally a function of how stimulating the environment. Optimal performance occurs when an individual is moderately aroused, that is, alert and not tense because overstimulation can lead to poor performance as well as underarousal. Low stimulation can create boredom and restlessness whereas high stimulation can create tension and stress.
Sensation seeking is a personality characteristic related to arousal. High sensation seekers prefer more continuous stimulation, are often bored with routine and are constantly looking for new arousal opportunities in the environment. Low sensation seekers differ by preferring less stimulation and show a preference for routine. Sensation seekers often search for new experiences and are usually who we picture jumping out of plans, playing extreme sports and participating in risky behaviors such as drugs or alcohol use. They have lower levels of monoamine oxidase that is involved with the breakdown of dopamine and serotonin. Sensation seekers have high levels of dopamine (which makes them favor approach rather than inhibition behaviors) and low levels of serotonin (which then fails to inhibit them from risks and new experiences.
Affect intensity is involved with a person’s capacity to be aroused emotionally. Individuals who are affect-intense experience their emotions strongly and have high reactivity. Individuals who are affect-stable experience emotions more mildly and show smaller fluctuations in their reactions. Although they do not differ in physiology, they do differ psychologically because affect-intense individuals are more psychologically sensitive to changes in arousal. Essentially their arousal thermostat is more easily activated whereas an affect-stable individual is far less sensitive to these changes.
Control incorporates many personality characteristics, however, our chapter deals with perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control refers to beliefs about how that person can interact with their environment to get desired outcomes rather than undesired outcomes. 2 things have to happen in order for this perception of control to occur. One is that the individual must feel they are capable of getting the desired outcome and two is that the situation must be at least somewhat predictable and responsive. People who experience learned helpless believe the opposite and feel as if the environment has more control over them rather than the other way around. People with high perceived control beliefs are more engaged and show more effort. People with low perceived control are more disaffected and show little effort and become discouraged easily.
Desire for control relates to an individual’s motivation to have control over the events in their lives. High DC individuals ask themselves (when a situation presents itself) “Will I be able to control what happens here?” They are not going to take a passive role in their own lives. Low DC individuals avoid responsibility and have less motivation to control what happens in their lives and are often simply comfortable with others doing the decision making. The have a “It is what it is” mentality. Unfortunately, high DC individuals can cause themselves harm by attempting difficult goals and displaying hostility when faced with failure. They can also persist too long tasks or problems that can’t be solved.
One of the most interesting things I learned in this chapter was when reading about happiness research. Researchers found that asking both lottery winners (a positive event) and trauma victims who sustained injury (a negative event) about their levels of happiness a year after these events to rate their happiness. Surprisingly, their responses did not differ much from each other. Although initially the accident victims displayed unhappiness, as soon as two months after the trauma they were showing decreased negative emotions and increased positive emotions. I wonder if I would be reporting the same thing if I were the trauma victim. To be honest, I doubt it!
I can definitely see where I lie on the curve of some of these characteristics. I am most definitely not on the extreme side of sensation seeking because the thought of engaging in risking behaviors like mountain climbing or parachuting seems completely insane to me. However, I am definitely on the high side for desire for control and I often find myself banging my head against the proverbial brick wall even because although I seek the control the task or situation is something I will never achieve control over and that is hard to accept sometimes. I do think being high in DC does a lot of positive things for my life though as well and I can’t ever see myself being content with others making decisions for me or to take a backseat through life.
ME terms used: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, happiness “set point”, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system
Three concepts are prevalent in chapter 13. They discuss the motivational principles related to personality characteristics. The first of these is happiness. The first statement the book makes is that all people say they are happy, regardless of their individual circumstances. One statement the book makes is to say that trying to be happy is like trying to be taller. What they mean by this is they feel that we have emotional set points that regulate our feelings positive or negative of emotionality. One of these is a happiness set point and emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion, while the other emerges mostly from differences in neuroticism. This states that extraverts enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts because extraverts are more sensitive to society’s rewards and are therefore more affected by them. Underlying this is the assumption that extraversion is a genetic factor rather than an environmental factor.
On the flip side, neuroticism and suffering mark the unhappiness point. This is a mirror of the extraversion in that they have an above average capacity to experience negative emotionality. A bad event can bring negative things, but for a neurotic person, these negative things stimulate a string of negative thinking and stimulate avoidance behavior. Some experts believe these two characteristics, extraversion and neuroticism are the basic personality dimensions.
Arousal on the other hand represents a variety of processes that dictate alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Four underlying principles explain arousal’s correlation to motivation. 1) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. 2) People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. 3) When under aroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels. 4) When over aroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. The book illustrates the reasoning behind this by plotting performance and efficiency on a vertical axis and arousal level on a horizontal axis. The result is an inverted U-curve. This shows that the optimal performance will be when arousal is moderate. Over-arousal leads to stress, frustration, and hassle while under arousal leads to boredom and restlessness. We see this in everyday life such as divorce and unemployment.
Control is something that has been studied in detail under the category of personal control beliefs. Two personality characteristics cover most of the idea behind control beliefs: perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s pre performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control concerns the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, and assume leadership roles. The book makes reference to a table comparing high desire for control and low desire for control. The high DC individual vs. the low DC individual will select harder tasks and react with greater effort in a response to a challenge. They will work at difficult tasks longer and are more likely to attribute success to self and failure to unstable forces. The benefits of a high DC include achieving higher goals, completing difficult tasks, and expressing a high level of motivation. The risks to processing a high DC include attempting too many difficult goals, developing performance inhibiting reactions, investing too much effort into impossible tasks, and developing an illusion of control.
I found the happiness the most interesting. I had heard that the level of happiness in one’s life stayed constant for the majority of their life, but I had never heard it explained like the book does. It would give reason to have less stress in planning what to do with one’s life and worry less about the material objects or intangibles in life. What was most surprising to me was again dealing with the happiness. I found the idea that extraverts were born, not made to be very surprising. I had always thought that it was more of an environment vs. genetic or biologic trait.
Terms: Happiness, Arousal, Desire for control, extravert. Neurotic.
Chapter 13 was focused on personality characteristics. There are three specific characteristics discussed in this chapter.
The first characteristic is happiness. People react strongly/very strongly to life events but seem to return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event; it doesn't matter what the life events are. There are two "set-points", positive and negative. Extraversion coincides with the happiness (positive) set-point. Extraversion centers around sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations. Assertiveness is the tendency toward social dominance. Venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. Being more sensitive to rewards --> more susceptible to positive feelings --> approach potentially rewarding situations more. Extraverts have a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions and have a stronger and more sensitive BAS - more frequent and intense signals of reward. There are two types of happiness. Hedonic refers to the one's pleasurable moments and reflects a pleasant life and represents what most people think of as happiness. Eudaimonic concerns self-realization, involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing, and is all about living one's true self. Neuroticism coincides with the unhappiness (negative) set-point. Neuroticism is the predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy; its opposite is emotional stability. Neurotics not only experience bad events but also bad thoughts. They have a strong and highly sensitive BIS - signals of punishment.
The second characteristic is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness (cortical mechanism), wakefulness (behavioral mechanism), and activation (autonomic mechanism). There are four principles for arousal: 1) Arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is; 2) Engage in behavior to increase/decrease arousal level; 3) When underaroused, seek out opportunities to increase levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance; 4) When overaroused, seek out opportunities to decrease levels, because decreases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas increases are aversive and undermine performance. Performance and arousal exist on an inverted-U curve. Moderate levels coincides with experience of pleasure, low levels produces boredom and restlessness, and high levels produces tension and stress. Insufficient stimulation and underarousal deal with sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation is an individual's sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. The brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level generated by environmental stimulation. Excessive stimulation and overarousal occurs from stressful events. This upsets emotional states, impairs cognitive activity, and accelerates physiological processes. The inverted-U hypothesis has met some criticism: Neiss says that it is descriptive rather than explanatory (how facilitates) and applies only when levels are extreme and does not apply to everyday affairs in which level changes relatively little. The second criticism was proven incorrect. Sensation seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience. The baseline level of arousal and reactivity are involved in sensation seeking. Baseline level of arousal is how aroused a person is without external stimulation. Reactivity is one's arousal reaction when exposed to external stimulation. Sensation-seeking construct pertains to the extent to which a person's CNS requires change and variability. Risk is the forecast that a behavior will produce aversive consequences. Sensation seekers are more "risk accepting" than "risk taking" because they believe the sensation is worth the risk. Sensation seeking has a biological basis. Seekers have low levels of MAOs (limbic system enzymes involved in breaking down brain neurotransmitters); they have high levels of dopamine and low levels of serotonin. Affect intensity concerns people's capacity to become aroused emotionally and is defined in terms of strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. Affect-intense individuals experience emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity and variability across many different situations. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in reactions. People have an "arousal thermostat."
The third characteristic is control. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he/she can interact with environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. People don't necessarily put forth strong effort to exert control over outcomes in predictable and responsive situations. Even structured situations can be difficult to control. Perceived control predicts how much effort a person is willing to exert; high perceived control = higher effort. It functions as an antecedent foundation on which other beliefs are constructed (competence, efficacy, and ability) and can emanate from any capacity. Self-confirming cycles of high and low engagement involve engagement efforts that produce positive outcomes and postperformance perceptions of high control and disaffection that produces negative outcomes and postperformance perceptions of low control. It explains how and why some people develop strong personal control beliefs and others don't. With desire for control (DC), high-DC takes an approach to situations and takes life by the horns and low-DC avoids situations and wings it in life. High-DC people want control over fate irrespective of how much control they currently have and of how structured or responsive situation appears to be. With establishing control, desire for control feeds into illusion of control. Through achievement situations, one can establish control through aspiration level --> response to challenge --> persistence --> attributions for success and failure. When losing control, high-DC people exhibit distinct reactions like anxiety. When people desire control but the environment refuses to afford it, people become vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression. Magnitude varied to how important control was. In controllable environments, DC = motivational asset; in uncontrollable environments, DC = motivational liability.
ME Terms: happiness, set-point (happiness/unhappiness), extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, BAS, hedonic, eudaimonic, neuroticism, BIS, arousal, cortical/behavioral/autonomic mechanism, inverted-U curve, sensory deprivation, sensation seeking, baseline level of arousal, reactivity, sensation-seeking construct, risk, MAO, affect intensity, affect-intense, affect-stable, arousal thermostat, control, perceived control, self-confirming cycles of H/L engagement, desire for control
Chapter 13 is titled 'Personality Characteristics'. This chapter discusses the individual differences that arise in happiness, arousal, and control and their effects on motivation. The first individual difference that arises among people is happiness. According to the authors, most people are happy regardless of life circumstances. There is difference that arises however, in how happy people are. One difference arises in personality characteristic. Those who are extraverts tend to be the happiest of all. Extraverts are outgoing individuals who focus on the positive vibes in the environment. They act on the Behavioral Activating Systems (BAS), in that they are more sensitive to rewarding stimuli in the environment. Extraverts also tend to be more sociable, more socially dominant and more venturesome. Those who score high on neuroticism tend to be unhappy. Unlike the extraverts, they are more sensitive to negative emotions in the environment. They act on the Behavioral Inhibition Systems (BIS). Neurotics tend to avoid potentially punishing situations. In summary, extraverts are generally happy and neurotics are generally unhappy. The second individual difference that arises is arousal. Arousal contributes to motivation in four ways:
1. A person's arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is.
2. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal.
3. When underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance.
4. When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermined performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance.
In other words, people try to maintain moderate arousal throughout their lives. According to the author, moderate arousal correlates with pleasure, and also leads to adequate performance of a task. Underarousal refers to an environment that is abnormally low in stimuli. It can lead to sensory deprivation and decrease performance and increase neuroticism. Overarousal and lead to emotional, cognitive, and physiological disruption. Individual differences arise in a sensation seeking personality characteristic. Those who rate high constantly search for new experiences. People also differ in their affect intensity, or how they experience emotions. Those with high affect intensity experience extreme highs and lows of emotion throughout the day. Affect-stable individuals are rather stable throughout the day. The third individual difference the author discusses is control. There are two levels of control: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is one's expectations of possessing the needed capacity to produce such outcomes. Desire for control is the extent to which individuals establish control over events in their lives. Some people have a higher desire for control than others. How one engages in a situation determines their perceived control belief. For instance, if someone is attempting to gain control of a situation and it turns out like they hoped, they now further believe they have a higher sense of perceived control.
The part of the chapter I found most interesting was the differentiation between extraversion and neuroticism. I am currently taking Psychology of Personality and both of these characteristics are brought up quite often. There are countless things these characteristics correlate with. One might assume that extraverts are generally happier than extraverts based on their definitions alone. The BIS/BAS differentiation explains the reason why differences in happiness arise. My question is how stable are these personality characteristics? According to my personality textbook, they are fairly stable throughout life. I would like to think that a neurotic person would be able to change their ways to that of an extravert. Perhaps I should do more research on cognitive therapy in this area.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, BAS, BIS, neuroticism, underarousal, overarousal, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discusses personality characteristics which is an intriguing topic from an actual scientific perspective. There are three principles which are thoroughly touched on; happiness, arousal, and control. Every situation varies the potential to produce happiness, arousal, and control. And this is also based on the individual’s perspective and how that individual’s brain is “wired.” These personality characteristics are in fact genetically predetermined more so then they are influenced by the environment. This is not to say that the environment does not have influence but genetics have a greater influence. Also it is important to note that most people are in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to these characteristics. For the most part people are not at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
Taking a closer look at happiness most people are happy. This was incredibly surprising to me considering the high levels of depression that exist in today’s society. I have always thought that people in unfortunate circumstances such as poverty, in serious life changing accidents, or those who have experienced horrible life events would be chronically . . .unhappy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even in negative life events people are just as happy as those who are fortunate. I also learned that individuals have a set point for a level of happiness. Even after a traumatic event that individual will eventually return to their set point or same level of happiness. This set point is pre-determined by genetics. Who is happy is determined by extraversion. Those who are extraverts are found to be happier than introverts. Extraverts are associated with sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. The reason that extraverts are happier than introverts is the chemical make-up of the brain. Extraverts have a stronger BAS which allows them to be more sensitive to positive rewards. These individuals pick out the positive aspects in every situation which energizes their behavior towards approach-oriented and goal-directed. Briefly mentioned in this chapter are the two types of happiness. Hedonic is the pleasurable moments one has throughout life. Eudaimonic is pursuit of one’s self, self-actualization. Finding meaning and self-worth. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic associated with being unhappy. These individuals are described as being chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Where extraverts experience regularly happiness, desire, excitement, energy, and enthusiasm neurotic individuals regularly experience irritability, fear, and anxiety. Neurotics have a sensitive BIS which picks up on the negative aspect of each situation. Because they are genetically focused in on negative aspect they constantly have negative thoughts, which then energizes that individual’s behavior towards avoidance tendencies.
Alertness, wakefulness, and activation are control through cortical, behavioral, and autonomic processes which is represented by alertness. The four principles of arousal are discussed as influencing motivation; an individual’s arousal level is mostly influenced by the environment, people engage in behaviors to find optimal level of arousal, when underaroused individuals want to increase their level of arousal. When overaroused that individual seeks activities to decrease their level of arousal. The reason for continually seeking optimal level of arousement is pleasure. Underarousement creates boredom and restlessness, while overarousement creates stress and tension. This optimal lever of arousement has proved beneficial because people perform best at a moderate arousement levels. When an individual is chronically at either extreme, overaroused/underaroused, they experience confusion, forgetfulness, and impaired concentration, and negative physiological effects. Sensation seekers are found to have low levels of MAO which break down neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, which contribute to rewards and inhibition. These high levels of dopamine and serotonin then cause the individual to constantly seek brain stimulation. These individuals are known as the “risk-takers” but it is better described by the book that they should be known as the risk-acceptors. It is the thrill they seek not the risk itself. Affect intensity is basically the level of intensity an individual experiences emotions. Affect-intense experience emotions very strongly and tend to display unstable and constant extreme changes in emotions due to their sensitivity of arousal. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions at a moderate level because they are less sensitive to arousal and therefor display a more regular and moderate level emotion.
Control can be further divided into perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control describes the expectations of an individual to be able to interact with the environment that will produce the desired outcomes. The desired outcome must be attainable and the situation needs to be predictable. Perceived control expectations predict how much effort that individual puts forth. The individual who puts forth more effort is more likely to succeed and therefore enforced the idea they he/she has control over the situation. Perceived control beliefs then further influence that individual’s engagement, coping, and challenge seeking. Those with high perceived control are able to succeed more because those individuals are more engaged and seek challenges that they can realistically attain. Even when failing they have better coping methods, often putting the blame on an outside source versus themselves. Those with high desire for control are often in leadership positions, avoid dependence, and are set on controlling their life. Those with low desire for control do not like responsibility and feel a lack of control over their circumstances. Sometimes those with high desire control can suffer negative consequences because they believe they have more control than what they actually have. But these individuals also show more persistence, react with more effort to a challenge, and set more realistic goals, which can be obviously very beneficial. Those with high desire for control can be greatly affected by situations where there is little control. Those individuals experience stress, depression, dominance. These individuals are also more vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.
I would consider myself an introvert. Although I am not assertive I do consider myself verturesome. And for the most part I consider myself shy unless I am with my friends. Although I do not consider myself as an extrovert, I do think that I would be classified at a low level of neuroticism. I do not experience a lot of fear or irritability but I do find my anxiety levels are sensitive when it comes to evenly a moderately stressful situation. I can completely identify with being underaroused because I have recently moved to a call-center and after an 8 hour shift I find myself terribly restless which in turn has a negative effect on my performance. As far as sensation seeking I would believe myself to be at a high level. I thoroughly enjoy new experiences. When it comes to affect-intensity I would definitely consider myself and affect-intense individual. I do notice that my emotions throughout the day vary quite a bit. As for control I have moderate to low perceived control and moderate desire for control.
Terms; personality characteristics, set point, happiness, arousal, control, introverts, extroverts, hedonic, eudaimonic, neurotic, sensation seekers, perceived control, desired control
Chapter 13 focuses on the personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and control. Most people are happy, and this is true almost irrespective of their life circumstances. People have a happiness and unhappiness set points that can be described by individual differences in personalities. Happiness emerges from extraversion and unhappiness emerges from neuroticism. Extraverts have a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions and are more eager to approach rewarding situations which creates greater sociability, greater social dominance, and greater venturesomeness. Extraverts have a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system). In contrast, neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions and therefore experience greater stress, more negative emotionality, and a steady stream of mood states such as anxiety, fear and irritability. Neurotics have a strong and highly sensitive BIS (behavioral inhibition system). Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The Yerkes/Dodson inverted U Curve shows that extremely low and high level of arousal produces poor performance while a moderate level of arousal means high performance and experience of pleasure. Some would argue this curve’s credibility, but everyday stimulation such as caffeine and time pressure seems to fit the hypothesis. Some people are sensation seekers. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. High sensation seekers are also willing to accept the risk associated with these exciting behaviors. There are also personal differences in affect intensity. Affect intensity concerns people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally. Affect-intense people experience their emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity and variability across many different emotion-eliciting situations. Affect-stable people experience their emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions from moment to moment or day to day. The last personality characteristic in Chapter 13 is control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control is the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles and enter situations in overly prepared ways. I think I am not very typical when it comes to my perceived control and desire for control. In applying the concepts to my life, I would say that I have a high perceived control because I feel that I can make a difference that I can obtain a desired outcome and I feel that in most cases my attempts to exercise control are usually predictable and responsive. However, I have a low desire for control. Unless I feel pressured, I just let life happen as it may. I don’t often make choices based on how much control I can have. I am not an extrovert; therefore seldom jump at the chance to be a leader-although I sometimes end up in that role. I also don’t mind others making up my mind for me The most interesting thing I found in this chapter was that sensation seekers have low levels of MAO (monoamine oxidase) which breaks down dopamine and serotonin. They also have a high dopamine level that makes them favor approach over inhibition and low serotonin levels means their biochemistry fails to inhibit them from risks and new experiences. I am fascinated by biopsychology. I have known people that I would consider as sensation seekers who have gotten into trouble with the law and drugs. Having the initial brain chemistry as described would tie so easily with drugs which hijack the pleasure center of the brain.
Terms Used: happiness, arousal, control, set points, extroversion, neuroticism, BAS, BIS, inverted U curve, sensation seeker, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, MAO, serotonin, dopamine
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. Two main personality characteristics that were discussed in this chapter were extraversion and neruoticism. Extraversion explains the answer to “Who is happy?”. This is because those that are more extraverted have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them much more aware of potential rewards in an envrionment. “Who is unhappy?” is answered by the personality characteristic neuroticism. Those that are higher in neuroticism are at a disadvantage. This is because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system which makes them much more prone to noticing signals of punishment in an environment.
Individuals that are higher in extraversion tend to automically have a more positive emotionality and are more approach-oriented. Individuals that are higher in neuroticism typically have a negative emotionality and are usually more avoidance-oriented.
Sensation seeking and affect intensity were also discussed in chapter 13. Our textbook defines sensation seeking as, “the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences”. To reach these sensations, people sometimes engage in risky and potentially dangerous behavior. Affect intensity is defined as, “the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions”. Those that are affect-intense strongly show their emotions. Those that are affect-stable only mildly experience their emotions.
Control was a significant section of this chapter. When people believe they have control in a certain situation, they are more likely to be positive and are more likely to attain their desired outcome. However, when people's perceived control is low, they don't put in as much effort and may be more negative, leading them to be less likely to attain the outcomes they desire. Those with a high desire for control typically try to gain control in as many aspects of their lives as they can and may feel depressed when they are not able to attain control.
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. There are 3 different motivation principles related to personality characteristics. The first one is happiness. Generally speaking, most people are happy. People react to extreme events in their life but will return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event. People have a set point of happiness withing themselves. That means they will be just as happy when they are 30 as they were when they were 20 event after life events happen. Extroversion is a source of happiness. Extroversion is composed of 3 facts: sociability (the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations) assertiveness (tendency toward social dominance) and venturesomeness ( tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations.) Extroverts are emotionally happier than introverts and are highly sociable. Extroverts are happier then introverts because they are more sensitive to rewards present in social situations. It makes them more susceptible to positive feelings and causes them to approach situations with potential reward. Extroverts have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) than introverts, which detects and regulates the source of positive emotions.
Neuroticism is associated with being unhappy, and is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics experience grater stress, negative feelings, anxiety, and fear than people who are not neurotics. Due to the fact that neurotics have a greater capacity to experience emotions and harbor disterbing and troubling thoughts, they suffer emotionally. Neurotics have a strong behavioral inhibition system (BIS) that is very sensitive. It sends signals of upcoming distress and can cause neurotics to avoid all sorts of situations.
There are two types of happiness you can feel. Hedonic happiness is the totality of ones pleasurable moments. Eudaimonic happiness involves engaging in oneself in the meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing.
The second type of motivational principle is arousal. Arousal is a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four explications arousal relates to motivation. Arousal is a function of how stimulation an environment is, people engage in activities to increase or decrease arousal, and when under or overaroused people will find opportunities to increase or decrease the arousal level. When people have low and high arousal they have low performance. Low arousal gives you not motivation to do anything while high arousal gets you over stimulated and you don't perform as well. A moderate level of arousal is when people perform at their best. People who feel a need for arousal that is higher then their baseline level will seek out sensations and get bored with routines while a low sensation seeker likes a low level of brain stimulation and likes routines. Affect intensity is the strength in which individuals experience emotions. Affect stable people are generally consistent in their mood. they are never one extreme or the other they just ride in the middle with little change in mood. People who are extremely affect intense feel constant highs and lows and bounce back from one to the other rather quickly.
Control is the last motivational principle. Control concerns the extent to which people strive to make their expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Every one has some amount of perceived control, or expectations a person holds that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. In order to feel perceived control people must be able to obtain the desired outcome and be in a situation that is somewhat predictable. People with a high amount of perceived control will see out and select relatively challenging tasks, set higher goals, and set plans about how to succeed. If you have a person with a high perceived control and a person with a low perceived control both in a situation that is equally challenging the person with a high perceived control is more likely to put effort into the task and succeed then the person with low perceived control. It is a circle that keeps reinforcing itself not matter if you are high or low. Sometimes people can face situations where control is almost impossible such as being in the army or being a doctor. Being in these situations can make people distressed, fell anxiety, and/or depressed. When people with a high desire for control are put in these situations they are vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.
The thing I found the most interesting was that perceived control is what you make it and not matter how you feel about it, high or low, it will always reinforce itself.
Chapter thirteen discusses personality characteristics in relation to happiness, arousal, and control. These three characteristics can all be controlled for both situational and by differing personalities. Majority of people reside in the middle range between sensation seekers or sensation avoiders while only a small percentage fall in the extremes of each. Strong life events generally push people to the extremely happy or extremely unhappy scale of their lives but generally most people return to their normal level of happiness after the event has passed, called a happiness or unhappiness set point. Extraverts tend to be associated with happiness. Three aspects of this personality type are sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Extraverts are generally happier than introverts and have more positive moods than their counterparts. This is because they tend to get stronger, positive emotions from rewarding life event due to greater sensitivity in their behavioral activating system.
On the other side of this discussion is unhappiness which is referred to as neuroticism. This can be defined as a predisposition to feeling negative emotions as well as feeling dissatisfied and unhappy. People that are neurotic suffer more from anxiety, fear, and irritability. These people feel more stress and negative life events generally cause more distress, and these feelings linger longer. The reason neurotics are more vulnerable to these feelings are because of their highly sensitive BIS (behavior inhibition system). This system regulates negative emotions and being highly sensitive to this means that they have a tendency to anticipate negative events.
Arousal is associated with alertness, wakefulness, and activation. How arousal is measured is by how stimulating the environment is, whether people’s behavior increases or decreases their arousal, a tendency to increase arousal when underaroused, and to decrease arousal when overaroused. Performance level is associated with the level of arousal. Performance is at its highest when it is at the moderate level and decreases when its increases from moderate to high. Low levels give a person a sense of boredom while high levels make people stressed and tense.
Sensation seeking is most related to arousal and reactivity. Those with high sensation seek continuous brain stimulation, bored easily, and always looking for ways to increase their arousal. They also tend to seek high risk activities. Affect intensity is the scale with which people can be emotionally aroused. Affect-intense individuals feel stronger emotions when positive events happen than when compared to affect stable personalities.
Control is mainly defined by two personality characteristics. These are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is how people preconceive how situations will turn out and their performance in situations while striving for a positive outcome. Desire for control is how people will make their own choices concerning others, in specific situations, or in leadership roles. A person that is high in perceived control seeks to take control of situations while striving for highly challenging tasks and roles. Individuals with a high desire for control are always seeking to control their situations and evaluating whether or not they will be able to take that control over each situation they face. Because high control individuals like to have control, when faced with events that are typically out of their control they will experience stress, anxiety, depression, and distress. This can also happen in places with large numbers of people. They are less likely to get things accomplished quickly and results in impatience as well as distress and tend to avoid situations like these.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, sensation seekers, sensation avoiders, extraverts, introverts, neuroticism, underarousal, overarousal, affect intensity, affect stable, perceived control, desire for control,
Chapter 13 is about Personality charactersitics. The chapter speaks about three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. These are happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter also spoke about 6 personality charactersitics: extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control.
HAPPINESS
Extraversion is the personality characteristic associated with happiness. Some of the components of extraversion that also allows them to be happy is greater sociability, social dominance, and venturesomeness. Extraverts are also happier than introverts because they have greater capactity to experience positive emotions. Neuroticism is the personality that is most associated with unhappiness. Neurotics are more likely to experience negative emotions.
AROUSAL
Some of the processes included in arousal are alertness, wakefulness, activation. There are four prinicples of arousal's contribution to motivation. They are based on the eviroment stimulating and engagement of behavior based on amount of arousal. There is an inverted u curve relationship between arousal level and performance or well-being. The personality charactesitc associated with arousal is sensation seeking. On the other hand affect intensity is an individuals ability to become emotionally aroused. It is the strength that people experience their emotions.
CONTROL
The book includes locus of control, percieved control, causality orientations, mastery vs helpless orientations, explanatory style, desitre for control, type A, and self efficacy as some of the personality charactersistics associated with control.
I was surprised to find out that most people actually are happy. Especially because there is a big market for increasing happiness and self help type of things. I also never knew there were two different types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic.
TERMS: happiness, arousal, control, personality characteristics, extraversiou, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, sociablity, social dominance, venturesomeness,hedonic, eudaimonic, alertness, wakefulness, activation, performance/well being, mastery versus helpless orientations, explanatory style, self-efficacy
Please read the following link:http://www.psychologicalscience.com/kim_maclin/2010/01/i-learned-it-at-the-movies.html as well as the 3 resource links at the bottom of that article.This semester's movies:Teen DreamsCast…
Chapter thirteen focuses on three motivational principles related to Personality Characteristics, with the first of those three being 'Happiness'. The section explains that generally most people are happy and that this is true almost "irrespective" of people's life circumstances. Human beings have two emotional set points, rather than just one. The first of those two is 'Positive Emotionality', or a person's happiness set point, which emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion. The second of the two set points is 'Negative Emotionality', or a person's unhappiness set point, which emerges mostly from individual differences in neuroticism. The section then focuses on connecting extraversion to happiness. The book explains that emotionally extraverts are happier than introverts and that they enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts. The book goes on to further explain that extraverts are happier than introverts because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions, and that extraverts have a stronger BAS (Brain Activating System) than introverts, which allows them to better detect and regulate signals of reward in the environment. Having a stronger BAS allows extraverts to anticipate situations with excitement, feeling happy, and wanting to approach situations. A later part of the section explains that there are two types of happiness, with the first type being 'Hedonic'. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one's pleasurable moments, it reflects a pleasant life and it represents what most people think of as happiness. The second type of happiness is 'Eudaimonic', which concerns self-realization. It involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing. It is the actualization of the self and it is realized through the pursuit and realization of personal authenticity and growth.
The second type of motivational principles related to Personality Characteristics is 'Arousal', which represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The book explains that there are four principles that explain Arousal's contribution to Motivation. The first principle states that "a person's arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is". The second principle states that "people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal". The third principle explains that when people are underaroused, they seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance. The fourth principle looks at the other end of the spectrum of arousal, so to speak, explaining that when people are overaroused they tend to decrease their arousal levels because increases are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. The section goes on to further explain that moderate levels of arousal result in the best performance, meaning that arousal and performance have an inverted-U relationship. The last part of the section focuses on 'Excessive Stimulation and Overarousal', explaining that over-stimulating, stressful environments upset emotional states, impair cognitive states, impair cognitive activity, and accelerate physiological processes.
The third type of motivational principles related to Personality Characteristics is 'Control'. The book explains that there are two main types of control, and those are two it focuses on. The first of those two is 'Perceived Control', which concerns differences in people's performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert, and that a person with high perceived control seeks out and selects relatively challenging tasks, sets relatively high goals, and generates sophisticated plans about how to succeed and what to do when progress is slow. The section further explains that perceived control is necessary for constructing beliefs about one's competence, efficacy, and ability. The book goes on to explain that there are two differences between perceived control and perceived competence, self-efficacy, and perceived ability. The first of those differences is that perceived control functions as the antecedent foundation on which these other beliefs are constructed. The second difference is that perceived control beliefs can emanate from any capacity, not just from one's own competence, efficacy, or ability. The second main type of control is 'Desire for Control', which concerns the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. The difference between the desire for control and perceived control is that high-desire-for-control individuals want control over their fates irrespective of how much control they currently have and irrespective of how structured or responsive the situation appears to be. I found that bit of information to be the most interesting part of the chapter, in part because most of the time, or maybe all of the time, I am the type of person that has a strong desire for control. Anyway, continuing on desire for control, high desire for control people are likely to: speak loudly, explosively, and rapidly; respond quickly to questions and comments, interrupt and talk over their partners, and end conversations when they want to. The last part of the section explains that desiring control is generally adaptive and productive when situations are controllable. The desire for control feeds into the illusion of control, meaning that in uncontrollable environments the desire for control works as a motivational liability, which I have personally experienced, and therefore can well relate to that information, meaning that I find it very useful to know that it has been proven by research.
Terms: 1) Happiness 2) Positive Emotionality 3) Negative Emotionality 4) Hedonic 5) Eudaimonic 6) Arousal 7) Excessive Stimulation and Overarousal 8) Control 9) Perceived Control 10) Desire for Control
Chapter 13 covers the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. Happiness is never clearly defined in the textbook but it states that most people are happy almost regardless of their life circumstances. The textbook also discusses how people who go through a very dramatic life event that produces large emotions there immediate happiness is affected but after a certain amount of time has passed their happiness level goes back to where it was before. This correlates to the concept of individuals having a happiness “set point”. Having a happiness “set point” means that regardless of your circumstance if you have a positive happy personality and happiness is in your genes you will be happy. The opposite is also true that if you do not have a positive happy personality you will not be happy regardless of your circumstance. This “set point” results from differences in individuals levels of extraversion and neuroticism. Chapter 13 states that extraversion is the personality characteristic most closely associated with happiness. Extraversion is defined in this Chapter by splitting it into three parts; sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is defined as the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations. An example of a person who has a high fulfillment of sociability would be someone who is known for being the life of the party. Assertiveness is defined as the tendency toward social dominance. An example of someone who is assertive would be a politician dominating a political debate. Venturesomeness is defined as the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. An example of an individual who has a high fulfillment of assertiveness would be a person who enjoys thrill seeking behavior such as sky diving. All of these things combined make extraverts different from introverts and allow them to be emotionally happier on average and enjoy more frequent positive moods. The personality characteristic that Chapter 13 associates with unhappiness is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Individuals who are high on neuroticism experience greater stress and more negative emotions than the average individual. The next motivational principle related to personality characteristics is arousal. Arousal is explained as representing a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Chapter 13 lists four principles to explain how arousal contributes to motivation. The first is a person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. The second is that people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. The third is that when underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal level, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance, whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance. The last is when overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. The last motivation principle related to personality characteristics is control. The textbook states that there are many possible personality characteristics that could be included under the category of control but perceived control and the desire for control encompass most of the spirit of control beliefs. Perceived control relates to the differences in an individual’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. The desire for control relates to the extent to which an individual will strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. Some negative effects of losing control or never having control are the individual becoming susceptible to depression and learned helplessness.
The thing that surprised me the most about this chapter was the effect that the different levels of neuroticism and extraversion can have on the overall happiness of an individual. I consider myself to be a very happy person and I operate on a very high level of extraversion so the correlation between the two does make sense. At the same time, I am surprised that it plays such a large role in the happiness of an individual compared to environmental influences.
M&E Terms:
Motivational, personality, happiness, arousal, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, Neuroticism, Arousal, environment
Chapter 13 discusses how personality characteristics can affect a person’s motivation and emotion for different events. There are three main motivation subjects that will be discussed: happiness, arousal, and control. Happiness obviously asks each person how happy they are and can be broken down into two different personality characteristics: extraversion and neuroticism. Extraverts are social, assertive, and full of adventure, which is associated with happiness; while introverts are the opposite and are associated with less frequent positive moods. Researchers have found that extraverts are happier because they respond stronger to positive situations in their lives due to biological differences in the behavioral activating systems in the body. The behavioral activating system is how the brain looks for rewards and the subsequent positive response. This mean the brain of an extrovert reacts more strongly to reward and anticipates reward more than in the brain of an introvert. The opposite of happiness is unhappiness, which is a characteristic associated with neuroticism. Neuroticism can be defined as emotional instability, as opposed to stable personalities. Interestingly, research has shown that neurotic individuals have a more sensitive behavioral inhibition system than do stable people. The behavioral inhibition system is what responds to punishment, and therefore associated with negative moods and emotions. This means the brain of a neurotic individual will respond more strongly to anything it feels is punishment, but will also anticipate punishment and respond accordingly.
The second motivation topic is arousal. Arousal represents the alertness and interest in performing a certain task. The book explains that arousal and performance have an inverted U relationship. As arousal is low and a person is bored their performance efficiency will be low as well. Other research also shows that low stimulation decreases cognitive abilities and makes a person prone to irritability. The inverted U relationship also shows that too much arousal is not good for a person. Too much stimulation increases stress, which also decreases cognitive abilities and performance efficiency. Another topic related to arousal is sensation seeking. This is a personality type which seeks out highly stimulating experiences which can be described as new, intense, and engaging. While this personality likes to take risks, it is better described as risk accepting, than risk taking. Due to the biological component of too little monoamine oxidase in the brain, which breaks down dopamine & serotonin, the person doesn’t have the best stopping system and therefore feel these experiences are worth the risk. The last part of arousal is affect intensity. This is defined as the strength an individual experiences emotion. An affect-intense individual reacts to situations with strong emotions, while an affect-stable individual reacts more evenly to situations.
The third motivation topic is control. The author believes “perceived control” and “desire for control” cover most of the control issues. Perceived control is the belief that a person can do what they need to do to be successful in a given situation. Learned helplessness occurs when a person feels they have lost control and no matter what they do they will not succeed. This low perceived control leads to low effort and the tendency to give up easily in difficult situations. The opposite is high levels of perceived control which makes a person more optimistic about the end result, leading to longer periods of effort and intensity. The desire for control is just how it sounds. A person with a high desire for control takes whatever action necessary to try and keep the end result what they want. The positive side is that the person achieves their goals, even if they are difficult, and has high levels of motivation. The negatives are that in situations that cannot be controlled, a person with a high desire for control gets extremely stressed and can’t function properly. People with low desires for control don’t need everything planned out and feel comfortable letting whatever happens, happen.
The most surprising thing learned in Chapter 13.
I was interested in the biological aspect of sensation-seeking. It is interesting to learn that they have high levels of dopamine and low levels of serotonin and monoamine oxidase. The book said that MAO breaks down dopamine and serotonin, but sensation seekers only have low levels of serotonin.
List of ME terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, inverted U curve, affect intensity, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control, learned helplessness.
Chapter 13 focuses on three aspects of individual differences, specifically in regard to a set of personality traits that causes changes and differences in our behaviors. The three main components discussed are happiness, arousal, and control. Several aspects of all of these are discussed.
The first section of the chapter focuses on happiness. There was a part in this section that I found to be somewhat surprising. The chapter talks about the differences between introverts and extraverts and how this personality trait affects the way we feel and act. It says that extraverts are typically happier than introverts because they have a larger capacity to experience positive emotions. The part of this section that was surprising to me was the discussion about how most people claim that they are happy. After reading the chapter it made sense that everyone has a happiness “set-point” and regardless of their surroundings and circumstances they are still happy. I think about people in areas of the world that have extreme misfortune and are still happy. This made me wonder if people are happy generally because they often to not know the difference between the life they are living and the life that other people live. However, I wondered if people have a happiness set-point how is it that so many people experience depression. Clearly there is a cultural aspect to this because of the high level of depression rates in the United States and the high level of prosperity and positive circumstances. So if depression is the opposite of happiness- I wonder if our set point impacts our likelihood of becoming extremely unhappy or depressed.
The most interesting part of the chapter to me was the discussion about perceived control and desire for control. The part of perceived control is something I had studied a lot as part of my I/O psychology courses. The way it can impact a person’s ability to be productive at work, show high job performance, and increase their engagement level is very interesting. I think that part of the challenges for organizations is to try to increase perceived control in employees so that they become more engaged and productive. There are ways to do this but it is no easy task. The other part of this section talked about desire for control. Desire for control is defined as the want or need for control over situations. As I read the examples the chapter presented it was not hard to think of people I know that fit into this category. I would say that I have a moderate desire for control as well. I constantly find myself working to control my environment and my future, and I also think I have a fairly high level of persistence. However, the chapter made me think of people that like to take risks in hopes of being able to control the outcome; the example that I think of is the gambler who constantly thinks he can control or predict the odds. I think that it is these people who find themselves in difficult situations due to their high need for control.
Lastly, the section about losing control is very interesting. When people are in situations in which they have little control it can cause a high level of stress and anxiety, especially for someone who has a high desire for control. The chapter gave the example of military life which I think really encompasses what losing control is all about. It is no wonder that people in the military often come home so traumatized by what they did and what they saw. The complete lack of control that people experience would be traumatizing for anybody, even those that do not have a high desire for control.
ME Terms: Personality, individual differences, happiness, arousal, control, perceived control, desire for control, persistence, losing control, engagement, productivity, outcomes, need for control, depression, happiness set-point, extraversion, introversion, positive emotions, cultural differences and performance.
Chapter 13 discusses the individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control when it comes to personality characteristics. The first discussed amongst these is happiness. I found it rather surprising that happiness could be seen as having a set point. When it comes to happiness, a "set point" will regulate happiness and subjective well being. We have two different set points, one being positive emotionality and the second being negative emotionality. The difference in set points arises from differences in personalities. These differences could be marked as extroversion (positive emotionality) and neuroticism (negative emotionality).
Extroversion encompasses three facets which are: sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. People who are characterized as extroverts tend to be happier and enjoy more positive moods than introverts. Reasoning behind this has somewhat to do with the fact that extroverts are more sensitive to the rewards that come in most social settings and because of this experience more positive feelings. It can also be said that extroverts have stronger behavioral approach systems (BAS). Due to this, they experience a "stronger incentive motivational state that energizes and directs their approach behavior".
The chapter notes that extroversion is not the key component of happiness. Happiness could be seen from two different aspects. The first is hedonic well being which is the totality of one's pleasurable moments. The second is, eudaimonic which is self realization which makes an individual engage in meaningful pursuits.
Neuroticism on the other hand, is the predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. People who are neurotic are more like to feel anxiety, fear, and irritability which is in most cases due to the harboring of disturbed and negative thoughts. They also have differing sensitivity levels in their behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which is strong and highly sensitive.
Arousal is the second aspect discussed in personality differences. Arousal can be seen as "representing a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation". The process of arousal is cortical, behavioral, and autonomic. It also has four principles. These principles include: (1) mostly a function of how stimulation the environment is (2) engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal (3) in light of under-arousement, people will seek out opportunities to increase arousal levels, which prove to be pleasurable and enhance performance, and (4) when over-aroused, people will take actions to decrease this. I found the study by Woodburn Heron to be rather interesting. After cutting off people's visual, auditory, and sensory information and making them stay in an unchanging environment. Upon participation, participants suffered from mental debilitation and found simple tasks to be challenging. This was due to being under aroused.
Arousal also brings about sensation seeking. Sensation seeking can be defined as, "seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of experience". Biologically, arousal stems from low levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO) which breaks down dopamine and serotonin.
Finally, the last aspect discussed is control. There are two different factors when it comes to control. The first is perceived control which examines the differences in people's performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Perceived control will centers around people's engagement, emotion, coping ability, and challenge seeking. Engagement is the "effort to gain control over an important outcome". This is important because the more willing someone is to engage in different environments the better their experiences will be. It helps produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. Perceived control also predicts how much effort a person is willing to exert given different circumstances and settings.
The second factor of control is desire for control. This is the "extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership, and being overly prepared". It is also how much a person is motivated when it comes to establishing control over the events in their lives and what happens. People with desire for control usually first like to establish their power, then restore whatever power they felt is lost. Desire for control can be over many things, one including communication with others. There are both positives and negatives when it comes to desire for control (figure 13.7; pg. 387), but the biggest downfall is that when a person with high desire for control feels as though they have lost control given the unchangeable circumstances of some environments, they are susceptible for learned helplessness and depression.
ME Terms: happiness, set point, extroversion, hedonic, eudaimonic, neuroticism, arousal, insufficient stimulation, sensation seeking, MAO, control, perceived control, engagement, desire for control
Chapter 13’s overall focus is on personality characteristics; happiness, arousal, and control in particular. These three motivational principles are closely linked to personality characteristics through subjective experiences, but there are individual differences between all three.
Happiness is experienced by everyone on this planet, no matter race, ethnicity or gender. Humans have two emotional set-points, not just one as previously thought. The first one is “positive emotionality.” The positive emotionality set point has to deal with one’s happiness, which comes from individual differences in extraversion. The second set point is “Negative Emotionality,” or one’s unhappiness set point. This comes from individual differences in neuroticism. The book then attempts to connect extraversion to happiness. The book states that extraverts are generally happier than introverts because they have a higher capacity for experiencing positive emotions. This is credited to the Brain Activating System that extroverts have a stronger mental capacity with than introverts. Having a stronger BAS allows extroverts to anticipate excitement and situations that accompany good moods better than introverts. The book uses the example of lottery winners vs. accident victims in terms of overall happiness. In both circumstances there is an event, whether positive (winning the lottery) or negative (suffering an accident) that affects happiness in the short term. But when evaluated a year after their life altering events, there was no significant difference in overall happiness. This shows that individual differences in people have more of an impact on happiness than significant events in the long term, whereas significant events control happiness much more in the short term.
The next personality characteristic in question is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Together the cortical (brain), behavioral (skeletal muscular system), and the autonomic (autonomic nervous system) constitute most of the motivational constructs of arousal. The book attempts to connect arousal and overall performance. An inverted-U curve is used to illustrate the differences between low, moderate and high levels of arousal on overall performance. Low levels of arousal produce relatively poor performances. And as arousal increases from low to moderate, both the intensity and quality of performance improves. But as the inverted-U curve demonstrates, too much arousal will ultimately lead to quality and efficiency decreasing. Therefore, what this means is that as humans, we must be aroused, but not too aroused to reach our optimal efficiency. Over-arousal, or excessive stimulation as the book calls it is equally detrimental as being under-aroused. Life is boring sometimes and when we are not being adequately stimulated our body “shuts down” to a degree. Same can be said if we are over-aroused. Too much stimulation and confuse our bodies, our cognitive way of thinking and many other things. A personal example of this would be Las Vegas. I went to Vegas last year with my family and girl-friend and was over stimulated from the beginning. Once I got off the plane there was more people and places to go than I was used to, I found myself becoming overwhelmed. And it never got better after that, there were so many eating options, gambling options, and entertainment options that I didn’t know what to decide on. Although choice is good, sometimes too much choice can make things too difficult. That is why when it comes to performance and life satisfactions, we must find the right amount of arousal and stimulation to be happy.
The third and final personality characteristic in question is control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. In order for someone to perceive that they have control, one must first be able or capable of attaining the desired outcome; second the situation itself must be somewhat predictable and responsive. If these two things are met, then perceived control is possible. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort someone is willing to put into a particular situation. Low perceived control will result in a low level of effort and a low success rate, on the other hand, high perceived control will lead to greater effort and a much higher success rate. Desired control is the second portion of the control section in this book. Desire for control is basically straight forward; it is someone’s desire to control any situation. A person with a high desire for control will do whatever it takes to succeed or control the situation. The negative aspect of this is that although someone may want to really control the situation, they are unable to do it through lack of skill or possibly lack or power. This can cause someone to become very frustrated and anxious, thus leading to failure. Control is a very slippery slope because we all want it but not everyone can handle it.
The most surprising thing I learned in chapter 13 was the section on losing control. When people have little to no control over situations, they tend to get very anxious and stressed, I am no different. Being put in situations where there is no control, or room for freedom I feel very uncomfortable and tend to “shut down.” The book uses the prison system as an example and it helps make a lot of sense out of this section. My father, a retired prison guard, would tell me stories about his job and how structured it was. There is structured time for everything in the prison system, you eat at the same time, exercise at the same time and sometime cannot freely use the bathroom as you please, depending on the circumstances. This would drive me crazy, I feel as though I would simply become a walking zombie and conform to that lifestyle forever. That is why I believe inmates struggle so much when they get out of prison; they become over stimulated with choices, and often times make the wrong ones.
Terms: Personality Characteristics, Happiness, Arousal, Control, Positive Emotionality, Negative Emotionality, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Brain Activating System, Perceived Control, Choice.
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics focusing on happiness, arousal and control. The most interesting part of this chapter to me was happiness. People have a happiness set point regardless of their life experiences. Extraversion means being highly sociable, assertive, and venturesome. Extraverts are happier than introverts. They are more sensitive to the rewards of most social situations and therefore actively approach these situations. Extraverts are more capable of experiencing positive affectivity because of their stronger behavioral activating system which detects signals of rewards. The BAS motivates extraverts by energizing approach-oriented, goal-directed behavior. It has been found that extraversion is biologically based and is heritable as seen in twin studies.
On the other side of things, neuroticism is linked to negative affectivity. Neuroticism is a predisposition to experience negative affect and to fell chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions because of their strong and sensitive behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which detects signals of punishment. The BIS motivates neurotics by energizing avoidance-oriented, goal-directed behavior. Neuroticism is also linked to chronic feelings of fear, anxiety, irritability, distress, hostility, anger, depression and self-consciousness due to the sensitive BIS.
Arousal includes alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Level of arousal is an important aspect of motivation. People with a low level of arousal show a low performance. People with a high level of arousal also show a low level of performance due to increased anxiety and emotional disturbance. Performance is highest when one is moderately aroused. When underaroused, as seen by Heron’s study, people feel unable to think clearly, visions, and decreased problem solving abilities. Overarousal can cause confusion, forgetfulness, and impaired concentration. Overarousal can be very uncomfortable and aversive but there are people who are considered sensation seeking. These people like a continual external supply of brain stimulation. These people search for new experiences and take risks. They see new experiences and sensations as worth the risk. Sensation seekers have been found to have higher levels of dopamine which favors approach over inhibition and also have low levels of the enzyme that breaks down dopamine.
This chapter talks about control as perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations of a person that they can interact with the environment to produce desired outcomes or prevent undesired outcomes. Perceived control beliefs influence engagement. The more control you think you have the more effort you will put forth and the more positive the outcome will be. Desire for control is how motivated a person is to establish control over situations in their lives. People who have a high desire for control select harder tasks, set more realistic goals, show greater effort, achieve higher goals, complete difficult tasks, and remain motivated. They are also more likely to attribute failure to some unstoppable force, attempt too difficult of goals, develop performance inhibiting reactions, invest too much effort, and develop an illusion of control.
I don’t think I am extremely extraverted or neurotic. I think I’m probably in the middle as are most people. I might be slightly higher for sensation seeking but nothing too crazy. I really like rollercoasters, scary movies, and getting tattoos but nothing that seems abnormally risky. When it comes to power, I think I have a normal perceived control and a low desire for control. I like to think that whatever is going to happen will happen but at the same time I know I can control certain things in my life.
I like this chapter because it was easier to read and understand than some other chapters. On the other hand, it was kind of short and I think more could have been talked about. I know from a previous class that personality has been found to be basically 50/50 with biological and environmental influences. This chapter made it seem like personality is mostly biological.
Terms: personality, happiness, arousal, control, Extraversion, BAS, Neuroticism, BIS, underarousal, overarousal, sensation seeking, perceived control, desire for control
apter 13 Largely deals with personality characteristics. It delves into what traits make a person have a happy/sad disposition. It also mentions how arousal affects motivation and behavior. The last section deals with how control may affect a person’s life.
The most basic thing to know about happiness is that it is relatively stable throughout a person’s live. If I were to win the lottery, I would be extremely happy for a few weeks. However, the amount of happiness would eventually return to previous levels. Being extraverted will also cause a person to be happy in his/her life. Extraverted people tend to seek out more awarding opportunities in their environment. Introverted people tend to not attend to these opportunities as frequently. Extraverted people are also happier because they possess a greater capacity to experience positive emotions. This means that they get really happy when something good happens. It also means that introverted people just become content and not euphoric. Extraverted experience hedonic happiness, and introverted experience eudaimonic happiness. Neurotics are less happy then people who have different traits. This is because they have a greater capacity for experiencing negative emotions. They also tend to harbor disturbing and troubling thoughts that are brought on by bad life events.
Arousal represents a variety of purposes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Under arousal causes people to seek out behavior to get aroused, increase pleasure, and to improve performance. Over aroused people seek out less arousing behavior to increase pleasure and performance. A medium level of arousal has the maximum potential for pleasure, performance, and feeling good. Some people do sensation seeking to get more arousal. These people generally take more risks that can ruin different aspects of their life. To them, these risks are worth it, and they actively participate in risk acceptance. Affect intensity can also influence one’s overall state of being. Affect-intense people experience strong emotions that vary in situations on a daily basis. Affect-stable people experience neutral feelings that are typically the same no matter what day it is.
There are two types of control this chapter address. The first is the amount of perceived control an individual has, and how that predicts performance. The next is the need for control, and the extent people strive to achieve it. People with high perceptions of control are able to set high goals, generate plans, and plan about how to succed. People with low perceptions do the opposite of this.
Terms: Happiness, arousal, control, extroverted, introverted, eudaimonic, hedonic, Neurotics, under/over aroused, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, need for control,
Chapter 13 is all about personality characteristics, one of my favorite topics! This chapter focuses on three topics related to personality: happiness, arousal and control. There are different personality traits that affect the motivational actions of individuals. First, the text discusses happiness. I found it interesting when they mentioned there is little to no difference in happiness between accident victims and lottery winners. It shows how much happiness depends on personal life events and the interpretation of such events. It also mentions that we all have a happiness “set-point” which relates to the idea that if we are happy now we will be happy later in life, and if we are unhappy now we will probably be unhappy later in life. I think this is based again off the interpretation a person has on their life.
Happiness is associated with extraversion, which is based off sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. An extrovert seeks out these while an introvert would lack these characteristics. It’s interesting to know that extroverts tend to be happier since they are more likely to approach positive and rewarding situations. Extroverts are more likely to show joy while introverts would only show contentment. When I look at my group of friends and recognize the introverts, I can completely agree with this statement. Also, it is important to understand there are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudiamonic. Hedonic is the reflection of a pleasant life, or it represents what most associate as the stereotypical happiness feeling. While eudiamonic is more of the actualization of the self or a person living as one’s true self.
The next personality characteristic relates to “Who is unhappy” and that is neuroticism. This is defined as one’s tendency to experience a negative experience and become chronically unhappy or dissatisfied. A person high in neuroticism experiences higher levels of stress, anxiety, fear and irritability. The opposite of neuroticism is emotional stability. A bad experience to a person high in neuroticism is upsetting alone but also brings a number of upsetting thoughts even after the event is over. This helps us understand why extraverts are generally happier and neurotics are generally unhappy.
Next, the text discussed arousal which relates to the processes that govern alertness. Understandably, when arousal levels are low so are performance levels. As arousal increases, performance quality increases. But when a person is over-aroused they feel stress and frustration which could affect performance quality negatively . Also creating negative effects would be if a person is under-stimulated. This can occur if a person is in a certain environment for too long. Humans have the ability to counteract such feelings through social interactions or mental imagery. Over-stimulation can also occur from such events as a repetitive bad relationship or overcrowding. If this emotional feeling manifest it can become anxiety, irritability or anger. If this cognitive feeling manifest it becomes confusion, forgetfulness, or impaired concentration. Not surprisingly, when a person is over-stimulated and these feelings arise, people try to rid them or people generally try to avoid situations where these feelings would arise. Many people differ when it comes to their reaction to the environment stimuli. Sensation seeking is related to one’s level of arousal because a high level sensation seeker prefers more stimulation. These people would become bored easily when things become routine. Sensations seekers are often considered risk takers. Sometimes this trait can manifest into a criminal behavior.
The final characteristic is control, which includes locus of control, perceived control, causality orientations mastery versus helpless orientations, explanatory style, desire for control and self efficacy. The two that appear most important are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the belief or expectation a person holds about the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. The perceived control also predicts how much a person is willing to exert in effort. Overall, it appears to be conceptually similar to related constructs, such as perceived competence, self efficacy an perceived ability. If someone has a high desire for control, they will often approach situations asking whether they can control the situation or not. They are not content with the idea of taking whatever life throws at them.
This chapter was interesting to me. It is always interesting to read about the way each individual can vary. For me, it is hard to imagine what I am not. But this is the only way to understand something you are not!
ME: happiness, extraversion, introversion, neuroticism, arousal, insufficient stimulation, excessive stimulation, sensation seeking, risk taking, control, perceived control, desire for control.
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. There are three main motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. They are happiness, arousal, and control. When something happens, like a life changing event our emotions suddenly change. Eventually though we will go back to being the same amount of happy that we were before the event happened. People seem to have a happiness “set point”. We have two emotional set points. They are positive emotions and negative emotions. How often we have positive or negative emotions depends on our personalities. The personality characteristic associated with happiness is extraversion. People who are extroverts are much happier than people who are introverts. Extroverts like to be sociable, they are assertive, and are adventurous. The reason why extroverts are happier than introverts is because they have a greater capacity to experience positive emotions. There are two types of happiness. They are hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It represents a pleasant life and represents what most people think of when they think of happiness. Eudaimonic well-being is related to self-realization. It involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing.
Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation:
1) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is.
2) People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal.
3) When underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance.
4) When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance.
A personality characteristic related to arousal is sensation seeking. A high sensation seeker becomes bored with routine. They continually need an external supply of brain stimulation. A low sensation seeker prefers less brain stimulation. This type of person likes routine.
When it comes to control there are two main personality characteristics that adequately capture most of the spirit of control beliefs. These two characteristics are perceived control and the desire for control. The desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. Control is often times an issue in our daily lives.
Terms used: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter thirteen is based around personality characteristics. The book focuses on three main parts happiness, arousal, and control. Depending on the situation and the surroundings a different affect can occur.
Happiness is experienced by everyone at some point in time. The amount of money doesn’t make a difference in happiness; both lottery winners and lower-income families say that they are happy. People with little education say that they are also happy, as well as people that have suffered through a terrible accident. Taking the accident for example, at first this is a huge change, and it’s a negative change. The person is not happy and has very little happy thoughts. As a month or two pass they begin to have both negative and positive thoughts. A year later the positive thoughts and emotions are now higher than the negative ones.
When you are asking the question, “Who is happy?”, you are asking a question about extraversion. To really dig into what extraversion is, it’s good to know the three parts that make the definition. Sociability is the enjoyment of others, assertiveness is the leaning of social dominance, and last is venturesomeness which is seeking enjoyment. These three main factors make up extraversion. Another question can be asked, “Who is unhappy?” At times, people go through a period of unhappiness. Neuroticism is the tendency to have or experience negative emotions and feel unhappy and dissatisfied. People who go through this are usually stressed, have mood swings and higher levels of fear and anxiety.
The next factor is arousal. Arousal is what controls a person’s activation wakefulness, and alertness. The inverted-U tells us the relationship between arousal and one’s performance. It shows that when a person has low levels of arousal, the performance level will also be low, as it moves up a step or two performance increases. But when arousal levels get to high the efficiency of the performance will start to decrease.
Sensory deprivation causes underarousal. It is caused by an unchanged environment. Overarousal is caused by stress. When people are in an environment where they feel stress most people try and get out of there and to a less stressful place. When a person can not get away from this environment their performance level decrease, they may become confused, and they may contain some heath problems. That is why it’s a good thing to try and stay away from things that can have a negative effect.
People have a different arousal level. Sensation seeking is the characteristic that are related to both arousal and reactivity. It is defined as the seeking for experience, taking risk, and having the willingness. A person with high seeking get bored with everyday routines and are always looking for new ways to increase arousal by find new experience. Those with low seeking tend to stay on track with the everyday routine.
The last main focus is control. There are two different briefs to control: perceived control, and the want or desire for control. Perceived control is based on the different performances a person does to have a positive outcome. Desire for control is where a people want to make their own decision and take on the leadership role. Having control is great, but there are times when having the power of control is limited and on the low side. Some of these situations are: crowded areas, military life, prison, and living in a nursing home. When a person strives for control and are unable to obtain it they fall under depressing and hopelessness.
Terms: happiness, arousal, and control, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, neuroticism, inverted-U, sensory deprivation, underarousal, overarousal, sensation seeking, perceived control, desire for control.
About seventy percent of people score in the middle of emotion scales. Typologies are seen as oversimplifying the contribution of personality process in motivation. Happiness has a two set points that is where people return to the same level of happiness regardless of life events (happy/tragic) Those set points are either positive or negative they are not opposite of each other but rather independent. Extroversion is the trait that determines positive set point. Extroversion is classified by sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness(which I did not know was a word )Extroverts are more sensitive to rewards and are more eager to approach positive feelings they also posses a stronger BAS.
There are two types of happiness , Hedonic which is most often associated with happiness, which equates to an overall pleasant life, Eudaimonic is about self-realization, living one's true self basically living life to the fullest.
Neuroticism is what governs the set point of negative emotions (unhappiness). It is relative to the BIS. They posses a grater ability to sense negative emotions and harbor troubling thoughts.There driven towards avoidance behavior because of their sensitivity of negative emotions and their aversion to it.
Arousal level is function of how stimulating environment is, people engage in behavior to either increase or decrease level of arousal, under arousal people seek out opportunities to increase arousal levels for pleasure and the opposite is true for over stimulation since it is aversive. The upside down U (inward U) as proposed by Yerkes and Dodson best demonstrates how moderate arousal produces the best results in productivity. It is sort of like how organisms need stress to live, like eustress I learned about that in health psychology.
People with sensation seeking personalities have biochemical differences from people that are sensation avoiders. Sensation seekers actually have decreased levels of MAO(enzyme) which is basically like the cleaner(re-uptake) of neurotransmitters in nerves this creates an increase in DA(dopamine) and a decrease in 5HT(serotonin).
There are three different types of affects people have, either affect stable which means there emotions are fairly stable across time, affect intense where there are large variations in emotion from day to day, and lastly where the person is neither one nor the other, so just in between.
Perceived control is the building block for other forms of control and emanates from capacity. It is the belief that one has the ability to produce positive outcomes. It determines how much effort one is willing to put fourth. Desire for control is the second area of control covered in chapter 13. It is when people strive to make own decisions and behavior. Engagement captures the intensity and emotional.
What I thought was neat was the experiment with the three different groups of people and how you could visually take in the variations between the people and then I was able to think of people I know and kind of place them into some of the categories.
Terms used: engagement, control, perceived control, desire for control,sensation seeking, affect intense, affect stable, arousal, neuoticism, BIS, BIA, hedonic, eudaimonic, extroversion, introversion, happiness, venturesomeness, inverted u , over arousal, under arousal, aversive, antecedent.
Chapter 13
Individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control happiness.
Chapter 13 was one of my favorite chapters so far from the book. I enjoy learning about the inner quirks that make everyone different, even in the same situations.
As I said, I learned that people can be in the exact same situation but be in completely different motivational and emotional states than those around them. There are many factors contributing to this phenomenon. Happiness vs. Neuroticism is one of them. Happiness is associated with extraversion. When compared to introverts, extraverts, as you probably know, are more social, venturesome, have stronger behavioral activating systems, and have a greater capacity to experiences the positive emotions that are present in the environment. Neurotics, on the other hand, have a greater capacity to experience the negative emotions present in the area. They are more sensitive to behavioral inhibition systems and are eager to avoid these potentially punishing situations. This may lead a neurotic person to develop avoidance behavior and obtain emotional stress.
Both neurotics and extraverts battle with arousal—be it overarousal or underarousal. Arousal contributes to motivation in four main ways:
1. One’s arousal level is a function of how stimulating an environment is.
2. People engage in behavior to either increase or decrease arousal.
3. When underaroused, people want to increase their arousal level because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance while decreases are aversive and undermine performance.
4. Number four is the exact opposite than number three. People want to decrease arousal when overly aroused.
Being underaroused can stem from sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation is when one’s environment is ultimately unchanging. We know this is aversive because according to a recent study the brain and nervous system prefer for the environment to generate and stimulate arousal. Overarousal, on the other hand, is caused by stressful environments and can lead to three main side effects:
• Emotional disruption (anxiety, irritability, anger)
• Cognitive Disruption (confusion, forgetfulness, impaired concentration)
• Psysiological disruption (sympathetic, nervous system, hyperactivity)
Next, the book segways into sensation seeking behaviors. Sensation seeking is a topic of great interest to be because I feel like I relate to its qualities. Sensation seeking is defined as, “the seeking of varied novel or complex, intense sensation and experiences, the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences.” There is an actual difference in the brains of those who are sensation seekers and those who are not—amazing. The biological basis of sensation seekers is that they have low levels of monoamine oxidase, high levels of dopamine, and low levels of serotonin.
Last, but not least, is information about control. One’s perceived control—or,
expectations of one’s control over one’s behavior and environment in order to produce desirable outcomes, has a lot more riding on it than I ever thought. In order to have a high level of perceived control one must first believe, also, the situation needs to be somewhat predictable and responsive. Perceived control beliefs are very important because they effect a lot of things, such as: goals, choices, effort, concentration, persistence, emotional states, performance, and problem solving strategies. It is obviously better to have high perceived control. People who are engaged feel more involved with the outcome, so they are in turn reinforced to have a higher perceived control. The desire for control lies in how motivated we are for control. I often times find I have a high perceived control in some situations (mostly familiar ones) and low perceived control in others.
The focus of chapter 13 was on personality characteristics and more specifically individual differences that appear between people. The chapter broke down the individual differences into three main categories which included: happiness/well-being, arousal and control. The two main types of personality characteristics that are related to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is often thought of as the characteristic that explains who is happy. Extraversion can be broken down into three separate facets that include sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness is the tendency toward social dominance, and venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. Extraverts are happier than introverts, because they have a strong behavioral activating system (BAS) that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Neuroticism is often thought of as the characteristic that explains who is unhappy. As the contradiction to extraversion, neurotics often suffer emotionally, because they have a strong behavioral inhibition system (BIS) that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment.
Arousal includes a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation by processes that are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation can be organized in the “inverted-U” relationship between arousal and performance/well-being. This “inverted-U” shows that performance is low at both high and low arousal and performance is high at moderate levels of arousal. There are two personality characteristics related to arousal which include sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. Often times sensation seekers will use sex, drugs, and gambling to appease their need for new experiences. Affect intensity is the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. An individual who is affect-stable experiences emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions. Conversely, an individual that is affect-intense will experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion-eliciting situations.
Finally, control can be described by two personality characteristics that include perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent undesirable ones. When someone’s perceived control is weak they engage in tasks only half-heartedly, showing passivity and negative emotion. Desire for control is the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. An individual that is high in desire for control approaches situations by wanting to control what happens to them, so they strive to establish control and to restore it when control is lost or threatened.
I thought that the most interesting part of this chapter was the discussion about insufficient stimulation and underarousal. The study that was described on sensory deprivation in which participants just laid in a bed with very minimal to no sensory arousal was fascinating. The idea that you can’t think clearly when there is absolutely no sensory information being received seems to be very counterintuitive to what you would normally think. The fact that there are no distractions whatsoever would make you think that you could think more clearly than you ever have before, but the opposite was found. This extended into the fact that a lot of people reported dreams and visions while awake. This leads to the idea that our minds actually need to be aroused by our various senses to function normally. This made me think of the controversial issue that people today are constantly bombarded all the time by new technology and this could lead to sensory overload by constantly being “connected” to the computer/technology world. After reading this section of the chapter it actually made me feel good to think that our brains are much more capable of handling the constant stimulation that it receives in the modern world. Of course there are limits to how much our brain and senses can handle and the fact that our body did not evolve around or for this technology must also be considered.
ME Terms: personality characteristics, individual differences, happiness/well-being, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, behavioral inhibition system, behavioral activating system, inverted-U, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, insufficient stimulation, underarousal, sensory deprivation
Chapter 13 was about Personality Characteristics. These are what make up the different ways people deal with life events. These individual differences make up the different motivational and emotional states that people experience, even in the same situation. Some of these personality characteristics include: extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. Each person could have one (or more) of these characteristics that cause them to act a certain way in certain situations. Also, this chapter mentions the three motivational principles which are related to these characteristics: happiness, arousal and control.
People usually have a happiness “set point”. This means that people have a set point at which they are happy--they don’t get any happier than that set point. No matter what the circumstances are. I found this very interesting. There are certain things in life which could make a person very happy, and I never thought of us having a “set point” of happiness; something saying that we will never get happier. In this section, it also talks about extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion has three main facets: sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Generally, extroverts are happier than introverts and are in better moods more frequently. One of the reasons why extroverts are happier is because they are more sensitive to rewards and, therefore, have more positive feelings. They also have a stronger BAS, which is the source of their positive emotions. When I read this, I wasn’t sure that I agreed with what it was saying. I am a very introverted person, but would consider myself very happy. But it started to make more sense as I read through it again. By being extroverted and more social, you will more likely be more sociable. Usually being around other people, or being a social person in general, results in positive thoughts/feelings which would make a person happier.
Neuroticism is defined as experiencing negative affect and feeling chronically dissatisfied/unhappy. Throughout the days, they tend to experience more stress and steady moods of anxiety, fear, and irritability. Neurotics not only tend to experience bad events, but they also have upsetting/pessimistic thoughts that hang around even after that event has passed.
Arousal is a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There is an “inverted-U” shape between arousal and performance. This means that people who experience low stimulation (arousal) have poor performance because tend to be bored and restless. And people who experience high stimulation (arousal) also have poor performance because they experience tension and stress. To experience optimal performance, you need to be moderately stimulated. This was very interesting to me as well. I had always thought of having a lot of stimulation in your life, the better your well being. But it does make sense when I think about school. Having so much to keep you busy (class, studying, job, etc) can be overwhelming and actually hurt your performance.
Control is divided into perceived control and desire for control. Perceived Control is a persons beliefs and expectations that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. These control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert in certain situations. Desire for Control, on the other hand, reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. People who have a high desire for control are not content to take whatever life throws them, and they feel the motivation to influence life and what happens to them. After reading this, I would say that I do not have a high desire for control. I tend to “go with the flow” and don’t really feel the need to control what happens to me in life--I have learned that you can’t do that.
Overall, this was a really good chapter and I learned a lot. There were a lot of things I didn’t really know much about, and it was very interesting to learn more and see where I fit into the whole thing.
TERMS: personality characteristics; individual differences; happiness; arousal; control; set point of happiness; extraversion; neuroticism; behavioral activating system; perceived control; desire for control;
Chapter 13 Summary
The personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and or control are found subjectively within situational events or experiences. All situations vary in how stimulating, arousing, and controllable they are based in large part upon individual differences. Our individual differences and personality characteristics affect how we respond to situations or how we feel about situations, specifically happiness, if we felt arousal, or if we perceived control in the situation.
Despite life circumstances most people are happy and while people react strongly to events in life such as winning the lottery that the text talks about, they also return to the level of happiness or positive emotionality they had prior to the event. The text talks about having a “set point” in happiness much like our physical bodies have a genetic aspect to body type and weight and we can only alter them to a certain degree. It was interesting to consider the fact that we also have a set point in negative emotionality and how happy or unhappy we are independent indicators of our well-being rather than opposites.
I love the association with the question of “who is happy” to the personality characteristic of an extrovert! This makes it easier for me to remember because extroverts are very sociable, they are more assertive and venturesome risk takers. Naturally this stimulates excitement because the extrovert is biologically motivated with a stronger BAS than introverts. In the BAS signals are sent more intensely that build in excitement in anticipation of pleasure or feeling happy and this is how they approach situations.
On the topic of neuroticism, personality characteristics can be associated with the clever question of “who is unhappy” because neurotic individuals experience negative effects such as dissatisfaction and unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally by being sensitive to environmental signals of punishment and a prolonged negative affect after the actual experience. They are sensitive to the biological motivation system of BIS that inhibits their behavior through avoidance, escape and withdrawal.
The activity of the cortical brain, the behavioral mechanism of the skeletal muscular system and the ANS make up arousal. We are aroused by how stimulated an environment is then we engage in behavior to either increase or decrease our levels of arousal. If we are under aroused we will either be bored or stressed; of which both are found to be aversive, or we will seek out more stimulating pleasurable activities or behaviors. If we are over aroused we eventually become overwhelmed or we feel the situation to be aversive and we will seek to decrease our arousal levels.
The beliefs and expectations we hold about how we can interact with the environment to produce our desired outcomes and prevent the undesirable outcomes defines perceived control.
Control that is perceived needs to be somewhat responsive and predictable to generate plans strategically set to reach our goals because forethought allows us to focus on the persistence to reach our goals or adjust them according to feedback while maintaining a positive emotional state. Perceived control influences our engagement level, our emotional state, our coping strategies and how we seek out challenges. If we become dissatisfied, the beauty of an extrovert with high levels of perceived control will dismiss the issue and blame it on aspects that are out of there control.
Terms: personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, control, individual differences, set point in happiness and neuroticism, BAS, BIS, pleasure/punishment signals, perceived control, influences engagement, emotion, and coping strategies
Chapter 13 focuses on three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: 1. happiness; 2. arousal; and 3. control. The main question this chapter is trying to answer is, Why do different people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation? In the beginning of the chapter, the authors put heavy emphasis on being cautious when reading about specific individual differences and how relatively few people are at either extreme of the specific characteristic—most people are somewhere in between. The first main section of the chapter is titled Happiness. Happiness is never specifically defined within the section; however, the authors note that most people are happy. One thing I found interesting in this section was the idea that people who faced negative life events (e.g., life-threatening accident) reacted strongly to the event but then seemed to return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event after a few months. Next the text talks about two different ‘set points’ people have that regulate their happiness. The happiness set point is called extraversion. Extraversion has three parts that describe the term: 1. sociability; 2. assertiveness; and 3. venturesomeness. People who are extraverts have greater tendencies toward those three things. Extraverts are happier than introverts and have more positive moods compared to introverts because they have a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions compared to introverts. Also, the text talks about how extraverts have a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system) than introverts do. The BAS is a brain system that detects and regulates signals of reward in the environment. For extraverts, these signals of reward activate their BAS whereas with introverts their BAS would be mildly activated. The unhappiness set point is described as neuroticism. According to the text, neuroticism is defined as ‘a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” Basically, neurotics are emotionally unstable individuals. Neurotics have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions and constantly have disturbed and troubling thoughts. This differential capacity to experience negative emotions occurs because neurotics and emotionally-stable people have different levels of sensitivity to the BIS (behavioral inhibition system). The BIS is a brain system that detects and regulates environmental signals of punishment. Neurotics have a strong and very sensitive BIS whereas stable individuals have a weak and not so sensitive BIS. The BIS functions as a motivational tool by motivating people to engage in avoidance-oriented, goal-directed behavior (e.g., escape, withdrawal, avoidance).
The second main section is titled Arousal. There are four principles that explain what arousal contributes to motivation: 1. a person’s arousal is triggered by things in the environment; 2. people will engage in behavior that will increase or decrease their level of arousal; 3. when people are underaroused, they will find opportunities to increase their arousal level because increases are pleasurable and enhances their performance whereas decreases are negative and negatively affect performance; and 4. when people are overaroused, they will find opportunities to decrease their arousal level because increases are negative and negatively affect performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. These four principles are illustrated in the text on pg 375 Figure 13.3 which shows the inverted-U curve of the relationship between arousal level and performance/well-being. One really interesting study regarding insufficient stimulation and underarousal was one done by Woodburn Heron where he paid participants to stay in an unchanging environment with time for meals and bathroom breaks. Participants were deprived of any sensory information in order for Heron to study effects of sensory deprivation. It’s no wonder that he had a hard time keeping participants in the study for more than a couple days—I would go crazy!! The arousal section also touches on sensation seeking people who search for new experiences (they like change), engage in more risk taking, and have a biological basis to behave in the ways they do (they have high levels of dopamine which favors approach over inhibition; also have low levels of serotonin which doesn’t work to keep them from risks and new experiences). The last part of this section is affect intensity, or the capacity for a person to become aroused emotionally. People can either be affect-intense or affect-stable. Basically, affect-intense people are more sensitive to changes in arousal than affect-stable people.
The last main section is titled Control. There are two types of personality characteristics related to control discussed in the text: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control deals with differences in people’s “preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes.” Desire for control deals with “the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways.” Two things need to be true for perceived control: 1. the person must be capable of obtaining the desired outcome; and 2. the situation in which the person wants to obtain the desired outcome must be at least somewhat predictable and responsive.
Terms Used: personality characteristics ,happiness, extravert, introvert, neuroticism, personality characteristics, set points, happiness set point, unhappiness set point, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, avoidance-oriented behavior, goal-directed behavior, arousal, underaroused, overaroused, inverted-U curve of the relationship between arousal level and performance/well-being, sensory deprivation, sensation seeking, dopamine, serotonin, affect-intense, affect-stable, control, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter thirteen discusses personality characteristics and the three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. The three principles are happiness, arousal, and control. Every person has a different level of happiness, arousal, and control. With happiness, it seems that most people are generally happy. Although life brings about negative events that cause unhappiness, people seem to return to a happiness set point after a little while. A person’s happiness set point is similar to body weight. People have a point where they usually remain at, but can fluctuate due to other circumstances. There is also an unhappiness set point. These set points are derived from two personality characteristics: extraversion and neuroticism.
Extraversion is related to happiness. It’s a characteristic that results in sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. It’s not just these facets that make a person happy, however. A person that is extroverted tends to be more open and sensitive to positive feelings. Therefore, they approach situations that would bring about positive feelings, resulting in their label of extroversion. Introverts tend to do the opposite but avoiding situations like this and are sensitive to negative feelings. There are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness comes from positive events that happen in a persons’ life. Eudaimonic happiness comes from the self and their meaning of the events that happen to them, good or bad.
Neuroticism is related to unhappiness, or suffering. Neurotic people are predisposed to experienced negative affect and tend to be unhappy most of the time. They are emotionally unstable and center their thoughts on negative things rather than positive things. This instability leads to anxiety, depression, and anger. Unlike extroverts, neurotic people are sensitive to the punishing aspects of a situation rather than the rewarding ones.
The second motivational principle is arousal. This represents an array of processes “that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation” (374). It occurs within the brain, skeletal muscular system, and autonomic nervous system. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation: 1. A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. 2. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal level. 3. When underaroused, people seek opportunities to increase arousal because it produces pleasant feelings. 4. When overaroused, people seek opportunities to decrease arousal because it produces aversive feelings. These principles are present in a model called the “inverted-U” curve. This curve shows that low and high arousal equals low performance. This is because low arousal produces boredom and therefore no interest in performing well. High arousal produces stress, which people tend to avoid. It’s best to be moderately aroused because people perform well at this level.
Being underaroused can lead to some problems. A type of research called sensory deprivation has been done to show this. “Sensory deprivation refers to a person’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment”. A study was done in which male college students were paid a large amount of money to stay in a room that had no noise or any other distracters. The environment was unchanged, except to get food and go to the bathroom. As time went by, researchers would have the students do different types of problems. They noticed that the students progressively worsened as the time went by and that their moods were very irritable. Even though the students were being offered money to stay, most people left within 2 or 3 days. This shows that humans need a certain level of arousal to be happy and function and a good level.
On the other end, it’s also problematic to be overaroused. As stated before, it causes stress. There are three types if disruption that stress causes: emotion, cognitive, and physiological. Emotional disruption causes anxiety and anger. Cognitive disruption causes confusing, impaired concentration, and forgetfulness. Physiological disruption causes problems like high blood pressure. Being stressed can lead to all these things happening at once, which would not be a pleasant experience. If someone isn’t able to decrease the amount of stress they have, it can lead to negative affect and other problems.
Affect intensity can be defined as the amount of strength in which an individual experiences their emotions. Someone who’s very affect-intense experiences their emotions very strongly and portrays them easily. The opposite of affect-intense is affect-stable and these people experience their emotions milder. This can be measured by questionnaires. It’s a psychological difference, not physiological.
The third principle is control. The two concepts of control discussed in this chapter are perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is the control people believe that they have or will have over a situation. If a situation is known to be somewhat unpredictable or difficult, people react differently based upon how much control they feel they have over it. It depends on how much effort they’re willing to put forth. This perceived control affects their motivation and how they react to situations. Desire for control is the other concept. This refers to how much an individual is motivated to have control over their lives. People have are high in the desire for control like to make their own decisions, be leaders, plan ahead, and are independent. This is different from perceived control because people with a desire for control want to control over the things in their life and perceived control is thinking you have control. People who want to have control establish it by being loud and quick in conversation. They tend to end conversation after they say what they have to or if the person converts to their opinion. The negative part of having this characteristic is that they still believe they have control over a situation even when they don’t.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, happiness set point, unhappiness set point, extraversion, neuroticism, hedonic, eudaimonic, inverted-U curve, underarousal, overarousal, sensory deprivation, emotional/cognitive/physiological disruption, negative affect, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Arousal, happiness levels, and amount of control were keys in Chapter 13. A commonality within these three characteristics is that they all require a gentle balance in order to produce the best response. If there is too much or too little of any of these then people will not accomplish their desired outcomes. In addition, without accomplishing a moderate amount of each people will not be as encouraged to accomplish goals because mental and physical consequences will cloud their ability to do so.
For example, when someone is sitting in their home going through their emails they are focused. If a loud noise occurs from an unknown location, that person switches from being moderately aroused by their emails to over aroused by their flight or fight response due to the unknown loud noise. While being so aroused, the person may not act appropriately and may be unable to focus on what to do. In the same note, if someone is under aroused or bored by a situation they will not be as productive (such as answering questions to a phone survey when someone calls at midnight). Research has shown that people often prefer a stimulating environment that is consistent. When people do experience a high or low arousing environment, they always attempt to decrease/increase their arousal by engaging in emotional or behavioral changes (e.g. responding differently to a situation). By accomplishing a moderate state of arousal, people are more likely to be happier.
Overall, most people are neither very happy nor very unhappy; they are all moderately happy regardless of circumstances in their lives. This means that people who are rich and powerful are the same amount of happy as people who are living in a low SES area, working at a manufacturing plant. There is a “set point” that people gravitate back to after experiencing really awesome or really awful events. In addition, everyone falls (more or less) into two groups that affect happiness; extroversion and neuroticism. People who are extroverted have a more general inclination to be happier because they view events as opportunities. Within these opportunities extroverts find greater connection others (greater sociability), great influence over others (greater social dominance), and increased availability of fun events (greater venturesomeness). In general, extroverts benefit in numerous ways over neurotics. People who are neurotic constantly view events as negative and are consequently dissatisfied with many events in their lives. As a result of being displeased with multiple life events, neurotics avoid activities and therefore lose opportunities to thrive. However, people have the ability to make changes for themselves and choose their reactions to events. It will take practice, but learning to respond positively to events in life will lead to better outcomes every time.
Finally, control affects how people behave in relation to the future results they want to see. This means that people who perceive their control as being high will exert more energy, be more persuasive, and be able to face difficult aspects of an event better than people who think they have not control of their current situation. However, there is a major different between thinking you can accomplish a goal and needing to accomplish a goal by any means necessary. The latter description refers to people who have a high desire for control (DC). These type of people believe they can influence (whether this is true or not) the outcomes of events in their lives. When they receive the outcomes they desire, they compliment themselves on their hard work. However, when the outcomes are different than what they expect they react in a depressive manor. Therefore, having a high perception of control is beneficial and having a high desire for control is less desirable in the long run.
I feel like maintaining a balance in arousal, happiness, and control is something everyone strives to accomplish everyday. Through experience in different events and stressful situations, we all learn to react in a way that allows us to accomplish our expected outcomes. Trial and error are often the best ways to learn how to gauge each of these characteristics. When a moderate level is found for each of these in any given situation, the results are bound to be as expected.
Chapter thirteen is about personality characteristics, and it focuses on three motivational principles in relation to personality characteristics. They are happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter cautions that few people are at an extreme in a characteristic. Most people are not extremely extraverted or have no extraversion at all, but instead, most are somewhere in between these two poles.
The first motivational principle discussed is happiness. Most people say that they are happy no matter their life circumstances. There are two personality characteristics that relate to happiness: extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is the personality characteristic that discusses who is happy, and extraverts tend to be happier than introverts. This is because extroverts have a stronger BAS or behavioral activating system, which makes them more aware of signals of rewards around them. There are two different types of happiness. Hedonic well-being is all of the person’s pleasurable moments, and it is what most people think of when they think of happiness. Eudaimonic well-being is participating in worthy and meaningful events and behaviors. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic that discusses who is unhappy, and neurotics suffer emotionally. Neurotics have a stronger BIS or behavioral inhibition system, which makes them more responsive to signals of punishment around them. Generally, extraverts are happy and neurotics are unhappy. Results from several surveys and tests show that extraverts will be excited, enthusiastic, and happy about being in potentially rewarding situations, and neurotics will be inhibited, hesitant, and anxious about being in potentially threatening situations.
Arousal is the second motivational principle, and sensations seeking and affect intensity are two personality characteristics associated with it. There are four principles that explain how arousal relates to motivation: arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal, people seek out situations to increase their arousal when they are underaroused, and people seek out situations to decrease their arousal levels when they are overaroused. These four principles make up an inverted-U relationship, and optimal performance is when someone is moderately aroused. Sensory deprivation is an individual’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. People with sensory deprivation are more irritable and do worse on cognitive evaluations. Overstimulating is caused by stressful environments and shows itself through feelings of anxiety, irritability, anger, confusion, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, and high blood pressure. Sensation-seeking is the need for varied, different, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take social, legal, financial, and physical risks to gain that experience. Sensation seekers look for new experiences such as sex and drugs and participate in risky behaviors like skydiving, smoking, and gambling. Affect intensity is the strength at what individuals typically experience their emotions. Affect-intense people experience and show their emotions strongly and with much variation. Affect-stable people experience and show their emotions mildly and with minimal variations.
Control is the third motivational principle, and perceived control and desire for control are two personality characteristics associated with it. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations a person has that he or she can get a desired outcome and prevent an undesired outcome. In order for this to happen, the person has to believe they have control in that situation and the situation needs to be somewhat predictable and responsive. A person with high perceived control chooses more difficult goals and puts in more effort to reach them. A person with low perceived control chooses easier goals and effort and confidence decrease. Desire for control is the extent an individual is motivated to gain control over the events in his or her life. People with high desire for control ask themselves if they will be able to control the events when entering a situation. They prefer to make their own decisions, prepare in advance, avoid depending on others, and choose leadership positions. They speak loudly, respond quickly to questions, and interrupt frequently. They end conversations when they want to, usually after getting the other person to agree with their views. People with low desire for control avoid responsibilities and prefer others to make decisions for them. Desire for control is not dependent on their current level of control in a situation or how responsive the situation is. When people desire control but the environment doesn’t allow it such as in the military, at the dentist, and in traffic, people become vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.
Terms: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, behavioral inhibition system, sensations seeking, affect intensity, sensory deprivation, overaroused, underaroused, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discusses the topic of personality characteristics. There are 3 major principles that we attribute to personality characteristics including happiness, arousal and control. Almost any event has the potential to affect all 3 of these. The personality characteristics discussed in this chapter are extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control and desire for control. Although a few individuals experience extreme levels (either high or low) on any one of the characteristics discussed in this chapter, most people fall somewhere in the middle of each personality characteristic.
Overall, most people are happy. Researchers have used experiments that enabled subjects to record their emotions or moods throughout the day and found that although some people are happier than others, most people are happy despite their life circumstances. People do have a happiness “set point” for positive emotionality (found in individual differences in extraversion) and an unhappiness “set point” for negative emotionality (found in individual differences in neuroticism.
Extraversion is closely tied to happiness. Extraverts display assertiveness and tendencies for dominance, sociability and enjoy being around people and social situations and they are more venturesome and tend to seek out situations that stimulate them. They are happier than introverts and experience more positive moods. They can be happy alone as well. The reason why they are happier is because the are more sensitive to the rewards in social situations. They have a stronger behavioral activating system than introverts. Their brain systems actually detect signals of reward in the environment which causes them to benefit from those signals that make them feel excited and wanting to approach the situation. Studies show that extraversion is based more on genetic than environmental factors which has been found by twin studies.
Neuroticism is closely tied to unhappiness and is essentially a predisposition for more negative emotions and negative moods like anxiety, fear and irritability. They are more emotionally unstable. They have different levels of sensitivity to situations than extraverts due because they pick up signals of punishment which leave them feeling fear, anxiety and the desire to avoid the situation. They have a behavioral inhibition system which motivates them for avoidance behaviors.
Arousal processes control alertness, wakefulness and activation. A person’s arousal level is generally a function of how stimulating the environment. Optimal performance occurs when an individual is moderately aroused, that is, alert and not tense because overstimulation can lead to poor performance as well as underarousal. Low stimulation can create boredom and restlessness whereas high stimulation can create tension and stress.
Sensation seeking is a personality characteristic related to arousal. High sensation seekers prefer more continuous stimulation, are often bored with routine and are constantly looking for new arousal opportunities in the environment. Low sensation seekers differ by preferring less stimulation and show a preference for routine. Sensation seekers often search for new experiences and are usually who we picture jumping out of plans, playing extreme sports and participating in risky behaviors such as drugs or alcohol use. They have lower levels of monoamine oxidase that is involved with the breakdown of dopamine and serotonin. Sensation seekers have high levels of dopamine (which makes them favor approach rather than inhibition behaviors) and low levels of serotonin (which then fails to inhibit them from risks and new experiences.
Affect intensity is involved with a person’s capacity to be aroused emotionally. Individuals who are affect-intense experience their emotions strongly and have high reactivity. Individuals who are affect-stable experience emotions more mildly and show smaller fluctuations in their reactions. Although they do not differ in physiology, they do differ psychologically because affect-intense individuals are more psychologically sensitive to changes in arousal. Essentially their arousal thermostat is more easily activated whereas an affect-stable individual is far less sensitive to these changes.
Control incorporates many personality characteristics, however, our chapter deals with perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control refers to beliefs about how that person can interact with their environment to get desired outcomes rather than undesired outcomes. 2 things have to happen in order for this perception of control to occur. One is that the individual must feel they are capable of getting the desired outcome and two is that the situation must be at least somewhat predictable and responsive. People who experience learned helpless believe the opposite and feel as if the environment has more control over them rather than the other way around. People with high perceived control beliefs are more engaged and show more effort. People with low perceived control are more disaffected and show little effort and become discouraged easily.
Desire for control relates to an individual’s motivation to have control over the events in their lives. High DC individuals ask themselves (when a situation presents itself) “Will I be able to control what happens here?” They are not going to take a passive role in their own lives. Low DC individuals avoid responsibility and have less motivation to control what happens in their lives and are often simply comfortable with others doing the decision making. The have a “It is what it is” mentality. Unfortunately, high DC individuals can cause themselves harm by attempting difficult goals and displaying hostility when faced with failure. They can also persist too long tasks or problems that can’t be solved.
One of the most interesting things I learned in this chapter was when reading about happiness research. Researchers found that asking both lottery winners (a positive event) and trauma victims who sustained injury (a negative event) about their levels of happiness a year after these events to rate their happiness. Surprisingly, their responses did not differ much from each other. Although initially the accident victims displayed unhappiness, as soon as two months after the trauma they were showing decreased negative emotions and increased positive emotions. I wonder if I would be reporting the same thing if I were the trauma victim. To be honest, I doubt it!
I can definitely see where I lie on the curve of some of these characteristics. I am most definitely not on the extreme side of sensation seeking because the thought of engaging in risking behaviors like mountain climbing or parachuting seems completely insane to me. However, I am definitely on the high side for desire for control and I often find myself banging my head against the proverbial brick wall even because although I seek the control the task or situation is something I will never achieve control over and that is hard to accept sometimes. I do think being high in DC does a lot of positive things for my life though as well and I can’t ever see myself being content with others making decisions for me or to take a backseat through life.
ME terms used: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, happiness “set point”, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system
Three concepts are prevalent in chapter 13. They discuss the motivational principles related to personality characteristics. The first of these is happiness. The first statement the book makes is that all people say they are happy, regardless of their individual circumstances. One statement the book makes is to say that trying to be happy is like trying to be taller. What they mean by this is they feel that we have emotional set points that regulate our feelings positive or negative of emotionality. One of these is a happiness set point and emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion, while the other emerges mostly from differences in neuroticism. This states that extraverts enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts because extraverts are more sensitive to society’s rewards and are therefore more affected by them. Underlying this is the assumption that extraversion is a genetic factor rather than an environmental factor.
On the flip side, neuroticism and suffering mark the unhappiness point. This is a mirror of the extraversion in that they have an above average capacity to experience negative emotionality. A bad event can bring negative things, but for a neurotic person, these negative things stimulate a string of negative thinking and stimulate avoidance behavior. Some experts believe these two characteristics, extraversion and neuroticism are the basic personality dimensions.
Arousal on the other hand represents a variety of processes that dictate alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Four underlying principles explain arousal’s correlation to motivation. 1) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. 2) People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. 3) When under aroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels. 4) When over aroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. The book illustrates the reasoning behind this by plotting performance and efficiency on a vertical axis and arousal level on a horizontal axis. The result is an inverted U-curve. This shows that the optimal performance will be when arousal is moderate. Over-arousal leads to stress, frustration, and hassle while under arousal leads to boredom and restlessness. We see this in everyday life such as divorce and unemployment.
Control is something that has been studied in detail under the category of personal control beliefs. Two personality characteristics cover most of the idea behind control beliefs: perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s pre performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control concerns the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, and assume leadership roles. The book makes reference to a table comparing high desire for control and low desire for control. The high DC individual vs. the low DC individual will select harder tasks and react with greater effort in a response to a challenge. They will work at difficult tasks longer and are more likely to attribute success to self and failure to unstable forces. The benefits of a high DC include achieving higher goals, completing difficult tasks, and expressing a high level of motivation. The risks to processing a high DC include attempting too many difficult goals, developing performance inhibiting reactions, investing too much effort into impossible tasks, and developing an illusion of control.
I found the happiness the most interesting. I had heard that the level of happiness in one’s life stayed constant for the majority of their life, but I had never heard it explained like the book does. It would give reason to have less stress in planning what to do with one’s life and worry less about the material objects or intangibles in life. What was most surprising to me was again dealing with the happiness. I found the idea that extraverts were born, not made to be very surprising. I had always thought that it was more of an environment vs. genetic or biologic trait.
Terms: Happiness, Arousal, Desire for control, extravert. Neurotic.
Chapter 13 was focused on personality characteristics. There are three specific characteristics discussed in this chapter.
The first characteristic is happiness. People react strongly/very strongly to life events but seem to return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event; it doesn't matter what the life events are. There are two "set-points", positive and negative. Extraversion coincides with the happiness (positive) set-point. Extraversion centers around sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations. Assertiveness is the tendency toward social dominance. Venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. Being more sensitive to rewards --> more susceptible to positive feelings --> approach potentially rewarding situations more. Extraverts have a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions and have a stronger and more sensitive BAS - more frequent and intense signals of reward. There are two types of happiness. Hedonic refers to the one's pleasurable moments and reflects a pleasant life and represents what most people think of as happiness. Eudaimonic concerns self-realization, involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing, and is all about living one's true self. Neuroticism coincides with the unhappiness (negative) set-point. Neuroticism is the predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy; its opposite is emotional stability. Neurotics not only experience bad events but also bad thoughts. They have a strong and highly sensitive BIS - signals of punishment.
The second characteristic is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness (cortical mechanism), wakefulness (behavioral mechanism), and activation (autonomic mechanism). There are four principles for arousal: 1) Arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is; 2) Engage in behavior to increase/decrease arousal level; 3) When underaroused, seek out opportunities to increase levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance; 4) When overaroused, seek out opportunities to decrease levels, because decreases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas increases are aversive and undermine performance. Performance and arousal exist on an inverted-U curve. Moderate levels coincides with experience of pleasure, low levels produces boredom and restlessness, and high levels produces tension and stress. Insufficient stimulation and underarousal deal with sensory deprivation. Sensory deprivation is an individual's sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. The brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level generated by environmental stimulation. Excessive stimulation and overarousal occurs from stressful events. This upsets emotional states, impairs cognitive activity, and accelerates physiological processes. The inverted-U hypothesis has met some criticism: Neiss says that it is descriptive rather than explanatory (how facilitates) and applies only when levels are extreme and does not apply to everyday affairs in which level changes relatively little. The second criticism was proven incorrect. Sensation seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience. The baseline level of arousal and reactivity are involved in sensation seeking. Baseline level of arousal is how aroused a person is without external stimulation. Reactivity is one's arousal reaction when exposed to external stimulation. Sensation-seeking construct pertains to the extent to which a person's CNS requires change and variability. Risk is the forecast that a behavior will produce aversive consequences. Sensation seekers are more "risk accepting" than "risk taking" because they believe the sensation is worth the risk. Sensation seeking has a biological basis. Seekers have low levels of MAOs (limbic system enzymes involved in breaking down brain neurotransmitters); they have high levels of dopamine and low levels of serotonin. Affect intensity concerns people's capacity to become aroused emotionally and is defined in terms of strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. Affect-intense individuals experience emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity and variability across many different situations. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in reactions. People have an "arousal thermostat."
The third characteristic is control. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he/she can interact with environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. People don't necessarily put forth strong effort to exert control over outcomes in predictable and responsive situations. Even structured situations can be difficult to control. Perceived control predicts how much effort a person is willing to exert; high perceived control = higher effort. It functions as an antecedent foundation on which other beliefs are constructed (competence, efficacy, and ability) and can emanate from any capacity. Self-confirming cycles of high and low engagement involve engagement efforts that produce positive outcomes and postperformance perceptions of high control and disaffection that produces negative outcomes and postperformance perceptions of low control. It explains how and why some people develop strong personal control beliefs and others don't. With desire for control (DC), high-DC takes an approach to situations and takes life by the horns and low-DC avoids situations and wings it in life. High-DC people want control over fate irrespective of how much control they currently have and of how structured or responsive situation appears to be. With establishing control, desire for control feeds into illusion of control. Through achievement situations, one can establish control through aspiration level --> response to challenge --> persistence --> attributions for success and failure. When losing control, high-DC people exhibit distinct reactions like anxiety. When people desire control but the environment refuses to afford it, people become vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression. Magnitude varied to how important control was. In controllable environments, DC = motivational asset; in uncontrollable environments, DC = motivational liability.
ME Terms: happiness, set-point (happiness/unhappiness), extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, BAS, hedonic, eudaimonic, neuroticism, BIS, arousal, cortical/behavioral/autonomic mechanism, inverted-U curve, sensory deprivation, sensation seeking, baseline level of arousal, reactivity, sensation-seeking construct, risk, MAO, affect intensity, affect-intense, affect-stable, arousal thermostat, control, perceived control, self-confirming cycles of H/L engagement, desire for control
Chapter 13 is titled 'Personality Characteristics'. This chapter discusses the individual differences that arise in happiness, arousal, and control and their effects on motivation. The first individual difference that arises among people is happiness. According to the authors, most people are happy regardless of life circumstances. There is difference that arises however, in how happy people are. One difference arises in personality characteristic. Those who are extraverts tend to be the happiest of all. Extraverts are outgoing individuals who focus on the positive vibes in the environment. They act on the Behavioral Activating Systems (BAS), in that they are more sensitive to rewarding stimuli in the environment. Extraverts also tend to be more sociable, more socially dominant and more venturesome. Those who score high on neuroticism tend to be unhappy. Unlike the extraverts, they are more sensitive to negative emotions in the environment. They act on the Behavioral Inhibition Systems (BIS). Neurotics tend to avoid potentially punishing situations. In summary, extraverts are generally happy and neurotics are generally unhappy. The second individual difference that arises is arousal. Arousal contributes to motivation in four ways:
1. A person's arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is.
2. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal.
3. When underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance.
4. When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermined performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance.
In other words, people try to maintain moderate arousal throughout their lives. According to the author, moderate arousal correlates with pleasure, and also leads to adequate performance of a task. Underarousal refers to an environment that is abnormally low in stimuli. It can lead to sensory deprivation and decrease performance and increase neuroticism. Overarousal and lead to emotional, cognitive, and physiological disruption. Individual differences arise in a sensation seeking personality characteristic. Those who rate high constantly search for new experiences. People also differ in their affect intensity, or how they experience emotions. Those with high affect intensity experience extreme highs and lows of emotion throughout the day. Affect-stable individuals are rather stable throughout the day. The third individual difference the author discusses is control. There are two levels of control: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is one's expectations of possessing the needed capacity to produce such outcomes. Desire for control is the extent to which individuals establish control over events in their lives. Some people have a higher desire for control than others. How one engages in a situation determines their perceived control belief. For instance, if someone is attempting to gain control of a situation and it turns out like they hoped, they now further believe they have a higher sense of perceived control.
The part of the chapter I found most interesting was the differentiation between extraversion and neuroticism. I am currently taking Psychology of Personality and both of these characteristics are brought up quite often. There are countless things these characteristics correlate with. One might assume that extraverts are generally happier than extraverts based on their definitions alone. The BIS/BAS differentiation explains the reason why differences in happiness arise. My question is how stable are these personality characteristics? According to my personality textbook, they are fairly stable throughout life. I would like to think that a neurotic person would be able to change their ways to that of an extravert. Perhaps I should do more research on cognitive therapy in this area.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, BAS, BIS, neuroticism, underarousal, overarousal, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discusses personality characteristics which is an intriguing topic from an actual scientific perspective. There are three principles which are thoroughly touched on; happiness, arousal, and control. Every situation varies the potential to produce happiness, arousal, and control. And this is also based on the individual’s perspective and how that individual’s brain is “wired.” These personality characteristics are in fact genetically predetermined more so then they are influenced by the environment. This is not to say that the environment does not have influence but genetics have a greater influence. Also it is important to note that most people are in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to these characteristics. For the most part people are not at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
Taking a closer look at happiness most people are happy. This was incredibly surprising to me considering the high levels of depression that exist in today’s society. I have always thought that people in unfortunate circumstances such as poverty, in serious life changing accidents, or those who have experienced horrible life events would be chronically . . .unhappy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that even in negative life events people are just as happy as those who are fortunate. I also learned that individuals have a set point for a level of happiness. Even after a traumatic event that individual will eventually return to their set point or same level of happiness. This set point is pre-determined by genetics. Who is happy is determined by extraversion. Those who are extraverts are found to be happier than introverts. Extraverts are associated with sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. The reason that extraverts are happier than introverts is the chemical make-up of the brain. Extraverts have a stronger BAS which allows them to be more sensitive to positive rewards. These individuals pick out the positive aspects in every situation which energizes their behavior towards approach-oriented and goal-directed. Briefly mentioned in this chapter are the two types of happiness. Hedonic is the pleasurable moments one has throughout life. Eudaimonic is pursuit of one’s self, self-actualization. Finding meaning and self-worth. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic associated with being unhappy. These individuals are described as being chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Where extraverts experience regularly happiness, desire, excitement, energy, and enthusiasm neurotic individuals regularly experience irritability, fear, and anxiety. Neurotics have a sensitive BIS which picks up on the negative aspect of each situation. Because they are genetically focused in on negative aspect they constantly have negative thoughts, which then energizes that individual’s behavior towards avoidance tendencies.
Alertness, wakefulness, and activation are control through cortical, behavioral, and autonomic processes which is represented by alertness. The four principles of arousal are discussed as influencing motivation; an individual’s arousal level is mostly influenced by the environment, people engage in behaviors to find optimal level of arousal, when underaroused individuals want to increase their level of arousal. When overaroused that individual seeks activities to decrease their level of arousal. The reason for continually seeking optimal level of arousement is pleasure. Underarousement creates boredom and restlessness, while overarousement creates stress and tension. This optimal lever of arousement has proved beneficial because people perform best at a moderate arousement levels. When an individual is chronically at either extreme, overaroused/underaroused, they experience confusion, forgetfulness, and impaired concentration, and negative physiological effects. Sensation seekers are found to have low levels of MAO which break down neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, which contribute to rewards and inhibition. These high levels of dopamine and serotonin then cause the individual to constantly seek brain stimulation. These individuals are known as the “risk-takers” but it is better described by the book that they should be known as the risk-acceptors. It is the thrill they seek not the risk itself. Affect intensity is basically the level of intensity an individual experiences emotions. Affect-intense experience emotions very strongly and tend to display unstable and constant extreme changes in emotions due to their sensitivity of arousal. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions at a moderate level because they are less sensitive to arousal and therefor display a more regular and moderate level emotion.
Control can be further divided into perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control describes the expectations of an individual to be able to interact with the environment that will produce the desired outcomes. The desired outcome must be attainable and the situation needs to be predictable. Perceived control expectations predict how much effort that individual puts forth. The individual who puts forth more effort is more likely to succeed and therefore enforced the idea they he/she has control over the situation. Perceived control beliefs then further influence that individual’s engagement, coping, and challenge seeking. Those with high perceived control are able to succeed more because those individuals are more engaged and seek challenges that they can realistically attain. Even when failing they have better coping methods, often putting the blame on an outside source versus themselves. Those with high desire for control are often in leadership positions, avoid dependence, and are set on controlling their life. Those with low desire for control do not like responsibility and feel a lack of control over their circumstances. Sometimes those with high desire control can suffer negative consequences because they believe they have more control than what they actually have. But these individuals also show more persistence, react with more effort to a challenge, and set more realistic goals, which can be obviously very beneficial. Those with high desire for control can be greatly affected by situations where there is little control. Those individuals experience stress, depression, dominance. These individuals are also more vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.
I would consider myself an introvert. Although I am not assertive I do consider myself verturesome. And for the most part I consider myself shy unless I am with my friends. Although I do not consider myself as an extrovert, I do think that I would be classified at a low level of neuroticism. I do not experience a lot of fear or irritability but I do find my anxiety levels are sensitive when it comes to evenly a moderately stressful situation. I can completely identify with being underaroused because I have recently moved to a call-center and after an 8 hour shift I find myself terribly restless which in turn has a negative effect on my performance. As far as sensation seeking I would believe myself to be at a high level. I thoroughly enjoy new experiences. When it comes to affect-intensity I would definitely consider myself and affect-intense individual. I do notice that my emotions throughout the day vary quite a bit. As for control I have moderate to low perceived control and moderate desire for control.
Terms; personality characteristics, set point, happiness, arousal, control, introverts, extroverts, hedonic, eudaimonic, neurotic, sensation seekers, perceived control, desired control
Chapter 13 focuses on the personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and control. Most people are happy, and this is true almost irrespective of their life circumstances. People have a happiness and unhappiness set points that can be described by individual differences in personalities. Happiness emerges from extraversion and unhappiness emerges from neuroticism. Extraverts have a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions and are more eager to approach rewarding situations which creates greater sociability, greater social dominance, and greater venturesomeness. Extraverts have a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system). In contrast, neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions and therefore experience greater stress, more negative emotionality, and a steady stream of mood states such as anxiety, fear and irritability. Neurotics have a strong and highly sensitive BIS (behavioral inhibition system). Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The Yerkes/Dodson inverted U Curve shows that extremely low and high level of arousal produces poor performance while a moderate level of arousal means high performance and experience of pleasure. Some would argue this curve’s credibility, but everyday stimulation such as caffeine and time pressure seems to fit the hypothesis. Some people are sensation seekers. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. High sensation seekers are also willing to accept the risk associated with these exciting behaviors. There are also personal differences in affect intensity. Affect intensity concerns people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally. Affect-intense people experience their emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity and variability across many different emotion-eliciting situations. Affect-stable people experience their emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions from moment to moment or day to day. The last personality characteristic in Chapter 13 is control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control is the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles and enter situations in overly prepared ways. I think I am not very typical when it comes to my perceived control and desire for control. In applying the concepts to my life, I would say that I have a high perceived control because I feel that I can make a difference that I can obtain a desired outcome and I feel that in most cases my attempts to exercise control are usually predictable and responsive. However, I have a low desire for control. Unless I feel pressured, I just let life happen as it may. I don’t often make choices based on how much control I can have. I am not an extrovert; therefore seldom jump at the chance to be a leader-although I sometimes end up in that role. I also don’t mind others making up my mind for me The most interesting thing I found in this chapter was that sensation seekers have low levels of MAO (monoamine oxidase) which breaks down dopamine and serotonin. They also have a high dopamine level that makes them favor approach over inhibition and low serotonin levels means their biochemistry fails to inhibit them from risks and new experiences. I am fascinated by biopsychology. I have known people that I would consider as sensation seekers who have gotten into trouble with the law and drugs. Having the initial brain chemistry as described would tie so easily with drugs which hijack the pleasure center of the brain.
Terms Used: happiness, arousal, control, set points, extroversion, neuroticism, BAS, BIS, inverted U curve, sensation seeker, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, MAO, serotonin, dopamine
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. Two main personality characteristics that were discussed in this chapter were extraversion and neruoticism. Extraversion explains the answer to “Who is happy?”. This is because those that are more extraverted have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them much more aware of potential rewards in an envrionment. “Who is unhappy?” is answered by the personality characteristic neuroticism. Those that are higher in neuroticism are at a disadvantage. This is because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system which makes them much more prone to noticing signals of punishment in an environment.
Individuals that are higher in extraversion tend to automically have a more positive emotionality and are more approach-oriented. Individuals that are higher in neuroticism typically have a negative emotionality and are usually more avoidance-oriented.
Sensation seeking and affect intensity were also discussed in chapter 13. Our textbook defines sensation seeking as, “the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences”. To reach these sensations, people sometimes engage in risky and potentially dangerous behavior. Affect intensity is defined as, “the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions”. Those that are affect-intense strongly show their emotions. Those that are affect-stable only mildly experience their emotions.
Control was a significant section of this chapter. When people believe they have control in a certain situation, they are more likely to be positive and are more likely to attain their desired outcome. However, when people's perceived control is low, they don't put in as much effort and may be more negative, leading them to be less likely to attain the outcomes they desire. Those with a high desire for control typically try to gain control in as many aspects of their lives as they can and may feel depressed when they are not able to attain control.
Terms: extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, positive emotionality, negative emotionality, sensation seeking, affect intensity, control, perceived control
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. There are 3 different motivation principles related to personality characteristics. The first one is happiness. Generally speaking, most people are happy. People react to extreme events in their life but will return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event. People have a set point of happiness withing themselves. That means they will be just as happy when they are 30 as they were when they were 20 event after life events happen. Extroversion is a source of happiness. Extroversion is composed of 3 facts: sociability (the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations) assertiveness (tendency toward social dominance) and venturesomeness ( tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations.) Extroverts are emotionally happier than introverts and are highly sociable. Extroverts are happier then introverts because they are more sensitive to rewards present in social situations. It makes them more susceptible to positive feelings and causes them to approach situations with potential reward. Extroverts have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) than introverts, which detects and regulates the source of positive emotions.
Neuroticism is associated with being unhappy, and is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics experience grater stress, negative feelings, anxiety, and fear than people who are not neurotics. Due to the fact that neurotics have a greater capacity to experience emotions and harbor disterbing and troubling thoughts, they suffer emotionally. Neurotics have a strong behavioral inhibition system (BIS) that is very sensitive. It sends signals of upcoming distress and can cause neurotics to avoid all sorts of situations.
There are two types of happiness you can feel. Hedonic happiness is the totality of ones pleasurable moments. Eudaimonic happiness involves engaging in oneself in the meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing.
The second type of motivational principle is arousal. Arousal is a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four explications arousal relates to motivation. Arousal is a function of how stimulation an environment is, people engage in activities to increase or decrease arousal, and when under or overaroused people will find opportunities to increase or decrease the arousal level. When people have low and high arousal they have low performance. Low arousal gives you not motivation to do anything while high arousal gets you over stimulated and you don't perform as well. A moderate level of arousal is when people perform at their best. People who feel a need for arousal that is higher then their baseline level will seek out sensations and get bored with routines while a low sensation seeker likes a low level of brain stimulation and likes routines. Affect intensity is the strength in which individuals experience emotions. Affect stable people are generally consistent in their mood. they are never one extreme or the other they just ride in the middle with little change in mood. People who are extremely affect intense feel constant highs and lows and bounce back from one to the other rather quickly.
Control is the last motivational principle. Control concerns the extent to which people strive to make their expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Every one has some amount of perceived control, or expectations a person holds that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. In order to feel perceived control people must be able to obtain the desired outcome and be in a situation that is somewhat predictable. People with a high amount of perceived control will see out and select relatively challenging tasks, set higher goals, and set plans about how to succeed. If you have a person with a high perceived control and a person with a low perceived control both in a situation that is equally challenging the person with a high perceived control is more likely to put effort into the task and succeed then the person with low perceived control. It is a circle that keeps reinforcing itself not matter if you are high or low. Sometimes people can face situations where control is almost impossible such as being in the army or being a doctor. Being in these situations can make people distressed, fell anxiety, and/or depressed. When people with a high desire for control are put in these situations they are vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.
The thing I found the most interesting was that perceived control is what you make it and not matter how you feel about it, high or low, it will always reinforce itself.
Terms:Happiness, Extroversion, neuroticism, BAS, BIS, arousal, affect intensity, control, perceived control,
Chapter thirteen discusses personality characteristics in relation to happiness, arousal, and control. These three characteristics can all be controlled for both situational and by differing personalities. Majority of people reside in the middle range between sensation seekers or sensation avoiders while only a small percentage fall in the extremes of each. Strong life events generally push people to the extremely happy or extremely unhappy scale of their lives but generally most people return to their normal level of happiness after the event has passed, called a happiness or unhappiness set point. Extraverts tend to be associated with happiness. Three aspects of this personality type are sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Extraverts are generally happier than introverts and have more positive moods than their counterparts. This is because they tend to get stronger, positive emotions from rewarding life event due to greater sensitivity in their behavioral activating system.
On the other side of this discussion is unhappiness which is referred to as neuroticism. This can be defined as a predisposition to feeling negative emotions as well as feeling dissatisfied and unhappy. People that are neurotic suffer more from anxiety, fear, and irritability. These people feel more stress and negative life events generally cause more distress, and these feelings linger longer. The reason neurotics are more vulnerable to these feelings are because of their highly sensitive BIS (behavior inhibition system). This system regulates negative emotions and being highly sensitive to this means that they have a tendency to anticipate negative events.
Arousal is associated with alertness, wakefulness, and activation. How arousal is measured is by how stimulating the environment is, whether people’s behavior increases or decreases their arousal, a tendency to increase arousal when underaroused, and to decrease arousal when overaroused. Performance level is associated with the level of arousal. Performance is at its highest when it is at the moderate level and decreases when its increases from moderate to high. Low levels give a person a sense of boredom while high levels make people stressed and tense.
Sensation seeking is most related to arousal and reactivity. Those with high sensation seek continuous brain stimulation, bored easily, and always looking for ways to increase their arousal. They also tend to seek high risk activities. Affect intensity is the scale with which people can be emotionally aroused. Affect-intense individuals feel stronger emotions when positive events happen than when compared to affect stable personalities.
Control is mainly defined by two personality characteristics. These are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is how people preconceive how situations will turn out and their performance in situations while striving for a positive outcome. Desire for control is how people will make their own choices concerning others, in specific situations, or in leadership roles. A person that is high in perceived control seeks to take control of situations while striving for highly challenging tasks and roles. Individuals with a high desire for control are always seeking to control their situations and evaluating whether or not they will be able to take that control over each situation they face. Because high control individuals like to have control, when faced with events that are typically out of their control they will experience stress, anxiety, depression, and distress. This can also happen in places with large numbers of people. They are less likely to get things accomplished quickly and results in impatience as well as distress and tend to avoid situations like these.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, sensation seekers, sensation avoiders, extraverts, introverts, neuroticism, underarousal, overarousal, affect intensity, affect stable, perceived control, desire for control,
Chapter 13 is about Personality charactersitics. The chapter speaks about three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. These are happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter also spoke about 6 personality charactersitics: extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control.
HAPPINESS
Extraversion is the personality characteristic associated with happiness. Some of the components of extraversion that also allows them to be happy is greater sociability, social dominance, and venturesomeness. Extraverts are also happier than introverts because they have greater capactity to experience positive emotions. Neuroticism is the personality that is most associated with unhappiness. Neurotics are more likely to experience negative emotions.
AROUSAL
Some of the processes included in arousal are alertness, wakefulness, activation. There are four prinicples of arousal's contribution to motivation. They are based on the eviroment stimulating and engagement of behavior based on amount of arousal. There is an inverted u curve relationship between arousal level and performance or well-being. The personality charactesitc associated with arousal is sensation seeking. On the other hand affect intensity is an individuals ability to become emotionally aroused. It is the strength that people experience their emotions.
CONTROL
The book includes locus of control, percieved control, causality orientations, mastery vs helpless orientations, explanatory style, desitre for control, type A, and self efficacy as some of the personality charactersistics associated with control.
I was surprised to find out that most people actually are happy. Especially because there is a big market for increasing happiness and self help type of things. I also never knew there were two different types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic.
TERMS: happiness, arousal, control, personality characteristics, extraversiou, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, sociablity, social dominance, venturesomeness,hedonic, eudaimonic, alertness, wakefulness, activation, performance/well being, mastery versus helpless orientations, explanatory style, self-efficacy