Reading Blog due 11/15 @ midnight

Chapter 13 is all about personality characteristic. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. Situational events can affect any of the three principles. People have different motivation and emotional states based on their personality characteristics. There are many different types of personality characteristics like extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire of control.

Happiness, arousal, and control vary in each situation. A person can become happy when getting an A on an exam. Before taking the exam a person can become stressed which will make the person initially unhappy. Situations vary in how arousing they are. When attending church most people are sedate, while when going to a bar is more stimulating, depending on who you are as a person and what arouses you or does not. Control is something that can happen in certain circumstances but others can not. I Can control my weight (if I wanted to) by working out and eating healthy. If I have a disease that holds onto fat and makes me continually gain weight, then I would have less control over the situation.

People can be sensation seekers or sensation avoiders. This is split up evenly between the two groups at 15% of people in the sensation seekers group and 15% in the sensation avoiders group. The majority of people are somewhere in-between the two groups at 75% most people are in the middle. These personality charactreristics exist with-in every human being. This means that only a few people harbor a high level of the personality characteristic. Most people harbor a moderate amount of the personality characteristic. Just a few harbor a low level of the characteristic.
Sensation seeking in the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. When an individual has a high level of sensation seeking then that person prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation. A sensation seeker gets bored with routine and is constantly in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences.

I went to two different websites over sensation seekers. I found this very interesting while reading about these types of personalities. I felt like I was a sensation seeker so the first website I went to was a scale on if you scored low or high in sensation seeking. I took the rating scale and was scored high in the characteristic of sensation seeking. This means I become bored with routines which is definitely true. I love experiencing and doing new things constantly. The other website I found was in psychology today. This asked the question if you were a risk taker. This article was particularly interesting to read. In our motivation and emotion book it also talked about risk taking and how that correlates with being a sensation seeker.

http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/licensing/tests/driverqualificationtest/sensationseekingscale/index.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker

Terms: Happiness, arousal, control, personalilty characteristics, sensation seekers, sensation avoiders, extraversion, neuroticism, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control.

Chapter thirteen focuses on personality characteristics. It focuses on three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. Happiness is usually seen throughout most people, even low class, low education, and not so pleasant countries are seen with overall happy people. There are two personality characteristics linked to happiness. They are extroversion and neuroticism. Extroverts are happier than introverts. This is because they have a stronger behavioral system that is responsive to reward signals in their environment. Neurotics suffer emotionally because they have stronger behavioral signals that are responsive to punishment in the environment.

Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation. First, a person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. Second, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. Third, when under aroused, 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. Lastly, when over aroused, 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. Human beings differ in their genetic baseline level of arousal and in their reactivity to environmental stimuli. Sensation seeking is the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity.

Perceived control and the desire for control represent two more personality characteristics. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent undesirable ones. When perceived control is strong, people engage in tasks with a positive attitude and are more likely to succeed. But when it is weak, people only engage halfway with a negative attitude that usually leads to failure. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives to establish control and restore control high desire control individuals embrace high standards and aspirations and put forth more effort.

I did some thinking on happiness and was wondering what makes people happy compared to others. A couple articles I found explained a lot. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that self-actualization might be an indicator of happiness. The bottom levels of the hierarchy of needs are the most important and once achieved, the smaller levels build on top. When someone hits the top and absolutely al their needs are being met they are considered to have reached self-actualization. The lowest level is physiological, then safety, love and belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization. I find it interesting that happiness is this detailed. When thinking about why I am happy I usually think no homework, it’s the weekend, vacation, being with friends. But, I never think about how it’s actually me meeting my needs that contributes to my happiness.

http://shazwellyn.hubpages.com/hub/Psychology-101-What-Makes-People-Happy
http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/maslow.htm

Chapter 13 discusses the topic of Personality Characteristics of people. The chapter discusses individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. The aspect is happiness, most people in life are happy even when they have not the most enjoyable life circumstances. People who won the lottery are almost just as happy as people who are suffering from debilitating injuries. People have a happiness "set point." This set point regulates their happiness and well-being.

There are two characteristics associated with happiness. One is extraversion and another is neuroticism. Extraversion is being sociable, assertive, and venturous. These people prefer enjoyment and social situations, have a tendency toward social dominance, and a tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations. Extraverts seem to more happy then introverts because they tend to experience more positive emotions. Extraverts also have the motivation function of the BAS, this is the energize approach-oriented, goal-directed behavior.

Neuroticism is the people who tend to be unhappy. They are defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. These people experience greater stress and negative emotions. They are associated with the BIS rating of emotions. BIS is associated with avoidance-oriented, goal-directed behavior. These people stay away from anxiety troubling situations.

Arousal is a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness and activation. There are four principles associated with arousal. 1)a person's arousal is a function of how stimulating the environment is, 2)people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their lever of arousal. 3)When under aroused, people seek out opportunities to increase arousal, 4) when over aroused people seek out opportunities to lessen arousal

Control is who people control their personality characteristics. There is two types of personality controls. First is perceived control which concerns differences in people's preperfomance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive emotions. Second 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.

This webiste discusses the topic of how extraverts are likely more happy than introverts. One study found that their happiness roots in their memories. They hold more positive views and ideas about things rather than introverts. This article also talked about how introverts and slowly be turned into extraverts.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/

This article discussed they types of jobs available or suggested for introverts. It talked about how they are more shy and not suitable for jobs that deal with people on a regular basis.
http://pattyinglishms.hubpages.com/hub/jobs-for-the-Introverted

Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. The chapter focuses on three motivational principles related to personality characteristics. These three principles include happiness, arousal and control. Any situation that occurs has the potential to affect any or all of these three principles. The personality characteristics that are discussed in this chapter explain why different people experience different motivational and emotional states when presented with the same situation. These characteristics include extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control and desire for control.

Happiness is an emotion experienced by all at some point in their life. The chapter explains that everyone has a happiness set point. This means that even after negative situations such as a car accident occurs, after a couple of months, an individual balances back to the level of happiness that had before their accident. Research has found that happiness is genetic. This means that people who are happy in their 20s are more likely to also be happy in their 30s, 40s and so on. The difference between personalities that have a high level of happiness versus a low level of happiness come into play when one looks at the different levels of extraversion and neuroticism in individuals. Individuals who have more extraversion tend to be happier. Extraversion is can be defined as being the result of three aspects such as sociability, assertiveness and venturesomeness. Extraverts engage in social events more, have the tendency to dominate conversations and events and are more likely to seek out adventure. The higher level of happiness for extraverts comes from these individuals being more sensitive to the rewards that can come out of social situations. This means that they pick up on positive feels more than introverts do. There are two types of happiness. These two types are hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic well-being is the total of one's pleasurable moments. Eudaimonic well-being focuses on self realization and is all about one pursuing the things that make him/her happy. This is about self growth. The personality characteristic that defines people who are unhappy is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as predisposition to experience negative feels and to feel chronically unhappy. The negatives of neuroticism are experiencing more daily stress, more negative emotions and feelings, and more moods of anxiety, fear and irritability.

Arousal focuses on processes that include alertness, wakefulness and activation. These processes are cortical, which includes the activity in the brain, behavioral which includes the skeletal muscular system and autonomic mechanisms which includes the autonomic nervous system. These three make up arousal. Arousal has four basic principles: a person's arousal level is a result of how stimulating the environment is, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal, when people are under aroused, they seek out situations that will increase their level of arousal and when overaroused, people seek out situations that will decrease their level of arousal. These four principles and how they interact with each other are shown in a 'inverted-U' figure. This inverted- U shows the relationship between level of arousal and performance. It shows that when arousal is low, performance is low and when arousal increases, performance and also increases. As for emotions, low arousal produces feelings of boredom whereas moderate levels of arousal produces feelings pleasure and high arousal produces feelings of feelings of stress, frustration and hassle.

Control includes the personality characteristics of personal control beliefs, including locus of control, perceived control, causality orientations, mastery versus helpless orientations, explanatory style, desire for control, type A behavior pattern and self -efficacy. Two of these personality characteristics sum up the majority of the control beliefs. These two are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations an individual has for how he/she will interact with the environment in order to produce his/her desired outcomes and to prevent undesired outcomes. In order for one to feel as if they have control over a situation two things must happen. One must feel as if one can obtain the desired outcome and second the situation needs to be somewhat predictable and responsive. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort one will exert in trying to accomplish the desired outcome. Desire for control is defined as the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. This is measured by the DC scale.

I chose to research more into the topic of happiness. I found two sources that I enjoyed. These sources were http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/04/10/5-reliable-findings-from-happiness-research/ and http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/5-life-changing-ideas-from-happiness-research/. From these two sources I learned some new things along with reading many things that were also covered in chapter 13. For instance, these websites talked about how a situation such as winning the lottery will only produce short term happiness. Once a couple of weeks or months pass, an individual will return to their level of happiness that they were at before they won the lottery. These websites also stated that money can't buy happiness. This statement supports the finding that happiness, in part, deals with genetics. Another statement from these websites is that you only control half of your happiness level which also confirms the research that shows genetics plays a part of one's happiness level. It was interesting to read the section of 'Does increased income increase one's level of happiness?' section. I think this is interesting because you always hear so much about how people with money must be so happy. People need to understand that the two do not show a high correlation.

Chapter 13 is focused on three motivational principles that are related to the following personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. We seem to have two emotional set points, which are happy and unhappy. The happiness set point emerges from individual differences in extraversion and the unhappiness set point emerges from individual differences in neuroticism. Extraversion has many characteristics, such as sociability, the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness, a tendency toward social dominance, or a tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting, stimulating situations. Extraverts are happier than introverts because they possess different levels of sensitivity to the behavioral activating system (BAS). This brain system detects and regulates signals of reward in the environment. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics experience greater stress, more negative emotionality, and a steady stream of mood states such as anxiety, fear, and irritability. Neurotic and emotionally stable individuals possess differing levels of sensitivity to the behavioral inhibition system (BIS). All in all extraverts are generally happy, and neurotics are generally unhappy.

Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The activity of the brain, skeletal muscular system, and autonomic nervous system constitute most of the motivational construct of arousal. 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. To attain such sensations, we seek new experiences, as in sex and drugs, and engage in risk-accepting behavior, as in gambling.

Perceived control is the beliefs and expectations a person holds that her or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. People with a strong perceived control have an increased probability that they will attain the outcomes they seek. When a person’s perceived control is weak, people engage in tasks only half-hearted ways as they show passivity and negative emotion. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. High desires for control individuals have high standards and aspirations, they give high effort when challenged, and they overly persist at difficult tasks. When a person who has a high desire for control feels out of control, they often show distress and depression.

Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, introverts, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, arousal, perceived control, and desire for control.

The first thing I found online is a neuroticism test and I also completed it. After you click submit it tells you your percent of neuroticism and an explanation as to why you scored that. I thought it was interesting and wanted to share it.

http://www.psychologistworld.com/influence_personality/fivefactortest/neuroticism1.php

This article is about why extraversion is not the only thing that matters when it comes to leadership positions and positive evaluations in interviews. Research has shown that extraversion is not all that matters when it comes to these specific situations—socials skills also predict leadership. Only extraverts who possessed high levels of social skills were more likely to be effective leaders. Personality matters, but skills and competencies can matter more when it comes to leadership and other complex social behaviors.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201110/why-extraversion-may-not-matter

Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics and how they relate to motivation. Individual differences exist in levels of happiness, arousal, and control. Different people have different motivational and emotional states in the same situations because they differ on those three concepts. When it comes to happiness, extraverts generally experience a greater level than neurotic people because neuroticism causes people to focus on the negative in a situation. Extraverts have a greater capacity than introverts to experience positive emotions and they have a stronger and more sensitive behavioral activating system. This causes extraverts to have an eagerness to approach potentially rewarding situations. Neurotics have a greater capacity than emotionally stable individuals to experience negative emotions. They have a stronger and more sensitive behavioral inhibition system. This causes them to be eager to avoid potentially punishing situations. Arousal also contributes to motivation in four ways. First, a person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. Second, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. Third, when people are under aroused, they tend to seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, such as drinking caffeine. Fourth, when people are over aroused they tend to seek opportunities to decrease their arousal, such as listening to calming music. Insufficient stimulation and under arousal can occur. Sensory deprivation is an individual’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. Heron’s sensory deprivation study showed that the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal generated by environmental stimulation. Excessive stimulation and over arousal can also occur. Overstimulation can happen through stressful environments, resulting in emotional disruption, cognitive disruption, or physiological disruption. 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 experiences. Sensation seeking is a personality characteristic that is related to arousal and reactivity. It is related to the extent to which a person’s central nervous system requires change and variability. Sensation seeking people search for new experiences, engage in risk taking behaviors, and have low levels of serotonin, but high levels of dopamine. Affect intensity is another way individuals can differ in their personalities. Affect stable individuals have a mostly neutral mood throughout the day while affect intense individuals moods go way up or down throughout the day. Control also affects our personalities. Perceived control is the differences in people’s performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes and desire for control is the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. Individual differences in these result in differences in personality and what we are motivated to do.
I was interested in sensation seeking, because I do not consider myself to be a sensation seeker so I was interested to learn about them. The thought of sky diving or bungee jumping freaks me out just thinking about it, so I wanted to know how someone could actually want to do these things. I read an article in Psychology Today that talked about how engaging in risk taking behaviors is a personality. It talked about the different types of behaviors that sensation seekers enjoy and get excitement out of, such as gambling, drinking, meeting new people, and reckless driving. It mentioned that these behaviors are a health risk and then outlined some of the reasons a person is a sensation seeker, such as the need for novelty, change, and excitement, a link to neuroticism, or expressing anger. I read another article that talked about how risk taking is an evolutionary trait. It said that humans who took risks and responded well to the chemicals released in their brains during dangerous situations lived to pass this trait on to their children. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker
http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/15/Risk-taking-behaviors.html
terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, sensory deprivation, sensation seeking, affect intensity, affect stable, perceived control, desired control

Chapter 13 was all about personality characteristics. I enjoyed learning about some of my own personality characteristics along with the personalities of my friends. This chapter starts off discussing the differences between extroverts, introverts, and neurotics. I especially enjoyed learning about neurotic personalities because it is a term that is used so often in our society but often used incorrectly. I learned that in simplest form, neurotic people have emotional instability, but not in a a "crazy" need medicine type of way that is often portrayed in our media. Later in the chapter, we learned about affect-stable individuals and affect-intense individuals. I felt as though affect-intense individuals are very similar to neurotic individuals because both experience a wide range of positive and negative emotions throughout the day. Back in the beginning of the chapter, the book described personality characteristics as individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. Extroverts are people who are more prone that introverts to feeling positive emotions and therefor have grater socialability and are more likely to approach a group of people, in search for that positive exchange. Introverts are less likely to approach a group of people because they are very prone to finding the negative in everyday exchanges. This part was interesting to learn because the book describes extroverts as generally happy people, which I believe that I am but then I also feel like I am an introvert because I am always scared to approach strangers. However, I feel like my social anxiety is more to blame that my introverted personality. The book the begins to discuss arousal which was also very fun to learn about, especially at this time of the semester. The book discusses how one must have a moderate level of arousal in order to achieve optimum performance.Currently, I have a low level of arousal but interestingly, I feel as though this love arousal level is due to my prior high arousal level that I had earlier this week. I have a huge research paper due at the end of the week that really overwhelmed me this weekend but no it is to the point where it is too overwhelming so I have withdrawn from the situation, putting off the paper even more, which will ultimately raise my arousal level once I actually sit down to write the paper. This feeling of withdrawal from my homework can also be linked to my perceived control of the paper. I am a person who has a high desire for control and I hate to feel as though I am in no control at all. Research papers, especially to this degree, are not my strong suite so I am feeling extra overwhelmed. However, I have acquired skills throughout my college career that have helped me gain a fairly high perception of control over any assignments that come my way.
My favorite part of the chapter was it's discussion of sensation seeking. This personality characteristic is related to arousal. I, myself do not like sensation seeking activities, at all, but my best friend loves them. It was fun to learn that our brains are actually composed differently, with her having higher dopamine levels coupled with lower serotonin levels. I decided to research sensation seeking activities/individuals on the internet for the last part of this blog. On websites:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation-Seeking_Scale and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensation-Seeking_Scale I learned that there are multiple ways to measure your extent of sensation seeking personalities, although many are disputed. And that for the most part, a person high in sensation seeking already knows it without having to look at a scale...I also stumbled on cool videos such as people riding roller coasters and para sailing!
Fun chapter!

Chapter thirteen focuses on individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control as well as factors contributing to these differences and ways these differences motivate different behaviors. Any situational event creates potential to affect all three motivational principles related to personality characteristics. Extraverts, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control are all personality characteristics discussed throughout the chapter.
Extraverts are known to be happier while neurotic individuals are less happy. This is partly because their BAS system is more sensitive to positive emotions and holds a greater capacity to experience positive emotions. Extroverts tend to be eager to approach potentially rewarding situations and are more social, more socially dominant, and more venturesome. Neurotics, on the other hand, have different brain activation and have stronger, more sensitive BIS. They have greater capacity to experience negative emotion, and are more likely to avoid actions that are potentially punishing. Although some people are very extroverted and others very neurotic, most individuals are relatively happy and are not on the extreme side one way or the other. Irrespective of life circumstances, most individuals remain generally happy.

People engage in behaviors to increase or decrease their level of arousal, and tend to perform at their best when arousal is regulated. Under-aroused people attempt to become more aroused, while over-aroused people try to decrease their arousal levels. Heron’s sensory deprivation study is an example of how our brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal. Humans are constantly motivated to control these levels of arousal. Sensation seeking individuals continually search for novel experiences and see them as being worth different risks. They tend to have higher levels of dopamine and lower levels of serotonin, so their biochemistry favors approach and fails to inhibit them from risks.

Perceived control is our belief of whether or not we think we are capable of obtaining and outcome in a situation that is at least somewhat predictable. Perceived control plays an important role in what we are motivated to do, how we do it, and how we feel about what we do. High perceived control is related to more effort and better outcomes, where low perceived control often leads to disengagement. High desire for control has many possible benefits, like achievement of higher goals, more persistence, more motivation, more realistic goals, and more effort than those with low perceived control.

I was interested in learning more about what we can do to control over-arousal. The first interesting
page I found (http://www.ithaca.edu/cross/SUPERVISION/MATERIALS/TREATMENT/TREATMENT%20(PDF)/Arousal%20Training.pdf) was a simple list of signs of over-arousal and steps to take to decrease arousal in a and improve performance in a sports context. A couple things listed to decrease arousal were deliberately slow your breathing and be aware of the “here and now” context and ignore past and future contexts. The second website (http://helpguide.org/mental/stress_relief_meditation_yoga_relaxation.htm) discussed different relaxations techniques and which ones are better suited for certain situations. Six techniques were described as well as ways to implement them into your daily life. I thought this was pretty interesting/ helpful information.

Chapter thirteen is about personality characteristics. There are three principles that are related to personality characteristics. They include happiness, arousal, and control. There are two personality characteristics related to happiness. They are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraverts are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward. Neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment. Arousal has a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation. The first is a person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulation the environment is. The second is people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. Thirdly, when under aroused people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels. The fourth one is when people are over aroused they seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. Perceived control and the desire for control represents two personality characteristics that are related to control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent undesirable ones. When perceived control is strong people engage in tasks with a positive attitude. But when it is weak they engage in tasks in only half-hearted ways. So they show passivity and negative emotion.

In chapter thirteen, it talks about how extraverts are happier. I decided to look up stuff about this. The first article I found talked about whether extroversion makes people happier, or they are happy and therefore are more extroverted. It also says that extroverts may have an advantage when it comes to getting head because they have a leg up on them when it comes to professional networking. The next article I found talked about extroverts being more creative. They are more likely to be successful at creative tasks because they have higher levels of dopamine. Whether extroverts are in a more positive mood or neutral mood doesn’t make them more or less creative, but just the fact that they are generally more positive makes them more creative.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/happiness/what-makes-people-happy2.htm
http://www.physorg.com/news200072067.html

Chapter 13 talked about personality characteristics. It taught us that every individual has differences in happiness, arousal and control. Happiness is whether someone is an extravert or introvert (neurotic). Extraverts have a greater capacity to experience positive emotions, approach rewarding situations, have greater sociability, dominance and venturesomeness. On the other hand, neurotics have emotional instability and are more prone to negative emotions. They avoid potentially punishing situations and have greater avoidance behavior and emotional distress. It has been found that one is extremely happy when they experience a positive event, such as winning the lottery. However, as time passes, this happiness decreases to a normal level to match everyone else’s happiness. Arousal governs alertness, wakefulness and activation. One’s arousal is determined by how stimulating the environment is, whether people engage in a behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. If one is underaroused, they seek out opportunities to increase their arousal level in order to enhance performance. If one is overaroused, they seek support to decrease arousal levels because this undermines their performance. One functions best at a moderate level of arousal. We are also sensation seeking individuals. A sensation seeking individual seeks varied, novel and complex sensations and experiences and is willing to take risks. Affect intensity represents the strength which individuals typically experience their emotions. They experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion eliciting situations. Their emotions only middle or minor change in their emotional reactions. Perceived control are the differences in people’s preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. These individuals are better at goal setting, task choice, effort, concentration and performance. or example, if one wants to ace an exam, they will try to control this as much as possible. They may review the notes, study with others, make flashcards, etc. in order to learn the material so when it comes time for the test, they will do fine. Desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. For example, one may choose to eat healthy and work out everyday to have a healthy lifestyle.
I chose to look up the differences between introverts and extroverts. This article explains that activity in different brain structures tells us who is an introvert and who is an extrovert. Introverts showed increased blood flow in the frontal lobes, the anterior thalamus and other structures associated with recalling events, making plans and problem-solving. In contrast, extroverts showed more activity in the posterior thalamus and posterior insula, regions involved in interpreting sensory data. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199907/the-difference-between-introverts-and-extroverts
I read another article on why people take risks. A study published in Time Magazine, had an article about this. It was proven that those who take risks do so because they have fewer inhibitory receptors for dopamine (the neurotransmitter responsible for making us feel satisfied). Because they have fewer receptors, when they engage in a risk (i.e., skydiving) they get an unusual amount of dopamine during the activity. Because they like this feeling, they continue to engage in risk taking behaviors.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1869106,00.html

happiness,neuroticism, extrovert, introvert, arousal, sensation seeking, affect intensity, control, perceived control, desire for control

Chapter 13 is all about personality characteristics and how different personality characteristics relate to motivation and emotion. Two characteristics for each of the following were focused on throughout the chapter: happiness, arousal, and control.

Most people, no matter their life circumstances, are generally happy. Two characteristics affect happiness—extraversion and neuroticism. Those high in extraversion are happier, while those high in neuroticism are less unhappy. Those high in extraversion have a higher capacity than introverts to experience positive emotions. Those high in neuroticism have a higher capacity than emotionally stable people to experience negative emotions. People high in extroversion have approaching behaviors while people high in neuroticism have avoiding behaviors.
Another trait in which there are individual personality differences is arousal. Sensation seeking and affect intensity are the two characteristics associated with arousal. Arousal deals with how stimulating the environment is. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal level. Under-arousal (insufficient stimulation) leads to sensory deprivation. Over-arousal (excessive stimulation) leads to environmental disruption, cognitive disruption, and physiological disruption. Some individuals have a tendency to seek situations of heightened sensory arousal. This type of individual craves new, risky experiences. Biologically, they have high levels of dopamine and low levels of serotonin. Affect intensity is the strength of which individuals experience their emotions. An affect-intense individual experiences emotions strongly at both ends. A chart of their mood over time looks like a monitor of a heart in cardiac arrest. Individuals who are affect-stable (most people) have less variability in their mood over time—their “heart chart” is more stable.

The last two personality characteristics discussed that affect motivation and emotion are related to control—perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control constitutes the personal expectations one possesses for being able to appropriately perform in a situation to produce positive outcomes and not negative outcomes. Perceived control beliefs form a self-confirming cycle both with beliefs of high control and beliefs of low control. . Desire for control is the extent to which individuals are motivated to extend control over events in their lives.

After our discussion in class today and when reflecting on my book that I read for my book analysis (The Help), I was reminded of how I have a high desire for control. I tend to embrace high standards and aspirations and not having control over certain situations makes me anxious unless I know that the person who is in charge, or has the control in the situation, also has high standards of excellence. I chose to look into more information about the desire for control. On the first website, the issue of choices and control was discussed. We (humans, as well as animas used in laboratory tests) tend to equate having choices as having control and therefore do not like not having choices, even from a very young age. http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/2010/03/29/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-31-the-desire-for-control-and-choices-is-built-in/

The second link I found was to an article (that I then checked out through the UNI Online Library site) that discussed the relationship between stress, control, and superstitious behaviors. The author hypothesized that in stressful situations, those with high desire for control tend to exhibit superstitious behaviors as a way of regaining control. The results were that those tested in stressful situations, whether they had a level of high or low desire for control, exhibited more superstitious behavior (in this case, knocks on wood) than those in a low stress situation. Out of all the participants who had high desire for control, those in stressful situations, as opposed to those in low stress situations, exhibited a large increase in superstitious behavior. http://psp.sagepub.com/content/28/1/102.abstract

Chapter 13 discussed three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. According to the chapter, any situation can affect all three experiences. Personality characteristics help explain why people have different motivational and emotional states.

Most people are happy, but the level of happiness varies between individual’s. One aspect that I found interesting in the text was that even after strong situational events, people return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event. Set points regulate happiness and well being. There is one set point for positive emotionality and one set point for negative emotionality. The two set points are independent of one another. There are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimanic. Hedonic happiness refers to the totality of an individuals pleasurable moments. Eudaimanic happiness involves self realization or doing what is worth doing. The personality characteristic most associated with happiness is extraversion. Extraverts are happier and enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts. Extraverts tend to be happier because they are more sensitive to the rewards in social situations, so they approach potentially rewarding situations more frequently than introverts. Extraverts have a stronger and more sensitive behavioral activation system which energizes approach orientated and goal directed behavior. Unhappiness is associated with the personality characteristic known as neuroticism. Neuroticism defined in the chapter, is a predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotic individual’s experience greater amounts of stress, negative emotions, anxiety, fear, and irritability. Neurotic individual’s have a highly sensitive behavior inhibitory systems, which signals future punishment. The signaling of punishment causes feelings of fear and anxiety, making neurotic individual’s more vulnerable to negative emotions and avoidant behavior.

Arousal is another motivational principle discussed in the chapter. Arousal involves processes governing alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Arousal influences motivations in four ways. First, arousal level is a function of how stimulating the environment is. Second, individual’s engage in behavior to either increase or decrease their arousal level. Third, people seek arousal for pleasure and to enhance their performance. Fourth, when people are over aroused they seek to decrease their arousal. When a person is in an unchanging environment they encounter sensory deprivation. The brain and nervous system prefer a moderate level of arousal and our motives counteract insufficient levels of arousal. Sensation seeking is a trait that is related to arousal and reactivity. High sensation seekers prefer a continual external supply of brain stimulation. High sensation seekers become bored with routine so they are constantly trying to find ways to increase their arousal. However, the problem with some individual’s who are high sensation seekers is that they take risks because they view sensations and experiences as worth the risk. High sensation seekers are also believed to have low levels of MAO, which is an enzyme in charge of breaking down neurotransmitters. High sensation seekers are believed to have high levels of Dopamine which is associated with rewards and approach orientated behavior. However, high sensation seekers are also believed to have low levels of Serotonin which is involved in the inhibition of approach behaviors. Affect intensity is another characteristic related to arousal. Affect intensity relates to people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally. Affect intense individual’s experience their emotions strongly and show emotional variability across many various situations. Affect stable individual’s experience their emotions mildly and show minor fluctuation in emotion across situations.

Control is the third motivational principle discussed in the chapter. Perceived control describes the differences in people’s expectations about their performance creating positive outcomes. In order to have perceived control over a situation, the self must be capable of obtaining the desired outcome and the situation should be somewhat predictable/responsive. Having a high perceived control predicts the amount of effort that a person is willing to put forth. High perceived control is correlated with positive emotional states. People experiencing a low perceived control tend to select easy tasks and set lower goals.

I decided to further research ways to increase happiness. The first webpage that I found offered five ways to increase happiness. The first recommendation was to write down negative feelings, which is similar to the idea that people tend to feel better after talking about their problems. Second, people should purchase experiences over goods. For example, traveling creates experiences which increase happiness. So, rather than purchasing materialistic objects, people should aim to purchase experiences. Third, people should give to receive. Giving doesn’t have to involve money, but can be things like donating blood or donating your time. Fourth, the webpage recommends that people write about someone they care for. The webpage stats that engaging in affectionate writing increased happiness. The last recommendation that the webpage offers to increase happiness is to sit up. Apparently, individual’s who sit up straight tend to be happier. I then viewed a webpage that discussed the benefits associated with being happy. People are happy have better health. The webpage mentioned that happy people had stronger immune systems and higher pain tolerance. Another benefit of happiness is a longer life. A third benefit of being happy is having successful relationships. People who are happy have fulfilling social lives. Happiness is also shown to benefit work. Happy people tend to be more satisfied with their jobs which increases their job productivity. One last benefit of happiness is better mental health. Happy people obviously have less depression, suicide, and lower levels of paranoia.

http://jerry-lopper.suite101.com/the-six-life-benefits-of-happiness-a34536

http://www.pluginid.com/research-proven-happiness/

Chapter thirteen discussed the three profound personality characteristics which are happiness, arousal, and control. We can explain and estimate how multiple different people will react in the same situation through these three features. First, happiness is experienced in all types of people in all types of lifestyles. Whether a person is poor or rich, most people will identify themselves as being happy. Extraversion is highly correlated with happiness. Extraverts bring forth three facets to describe them, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness. People that possess extravert qualities tend to be happier in their life than introverts because they are open to rewards in social situations. These interactions allow positive feels to flow through them. Extroverts possess a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) which allows the brain system to detect and release signals to alert one of the rewards in the environment. This system is designed to motivate one in approach-oriented, goal-directed behaviors. On the other hand, neurotic people suffer emotionally. They experience negative feelings from environments that create an unhappy lifestyle. Instead of having a strong BAS, they are highly sensitive to BIS, or behavior inhibition system. These encourage negative emotions such as fear and anxiety. Unlike extraverts, situations make them sensitive to the negative emotions, encouraging them to not participate.
Arousal is in charge of alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The relationship between arousal and performance efficiency and affect can be seen in the inverted-U curve. On the left end of the graph, one experiences low levels of arousal. This produces boredom and restlessness which produces negative affects. An individual can also acquire sensory deprivation that alludes to a person’s sensory and emotional experiences in the environment. On the right end of the spectrum, is overstimulation. This also causes negative effects such as stress and frustration. When we are on either the high or low end, we strive to find things to bring us back to the middle where we are at a great spot for productivity. On the other end, overstimulation produces upset cognitive states, impaired cognitive activity and accelerated physiological processes. Individuals can also harbor a sensation seeking personality. These individuals get tired of doing the everyday activities and seek out to increase arousal through new, exciting experiences. These people are often risk takers.
There are two types of control: perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the belief one has on how they will execute themselves to produces their desired outcome and avoids undesired outcomes. The amount of effort a person will exert in a situation depends on their perceived control. When they believe that they have a lot of control over to effect the situation, they will try harder. On the other hand, they produce little control and become pessimistic with they perceive they have little control in affecting the situation. The desire for control is the amount of effort one will put forth in order to establish control over an event. People with high desire for control favor choosing their own decisions, relying on themselves for things, and take leadership roles. They tend to control a situation, speak loudly, explosively, and rapidly. High desire for control individuals will persist longer on a task than a low desire for control individual. Sometimes a desire for control can be negative. They tend to set goals to high, invest too much time on something that won’t be accomplished, and can also develop an illusion of control.
I was interested to learn about whether I am an extrovert or introvert. This is a concept that I should just know about myself. However, I find that I can be extremely extroverted, but I am also introverted depending on the situation. I was curious to find out what an outside source would say. On the first website, I took a survey. If you had more “true,” than you is an introvert. My numbers were almost identical. I had nine “true,” or nine introverts compared to eleven “false,” extroverts. I think this definitely describes me.
The next website describes an “ambivert.” After discovering I was neither an extrovert nor an introvert, I decided to research what I was classified as. I learned that I am an “ambivert.” An ambivert is someone who falls in between the two concepts and cannot fully classify as either.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201103/quiz-are-you-introvert-or-extrovert-and-why-it-matters
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Am-An-Ambivert/725127

Chapter 13 discusses the characteristics of personality. The author focuses on three main components; happiness, arousal, and control. A study done by Diener & Diener (1996) found that most people are happy and that has little to do with what is going on in their lives. Lottery winners and car accident victims report on average equal amounts of happiness a short time (2 months) after the event. There are two main components to happiness, extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion has three facets, which are sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Extraverts are happier than introverts because they are better at experiencing positive emotions. They have a stronger behavioral activating system, which leads to more intense reward signals. Neuroticism is a predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics have more negative emotions, feel stress more intensely, and often experience negative mood states. Neurotics hold on to bad thoughts and feelings longer than an individual who is low in neuroticism. There are two different types of happiness. Hedonic happiness is related to a pleasant life. It is the one that is usually thought of when a person thinks about happiness. Eudaimonic happiness is similar to self-actualization. People who are high in this engage in activities they believe to be meaningful and work towards personal growth.

Arousal is a name given to many different components that effect alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Arousal has four basic components that are tied to motivation; a person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease the level of arousal, when underaroused people seek out opportunities to increase the arousal because it is pleasurable and enhances performance, and when overaroused people seek out opportunities to decrease the arousal levels because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance. People perform optimally at moderate levels of arousal. It follows an inverted U shape. This means that low levels of arousal and high levels of arousal effect efficiency and affect negatively. Arousal also effects emotions, low levels equate to boredom and high levels create anxiety and stress.

In this chapter control is talked about in two different ways, perceived control and desired control. Perceived control has to do with beliefs and expectations a person has about the outcome that interaction will produce, mainly that it will be a desired one. Perceived control is a way to predict the amount of effort an individual will exert on any given task. It is related to other psychological constructs like perceived competence, self-efficacy, and perceived ability. It is the concept upon which these others are based. Desired control is about how motivated a person is to have control over their lives. It is different in that it doesn’t matter how much control they actually have, as it does to someone with high perceived control.

After doing the reading and listening to the lecture I wanted to figure out about ways to control neuroticism. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/12/07/us-antidepressant-neurosis-idUSTRE5B64BI20091207 This article states that antidepressants may help to treat neuroticism as a mechanism for curing depression. It also states that people who are highly neurotic are at a higher risk to suffer from depression. http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/450/Neurosis.html This article discusses some non prescription options for treatment that include various types of psychotherapy, art/music therapy, and relaxation exercises like meditation or yoga

Happiness, arousal, and control are the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics that chapter 13 talks about. It says that most people are happy even when they don’t have that great of a lifestyle. The people that are most associated with “Who is happy?” are extraverts. Extraverts are sociable, assertive, and venturesomeness. When people usually tend to stay away from those three things they are considered to be introverts. Because extraverts experience more positive emotions they are found to be more happy than introverts. Extraverts experience more positive emotion because they have a stronger BAS. When people are asked to associate something with “Who is unhappy?” people think of neuroticism. The book defines neuroticism as “a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” Because neurotics tend to notice the bad things in life and don’t let go of them they suffer emotionally. Arousal represents cortical, behavioral, and autonomic processes that help determine alertness, wakefulness, and activation. When someone is not very aroused their performance level is not very well. As the level of arousal moves from low to moderate the performance improves, but as it moves from moderate to high the performance decreases. People perform better at a moderate arousal because they are not too tired or bored(low arousal) or they are not frightened or stressed like crazy(high arousal). The characteristic of personality that relates to arousal and reactivity is sensation seeking. Someone that is a high sensation seeker doesn’t like to do the same thing every day, likes to try new exciting things, and would rather have a continual external supply of brain stimulation. Affect intensity is defined in the book as “in the terms of the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions.” People that have a low affect intensity tend to stay in the same general vicinity of mood, whereas people with a high affect intensity have their mood all over the place. The book says that “perceived control concerns differences in people’s preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes.” The desire of control looks at how often people try to make their own decisions, make an influence on other people, take charge, and take on things that seem like a lot to handle.

I found the topic on sensation seeking to be very interesting. I feel that I have a medium to high sensation seeking personality. I find myself wanting to do more dangerous things because I think it would be fun. I don’t get very aroused off of roller coasters anymore. The first link I found was http://dashpointpirate.typepad.com/the_dash_point_pirate_woo/2010/09/the-sensation-seeking-personality.html . This website talked about kayaking and the thrill of white water kayaking. When I read this sentence it made me think of “whoo she has a high sensation seeking personality” : “When we first met, even though the river was running high, her sunburned face told me that there was absolutely nothing that could happen that day that could get her excited.” This article goes on more to talk about sensation seeking personality itself. It was very interesting.

A lot of the links for sensation seeking were for sensation seeking scales. I decided to take one and my result was a 53% which is average. The scores are 00-27% = Very Low 28-41%=Low 42-70% = Average 71-84%= High and 85- 100%= Very High I would recommend doing one of these scales to see where you are at on the sensation seeking side of your personality. It was pretty interesting. The scale that I took was found on: http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/licensing/tests/driverqualificationtest/sensationseekingscale/index.html

Chapter 13 focuses on three motivational principles related to personality characteristics. They are happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter begins by discussing happiness and why some people are happy and some are not. The author discusses how happiness is a personality characteristic that is at a set point in each person, as is weight discussed previously. In studies that have been conducted, people who experience both happy and unhappy situations may experience extreme ends (happy or unhappy) of the mood scale in the beginning, but will flatten out to a consistent level of happiness later on. This is why it is believed that we each have a set point of happiness. Because of this, people’s happiness levels and thusly their likelihood of approach/avoid behaviors can be anticipated quite successfully and accurately. The chapter discusses how our happiness and unhappiness set points can be explained by our personalities, or our likelihood of extroversion or neuroticism.
Our personal characteristic of happiness is associated with extraversion. Extraversion can be split into three facets: sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Basically, the book says that those who have the characteristics consistent with extraversions are happier than those who don’t because they have more positive moods than introverts. This is due to our BAS or behavioral activating system. Those who are happy have a stronger BAS than those who aren’t. This means they are sensitive to situations that signal a forthcoming reward. When their BAS receives this signal, they anticipate situations with excitement, approach behaviors, and happy feelings. These situations only mildly activate the BAS of individuals who are introverts. The findings of extraversion being heritable are enhanced by twin studies who perform similarly on extraversion questionnaires when reared apart.
On the other hand, our personal characteristic of unhappiness is associated with neuroticism. This is when there is “a predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” (p. 372). Neurotics experience more negative feelings, such as stress, anxiety, fear, irritability, etc. On the opposite end of extraverts, neurotics have a sensitive BIS or behavioral inhibition system. This means that they are sensitive to situations that signal a forthcoming punishment. Because of this, they experience negative emotions. They anticipate that situations will bring them fear and anxiety. This results in them emitting avoidance behaviors, thus being unhappy more often than extraverts.

The next section discussed arousal. According to the book, “arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation.” (p. 374). The activity of the brain, muscular system, and autonomic nervous system constitute the motivational construct of arousal. The authors say that 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 o increase or decrease their level of arousal, 3) when underaroused, people seek opportunities to increase arousal levels, because increases are positive, 4) when overaroused, people seek opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases are aversive. These together make the inverted “U” shape that describes the relationship between arousal level and performance/well-being. Low levels of arousal produce poor performance. Moderate levels of arousal produce optimal performance. High levels of arousal produce poor performance again. Because of this explanation, low stimulation causes boredom and restlessness, which is aversive. High stimulation causes stress and tension, which is aversive. People try to escape these situations so they will do what I said previously; seek out the opposite level of stimulation. Those who are underaroused may even participate in risk-taking because they want to avoid the boredom. Those who are overaroused may participate in calming environments. In a study performed, it was discovered that sensory deprivation actually resulted in terrible performance, even of tasks that seem easy in everyday life. We are naturally enabled with processes to combat these bouts of boredom produced in sensory deprivation, we make up stories with our mental capabilities. When we are overaroused, we get stressed and it can turn into anger, anxiety, and irritability. We may have cognitive disruption that ends in confusion, forgetfulness, and impaired concentration. These often result in our autonomic nervous systems coming into play. Our blood pressure and pulse may rise and we may be vulnerable to headaches.
This section also discusses sensation seeking and how that is related to arousal. Sensation seeking is a personality characteristic associated with arousal. High sensation seekers get bored with routine and try to find ways to continually stimulate themselves through exciting experiences. Low sensation seekers tolerate routine well and prefer low stimulation. Those who are high sensation seekers often ignore possible risks when trying to participate in stimulating tasks. The book describes them as “risk accepting” instead of risk taking. Sensation seeking is tied to biological bases. It is found that sensation seekers have low amounts of MAO or monoamine oxidase. This is the enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine acts on the pleasure centers of the brain, facilitating approach behaviors, while serotonin acts as the brains inhibition system. Sensation seekers have higher amounts of dopamine and lower amounts of serotonin, explaining why they are sensation seekers in many facets of their lives.
Lastly this section discusses affect intensity. This is peoples’ ability to become emotionally aroused. There are some people who have affect-intense personalities and some who have affect-stable personalities. How you react to certain situations and events defines your affect intensity. If you react significantly or intensely to events and situations on a day to day basis, you are probably more likely an affect-intense individual. If you react rather well and do not have extreme reactions during day to day events and situations, you are probably an affect-stable individual. This can be explained because affect-intense individuals are more sensitive to changes in arousal than are affect-stable individuals.

The last part of the chapter discusses control. There are two personality characteristics included, perceived control and the desire for control. They aren’t hard to understand. Perceived control is when someone views themselves as having the capacity to produce certain outcomes. Desire for control is when people strive to make their own decisions, assume leadership roles, enter situations in overly prepared ways, and influence others. In order for someone to perceive control, they must be capable of obtaining the desired outcome and the situation needs to be somewhat predictable and responsive. Those with a high perceived control exert more effort and seek out relatively challenging tasks. They will also set high goals and plans about how to succeed. They will persist in the face of difficulty and be concentrated. When someone has a low perceived control, they will seek out easy tasks, quit if things go wrong, have low attention, and low confidence. People always say that if you believe you can do it, you will be able to and vice versa. The section discusses this. They call it the self-confirming cycles of high and low engagement. Basically this means that high effort will produce positive outcomes and a perception of control which will then produce high effort. It is a cycle. The same is true for low effort and low perceived control. Using this knowledge, we can help ourselves realize how to do better on situations and how negative it is to have low perceived control.
The last part of the chapter discusses the desire for control. This is the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control. Those with high desire do not just take what is thrown at them. They assume leadership roles and avoid dependence on others. Those with low desire are the opposite. Those with high desire want to control their fates even if they actually have no control currently. They have a high desire to both establish control and restore lost control. There are many situations where people have no control, yet those with high desire will do what they can to try to establish it. They will speak loudly, rapidly, and explosively and interrupt or talk over their partners. They will often end conversations when they want to and are done saying everything they needed to say. Those with high desire will persist in the face of difficulties. This is how the desire of control can become negative. Those with high desire will often persist too long on tasks even when they are unsolvable. They also may attempt tasks that are overly difficult, exhibiting hostile reactions with failure. They may overestimate their perceived performance and overinvest their energies.
When those who have a desire for control begin to lose control or have no control at all, such as living next to an airport, etc., they may become anxious or angry. They may become vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression.

The thing that interested me most from this chapter was the discussion about low MAO and high sensation seeking. I found two sites that discuss this and how it relates both to gender differences in sensation seeking and age differences in sensation seeking. The first is part of a book and the part that interested me was the explanation of why teens and early adult males are sensations seekers and interestingly why they listen to loud rock music. According to Harry Witchel, sensation seeking is biological. A study they did found that when individuals were presented with a loud noise, their body’s arousal levels changed. Those high in sensation seeking actually had a sudden decrease in heart rate (calming) when presented with the loud noise, while those low in sensation seeking actually had a sudden increase in heart rate (arousal). I find this very intriguing. This may help to explain why older generations also are lower in sensation seeking. They prefer much quieter music than younger generations. According to Marvin Zuckerman, levels of MAO actually decrease as you get older. This as well can explain why there is a difference in age and sensation seeking, also explaining possible causes of “aging-out” of crime in the mid 20s. Males also have lower levels of MAO than women, again explaining why adolescent and young adult males have more experiences of sensation seeking and criminal activities. Because low MAO results in higher levels of dopamine, younger males are not able to assess risks properly. They are very impulsive and the levels of neurotransmitters and MAO actually are similar to those with psychopathy. Those who are drug users are also similar because many drugs act on the pleasure centers of the brain through the breakdown or activation of dopamine. I think it is interesting that the last article goes on to discuss how without sensation seekers, we would cease to exist. While it seems like it would only end negatively, sensation seekers are the ones who have made progress throughout thousands of years for us by seeking out new areas, experiences, hunting, procreating, etc. Unfortunately, our society has adapted so much that there is little left to explore and sensation seeking is now more harmful than helpful.

Article 1: http://books.google.com/books?id=ApiyY8LX5fAC&pg=PA379&lpg=PA379&dq=MAO+in+sensation+seekers&source=bl&ots=MRwyNXF8cV&sig=KR-bz8X1ArRbNf0y6KfC5j4K8SE&hl=en&ei=GUrDTuD6J43UgAe-_8z2Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=MAO%20in%20sensation%20seekers&f=false

Article 2: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker?page=3

Chapter 13 is focused upon personality characteristics. The major “motivational principles” affected by personality characteristics are happiness, arousal, and control. Those characteristics that have an impact on the main three principles are extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. The majority of people fall into the middle of any given characteristic while a small number fall on either extreme end of the spectrum.

In regards to happiness, those who are extroverted tend to be happier than introverts for a number of reasons. They are more likely to engage in potentially rewarding situations and are actually more sensitive to their positive moods and thus have more positive moods than introverts. People high in neuroticism tend to be unhappy when compared to those low in the characteristic, the emotionally stable. Neurotics are similar to extroverts in that they experience heightened capacity to experience emotion, however, for the neurotic, that is negative affect.

With arousal, the greatest balance, and best performance, will occur at a moderate level. When under and over aroused, people seek to change the environmental stimulus that affects arousal to reach a more moderate level. Sensation seekers fall into this section; they require a greater amount of stimulation to reach a satisfying level of arousal even at much risk to themselves or others.

Control is described in terms of perceived control and desire for control while many other psychological concepts would fit into the category. Perceived control is limited by a person’s ability to actually achieve their goal and a semi-predictable and responsive environment. When both of those are present, a high perceived control belief is present and people are more likely to set larger/harder goals and generally challenge themselves as opposed to those with low perceived control who would only seek simple tasks and goals that were easily achievable. Those high in desire for control want to take what’s given and make it what works best for them instead of just settling for what life hands them like a person with a low desire for control would do. Those with high degree of control attribute their success to themselves but failure as someone else’s problem. They are better off motivationally than a person with a low degree of control who would take failure more internally and lose their motivation to continue with further goals and more difficult tasks.

While reading this chapter I couldn’t help but think about the “big 5” personality traits and where those came from. I went online and took a short quiz to tell me where I fell on each trait, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Included in that list are the reasons I associated the big 5 with this chapter, extraversion and neuroticism. I already knew approximately where I fell on those two spectrums from reading the chapter but I wanted the information it gave at the end, telling me what it could about my personality based upon my scores on the quiz. I felt like the conclusion was fairly accurate, although that could be similar to the people reading the same horoscope in the cold reading experiment (Dutton’s?). I also found another test that used different criteria to categorize personalities, extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. The two sites agreed upon the area of extraversion alone, everything else had varied to some extent. This site was very similar in its evaluation of me. I suppose this is an area of psychology like many others where there is some level of agreement and a certain level of difference in opinion.

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

Chapter 13 is about individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control; aka our personality characteristics. The chapter first discusses two personality characteristics related to happiness; extraversion and neuroticism. Extraverts are very sensitive to good things in the environment, more eager to approach potentially rewarding situations and because of this more likely to be happy. Neurotic people are not as emotionally stable (but generally not completely unstable), have a much greater capacity to experience negative emotions and see any negative or even neutral feedback in their environment as punishing, and thus show greater avoidance behavior and emotional distress.

Next this chapter discusses two personality characteristics related to arousal; sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is a personality characteristic in which the individual show high need for varied and intense sensations and is willing to take on high risks to achieve the intense sensations. Affect intensity is the level at which individuals generally feel their emotions. Finally the chapter discusses two personality characteristics related to control; perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is our view of whether we possess the ability to get the outcomes that we want or avoid the ones that we don’t. Desire for control is the extent to which we are motivated to control events in our lives.

Something that I thought was interesting in chapter 13 was the concept of perceived control and the benefits that are linked to having high perceived control. I wanted to look further into the topic because I think that perceived control is so very interesting to me because I far too often don’t feel in control of school or my future, or life in general and I was hoping that by learning more about the topic I would be able change my cognitive thoughts about situations and increase my perceived control. I found two different articles talking about perceived control; one an overview of the topic with much of the same information that was in the book and discussed in class, and the other a study actually done about the effects of perceived control. Both were very interesting to me, however I found it especially interesting to read the study. It found that perceived ability is closely linked to perceived control. It also discussed that feedback seeking was affected by the perceived ability and perceived control. When perceived ability and perceived control are low we seek negative feedback and ignore positive feedback. I found this to be especially interesting because this would only decrease a person’s perceived ability and perceived control. And I think that this is one of many things that I can work to cognitively change when I’m feeling low levels of perceived control. I will force myself to look for any form of positive feedback I can to build back up rather than focus on negative feedback and make myself feel worse.
http://www.columbia.edu/~nb2229/docs/trope,%20gervey,%20and%20bolger%2099.pdf
http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/381/Control-Perceived.html

Chapter 13 covers personality characteristics and how they relate to motivation. There are three motivational principles related specifically to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. Any situation has the potential to affect all three of these motivational principals, and this in turn affects our personality.
The first motivational principle is happiness. Those who are extraverts report experiencing a happiness feeling more often. This is because they are more sensitive to the feelings of those around them, and are able to pick up on positive feelings more easily. Extraverts have a greater tendency towards sociability, assertiveness, and greater venturesomeness. Extraverts are also in positive moods more frequently than those who aren’t as extraverted – they have a greater capacity than introverts to experience positive emotions. They have stronger and more sensitive Behavioral Activating Systems. They also have a greater eagerness to approach potentially rewarding situations.
Neuroticism is very different than extroversion. Those who are neurotics exhibit a greater capacity to experience negative emotions in comparison to emotionally stable individuals. In contrast to extraverts, who have stronger and more sensitive Behavioral Activating Systems, neurotics have stronger and more sensitive Behavioral Inhibition Systems. Neurotics have an eagerness to avoid potentially punishing situations and have greater avoidance behavior and emotional distress when compared to emotionally stable individuals.
The second motivational principle is arousal. A person’s arousal level mostly depends on how stimulating their environment is. If the environment is not stimulating the person’s arousal level will be much lower than if the environment provides high stimulation. People then engage in behavior to either increase or decrease their level of arousal so it will be at more of a moderate level. So when a person is under-aroused, they will seek out ways to increase their arousal levels, which enhances pleasure. And when the person is over-aroused, they will seek out ways to decrease their arousal levels, because too much stimulation and arousal can be averse, and decreasing the high arousal levels will be pleasurable. Sensation seeking is related to arousal level. It is a personality characteristic, and is related to the extent to which a person’s central nervous system requires change. Those who are sensation seeking are always looking for new experiences and enjoy taking risks. There is a biological basis to this, related to low levels of monoamine oxidase and serotonin, and high levels of dopamine.
The final motivational principle is control. Perceived control is the differences in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. And desire for control is the extent to which a person is motivated to control the things that happen in their life. High perceived control is a very positive thing, and is related to goal setting, positive emotional states, and persistence in the face of difficulty.
I looked up websites on neuroticism to find out more about the topic. According to the first website, those who score high in neuroticism are very emotionally reactive and have a higher chance of feeling threatened or being in a bad mood in a normal situation. Employees with high neuroticism may have difficulty concentrating and are easily distracted from their work. In the second website I visited I took a test to determine my level of neuroticism. My results say that I score 92.5% on the neuroticism index. This seems awfully high, and while I know I definitely have some characteristics of neuroticism, I don’t think I am quite this high. It is good though to be aware of the negative sides of being neurotic, and this is something I will work on.
http://www.123test.com/personality-neuroticism/
http://www.psychologistworld.com/influence_personality/fivefactortest/ind_result.php

Chapter 3 discusses happiness, arousal, and control. It mentioned that extraverts have a higher rate than introverts, because they have a stronger behavioral activating system. This isn’t to say that introverts are not happy, just that they are more content that actually happy. Also, neurotics, people that have a strong behavioral inhibition system, have higher tendencies to be unhappy.

The chapter also discussed two personality characteristics relating to arousal: affect intensity and sensation seeking. Affect intense individuals experience very strong emotions, both positive and negative. Bipolar disorder is an extreme form of affect intensity. Another example would be people under the age of twenty, as they have not learned to master their emotions as of yet. However, most individuals are affect stable. Sensation seeking refers to people who have a high need for varied, novel, complex and intense sensations.

The book also discussed to personality characteristics in reference to control. The first is a desire for control, which is something I have. Desire for control “reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives.” This is true for me, because I like to know what is going on and do not like others to make decisions for me. In relation to this, I loath ambiguity as it makes me feel like I have no control. Perceived control is the second characteristic, which is the “capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent undesirable ones.”

The point discussed about introversion versus extraversion made in regards to happiness piqued my curiosity, because in every personality or skill test I have taken my highest skills or personality characteristics are interpersonal and intrapersonal skills or extraversion and introversion. They are always tied. So I never really know what exactly I am or should be considered, which makes me very interested in the differences. I came across a website, http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/introverts-extraverts/, that discussed some of the differences and how to deal with each type. The author emphasized that they are merely differences between the two and that neither were better nor worse than the other.

Also of interest was a website about Carl Jung’s interest in introversion versus extraversion, http://www.peoplemaps.com/science/psychology-carl-jung/. Jung, whose name seems familiar, stressed that until someone had tried being both extraverted and introverted, they had not had the capacity to be truly content or happy.

Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. There are three motivational principles that relate to personality characteristics which include happiness, arousal, and control. Situational events can affect any of the these principles. These principles influence peoples motivational and emotional states. There are many different types of personality characteristics including extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire of control.
An example from the book talk about taking an exam for a class. The outcome of the test can make you happy or unhappy. Taking the test could arouse us and we also have control over how much we study for the test and in result the outcome of the test. When we go to star bucks to study we are sedate while if we were to go out on Saturday night we would be aroused. With happiness we have two set points. One point is for happiness and the other unhappiness. Studies show that people who win the lottery and people who were in a horrible accident obviously were at different points of happiness at the time but asked later they had gone back down to their normal set happiness level. Control is something that can happen in certain circumstances but is different for everyone. When losing weight, for some you can shed off weight just by eating healthy and exercising on a regular basis. In the same case other do not have as much control and no matter what kind of dieting they try it is extremely hard to even lose a pound.
Two types of personality characteristics that were discussed in chapter 13 were perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control are beliefs a person has about how they interact with the environment. It is the belief that a person can produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. Perceived control has been shown to be able to increase effort and performance. Desire control is the extent that a person believes they are in control over their life events.
For my topic I choose to look for set points for happiness. The first website I found talks how we have a set point of happiness and different situations make are happiness level rise and fall. After time however, you will always gravitate back down to your set happiness level. It also talks about how happiness levels are genetic. 50% of our happiness is already determined when we are born. The second article I found was from the university of Minnesota twin studies. It also talked about how your socioeconomic status, job title, or social position are not correlated with happiness. 87% of their sample in the study were questioned now at middle age and were reported to be above the average of happy. Are happiness level is moved up or down by activities and certain situations. These can be different from person to person.

http://www.psych.umn.edu/psylabs/happness/hapindex.htm
http://mysuperchargedlife.com/blog/the-science-of-happiness-your-happiness-set-point/

Chapter 13 discusses a number of different personality characteristics including extraversion and neuroticism, perceived control and desire for control, as well as affect intensity and affect stability.

Extraversion and Neuroticism

Chapter 13 discusses how extraverts are usually happier than introverts due to a stronger behavioral activation system, which makes extraverts highly responsive to signals within the environment related to rewarding behavior. This causes extraverts to tend to have an approach temperament and positive emotionality. This is opposite to those high in neuroticism, which tend to have negative emotionality and an avoidance temperament due to a strong behavioral inhibition system, which makes individuals highly sensitive to signals of punishment within their environment.

Affect Intensity and Affect Stability

Chapter 13 also discusses the topic of affect intensity and affect stability, as well as sensation seeking. Chapter 13 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.” A biological basis for high sensation seeking individuals is that they tend to have low levels of MAO and serotonin, while having high levels of dopamine. Chapter 13 describes affect intensity as the strength to which individuals experience and feel their emotions on a day-to-day basis. Affect intense individuals tend to experience their emotions very strongly with large fluctuations in their emotions over long time periods. Affect stable individuals tend to experience only mild levels of emotionality with mild fluctuations from day-to-day.

Perceived Control and Desire for Control

Chapter 13 spends a great deal of time discussing the topics of perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is an individual’s pre-performance expectancy to produce positive outcomes and prevent undesirable outcomes. Individuals with high-perceived control end up having better performance, concentration, and effort, as well as showing positive emotionality. When an individual does not have a high level of perceived control, the opposite of this occurs, with individuals showing poorer performance, half-hearted effort, poorer concentration, and negative emotionality. Desire for control refers to the extent to which an individual is motivated to establish control within his or her own life. Individuals with a high desire for control tend to approach situations with high standards and aspirations, put forth more effort than low-desire for control individuals, and also tend to show more effort than low-desire for control individuals.

For an outside research topic for this chapter, I chose the topic of happiness and how it relates to introverts and extraverts. I found an interesting article from Fox News Health, which discusses how the key for happiness may be due to how different personalities view past experiences. The article said that studies have found that extraverts, whom are normally happier than introverts, view the past in a positive light instead of within a negative light. The study says that, although personality traits are hard to change, individuals can work on becoming happier by remembering positive past experiences and viewing negative past experiences in a more optimistic light. The second article I found listed the advantages of being an introvert and made me begin to question just how extroverts are happier than introverts. Since we live in an overly extroverted world, with introverts being in the minority, what many define has happiness could simply be an extroverted viewpoint of happiness. Some of the advantages of being an introvert that the article listed are indulging in life’s simple pleasures more often, less social complications, and greater freedom in their actions. The article got me thinking about how introverts may instead, actually be misunderstood in how they tend to view happiness.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/

http://princesswithapen.hubpages.com/hub/Advantages-of-being-an-introvert