Reading Blog due Tuesday 4/3 @ midnight

Chapter 13 is all about personality characteristics. The chapter started by talking about why some people are happy and why some people are unhappy. They talk about personality characteristics as being able to reliably predict why people are different in terms of emotion. After introducing the topic of personality characteristics, they talked about individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. Pretty much the whole chapter was centered around each of these things but it first introduced them before going into detail. The main thing to take from this part is that few people are at either extreme when it comes to certain characteristics. The first characteristic that it talked about happiness. Most people see themselves as happy or characterize themselves as happy. Even if you are in a low income group you still feel for the most part happy. It expands on this idea and talks about how money does not determine someones happiness. They talk about former lottery winners and how they are not as happy as you would think they would be after winning so much money. They then talk about how there are two set points in happiness. Those are positive and negative emotionality. Positive is happy and negative is unhappy as you would think. The chapter then goes into talking about extraversion. The way that most people define is in three ways. They talk about sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is preference to be around people. Assertiveness is tendency toward social dominance. Venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting. Most of the time extroverts are more happy introverts. Neuroticism is the next thing they talk about. This is defined as the predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. In other words neuroticism is who is unhappy. These people experience greater stress, more negative emotionality, and a steady stream of negative thoughts. Arousal is the next thing talked about. It represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. It talks about how performance and arousal are related very close to each other. Low level of arousal produces relatively poor performance. It is represented in an inverted-U curve. Sensation seeking is also related to arousal. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. These people are always searching for new experiences. They also take more risks. This section also talks about affect intensity. This concerns people's capacity to become aroused emotionally. The last thing they discussed was control. One thing under control is the desire for control which concerns the extent to which epople strive to make their own decisions. There is also perceived control which concerns differences in people's preperformance expectancies of poccessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes.

The thing I decided to research about was risk raking. I found this interesting because there are many different types of risks. I have also found why some people are more riskful than others is pretty cool. The first article talked about intelligent risk taking. It talked about a couple of different ways to take risks without losing a lot. They talk about some of the most intelligent risks is where the downside is limited. The next article was particularly interesting. It was on a website about livestrong which is the organization that Lance Armstrong started. I thought it was cool cause it encouraged risk taking. It talks about things like roadblocks and some steps to be an effective risk taker. I had no idea that they would have that on a website like that but I found it pretty cool.

Terms: Personality Characteristics, Happiness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Arousal, Risk Taking, Control, Perceived Control, Desire for Control

Chapter 13 focuses on our personality characteristics. The personality characteristics that this chapter focuses on are our happiness, arousal, and control.
Happiness is the first personality characteristic described. The book states that pretty much our events in our life predict our emotions, which then predict our happiness. I thought this was interesting because it talked about the lottery as one example, and as we probably all know we just experienced the biggest lottery in history just this past weekend. You would expect a lottery winner who just won over a million (or way more than a million) dollars would be on average happier than the average person, or say someone who had been in a traumatic accident. Yet, according to researchers, there was really no difference. Yes, the levels of happiness may change right after those events, but people text to go back to the same level of happiness as they were before that life event happened, which was very interesting to me. Extraversion and happiness is the next topic introduced, which explains three facets that go along with it. These are sociability, wanting to be with others; assertiveness, having social dominance and venturesomeness, enjoying things that are exciting. Extraverts are on average happier then introverts because they usually feel pleasurable emotions more often. On the flip side, neuroticism deals with people who are unhappy. These types of individuals suffer when it comes to emotions, and experience more negative emotions then positive ones. There are personality tests that can examine someone’s happiness. Some of these are the NEO personality inventory scales, the Big Five Inventory, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. By examining these scores, a psychologist or researchers can find out many things about an individual such their level of happiness, excitement, and how they experience rewarding situations.
Arousal deals with a mixture of different processes. These are an individual’s alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The processes that go along with these are the cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. The book used the U curve to explain arousal. If an individual has low arousal, they will most likely do poorly when it comes to performance. On the other hand, individuals who have high levels of arousal will most likely have better performance, and quality of performance. Stimulation is also something that affects our levels of arousal. We can have high or low stimulation. It states that low stimulation results in boredom, but high stimulation results in stress. Both of these are aversive feelings, so how do we get to a happy medium? When people are experiencing low levels of stimulation they need to go out and find something more exciting. Yet when people are under high stimulation, they need to experience something more soothing and avoid the too high of stimulation. It also explains the difference between insufficient stimulation and underarousal as well as excessive stimulation and overarousal. The credibility of the U curve is also discussed with arousal. There are people who have criticisms towards the hypothesis. Some of the criticisms are that the U curve only works in extreme cases, when people have extremely high or extremely low levels of arousal. Also, it states that it does not apply to everyday experiences.
Control is the third characteristics explained in the chapter. There are many different types of control that could be illustrated. Personal control beliefs, locus of control, perceived control, causality orientations, etc are all different types of control that a person may experience. Desire for control is one of the main ones; this is when individuals are longing for control over things, and striving to make their own decisions. This then relates to perceived control. Before someone can know that they have control over something, two things need to be true. The first is that that person needs to be able to achieve the outcome. The second is that the situation the person is in needs to be predictable. Desire for control is something that usually everyone wants to achieve sometime. People are have high DC usually approach situations and ask themselves if they will be able to achieve something, and they are more likely to go for it. Individuals who are low in DC usually do not feel comfortable going towards certain things and tend to avoid certain situations or responsibilities. Losing control is something that many people face, and it usually aversive. For example, people who are in high DC can sometimes experience anxiety and stress when it comes to situations where they are not in control of. The example used in the book was going to the dentist office. Yes, this seems like such a simple example but it definitely made sense showing how someone does not feel in control anymore.

The topic I chose to focus on was happiness. The first website I found was about the psychology of happiness. It gave some statistics about happiness, and also 13 steps to be happier! According to the article, 50% of happiness comes to a genetic set point, such as our predisposition of happiness. 10% of our happiness is determined by our circumstances such as age, race, gender, and wealth. The other 40% of our happiness come from intentional activities, which include what we can and cannot do. I thought this was interesting to see some actual statistics. Also it was nice to see that it connected to the text. I still think it was very interesting knowing that our circumstances only contribute to 10% of our happiness. This relates to the example in the book that explained the individuals who were involved in a bad accident and individuals who had wont the lottery. Within a year of these events, on average their happiness levels are the same. The rest of the article states ways we can be happier. I thought this was nice because even though people are ‘happy’ there are probably ways to still boost that happiness. Some of ways for an individual can increase their happiness level is to foster close relationships, have sex, get regular exercise and good amount of sleep, join a group, don’t dwell on the past, and of course do not compare yourself to others, which I think is something too many people do.
This next link I found was a clip. This was a lecture done by a Professor at Harvard named Dan Gilbert. The link has certain clips that you can chose to watch, or the whole thing. Gilbert talks about how we are poor in predicting our happiness, and that everyone thinks happiness depends on things such as money or events in our life. He stated that in a study done, if someone was in a significant bad event, within three months (of course depending on the circumstances) it will have no effect on your happiness.

TERMS: personality, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, pleasurable, emotions, neuroticism, negative emotions, positive emotions,
NEO personality inventory scales, the Big Five Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire,
cortical, behavioral, autonomic, stimulation, aversive, underarousal, overarousal, personal control beliefs, locus of control, perceived control, desire for control (DC)

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/08/25/the-psychology-of-happiness-13-steps-to-a-better-life/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7822696446273926158

Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics; happiness, arousal, and control are the three motivational principles that are of highlighted. Happiness is our first characteristic presented.
We learn that overall, more people are happy most of the time regardless of their backgrounds. It seems people have a happiness set point where there is a range of positive-emotionality and negative-emotionality. People do not deviate from these numbers too much when looking at the totality of their life. We can better measure who is happy with the concept of extroversion. Someone who would measure high in extroversion would be seen has highly sociable, assertive, and venturesome. Extroversion correlates with happiness. This can be explained by the idea that extroverts have a stronger s BAS (Behavioral Activating System), a biological motivational system. This would indicate that people are born with a certain level of happiness. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic associated with being unhappy. It is the tendency to typically experience negative affect and feel persistently discontent. This leads to increased levels of stress and greater anxiety and irritability. Neurotics have a stronger Behavioral Inhibiting System (BIS). BIS energizes avoidance-orientated behaviors. This makes neurotics highly responsive to signals of punishment.

Arousal symbolizes the varying methods that control alertness, wakefulness, and activation. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation. Simplified, they are as follows, arousal level is determined by environment, people behave to either increases or decrease arousal, when over or under aroused, people seek to bring the level back to a comfortable range. People who are sensation seeking seem to need to engage in increasingly risky, complex, and novel behaviors. Affect intensity is a person’s capacity to become emotionally aroused. People who are affect-intense are more psychologically sensitive to change than affect-stable people.

Control can be best explained through the concepts of perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the belief a person has that they can interact with their environment is a way that can produce desired outcomes and prevent unwanted outcomes. Desire for control refers to the extent which people are motivated to take control over their life events. People with a high desire for control like to be independent of others, prepare in advance, and make decisions on their own. People with a low desire for control avoid responsibility and are comfortable with others making decisions for them. Those who have a higher desire for control are better at establishing control. They also have stronger distress reactions when they perceived they have lost control over a situation.

I decided to research the topic of happiness. The first link provided is a TED talk on happiness by psychologist Dan Gilbert. He talks about some of the same things that were in the textbook. He presented two groups of people, one who won the lottery and another who became who paraplegic. A year later he asks which group is happier. The results are that both groups are equally happy, this is more evidence that we have a sort of happiness set point that we return to no matter life circumstances. The main point of his talk was that natural happiness and synthetic happiness, or the happiness that we create when we don’t get what we want, are of equal value to the person. So in a sense we can create our own happiness.

The second link is also from TED talks. It is a lecture given by psychologist Daniel Kahneman. He talks about the differences between our experiencing selves and our remember selves. Depending on your frame of reference, your subjective experience of happiness varies. Your psychological present experiences happiness differently than when you look back on the same experience. This has to do with the variable of time and the story we create when looking back on an experience. Also, the idea of a future experience as thought of as an anticipated experience will influence how you experience and remember things.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html

Terms: Happiness, extraversion, BAS (Behavioral Activating System), neuroticism, Behavioral Inhibiting System (BIS), arousal, sensation seeking, affect intensity, control, perceived control, desire for control

Situational events affect happiness, arousal and control. Based on the components of extraversion, extraverts are happier because they are more likely to experience positive emotions through greater sociability, social dominance and venturesomeness. Although this makes it sound like introverts are incapable of happiness, there are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is associated with what we (society) perceive as happiness. Whereas eudaimonic happiness is associated with self-realization and pursuing what is meaningful in life.

Along with extraversion, increased levels of arousal are related to better performance. However, intensity and quality performance improves when arousal levels are moderately increased. When arousal is high, the effects are equivalent to low arousal states. Human beings seek arousal when they are sensory deprived through social interaction or a change of environment.

I thought it was interesting to read about risk taking or “risk accepting” because I am a bit of a risk taker. I am currently saving up right now to go skydiving. Although there is a chance that I am paying $300 to plummet to my death, life is short anyway.

I decided to research monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors because I think it is intriguing that a genetic predisposition to MAO is correlated with sensation seekers. Therefore someone born with low level of MAO are more likely to be sensation seekers, and are more than likely extraverts. MAO inhibitors metabolize neurotransmitters like Dopamine and serotonin. Low levels of MAO would mean increased levels of dopamine and serotonin. This explains why there are some sensation seekers and some sensation avoiders, because dopamine guides our approach oriented behavior. Interestingly, bipolar patients tend to have low MAO levels and higher dopamine levels that are observable through their moods of extreme highs and low. Conversely, chronic schizophrenic have reportedly had low levels of MAO, yet seem to be sensation avoiders. Another study observed monkeys with high and low MAO levels. They found that monkeys with low levels of MAO were more active in both sexes.

http://pharmacist.hubpages.com/hub/What-Are-MAO-Inhibitors

http://books.google.com/books?id=ApiyY8LX5fAC&pg=PA300&lpg=PA300&dq=low+MAO+results+in+sensation+seekers&source=bl&ots=MRxANWGcaU&sig=VDDEk2R4V-s4LxAtKMDO-V2wcxI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bEN6T5TMIMTYgQeGhOneAg&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=low%20MAO%20results%20in%20sensation%20seekers&f=false

Terms: Sociability, social dominance, happiness, arousal, control, components of extraversion, extraverts, introverts, hedonic eudaimonic, risk accepting, sensory deprivation, monoamine oxidase,

Chapter 13 focuses on individual differences in personality characteristics and the three motivational principles that are directly related to them. The various personality characteristics explored in this chapter are: extraversion, neuroticism, sensation-seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desired control, while the three principles related to the various characteristics of personality are: 1) happiness, 2) arousal, and3) control.

At the beginning of Chapter 13, we are asked to keep in mind that most individuals are relatively happy and of average level of the other two characteristics. In other words, there aren’t too many people out there who are extreme sensation-seekers, in high need of arousal, and desire the highest level of control, etc. this also applies to the lower end of the spectrum-a small number of individuals are in no need for sensation, control, or arousal. In fact, the majority of people fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum regarding individual levels of personality characteristics.
Happiness is something most people want to achieve, or remain in the state of. While the majority of people are relatively happy, there are those who are unhappy for an extreme amount of time during each day. People are said to be within “normal” range if they have both positive and negative emotions regarding happiness/unhappiness, but not overly excessive amounts of either. However, our textbook also states that no matter what happens in our lives, we will most likely return to the same state of happiness we were meant to be in, or our happiness “set point”. So, for someone who has a major event happen in their life, such as inheriting a fortune, the level of happiness normally felt by him/her will be temporarily replaced by a high level of happiness, but will return to its “set point” after a certain period of time. Chapter 13 points out that we actually have two of these set points; one is related to our differences in extraversion, a personality characteristic associated with those who are happy, and the other is associated with neuroticism, which is the characteristic associated with the unhappy emotions experienced.

Along with extraversion, we have introversion, which is the characteristic involved when people are not considered sociable or assertive people. Our book states that emotionally speaking, extraverts are generally happier than introverts, and that this may just be the way those people are. Extraverts may have a greater capacity to be emotionally more positive than introverts. Also, extraversion is associated with the BAS, which motivates individuals to experience approach-oriented behavior.

Neuroticism is the negative side of happiness. Neurotics feel unhappy and dissatisfied constantly, suffering emotionally. The BIS is associated with neurotics and affects the avoidance-oriented behavior, triggering escape and withdrawal for example.

Arousal affects our motivation to be alert, awake, and active. Environment plays a part in arousal, namely the level of stimulation in one’s environment. A certain amount of arousal is needed for adequate performance level. Too much or too little stimulation in the environment can affect a person’s emotional level/arousal, thus affecting her/his performance. This relates to the inverted U curve, or the bell-shaped curve I learned about in a previous class. We want to be somewhere in the middle of the curve, therefore maximizing performance levels. This bell-shaped curve also correlates with stress levels. The more stimulation experienced, the more stress. This leads to the release of cortisol, which aids in managing stress.

Arousal is related to sensation-seeking behaviors. Some people are always searching for a higher level of stimulation equaling more arousal. They want to try things they have never tried, and go to heights others have not, so to speak. These sensation-seekers are usually involved in risky behaviors, due to their low levels of MAO (monoamine oxidase). MAO is the enzyme responsible for the breakdown of serotonin and dopamine, and without this enzyme, those excitement levels remain high, and inhibition is low.

Affect intensity is the level at which individuals become emotionally aroused. There are those people whose emotions rarely affect their attitudes, behaviors, or judgments. Imagine never being able to determine whether a person is angry or excited- this is the result of a person’s affect intensity level.

Finally, chapter 13 discusses the principle of control. Some characteristics listed under the topic of control in our text are the locus of control, mastery versus helpless orientations, perceived control, and desire for control. The last two listed previously are the key components to control. When we want to accomplish something, we strive for it, utilizing the desire for control. The expectancy we possess regarding the positive outcome of an action is perceived control. If we believe and expect we can do something, we perceive control over that action, and over the environment, exerting more effort. When perceived control is absent, we experience learned helplessness, as discussed in a previous chapter. However, we all want the exact opposite, to have or establish control in our lives. We desire it.
Unfortunately, the desire for control (DC)can sometimes lead people to overestimate their abilities, causing an illusion of control and leading even more so to a loss of control. Therefore high DC individuals look for the lost intense challenges and reach for the highest standards, which also can lead to higher distress levels and depression.

http://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=23620

I looked at a couple of websites that discussed sensation seeking personalities. The first site, listed above, states that high sensation seekers are more likely to try drugs than low sensation seekers. Also, some studies are showing evidence that individuals with high sensation seeking behaviors have a different brain than others. Research has shown that there may be differences in the hippocampus of those with the need for more arousal. According to this site, thrill seekers “may have a lower set-point for fear extinction—meaning they can more easily turn off, or at least tamp down, the physiological response to a fearful event”, and may also have the cognitive ability to decipher between those risks which will harm them and which cannot. It is kind-of beneficial I would think, to have the ability to deter anxiety and fear and just have a “go-for-it” attitude at times. Then again, it may get a person into trouble.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201010/are-you-high-sensation-seeker-check-your-hand-grip

The second website I found was Psychology Today online. This caught my eye because it stated a correlation between hand-grip strength and sensation seeking levels, as well as other personality traits. The interesting aspect of this article is that it states there is a direct correlation between testosterone levels and sensation seeking and testosterone levels and hand-grip strength (HGS). More so, there was evidence also linking HGS and sensation seeking behaviors; that it “was positively correlated with…the thrill and adventure seeking subscale (of either hands). In other words, the stronger a man's HGS, the more likely he is to engage in high sensation-seeking activities (e.g., bungee jumping).” Very interesting information I thought.

TERMS: happiness, extraversion, introversion, control, arousal, perceived/desired/locus of control, affect intensity, sensation seeking, stress, neuroticism, performance, emotion, stimulation

This chapter discussed the personality characteristics related to happiness, arousal, and control. It explained how personality differences arise and what implications they might have for motivation, emotion, and everyday activities.

First we looked at happiness. The personality characteristics that define this were extraversion and neuroticism. An extravert is a person who is generally happy - happier than an introvert would normally be. This is because they have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that is more responsive to the signaling of rewards within an environment. A person can be an introvert and still be happy because there is more than one kind of happiness. The first is hedonic, which is a person's pleasurable moments in a lifetime. The second kind of happiness is eudaimonic, this is the self realization of happiness where a person will engage themselves in meaningful endeavors. On the other hand, a neurotic person is someone tending to be unhappy with a stronger behavioral inhibiting system (BIS) that is more responsive to signals of punishment within an environment. For example, an extravert will be social and outgoing looking to make friends. Someone who is neurotic might be hesitant to make friends because they see how it could punish or harm them. Extraversion is linked with positive emotion and an approach temperament while neuroticism is linked with more negative emotions and avoidance temperament.

Arousal is associated with the personality characteristics of sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, complex, and intense sensations and willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. Once a person seeks these new experiences, like sex or drugs, this promotes the risk accepting behavior. This just promotes them to try more things because it was associated with an approach oriented behavior. For example, this is why people gamble. Once they try it and win a hand of blackjack they want to bet more to win more since it worked the first time. They aren't avoiding the risk anymore, it becomes fun and exciting to do. The other personality characteristic associated with arousal is affect intensity. This is the strength of emotions that a person experiences. Some people tend to have strong emotions and can be hyperactive in a emotional way. This person would be extremely happy in one moment and very sad or mad in the next. Most people are going to be pretty stable where their emotions are mild and show minor fluctuations in emotional reactions.

The last topic the chapter discussed was control. Perceived control and the desire for control were the personality ihen a person has a high desire for control they approach situations by wanting to totally control what happens to them. This can be helpful and harmful. It is helpful when they embrace their high standards with high effort when they are challenged because it helps them self serve and enhance their control. On the other hand, they might feel threatened or lost and exhibit reactions such as depression or distress when control is not present. This might occur when a person visits the dentist and can't control what happens to their teeth. They have to leave it in the hands of the professional and this makes them very uncomfortable.

I decided to look more into arousal for my research topic. The first article I found talked about swallowing your fear and accept it because it will help you overcome your emotions. When you focus your attention on your body and your surroundings, your sense of action becomes the only focus. For example, when you are in a canoe in white water you have to keep your body loose and balance in order to not tip the boat. If you let your emotions overcome you then you won't be able to manage this task. If you push through it with the willpower you are showing yourself that you can accomplish it even though you were screaming inside your head. If you can manage your emotions in this extreme situation you can manage them in real situations. This deals directly with affect intensity. You have to remain mild mannered and emotionally stable on the outside . It can also be considered a kind of sensation seeking that you might have thought you would never have but it introduced you to risk accepting behaviors.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200612/swallow-your-fear

The second article I found talked about why teenagers act as crazy and rebellious as they do. Their brains are still evolving and they take risks to make a leap from home life to independence. Once teens develop a mature frontal lobe they tend to be less reliant on their parents. When teens take risks the effects can be especially harmful because their brains are not fully developed. For instance, a teenager who decides to drink and drive and then gets in a car accident with a head injury. This could possible result in permanent brain damage affecting them for the rest of their life. Teens don't realize the impact it could actually have on them. There is a reason why we have a legal drinking age - although many don't stay true to it, it does save lives. This again goes along with the crazy sensation seeking and how teenagers don't need added influences of alcohol to feel like they have taken a risk.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/trouble-in-mind/201112/brilliant-brazen-teenage-brains

TERMS: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, BAS, BIS, approach temperament, avoidance temperament, eudaimonic happiness, hedonic happiness, sensation seeking, affect intensity, risk accepting behavior, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, self confirming cycle

Chapter 13 talks about personalities. It goes into depth about three important personalities, happiness, arousal, and control.

Happiness is something that everyone has; people just have their own “set point” which is the balance between positive and negative events in one’s life. Extraversion is a key component of happiness because extroverts are usually happier than introverts. That is because of three factors, sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. There are two types of happiness, hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic is one’s pleasurable moments. Eudaimonic involves self-realization and engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing. The negative side of happiness is called neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to fell chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.

Arousal is the second personality the book talks about. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Arousal is measured by an inverted-U curve, with, low arousal being represented in the lower left and increasing as you move to the lower right where high arousal is located. Low arousal proceeds to boredom, high arousal leads to tension and stress. When under aroused people seek out activities that offer increased stimulation, opportunities for exploring something new, maybe even take a risk. On the other hand, when high arousal is present a person will avoid environmental stimulation.
The third personality the book talks about is control. Control can best be described by perceived control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s perperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. The desire for control comes from the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways.

I chose to look more into perceived control. I found a nice article by a bunch of Vanderbilt professors. I also looked at an article by Art Markman. In this article it was interesting because he was talking about how one morning all the Obama signs in his neighborhood had been taken and all the McCain signs were left back during the 2008 election and how it didn’t really matter what signs were taken because they were in Texas where McCain was going to carry whether the Obama signs were taken or not.

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/nursing/kwallston/perceived%20control%20and%20health.pdf

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/200810/the-power-yard-signs-iii-perceived-control

Terms Used: happiness, extraversion, hedonic, eudaimonic, neuroticism, arousal, inverted-U curve, control, perceived control

Chapter 13 is titled Personality Characteristics. This chapter focuses on going in-depth about individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. Any situational event allows all three of these subjective experiences to be affected. The personality characteristics discussed in this chapter are extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. These characteristics help explain the differences between motivational and emotional states even in the same situation. An important thing to remember when discussing which characteristic an individual is classified as, is that people rarely fall on one extreme. These characteristics are on a spectrum and constantly changing based on the situation.

Generally speaking, most people are happy. If a dramatic event was to happen for an individual that caused extreme happiness and a different life event occurred for someone that caused extreme sadness, they would be on different ends of the happiness spectrum. However, a year down the road, if you were to measure their levels of happiness, they would be relatively close to the average person. People have a happiness “set point”. This means most people return back to an average level of happiness for themselves after events whether they are positive or negative. When in comes to extraversion and happiness, extraverts are happier than introverts because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions. They benefit from more frequent and intense signals of reward that leave them anticipating situations with excitement, feeling happy, and wanting to approach situations. There are two types of happiness; hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It reflects a pleasant life, and in represents what most people think of as happiness. Eudaimonic concerns self-realization; it involves engaging one’s self in meaningful pursuits and doing what is worth doing.

Arousal represents a variety of processes that harvest alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. The activity of the brain, skeletal muscular system, and autonomic nervous system together constitute most of the motivational construct of arousal. Four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation are; 1.) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is. 2.) People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. 3.) When under aroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance whereas decreases are aversive and undermine performance. 4.) 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.
Control beliefs are most commonly displayed through perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. The desire for control concerns the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. To assess individual differences in perceptions of control, researchers use questionnaires that contain the following items; 1.) If you decide to sit yourself down and learn something really hard, can you learn it? 2.) I’ll bet you don’t like to get bad grades. Can you do anything to keep from getting any? 3.) Let’s say: You decide that you’re not going to get any problems wrong (like on a math or spelling paper). Can you do it?

I went on to further research hedonic happiness, also known as a hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation. It is known as the supposed tendency to return to relatively stable level of happiness, despite major positive or negative life events. This theory is still relatively new so not much research has been done. Research tends to support a three factor model where our level of happiness is 50% determined by genetics, 10% determined by outside circumstances, and 40% determined by intentional activities. The last factor is the focus of positive psychology because not all activities are equally effective at helping others reach their higher level of happiness. One topic of controversy that goes along with hedonic happiness is the set point. The set point is different for every individual and may be more based on genetics than the specific situation. People also tend to focus more on negative things than positive things which can also alter the set point. Drug use can also alter an individual’s set point of happiness. Hedonic happiness is subjective well-being that involves the presence of a positive mood, absence of negative mood, satisfaction with various domains of life, and global life satisfaction.

Terms: personality, characteristics, individual differences, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, set point, happiness, arousal, control, positive, negative, hedonic treadmill, genetics

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill -
http://forum.psychlinks.ca/positive-psychology/24145-happiness-and-positive-psychology-hedonic-and-eudaimonic-well-being.html

There are two main personality charachteristics that are related to happiness; extraversion neurotocism. Extraversion explains more of who is happy. These people are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral acting system (BAS) because of the way they respond to reward. Neurotocism explains more of who is unhappy. These people suffer more emotionally because of the same BAS, however theirs makes them repond more to punishment rather than reward. When entering these situations, neurotics negative emotions and therefore show avoidance seeking behaivors.
The two personality characteristics that this chapter talks about related to arousal, performance and mood are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied and intense situations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risks for the sake of the experience. These are the people who jump out of airplanes, place big bets, engage in risky behaviors such as drugs and risky sexual situations. Affect intensity individuals have strong emotions and show emotional hyperactivity in situations where emotions are elicit. Someone who is affect-stable would be oppoisite and only experience their emotions midly and not have a big fluctuation of emotions. I would think of someone like this as being non-chalant, just kind of doesn’t care, hard to read.
This chapter also talks about the two personality characteristics that are related to control being perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the belief a person has that he or she can interact with the environment and have control over what they want to happen and what they do not want to happen. When someone has a strong belief in perceived control, they engage in tasks with positive emotion. For example, if I think I have complete control on whether or not I get an A on a test, I am going to study hard for it and go into it thinking I will get an A. However, if the person’s perceived control is weak, they go about things more passively and negatively. If I don’t think I have control over a grade I get, I am not going to go into it with much confidence and probably not study hard or try hard, because it doesn’t matter, its out of my control. Desire for control is the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their life. If someone has a high desire for control, they want to control a situation and have high standards, therefore put forth a lot of effort when challenged.
The sensation seeking section was of interest to me, and I found online a sensation seeking scale. I took a little quiz that said I am low sensation seeking, and I believe this now, however, if I would have taken this quiz before I became a mother, I know I would have answered a lot different and thought of different experiences when reading the questions. Here is the quiz:
http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/licensing/tests/driverqualificationtest/sensationseekingscale/index.html
the other thing I looked into was to see if drug abusers are more impulsive or more sensation seeking type of people. I found there is a difference between being impulsive and being a high sensation seeker. This article gave some good info.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20678754
Terms used: happiness, extraversion, neurotocism, arousal, performance, introverts, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control

Chapter 13 covers the topic of personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and control and differing levels of each. Happiness is largely associated with extraversion because these people have more positive moods because they’re more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most social situations than those who are introverts. This is so because extroverts have a stronger behavioral activating system, or BAS. Therefore, they have a stronger incentive motivational state. The book states that happiness is just as genetic as it is environmental. The opposite of happiness would be neuroticism. These people have a predisposition to experience negative affect and more likely to have anxiety, fear, and irritable mood states. Contrast to extroverts, neurotics have a strong behavioral inhibition system, or BIS. Therefore, they have an avoidant-oriented motivational style. Arousal produces optimal performance when it’s at a moderate level. If it’s too high we experience stress, yet when it’s too low we experience boredom. As humans,vwe rely on a variety of cognitive and behavioral stimulation to increase our arousal level if it’s too low because our brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal. However, if we’re overstimulated it impairs our cognitive and physiological processes. But we need to take into consideration that individuals differ on their baseline of arousal. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, while a low seeker prefers less brain stimulation. High and low sensation seekers therefore experience different characteristic in their behavior. For instance, high seekers are more likely to search for new experiences, accept risks, and become bored with routine. We should also take into account the individuals emotional intensity. Affect-intense people show strong emotions towards various good or bad events, while affect-stable people have mild emotions. Control has two types of main beliefs: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds where they can produce desired outcomes by way in which they interact with the environment. It also predicts how much effort a person is willing to exert. High perceived control individuals initiate action, has effort, concentration, and can persist. Low perceived individuals select an easy task, set lower goals, and generates simple plans, which over time may lead to a more pessimistic view. Desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. These people prefer to make their own decisions, avoid dependence on others, and assume leadership roles in a group. They do so by speaking loudly and rapidly and interrupt others. However, when their control is lost they suffer from distress, anxiety, depression, and assertive coping.

The most surprising fact I learned from this chapter was in the study on sensory-deprivation. The participants were restricted from sensory information from touch and were told to sit in a room, only to leave for meals and the restroom. Over some time, they reported blank episodes of thought or let their mind wonder. But the most interesting thing I thought was that nearly everyone reported dreams and visions while awake. This intrigued me because it goes to show that without the environmental stimulation, our brains save themselves by making up its own stimulation through dreams and visions in the waking hours. It’s amazing how our brain and body feed on external stimulation, yet in the absence of that we are able to create our own. Therefore I decided to do more research regarding sensory deprivation. http://www.physorg.com/news175504269.html - at this website, it explains that sensory deprivation can produce hallucinations within 15 minutes. A study was done where participants sat in a sensory-depriving room for 15 minutes. Each one reported hallucinations, depressed mood, or paranoia. The researchers even tested for those who were prone to hallucinations and those highly prone, and they found that each group still experienced some level of hallucinations. Scientists concluded that hallucinations are produced through faulty source monitoring, where the brain misidentifies the source of its own thoughts as arising from outside the body. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb5TV8uHmQ0 – this video clip from “gateways to the mind” explains and demonstrated that the brain is stimulated by external factors. They then observed a sensory deprivation experiment where we could see the person in a small room covered in blankets and cases to block out sensory stimulation. They explained that each subject couldn’t handle it for more than 24 hours and each lost touch with reality. As time went on, the participants who stuck it out the longest experienced intense hallucinations of animated figures, or hearing voices, and they became frightening. I enjoyed watching this video because it shows what the experiment looks like, which allowed me to better understand the circumstances for which sensory deprivation may occur.

TERMS: happiness, arousal, control, extroverts, introverts, BAS, neuroticism, BIS, sensation seeker, baseline, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control, sensory deprivation

Chapter 13 examined personality characteristics, namely happiness, arousal, and control, and their roles in motivation and emotion. The topic of happiness was the biggest portion and it primarily examined who is happy and who is unhappy. Studies support the idea that extroverts are as a whole the happier people than introverts. The biggest reason for this seems to be that extroverts Behavioral Activating System (BAS) is hypersensitive. What this means is that their willingness to take approach oriented behavior is very high. When our BAS is hypersensitive it causes individuals to see all the pros to engaging in a behavior and not pay as much attention to the possible negative consequences. Those who are unhappy tend to be neurotics. Neuroticism is when individuals tend to view events as negative and to be unsatisfied. Neurotics, when compared to extroverts, have a hypersensitive Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS). This means that their tendency to avoid participating in a given activity is high. When our BIS is hypersensitive it means that we are looking for the possible punishment that may accompany a behavior. For example, if you go to a party and your BIS is highly activated you will probably think of things such as what if a fight starts, what if the cops show up, nobody really wants me here, or I’m probably going to pass out and die if I drink too much. All of these events serve as punishers even though they are highly unlikely.
The next section of the chapter examined arousal. The Inverted-U curve explained to us that people like to be moderately aroused most of the time. If we are under aroused, like in the sensory deprivation studies, we are unable to think clearly, become easily agitated, and boredom. If we are over aroused we become stressed and anxious and cannot think clearly. Our brain functions best when we are at a moderate level of arousal and allows us to think clearly and be able to complete tasks efficiently. People seek to find the moderate level of arousal by changing their environment. People who have sensation seeking traits are bored easily with routine and are always seeking a new environmental stimulus. This is definitely my personality type.
The last section of the chapter looked at control which can be broken up into perceived control and our desire for control. Perceived control is how competent or how able you think you are and whether or not you can complete a given task. People with high perceived control tend to be more willing to approach a behavior because they think they can do it. People with a low perceived control would rather avoid a given behavior because they don’t think they can reach their goal or their environment is not predictable or they haven’t tried it before. Individuals also exhibit a certain degree of desire for control. The best aspect of having a high desire for control is that it helps people persist in tasks, choose to pursue more difficult tasks, and attribute success to yourself and perceive failure as being caused by something aside from yourself.
One thing that interested me was discussed under the Control portion of the chapter as a positive attribute of having a high desire for control. If you fail and have a high desire for control then you will view success as being attributed to your own hard work, effort, and abilities. When you fail and have a high desire for control you do not attribute it to yourself but rather to outside circumstances. However, one downside may be that you may develop the illusion of control when in fact you do not have control. One website I found http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/10/03/the-illusion-of-control/ explored our illusion of control a bit further. This individual took a look at how we often think that we have control over areas that we in fact cannot control. They said that depressed or neurotic people do not have this ‘problem’. They tend to have a much more realistic view of life and do not delude themselves with the illusion that they can control things like many people do. This was really interesting to me because I feel as though we often look at depressed people in a negative fashion when they can be ‘better’ than average people in cases like these. The second website was http://www.virtuailes.com/THE-INVESTMENT-ENVIRONMENT/investment-illusion-of-control.html . This website looked at how when investors have a high desire for control it often does them in. Just like in our textbook it stated that for us to develop a high perceived control have to feel as though they have a sense of control and that they have some idea of the expected outcomes. Investors sometimes get too sure of themselves with some investment choices they make. If their investment continues to do well over time they may develop the illusion of control over something like the stock market, which is foolish. Seeing these two articles discuss our illusion of control over many aspects of life is humbling to realize how little we do actually control.

Chapter 13 focuses on three motivational principles that go along with personality characteristics. Happiness, arousal, and control are the three. We look at these principles on a continuum; some people are very high in one area and low in another. However, most people fall somewhere in between. Most people are generally happy in life. Our happiness can be looked at as a set point. It fluctuates at different life events, good and bad, and then usually settles back to its normal state. The book gives the analogy of it being like our body weight. Just like our body weight, happiness is something that is hard to control or change. A generally happy person is considered an extrovert. Extroverts are social, assertive, and seek out stimulating situations. They are happier than introverts because they are more sensitive to life rewards in social situations. This makes them more likely to experience positive feelings. Extroverts BAS is higher than introverts. Because of this they are more goal-directed and approach oriented. A person who is “unhappy” is considered to be a neurotic. Neurotics experience negative emotions such as fear, anxiety and irritability in their everyday life. They have a high BIS that triggers these negative emotions. Arousal is the second principle discussed in the book. Arousal is brought on by collaboration of the brain, skeletal muscular system, and automatic nervous system. Arousal levels are examined by an inverted-U. As arousal level increases from low to moderate, intensity and quality of performance rise. When arousal level keeps increasing to high, performance quality and efficiency drop. Low arousal gives rise to boredom, and high arousal level creates tension and stress. It is best to have arousal levels at a medium state to avoid both boredom and overstimulation. Sensation seeking is a personality characteristic that coincides with arousal. A person with high sensation seeking levels looks for ways to increase arousal. A person with low sensation seeking levels likes routine and doesn’t search for stimulation through new experiences. A sensation seeker searching for new experiences is looking for a boost in arousal; also found in risk taking. Affect intensity is a continuum of a person’s capacity to be aroused. Those who are affect intense experience strong emotions that change frequently. Affect-stable individuals have mild emotions that have only minor fluctuations. Control is the third principle discussed. Control is broken down into two parts; perceived control and desired control. Perceived control is the belief and expectation a person feels that they can interact with the environment in ways that will produce the desired outcome. It predicts how much effort a person will put in and how high their goals will be. Desire for control refers to the extent at which individuals are motivated to establish control over events in their lives. A person with high desired control wants to make their own decisions, prepare for situations in advance, and hold leadership roles. This type of person sees a difficult situation as threatening their desire for control. Therefore they are more likely to persist longer than those who have a low desire for control. When they completely lose control however, they show distress, anxiety, depression, dominance, and assertive coping.

I thought the discussion between the differences in introverts and extroverts was quite interesting. I came upon a website that gave information on misconceptions of introverts, and how successful they can be. First off, it stated that many people think introverts are anti-social. However, they simply just need less stimulation than an extrovert, giving them a different way of being social. Their idea of being social might be having a glass of wine with a group of friends over going to a loud, crowded party. Shyness is not a quality of an introvert. Shyness is the fear of social situations, which could be found in an extrovert or an introvert. What I found extremely eye opening is how the work force in America is directed toward extrovert’s success. Most office buildings are open and focus on total teamwork. However, for an introvert they will be much more successful in their own office doing the work on their own. The next website I found was just kind of fun but gave the names of some successful introverts including; Charles Darwin, Larry Page, Eleanor Roosevelt, Steve Wosniak and more.
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/30/145930229/quiet-please-unleashing-the-power-of-introverts
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/lmj45ifjd/albert-einstein/

Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extrovert, BAS, neuroticism, BIS, arousal levels, inverted-u, sensation seeking, risk taking, affect intensity, control, perceived control, desired control

Chapter 13 focused on personality characteristics within three motivational principles: happiness, arousal, and control. It is these personal characteristics that explain why given a certain event that people have different motivational and emotional states. These differences can range from extreme to mild, but relatively few people are at either end of the characteristic putting them in the middle.

The first motivation we come upon is happiness, a state that most people experiences irrespective of their life circumstances. People can’t always be emotionally happy which leads to the two independent emotional set points, positive emotionality (happiness) and negative emotionality (unhappiness). To be happy one has to have the characteristic of an extraverted person; to be socially enjoyable (sociability), have a social dominance (assertiveness), and to be able to seek out and enjoy exciting situations (venturesomeness). Due to their reward inherent sensitivity extraverts are generally happier than introverts when they approach potentially rewarding situations. This is possible due to a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system), a function that energizes approach-oriented, goal-directed behavior supplying the extravert with a steady stream of motivational and emotional states. In regards to happiness there are two types; hedonic – a flash back of pleasurable moments and state of what happiness people portray and eudaimonic – involving oneself in meaningful pursuits (self-realization). The characteristic that falls on the opposite side of happiness is (neuroticism), a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. They suffer emotionally due to a greater capacity to experience negative emotions a result from harboring disturbed and troubling thoughts. On a more biological level neurotics have a highly strong and sensitive BIS (behavioral inhibition system) a system that uses forthcoming punishment as a source of negative emotions (fear, anxiety). The BIS functions in a way that energizes avoidance-oriented, goal-directed behavior.

Arousal represents a variety of processes; cortical (brain), behavioral (skeletal muscular system), and autonomic (nervous system). The rise and fall of arousal can be represented into an “inverted-U curve” by comparing the relationship between arousal and performance/well-being. Within this representation there are three levels: moderate, low, and high. A moderate level of arousal is that of an orgasm where as a low level coincides with boredom and restlessness, leading the person to explore something new or even risky (increase stimulation). High stimulation produces tension and stress, when this happens it creates a negative effect. Drawing people’s attention to a more calm environment (vacation, quiet walk) anything to decrease the stimulation. When one is over stimulated in a stressful environment the three processes stated above get impaired. The emotional turmoil manifests itself in feelings of anxiety, irritability, and anger. Cognitive disruption comes off as confusion and impaired concentration. Whereas physiological problems develop in the sympathetic nervous system (high blood pressure). Sensation seeking is the next personality characteristic that is linked to arousal (baseline level) – how aroused a person is without external stimulation and reactivity – arousal reaction to exposed external stimulation. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external stimulation through exciting experiences such as sex to avoid falling into a boring routine.

The final motivational principle come down to control. Control covers a wide range of personal control beliefs, but only two are really worth talking about. Perceived control, the beliefs and expectations a person holds that they can produce a desired outcome and prevent undesired ones. In order for this to work an individual has to fill they are able to obtain the outcome and second the situation they are attempting to control has to somewhat be predictable and responsive. This all predicts how much effort a person is willing to exert; those with a high perceived control set higher goals and plans on how to succeed, whereas the low end select easy tasks and set lower goals with fallback strategies. Desire for control (DC) reflects the motivation of an individual to establish control over the events in their lives. What sets these two control beliefs apart is the high-desire-for-control that people want over their fates, regardless of how much control is currently had and irrespective of how structured or responsive the situation appears to be. The manifestations of these personal control behaviors comes from the desire to establish control and to restore control, “the desire for control feeds into the illusion of control”. The one down side for individuals with high-DC is they tend to overestimate how well they will perform, usually interpreting success and failure feedback in ways that feed an illusion of control.

Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, introversion, neuroticism, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, BAS, BIS, hedonic, eudaimonic, inverted-U, cortical, behavior, autonomic, sensation seeking, baseline level, reactivity, perceived control, desire for control.

The area I decided to read more into was the rick taking in sensation seeking. More to the point of the side effects or down fall of too much ricking taking. As I was searching I found that there are a lot of different types of rick taking, some that lead to success and others, well not so much. For those who took the risk that didn’t turn out so well, were the ones that are more likely to take a risk in the wrong direction. Such as drugs and alcohol which can lead to the abuse of such substances, and another big manifestation that was talked about in our text was also talked about in the articles I found, sex. A risky behavior indeed, one that leads to multiple sex partners and the spread of HIVs and other STDs. As one article put it the shame and guilt that can come from these behaviors can cause depression and family problem due to interpersonal problems.

http://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=23620
http://www.bridgestorecovery.com/psychological_trauma/risk_taking_behaviors/

Chapter 13 talks about personality characteristics. It starts out by talking about why some people are happy and why others are not. It talks about personality characteristics as being able to reliably predict why people are different in terms of emotion. The chapter also talked about individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. Few people are at either extreme when it comes to certain characteristics. The first characteristic the chapter talked about was happiness. Most people view themselves as happy. It goes further into this idea and talks about how money does not determine someone’s happiness. It says that there are 2 set points in happiness, which are positive and negative emotionality. The next thing chapter 13 talks about is extraversion. The way that most people define it is in three ways. They talk about sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Sociability is preference to be around people. Assertiveness is tendency toward social dominance. Venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy excitement. Most of the time extroverts are happier than introverts. The chapter then talks about neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as the predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. These type of people experience greater stress, more negative emotionality, and a steady stream of negative thoughts. They then turned their attention to arousal. It represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Low level of arousal produces relatively poor performance. Sensation seeking is also related to arousal. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. These are the people that take more risks. The last thing they discussed was control. One thing under control is the desire for control which concerns the extent to which epople strive to make their own decisions. There is also perceived control which concerns differences in people's preperformance expectancies of poccessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes.

TERMS:Personality Characteristics, Happiness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Arousal, Risk Taking, Control, Perceived Control, Desire for Control

The main topic of Chapter 13 was personality characteristics, which focused mainly on happiness and neuroticism, sensation seeking and arousal, and desire for control.

One of the main connections made with in the chapter was the connection between happiness and extraversion. Studies show that extraverts are more likely to be happy than introverts. Overall, extraverts are more likely to experience positive feelings and are more likely to engage in social events and as an outcome have more rewards for doing more things. Another connection made in the chapter was between neuroticism and unhappiness. Neurotic people suffer emotionally and have unstable emotional control, which leads to unhappiness.

Another topic discussed in the chapter was arousal and sensation seeking personality characteristics. When people are not being stimulated enough, they will sometimes participate in sensation seeking behaviors to deal with their under arousal. An important part of arousal is affect intensity. If we highly experience our emotions we are high on affect intensity. It is best to be mildly aroused and have affect stability. Performance for tasks are affected by arousal and moderately arousal helps to have the most efficiently completed tasks.

The last part of the chapter discusses control and desire to have control as a personality factor. People emit behaviors that have desirable outcomes and try to prevent outcomes that are undesirable. When people feel that they are going to have positive outcomes from this behaviors and that they have actively controlled the situation then they generally have more positive feelings. In the same sense, if a person is having negative feelings about a situation it may contribute to an undesirable outcome.

The topic I choose to do some more research on is sensation-seeking behaviors. I began by taking the sensation seeking scale test. I thought I would result as high on sensation seeking because I do like to try new things and be adventurous, however I resulted at 47%, which is average on the scale. I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t high on sensation seeking, however it just shows that I am a pretty grounded individual. The second thing I looked at was an article that talks about how sensation seeking could be in our genetic make up. It explains how dopamine controls sensation-seeking behaviors and how genes can mutate overtime to increase the likelihood that someone would participate in these kinds of behaviors.

Two Links:
http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/licensing/tests/driverqualificationtest/sensationseekingscale/index.html
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20101006/sensation-seeking-may-be-in-the-genes

Terms: Personality characteristics, happiness, neuroticism, sensation seeking, arousal, control, extraversion, extraverts, introverts, positive feelings, social, rewards, unhappiness, stimulated, under arousal, affect intensity, affect stability, performance, emit, outcomes, sensation seeking scale, genetic make up, dopamine.

There are three main personality dimensions discussed in Chapter 13 that pertain to motivation: happiness (extraversion and neuroticism), arousal (alertness, wakefulness, and activation) and control (perceived control and desire for control). An important point regarding personality characteristics is that they are normally distributed, meaning that most people have a moderate level of the characteristic. Few people lie on the extremes (such as a “neurotic” or “extrovert”), but instead they show some level of the characteristic.

The first personality characteristic is happiness, which seems strange at first glance. Many people may not know that happiness (or positive emotionality) has a set point as well as unhappiness (or negative emotionality). The set-points are independent of one another. The idea behind set-points is that people have a consistent mood that may vary with environmental situations, but is still relatively stable. These sets-points can be explained by two personality characteristics: extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is the tendency toward sociability, assertiveness, and being exciting. Sociability is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and situations. Assertiveness is defined as the tendency toward social dominance and venturesomeness is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting and stimulating situations. These three traits together create the construct extraversion. Extraverts tend to be happier and experience more positive emotions than introverts because they have a higher sensitivity to the behavioral activating system (BAS), which is the brain region responsible for the positive emotions associated with rewards. This means that extroverts are more likely to seek out environments that provide potential rewards. The fact that extraversion is linked to brain functioning suggests that this is a genetic trait, which has been supported by twin studies. I will explore this topic in depth in the second part of this assignment.

On the other hand, neuroticism is the personality characteristic that determines the negative emotionality set-point. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Like extraversion, it is thought that neurotics are prone to negative emotionality due to a higher sensitivity to a specific brain region. In the case of neuroticism, it is the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), which is a brain system that regulates environment signals of punishment. A high sensitivity to this system results in avoidance-oriented behaviors.

Arousal is the second pertinent personality characteristic discussed in Chapter 13. Arousal concerns three different constructs: 1) Alertness, or the activity of the brain (cortical activity), 2) wakefulness, or the skeletal muscular system (behavioral activity), and 3) activation, or the autonomic nervous system (autonomic activity). In general, people function the best when there is a moderate level of arousal. This is referred to as the Yerkes-Dodson Law. The idea is represented by an inverted “U” graph, which illustrates that low arousal leads to decreased performance due to boredom and restlessness, moderate arousal leads to increased attention and effort, and high levels of arousal leads to emotional disturbance and anxiety. If arousal is not at an optimal level (moderate), then people tend to either approach or avoid the sources of arousal. An example of this is sensory deprivation, which is an individual’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. Studies on sensory deprivation illustrate that we seek moderate arousal and that we have ways of counteracting insufficient stimulation such as mental imagery and social interaction. On the other hand, excessive stimulation and over-arousal can lead to emotional, cognitive, and physiological disruption. The take away is that people seek moderate arousal which leads to optimal performance and positive emotionality.

People differ in their baseline level of arousal, or how aroused a person is without external stimulation (similar to a set-point), and reactivity, or one’s arousal reaction when exposed to external stimulation. These traits are related to the sensation seeking, which is a personality characteristic that is defined as “the seeking of varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience.” A common name for people with this personality characteristic is “adrenaline junkies”. These people prefer continual brain stimulation and are constantly seeking out new experiences that will provide that stimulation. Interestingly, studies suggest that this extreme approach-oriented behavior may be caused by an imbalance in neurotransmitters (namely, dopamine and serotonin). Another arousal-related construct is affect intensity, which concerns people’s capacities to become aroused emotionally. Affect-intense people have high reactivity and variability in their emotional states whereas affect-stable individuals tend to be pretty steady in their levels of emotionality.

The third and final personality characteristic discussed in Chapter 13 is control. There are two personality traits that cover most of control beliefs as they relate to personality: perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. In order to feel that you have control over the situation, two things must be true: 1) the self must be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome and 2) the situation in which one attempts to exercise control needs to be at least somewhat predictable and responsive. A person’s personal control beliefs predict the level of persistence and engagement in an activity. Engagement captures the intensity and emotional quality of a person’s participation. Interestingly, the tendency for people with high control perceptions to have higher levels of persistence and engagement leads to a self-confirming cycle because the increased effort typically will result in success, which will contribute to the high control belief. The other personality trait is the desire for control. A person high in desire for control prefers making their own decisions, prepare for situations in advance, avoid dependence on others, and assume leadership roles in group settings whereas a low desire for control person prefers to “wing it”. This personality trait has important implications for achievement.

The thing that interested me the most from this chapter was the idea that our set-points for positive and negative emotionality may be determined by our genetics, which is suggested by the twin study in the textbook. I decided to do some more research on this topic. The first article I found (Lake, Eaves, Maes, Heath, and Martin, 2000) was an impressive twins study that had 45,000+ participants. It concluded that family resemblance in neuroticism can be explained through a fairly simple genetic model. The article also made a point that I had not thought of before. Lake et. al. state, “Neuroticism represents … an attractive target for association and linkage analysis to identify major genes underlying anxiety and depression (pg. 224).” I find this exciting since neuroticism is linked to many disorders that affect millions of people (such as anxiety and depression), and neuroticism is a fairly easy trait to measure. The second article I found looked at the different models to explain the relationship between extraversion/positive emotionality and neuroticism/negative emotionality (McFatter, 1997). This article was interesting because it made an important distinction between the frequency of positive or negative emotions and the intensity of those emotions. He found that when intensity was measured rather than frequency, stronger correlations were found between the constructs (extraversion and neuroticism) and emotionality. Another interesting point made in the article is the distinction between two types of negative emotionality: fear or sadness (or withdrawal-oriented emotions) and anger (approach-oriented emotions). In his analysis, McFatter separated these types of negative emotions and found differing results (for instance, anger correlated with extraversion, suggesting that they are approach-oriented in nature). I found this interesting since it was not mentioned in the book, but it does make sense that anger has different motivational characteristics than other negative emotions, such as sadness or guilt. In summary, I find this topic to be very interesting. With that said, those articles were a pain in the butt to read because they used very esoteric terms that only experts in the field understand. While I understand this is the nature of research, it makes it difficult to about other fields when you may not be familiar with some of the theories or terms used by professionals in that area.

Lake et. al. can be found at: http://www.springerlink.com.proxy.lib.uni.edu/content/x6040h6763wt7228/

McFatter can be found at: http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~rmm2440/Publications/McFatter_PAID_1998.pdf

Terms: happiness, arousal, control, normally distributed, positive emotionality, negative emotionality, set-points, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, BAS, neuroticism, BIS, arousal, alertness, wakefulness, activation, Yerkes-Dodson Law, sensory deprivation, baseline level of arousal, reactivity, sensation seeking, affect intensity, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, engagement, self-confirming cycles, desire for control

Chapter 13 relates personality to motivation and emotion. The main motivational principles related to personality are happiness, control, and arousal. It seems that everyone has a set point of happiness. People go through the ups and downs of life, but they return to the same level of happiness as time passes. It is suggested that happiness may have a genetic component to it. We have two set points; one for positive emotions and one for negative emotions. Extraversion is a predictor of the happiness set point, while neuroticism is the predictor of the unhappiness set point. Extraverted people seem to experience positive emotions more often than introverts because they are more sensitive to the rewards of social situations. There are two different types of happiness. Hedonic happiness is the total amount of happiness in an individual’s life. When people think of happiness, they are generally thinking of hedonic happiness. The second type of happiness is called eudaimonic well-being. Eudaimonic well-being regards how a person makes their life meaningful. Neurotic people seem to be unhappier in life. Neurotic people generally think of negative and distressing thoughts. This makes them more likely to be irritable, moody, unsatisfied, and stressed. Neurotic people have a sensitive behavioral inhibition system, making them more sensitive to punishment. The behavioral inhibition system energizes avoidant behaviors like withdrawal and escape.
There are four principles that tie arousal to motivation. First, a person’s arousal level depends on a stimulating environment. People actively behave in ways that increase and decrease their arousal levels. Third, when people are not aroused, they try to increase their arousal because the rise in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and assist with performance. Lastly, when people are over aroused, they try to decrease the environmental stimuli because it is pleasurable and helps with their performances. People perform the best (ex: in tests, sports, and job interviews) when they aroused to the right level. The best performance comes from being aroused, to avoid boredom, but not too aroused, to avoid stress. When people are under aroused, they go through blank periods where they run out of things to think about. Their mental functioning decreases, making even simple math problems difficult. Major life events are a shock to the body’s nervous and endocrine systems. Typical, everyday stressors build up a taxing effect on the systems. When an environment is overly stimulating, negative emotions, like anger, stress, and irritability, are created, cognitive abilities decrease, and physiological processes accelerate. Everyone has a baseline of arousal. The baseline is how aroused someone is without any stimulation. Reactivity is how someone responds when they experience stimulation. There is a personality characteristic that is tied to arousal. The characteristic is sensation seeking. Sensation seekers seek highly stimulating environments. They do not like routine. Sensations seekers search for new experiences and take risks. They are low on monoamine oxidase, an enzyme in the limbic system. It breaks down dopamine and serotonin. Since the brains of sensation seekers do not break down the dopamine as much, there are more approach behaviors (seeking new experiences and taking risks). Affect intensity deals with how strongly people experience their emotions. Someone that is affect stable feels content when someone who is affect intense is feeling overjoyed.
Perceived control and desire for control are two personality characteristics that tie in closely with control. Perceived control refers to the expectations a person has that they will interact with the environment in ways that will be conducive to desirable outcomes. Perceived control is a big predictor of how much effort a person will put into an activity. There is a continuum running from engagement to disaffected for engagement in the effort to gain control over an important outcome. When highly engaged, people put a lot of effort into their activities, and they are more persistent. When disaffected, people are passive and experience negative emotions. Beliefs of control contribute positively to effort, which in turn enhances performance, which fuels gains in perceptions of control in that area. This cycle is called a self-confirming cycle. Desire for control is the extent individuals are motivated to exert control over the events in their lives. People with a high desire for control set their goals high, persist when challenged (to the point of stubbornness when overly challenged), and have an internal locus of control. When their control is threatened, high desire for control individuals become distressed and depressed.

I decided to research further into happiness. I stumbled upon a website with many different articles about happiness. One that caught my eye was called “Does it matter if you’re single with no kids?” I found this interesting because I am stereotypical about those people. I view single people with no kids as lonely and depressed. The article talked about research that proved the lonely, depressed, and alone stereotype was actually the exception, rather than the rule. In a study of people of different marital and parental statuses over the age of 51, it was found that across all marital statuses, people with no kids were less likely to be depressed. Another article I found was called “The Happiness Chronicles II: Does Money Buy Happiness?” In this article, they pointed out that money makes people happier when they are in absolute poverty and cannot afford their basic needs of food, water, and shelter. They then pointed out that satisfying intrinsic goals is what brings the most happiness, as it is something the individual finds meaning and purpose in. I also learned that inequalities in wealth bring about unhappiness because there is less trust in others. This strains social relationships, causing unhappiness.

Terms: Happiness, Control, Arousal, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Hedonic Happiness, Eudaimonic well-being. Behavioral inhibition system, Arousal baseline, Reactivity, Sensation seeking, Monoamine oxidase, Affect intensity, Perceived control, Desire for control, Engagement, Disaffected, Self-confirming cycles, Locus of control, Intrinsic motivation

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/201204/part-1-does-it-matter-if-you-are-single-no-kids

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/under-the-influence/201204/the-happiness-chronicles-ii-does-money-buy-happiness

This chapter takes a look at motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. These are happiness, arousal, and control. Most people are happy and experience happiness. However, how happy and how unhappy we are, are independent of each other when looking at our well-being. Extraverts are considered more happy than introverts. The reason is because they are more sociable, tend to have more social dominance and seek out exciting situations. Also, extraverts have a natural tendency to experience positive emotions. There are two types of happiness. Hedonic well-being is a pleasant life and eudaimonic well-being looks at going for meaningful pursuits. Neuroticism is a predisposition to feel unhappy. Neurotic people are emotionally unstable.

Arousal is the second motivational principle related to personality characteristics. Arousal represents how stimulating the environment is that they are in. It is motivational because people do some sort of behavior to either increase or decrease their level of arousal. In the Inverted-U curve we see that low and high arousal both show low performance efficiency and that we are at our peak for performance in moderate levels of arousal. Also, as we go from low to moderate arousal, we become more alert and interested. In going from moderate to high arousal, we experience anxiety. When people are underaroused, they begin to daydream and will try to change things to increase arousal. When overaroused, people try to counteract that by getting out of the situation. There are some sensation seeking people that desire continuous brain stimulation. These people search for new experiences, take more risks, and have higher levels of dopamine.

The third and final motivational principle related to personality characteristics is control. Perceived control is how much control a person thinks they have. Desired control is the amount of control a person wants in making their own decisions. In order to perceive control, the self must be able to achieve the desired outcome and the situation in which they are trying to achieve control must be relatively predictable and responsive. Desire for control is how motivated people are to take control over the events in their lives. People with a high desire for control try to take charge of their life rather than waiting to see what will happen. In situations where high desire for control people have little control, they become depressed and experience learned helplessness.

I was fascinated by sensation seeking and decided to look into it. The first thing I found was a questionnaire that you fill out and it will calculate your percentage and tell you where you rank on a scale of how high your sensation seeking disposition is. It is called the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire. I completed it and found out that I am 53% which is in the average range for sensation seeking. One of the major things in there was how impulsive you are and that is not me. I consider myself to take risks and look for new experiences. However, I do have to think things through and don’t do very many things spur of the moment. The second webpage I found had an article on how sensation seeking may be genetic. The article discussed how some people are genetically predisposed to do sensation seeking behaviors. It also mentioned how many, but not all, people with this gene will have behavioral disorders.

Terms Used: Personality Characteristics, Happiness, Arousal, Control, Well-Being, Extraverts, Introverts, Emotions, Hedonic Well-Being, Eudaimonic Well-Being, Neuroticism, Motivational Principle, Inverted U-Curve, Sensation Seeking, Dopamine, Perceived Control, Desired Control, High Desire for Control

First Website: http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/licensing/tests/driverqualificationtest/sensationseekingscale/index.html
Second Website: http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20101006/sensation-seeking-may-be-in-the-genes

Chapter 13 talks about personality and all the things that go into what makes personalities different. This chapter explains the difference between how extraversion n affects and introversion. These two concepts have a big effect on how we each view certain situations.

Different states of arousal were also talked about it. The book discussed how much arousal in necessary in order to be very productive. I had just assumed that the higher the level of arousal, the better. I was wrong. Although a low state is very bad, a very high state can be just as inhibiting. Moderate arousal is ideal in most settings.

Sensation seeking was also a key point in this chapter. Different things go into why people take risks instead of staying where it is safe. The two biggest factors are seeking new experiences and also wanting to take a risk. These behaviors can be caused by different levels of hormones in the body.
The topic I chose to look into more was the concept of risk taking. The thought of doing something just to feel the rush makes no sense to me. In the two articles I read, both mentioned the word “addict”. I thought this was very interesting. The release of dopamine was described as the feeling you get when you are full, have a success or are just really happy. The reason certain drugs give people a “high” is because they cause the dopamine to leave the cells, which makes the person feel happy.
Just like people can be addicted to drugs, they can also become addicted to the feelings they get when dopamine is released. This implies that the term “adrenaline junkie” is more than just a saying. Just like any other addiction, after a while, you need more to achieve the same affect. In the case of someone who is addicted the dopamine rush, this means taking greater risks. When once riding a roller coaster provided a big rush, now the person needs something more.
The thought of people being “addicted” to danger is mind-blowing and somewhat scary. If you need to feel that rush, how far will you go to get it? In a society that is focusing more and more on being able to do the extream, I sometimes feel we are creating a generation of adrenaline junkies.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1869106,00.html

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/risk

Chapter 13 talks about personality characteristics. The main ideas of this chapter are happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter explains that two personality characteristics are credited to each idea. The first, happiness, has two different personality characteristics. These are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is how outgoing a person is in different situations. People who possess this trait tend to be happier since they have a stronger behavioral activating system or BAS. The BAS makes extraverts very sensitive to signals of reward in the environment. This means that it doesn’t take much to make extraverts happy. Neurotics on the other hand are naturally unhappy. This is due to their BIS or behavioral inhibiting system. The BIS is very strong in neurotics and causes them to be unhappy. They are highly responsive to signals of punishment from the world around them.

Next, arousals personality characteristics are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking individuals tend to crave dangerous or very risky behavior to satisfy their cravings for extreme sensations. Affect intensity individuals experience different scenarios much more intensely than the average person, who would be said to have affect stable personality characteristics.

Lastly, is the idea of control. Controls’ characteristics are perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control individuals moderate their behavior in specific ways in order to achieve a specific outcome and avoid other outcomes. Desire for control regards an individuals desire to control the environment in which he/she lives in. Individuals with strong desire for control often have high standards and difficult goals in their life. They are very motivated people and do not back down from challenges very easy. Individuals such as these with a high need for achievement often get very uncomfortable in situations where they could potentially lose control.
The topic of interest I decided to research further was arousal. More specifically, sensation seeking individuals. The first person that really pops into my mind is Rob Dyrdek. Mostly everyone has heard of him and his show on MTV. Rob has done a number of crazy stunts and seems to live day to day trying to create/invent new ways to do something absolutely crazy and dangerous. His newest and probably most publicized stunt was kickflipping the all-new Chevy Sonic. I’m sure most of you have seen this commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuvoSw1TiJ8

Chapter 13 talks about the many different personality characteristics. One of the main personality characteristics is known as happiness and it has two traits related to it; extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversions are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral system. People who have more neurotic suffer more emotionally. They are so able to suffer from things that happen to the environment. Two other personality characteristics talked about in this chapter was sensation seeking and affect intensity. They are both related to arousal, performance and mood and emotions. People who seek sensation want more complex sensation and are willing to take risks to get that sensation. Affect intensity strength people have strong ways of coping and showing emotions. Perceived control and desire for control are two personality characteristics that are related to control. Perceived control is the ability to get the outcomes they want and not attainable the outcomes that are undesirable. Desired control involves the motivation aspect and what they want in their life. People who have the desired control characteristic want to control exactly what happens to them and strive to restore control when control is out of balance. Distress and depression can come upon a person with high desired control when the person's control is out of their hands. When a person with high desired control goes to the doctor and everything that is happening is out of their control than that person would likely experience distress and/or depression.

This was a very informative chapter for me because I didn't know or ever think about any of this information. In this chapter I found that the most interesting part is that people are becoming extremists. They are taking way too many risks that can injury them or take their life. I would never jump out of an airplane or do anything to potentially kill myself. This is an article that I found that talks about extreme sports and it just makes me think these people have to have the personality characteristic of sensation seeking and are willing to take the risk of injury.

http://globaladventures.us/extreme-sports/

The next part of chapter 13 I found interesting was talking about the controlling part. Controlling people can be damaging to themselves. This is an article I read that talks about signs of controlling people and how to deal with them.

http://www.towerofpower.com.au/controlling-people

Terms: happiness, extracersion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, personality characteristics, perceived control, desire for control