Summarize the chapter. Next, go out on the internet and research a topic of interest to you that you found in chapter 13. Report on what you found, and include at least 2 links to that information.
Chapter 13 covers the personality characteristics of happiness, arousal and control. We are all different; therefore, we each have a unique set of personality characteristics. Not only do our personality characteristics display our individuality, they contribute our motivation. Our personalities help to energize and direct our behavior.
Our happiness, according to the book, is very biologically based. Happiness is related to extraversion. ..extroverted individuals tend to be happier. Prior to reading this chapter, I thought that extraversion was simply a desire to be around others and to be social. This chapter points out that extraversion has three parts to it: sociability, assertiveness and seeking out exciting things. Individuals who are high in these three areas are more extroverted. Extroversion is rooted biologically. More extroverted individuals have a stronger behavioral activation system (BAS). Because of this, they are more sensitive to the rewards that they may experience in a given situation. Their anticipation for these rewards leaves them feeling excited. Stronger BASExtrovertedhappy. Neuroticism on the other hand, is related to unhappiness. Biologically speaking, neuroticism opposes extroversion. Highly neurotic individuals have a stronger behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which leads them to foresee more negative consequences in situations. Because of this, individuals that are more neurotic are more sensitive to negative consequences. Because of their expectation for rewards, extroverts act in a more approach oriented manner while neurotics expect punishments and chose to avoid situations because of that. I was glad to see that the book mentioned that not all introverts are unhappy. They may simply have a different type of happiness. The book points our two types of happiness: hedonic (e.g. a pleasant life…common idea of happiness) and eudaimonic (e.g. self realization, being your true self). Introverts may experience the eudaimonic happiness more than hedonic happiness. One question I had, though, was this: the book mentions that there appears to be a biological happiness “set point” in people…can we ever change this set point??
Arousal is the second section in this book chapter. There is an optimal arousal level. Whether you are under aroused or over aroused, you will not be able to perform to the best of your abilities. If we are under aroused, we are bored and find it difficult to focus and have motivation to complete a task. On the other hand, though, if we are too highly aroused, we may experience stress and pressure and not perform well because of it. Optimally arousing situations lead to optimal performance. Certain individuals have a high sensation seeking side to their personality. These individuals are more likely to take risks than are individuals who are low in the need for sensation. Perhaps sensation seekers enjoy the highly arousing states and therefore seek them out. Depending on our personalities, we are motivated to seek out different activities. The final subsection discussed in the arousal section was on affect intensity. Affect intensity is how strongly we feel our emotions. Some of us experience emotional extremes while others are constantly on a more even keel.
The final section of this chapter is on control. Some individuals desire more control while others do not need as much. Simply enough, this is called: desire for control. Individuals who have a high desire for control attempt to establish control in all situations and regain control whenever they feel like they have lost control. When these individuals lose their control, they get flustered and are prone to experience learned helplessness. The more someone desires to have control the more prone they are to learned helplessness if they do not have control Perceived control is the other aspect of control that was discussed in the book. Perceived control is described in the book as the precursor to competency, efficacy and ability. The more perceived control a person has going into a task, the more effort they will put forth and, because of that, the more likely they will be to succeed. If they do succeed, this success will feed into their future feelings of perceived control on other tasks. Perceived control will likely lead to better performance and better performance leads to feelings of competence and efficacy which will give you confidence the next time you encounter the task again. This is a positive cycle.
The How of Happiness http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/living-well/articles/2008/01/18/want-to-be-happier-heres-how
Says that we are not bound to our happiness “set point”
I very much so dislike the idea of scientific happiness
Says that 40% of happiness is within our control
I like what they author of the book The How of Happiness says about “future nostalgia”thinking too much about the future takes away from the joy of the present
The How of Happiness Scale: http://chass.ucr.edu/faculty_book/lyubomirsky/Quiz/subjective_happiness.html
I was a little confused when I was reading about the relation between extroversion and happiness. I felt bad for the introverts being deemed unhappy. Then I read the section on the two kinds of happiness and felt a bit better. I did a little searching online about eudaimonic happiness too and this is a website that I came up with. http://www.positivepsychology.org.uk/pp-theory/eudaimonia/34-the-concept-of-eudaimonic-well-being.html
Chapter 13 examines the main question, "are you happy?" It will also focus on three motivational principles of happiness, arousal, and control. People have a "set point" of happiness when it comes to the question, "are you happy?" Those who are happy in their 20's are usually happy in the their 30's and those who are unhappy usually end up being unhappy later on as well. The status of our happiness and unhappiness set points can be explained by the individual differences in our personalities. The two personality characteristics looked at relating to this are extraversion and neuroticism. The book describes that extroverts are happier than introverts because they have a strong behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment.
The three aspects of extraversion are sociability which is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness which is the tendency toward social dominance, and the last one is venturesomeness which is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting and stimulating situations. Extraverts also are happier whether they live alone or with others, in small or big cities, and whether they work in social or nonsocial occupations. They also approach potentialy rewarding situations more than introverts because of their greater sensitivity to positive feelings. People who are unhappy have the characteristic of neuroticism because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. They are more vulnerable and more susceptible to negative emotions. It often leads them to having a avoidance behavior in many situations.
Going back to happiness though, there are two kinds of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one's pleasurable moments and reflects a pleasant life with self-realization. Eudaimonic happiness means living one's true self.
This chapter also discusses arousal which represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation which are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms and can be explained by four principles: 1.A person's arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is 2. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal 3. When underaroused, people seek out opportunities in increase their arousal levels 4.When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal level. When being underaroused, there could be psychological consequences in sensory deprivation. This refers to an individual's sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. Sensory deprivation studies show that the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal generated by environmental stimulation.
The last section the chapter discusses is over control. Two personality characteristics can describe control beliefs: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people's preperformance 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 role, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. Perceived control beliefs influence the individual's engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge-seeking. People with high control usually show high effort, concentrate and pay attention, persist in the face of failure, maintain interest and curiosity in the task, and maintain optimism for future positive outcomes while people with low perceived control show relatively low effort, doubt their capacities, tend to give up in facing challenges or failure, become discouraged quickly, and are prone to passivity, anxiety, and even anger and go through just the motion of participating without trying very hard. I would say I have a somewhat high sense of perceived control. I don't believe in failure but I do believe in making mistakes. My mistakes push me to strive to become better at a task or whatever I am trying to accomplish at the time. I'm also very optimistic when it comes to my future. I do believe that I will have a happy life like I do right now and even though at times it does stress me out to think about what career I'll be in, it just motivates me even more to be successful and eventually have a family someday that I can help support with my career. People with high desire for control approach situations by wanting to control what happens to them so they strive to establish control and to restore it when it is lost or threatened. By establishing this control, they embrace high standards and aspirations and put high effort in doing so. People with low desire for control tend to avoid responsibilities an feel comfortable with having others make their decisions for them.
An article I found relating to this chapter dealt with people who have the characteristic of introversion. I wasn't intrigued on the story itself but there was a section in their about happiness and introversion.
The Truth About Introverts http://www.psychworld.com/the-truth-about-introverts-2010-10
In this article, a psychologist named Dr. Helgoe makes two harmful claims about introverts: 1.introverts are damaged by extraversion 2.introverts do not wish to be happy.In this article, she tries to explain and back up her claims stated. With the second claim, she relates it to happiness. The article states that "a person cannot be happy by focusing on being happy. He or she must instead focus on doing the things that lead one to be happy, and that is not the same for everyone." while Helgoe claims that introverts prefer to be “neutral.” She also states that "In the united states [sic], people rank happiness as their most important goal. That view has a special impact on introverts. Happiness is not always their top priority; they don’t need external rewards to keep their brains in high gear. In fact, the pursuit of happiness may represent another personality-culture clash for them." This article definitely related to chapter 13 and I found it very interesting.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201008/revenge-the-introvert
This article relates to the last article. In this article though, a psychologist is telling her viewers about how she has never really enjoyed being a therapist and gives us an insight on her being an introvert. She says that introversion vs extraversion can be determined by conversation style and gives some examples: Introverts are the ones doing the listening while extraverts are more likely to pepper people with questions. Introverts like to think before responding—many prefer to think out what they want to say in advance—and seek facts before expressing opinions. Extraverts are comfortable thinking as they speak. Introverts prefer slow-paced interactions that allow room for thought.
Both of these articles are great articles over introversion and tie in with chapter 13.
Terms: happiness, unhappiness, set-points, extraversion, neuroticism, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, Hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness, sensory deprivation, overarousal, underarousal, perceived control, desire for control, high perceived control, low perceived control
Chapter thirteen’s focus was on personality. More specifically, three aspects within personality were analyzed: happiness, arousal, and control. Within happiness, it is discussed that most people, despite their life circumstances, are typically happy. In fact, it is stated that most people have set-points for their happiness and that over a period of many years, one’s happiness will stay about the same despite what occurs during those years. Happiness is discussed as being correlated with extraversion. As many might assume, extraverted (as opposed to introverted) people are happier. This is said to be due to three things: greater sociability, greater social dominance, and greater venturesomeness. Moreover, biologically speaking, extraverts have a stronger behavioral activating system than introverts. On the other end of happiness is unhappiness and this is said to be correlate with neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as “a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” The biological basis of this correlation stems from the sensitivity of the behavioral inhibition system. Neurotics have a highly sensitive BIS.
The second aspect, arousal, is discussed next. The relationship between performance, emotion, and arousal is gone over and it is said that relatively low levels and extremely high levels of arousal typically produce low performance. The ideal is to experience a moderate level of arousal. In addition, low arousal is correlated with boredom while high arousal is correlated with tension. Within the discussion of arousal, sensation seeking is talked about. Sensation seeking is described as “the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity.” The sensation seeker is constantly searching for new experiences and taking risks. In addition, sensation seekers are more likely to have low levels of monoamine oxidase, high levels of dopamine, and low levels of serotonin. The last topic discussed within arousal is affect intensity. Affect intensity “concerns people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally.” Affect intensity differs among individuals and people are labeled as being either affect-intense or affect-stable.
Finally in chapter thirteen the topic of control is discussed. More specifically, perceived control and the desire for control are focused upon. Perceived control is defined as “the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcome and prevent undesired outcomes.” Perceived control is said to predict how much effort a person is willing to put forth. In addition, perceived control is usually a predictor of how one will construct beliefs about their own competence, efficacy, and ability. The desire for control is defined as “the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives.” People in the desire for control like to make their own decisions, avoid being dependent on others, assume leadership roles, and prepare for situations in advance.
One of the topics in this chapter I was particularly interested in was the relationship between happiness and introversion/extraversion. Obviously the book discusses how extraverts are happier but only provides a very small paragraph on the happiness of introverts. Since I am more of an introverted person, I wanted to learn a little more. The first article I read discussed the “quiet joys of introverts.” The discussion was based upon the fact that most introverts are happy but that they attain their happiness from other sources such as reading a book or spending time with a few people rather than a large group. In addition, the sensitivity of introverts was said to be higher than extraverts. The article gave an example of babies crying with a greater sense of distress at unpleasant stimuli (popping balloons). These babies who were more sensitive to these stimuli grew up to be introverts. The benefits of being an introvert, according to the article, are that we listen better and we have a better ability to focus for long periods of time. This allows introverts to enjoy such occupations as musicians and scientists. These “quiet joys” don’t necessarily mean the extravert next to us is happier. The link to my first article is http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/26/shhhh-the-quiet-joys-of-the-introvert/.
The second article I found discussed the cultural bias of happiness and extraverts. It said that introverts and extraverts are both happy but express their happiness in different realms (much like the first article suggested). In addition, in our culture, happiness is seen as being outgoing, friendly, talkative, social, etc. All the characteristics of extraverts are seen as the prime definition for happiness. This article suggests that this is wrong and that introverts are happy, but in their own ways that are different from what society defines as “happy.” The link to this article is http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/an-introverts-guide-to-happiness.aspx.
Chapter 13 discusses personality characteristics. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control.
Individuals seem to have a “set point” for their level of happiness, and even after big life events, they seem to return to their original level of happiness. Extroversion and neuroticism are the personality traits that seem to have an impact on levels of happiness. Extroverts tend to be happier than introverts. This is because they are more sociable, more sensitive to the rewards gained from social situations, and more susceptible to positive feelings. The level of sensitivity refers to an underlying biological motivation system: the behavioral activating system. For extroverts, signals of reward strongly activate their BAS, so they experience a stronger incentive motivational state, as well as positive emotions. Individuals high on neuroticism have a strong and highly sensitive behavioral inhibition system, which detects and regulates environmental signals of punishment. Signals of punishment are the source of negative emotions, so neurotics are more vulnerable and susceptible to negative emotions. The BIS also has a motivational function to energize avoidance-oriented behavior.
A person’s arousal level is a function of how stimulating the environment is. Both low levels and high levels of arousal can cause poor performance, but moderate arousal can cause optimal performance as well as pleasure. This can be seen on the Inverted-U diagram. The brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal, and people rely on cognitive and behavioral means to produce this arousal if their environment is not stimulating enough. Over-stimulating events cause us stress, negative emotional states, impaired cognitive activity, and accelerated physiological processes. The personality trait related to arousal is sensation seeking. High sensation seekers prefer a continual external supply of brain stimulation, and engage in new, exciting, and often risky behaviors to get that stimulation. Low sensation seekers prefer less brain stimulation, and are less likely to engage in risky behaviors.
Two personality characteristics involve control: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control refers to the expectations a person has about their actions and decisions having an impact on desired outcomes. Someone with high perceived control sets high goals, initiates action, exerts effort, has great concentration, and persists in the face of difficulty. They also maintain positive emotional states, keep their goals in mind, monitor progress, and look for feedback. Perceived control is necessary for competence, efficacy, and ability. Desire for control is the extent to which people are motivated to have control over the events in their life. Individuals with a high desire for control like to make their own decisions, while individuals with a low desire for control prefer others to make decisions for them.
The section on extroverts and introverts related to happiness was very interesting to me, as I see it was to others who blogged before me. The first article I read was from: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201112/are-extroverts-happier-introverts-yes
This article recognized the fact that extroverts are found to be happier than introverts. But it proposed the idea that there are different kinds of happy. For example, introverts want company just as much as extroverts do. But they prefer socializing with a few people that they know well, rather than a group of just anyone. Gratitude is another type of happiness that can be beneficial – having a quiet, content, internal sort of happiness. Raising children is another example. Research shows that parent of young children less “happy” than those without children, but most parents will not hesitate to talk about how their children bring them joy and meaning in life. Another important point on this deals with self-report. When asked to rate their emotional states, introvert will give less extreme answers than extroverts, which may tip the scale even more.
This article talked about how extroverts may be happier because of their memories. Extroverts recall memories more positively than introverts. They tend to have a more positive view of their past and less regrets. This article compared extroverts to neurotics, but it still pertains to the idea of happiness.
Terms: Happiness, arousal, control, set point, extrovert, introvert, behavioral activation system, neuroticism, behavioral inhibition system, Inverted-U curve, sensation seeking, perceived control, desire for control, competence,
Chapter thirteen discusses three important personality characteristics that related to motivation. The three characteristics are happiness, arousal, and control. These three characteristics can be brought on by any situational event, and vary in the intensity by which one experiences these three emotion.
Happiness is the first characteristic discussed. The text says that most people are generally happy, despite differences in their SES. People tend to revert back to their original level of happiness even after life changing events. In the book, it talked about the example of a person winning the lottery and a person in a freak car accident. As we could expect, these two life events were changing, and produced different emotions, both positive and negative. But as these people were re-assessed a year later, their level of happiness had returned to normal, to the level they were before this event. One personality characteristic that is generally associated with happiness is extraversion. People that have an extravert personality are often more social, display their assertiveness and they look for self-stimulating situations. For example, people that love being outdoors try to find any activity they can where they can be outside, meet new people, and take control of their situation. These would be extravert people, and studies suggest that these people are more likely to experience positive moods, and ultimately happiness. Happiness comes in two forms, hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness come from an individual’s pleasures in life, such as positive stimulating events like doing the things one enjoys (golfing, fishing, etc.) having an enjoyable job and many other things. Eudaimonic involves “engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing (pg. 372).”
The chapter then talks about arousal, and how it directs alertness and activates physiological processes within us. Arousal is very dependent on the environmental events around us. Arousal plays a part in our ability to perform. The inverted-U curve best displays how performance and arousal are related. If arousal is too low, then we have decreased performance levels because we are not getting enough stimulation. If we are aroused to a medium level, that is when our performance is best, and were are able to carry out tasks with quality and efficiency. When we are moderately aroused, we are able to experience the pleasures in life. As people progress to a high level of arousal, performance tends to decrease. This is over-stimulation, such as stressful environments like finals week in college. As a result, this environment disrupts our ability to perform to the best of our abilities.
One of the topics concerning arousal had to deal with risk taking, which was later referred to as “risk-acceptance.” Interested on this topic, I researched risk-acceptance online and found an article titled “Forewarned is forearmed-the rationale for risk-acceptance (http://kbondale.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/forewarned-is-forearmed-the-rationale-for-risk-acceptance/).” This article talked about certain advantages of risk-acceptance in a business setting. One, risk-acceptance allows for identifying the unknowns, rather than an unexpected unknown showing up in the future. Risk-acceptance does not always mean an action will take place, but also does not mean that nothing will happen. Risk-acceptance can act as a preventative measure from future disasters. Third, risk-acceptance can aid to help avoid things from reoccurring, or facing an unknown event. Risk-acceptance allows for identification of certain possible outcomes, and the preparation that has to be done.
The last personality characteristic discussed is control. Control can be further divided into two sub-categories, perceived control and desired control. Perceived control reflects the individual’s expectations that they can engage themselves with the environment. For example, a pitcher coming into a game with a game plan of how he is going to pitch to batters displays perceived control. He believes that he is able to be in control of the game by throwing certain pitches and throwing them to certain areas of the plate. Through perceived control, it can easily be determined the action and effort put into specific events. Desire control refers to people that are pro-active. They take action by being prepared, make their own decisions and take responsibilities for their actions. People that are high in desired control are usually independent, and strive to be leaders rather than followers.
One of the interesting topics I found in this chapter was losing control. For further research I found an article called “The fear of Losing Control (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-would-aristotle-do/201105/the-fear-losing-control).” In this article, Dr. Cohen suggests that losing control results from the demand o “certainty in a world that is “uncertain.” People that lose control are perfectionists. Everything in their world has to be certain, an in an organized manner. Perfectionists are more likely to stress over the uncertainty of their lives. The best way to cope with losing control, or to prevent it, is by removing your perfectionist attitude. Gaining courage and realizing that there is great deal of uncertainty in this world is the best coping function for loss of control. Another article I found on this topic was called “Losing Control (http://panicend.com/co.html).” This article suggested that it is hard to attain control, and it requires us to control our subconscious processes. Once control is attained, the reason we lose control is out of fear. The desire for attaining control contributes to our fear, which ultimately leads us to lose control of certain aspects and situations of our lives.
The chapter discusses three motivational principles that relate to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal and control. Within the happiness dimension, we learned that extraversion is a characteristic that is frequently associated with happiness, and its three facets include sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. The book states that those who are extraverted are happier than those who are introverted because they are more sensitive to the rewards that result from social situations. They also “possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions" (pg. 371). The opposite of happiness is neuroticism. Those who are neurotic are predisposed to have negative affect and to constantly feel unhappy and dissatisfied.
The second motivational principle related to personality characteristics is arousal, which controls how alert we feel, how awake we are, and our level of activity. The book tells us that we perform optimally when we have moderate levels of arousal, and more poorly when we have insufficient stimulation or excessive stimulation. We are all genetically programmed with our own baseline level of arousal, and we all react differently when we are exposed to stimuli in the environment. Those who are more sensation seeking tend to desire constant brain stimulation, which is achieved through excitement. For this reason, high sensation seekers tend to change their activities and are behave more promiscuously than low sensation seekers. High sensation seekers are also more likely to take risks.
The third motivational principle is control. When we have strong perceived control, we are more likely to attain the outcomes that we desire, because we are motivated to behave in ways that let us obtain them. When our perceived control is weak, we become more passive and only half-attempt to solve our problems. Those of us who set and embrace high standards are more likely to put forth effort when challenges arise, and are also more likely to persist in our behavior. On the other hand, those of us who do not feel any sense of control quickly become distressed or depressed.
I chose to look up extraversion and introversion. The book says that extraverts have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that “makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment” (pg. 389). This statement interested me, because I was much more of an extravert in high school than I am now. If we are biologically-prone to be extraverted or introverted, then how could I have changed that characteristic of my personality? I found on this website - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201108/there-s-more-introversion-you-might-think - that there are six facets of introversion, and that most people are introverted in some of these facets, while extraverted in others. This website also tells us that our degrees of introversion vs. extraversion changes over time. So while our BAS may be more sensitive to reward stimuli in the environment, other factors must also contribute to how extraverted we are. Otherwise, I would still be extraverted, and would still have the same BAS sensitivity that I had in high school.
Still on the topic of introversion, I found a number of sites that gave self-help advice about how to overcome introversion – typically using the angle of how to stop being shy. I found this interesting, because not all introverts are shy. Regardless, these sites also had the mentality that one could change their position on the extraversion-introversion scale. One website - http://www.persuasive.net/introvert-to-extrovert-4-ways-to-take-control-of-your-shyness - included four steps for changing that personality characteristic. The first step was to acknowledge that you have the ability to change that aspect of you. The second step was to recognize all of the processes involved in regards to that characteristic. For instance, if you want to become the life of the party, you have to realize that you typically avoid conversations with others you don’t know, and that you do so because strangers make your heart rate increase, your hands shake, and they cause you to stutter. The third step was to take one of the processes and change it. For instance, your first step toward becoming the life of the party could be to smile and make eye contact with others at the party. The final step was to ultimately change your beliefs about yourself. If you believe you are introverted, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, if you begin believing that you are extraverted, you will begin to act in ways that reflect that belief.
Chapter 13 is all about the personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter states that most people are happy, even when they are from low income situations, or are not well educated. Extraversion is the personality trait that is associated with who is happy. People who are extraverted are socible, assertive, and venturesome. Extraverts are generally happier than introverts because they possess a greated inherent capacity to experience positive emotions.
The personality trait that is associated with who is unhappy is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. People who are neurotic have higher stress, more negative emotions, anxiety, and irritability, than people who are not. Neuroticism is basically the opposite of being an extravert. There are many personality tests that can tell you if you are someone who is neurotic or extraverted, although I feel it is fairly easy to tell if someone is at each end of the extreme.
Arousal is discussed next. The text states that arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. A low level of arousal produces poor performance, and when arousal is high people usually perform better. Sensory deprivation research can illustrate the psychological consequences of being under aroused. Sensory deprivation is an individuals sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. When life is stressful we may be experienceing overarousal. Overstimulation can cause bad emotional states, impaired cognitive activity, and accelerated physiological prosesses.
Everyone has different levels of arousal. No two people are the same. Sensation seeking is the personality characteristics related to arousal and reactivity. Sensation seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations.
Finally control is discussed. The text states that pereived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert. When someone has high perceived control they keep their plans and strategies in mind, maintain positive emotional states, monitor problem solving strategies, and generate and monitor feelback to adjust or imporve relevant skills.
The first article I found was called The neuroticism Paradox. It states that unfortunatly the trait is usually unchanging through out a person's life. it also says that neurosis used to be one of the main focuses of therapy. The article also gives a few steps of how to manage your mood and what to look out for. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201010/the-neuroticism-paradox
Chapter 13 starts out by discussing happiness, arousal, and control. It expresses that individuals can experience different levels of each depending on their personality. The Personality characteristics that were looked at in the chapter are extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. Out of these there are 2 that relate to happiness. Those 2 are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraverts are happy because high BAS or behavioral activating systems. You can think of extraversion as “Who is happy?”. Neuroticism has to do with “Who is unhappy?” Individuals that are high in neuroticism have high behavioral inhibition system or BIS. This makes them a magnet for punishment in the environment. Sensation seekers and affect intensity individuals are related to arousal. These are based on how people seek new experiences and experience their emotions. Perceived control and desire of control relates to control. Perceived control allows individuals to activate tasks that allow them to cope effectively. It is just the opposite if the perceived control is weak. The chapter explains that the desire for control is what it sounds like. It is the frequency of control that individuals want to have in their daily lives. If it is desired, individuals may go out of their way to get the control.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/risk
I did some research pertaining to sensation seeking and risk. I found an article in psychology today that discusses how many of the popular sports today have to do with risk such as mountain climbing, extreme skiing, and cliff parachuting. It also talks about how under common personality theories, the common person avoids risks at any cost, however research is showing today that this need for risk is hard wired into the brain and linked with pleasure. This usually stays common with younger adults and filters out as individuals get older.
The article also talks not only can partaking in risk be a deadly thing but it also can cause individuals to get bored easy at their jobs and in “normal” life. This also might make them get bored with small risks so they keep increasing it. The article indicates this behavior may set them on the road to drug addiction as well.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/80914.php
Another article I found talks about how men are found to be more attracted to risk then women. It also indicates that there aren’t just people who take risks and people who don’t. There can be a mix within. It includes general competition as a risk. People could be considered risk takers just by involving themselves in competitions. The article also indicates that risk is nothing new. Our ancestors experience risk in gathering food and protecting their mates. The sensation that we get from risk has been around for a long time.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, express, extraversion, neuroticism, personality, sensation, affect intensity, risk
Chapter 13 is all centered on the topic of personality characteristics. It begins with discussing that there are individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control, which make up the three main sections of this chapter. It states in the textbook that extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control, all explain why different people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation (p.368).
Next, the subsection on happiness begins. Here, it explains how most people are typically happy. Even people who go through major life events return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event occurred. It also talked about how people have happiness “set points”, which essentially means that you remain as happy as you are throughout your life. One of the set points is for positive emotionality, and the other set point is for negative emotionality. The textbook states that the happiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion, whereas the unhappiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in neuroticism (p.370).
The subsection moves on to discuss how extraverts are emotionally happier than introverts, and they also enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts do (p.370). This is because of the fact that extraverts are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most social situations, which means that they are more susceptible to positive feelings. This is all tied in to the behavioral activating system (BAS) in extraverts being stronger than in introverts.
This subsection goes on to explain how the unhappiness set point is associated with the personality characteristic of neuroticism. Neurotics suffer emotionally because of their greater capacity to experience negative emotions and because they chronically harbor disturbed and troubling thoughts (p.372). All of this is tied into the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), because neurotics have a strong, highly sensitive BIS (p.373).
The next subsection is on the topic of arousal, which represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation (p.374). It discusses the inverted-U curve that illustrates the effects of arousal on performance efficiency and affect. This section states how having insufficient stimulation or how having excessive stimulation is not beneficial to anyone. Too little stimulation is bad because the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal, and too much stimulation is bad because it is stressful and can upset emotional states, impair cognitive activity, and accelerate physiological processes (p.377). Having a moderate level of stimulation is most optimal for people.
The subsection then moves on to discuss sensation seeking, which is the personality characteristic that is related to arousal and reactivity. In this section, the search for new experiences, risk taking, and biological basis are all covered. It then moves on to cover affect intensity, which concerns people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally (p.381).
The final subsection within the chapter is centered on the topic of control. The two personality characteristics that capture most of the meaning of control are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes (p.384). The desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives (p.386). It is obvious how both of these play into the whole concept of control.
All in all, this chapter did a great job of covering the different personality characteristics within the three broad topics of happiness, arousal, and control. I was interested in learning more about extraversion and happiness, though. Therefore, I did some research on the topic, and what I found is written below.
http://www.happinessstrategies.com/blog/category/positive-psychology/page/2/
This link discussed how even the strong correlations between extraversion and happiness allows for many happy introverts. This may be because the happy introverts act a lot like happy extraverts. It went on to say that simply acting extraverted could lead to feeling happier. It also touches on how genes link to happiness via personality and that it stays pretty stable throughout life. It talks about the “Big Five”, which are dimensions of personality. They include agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. It states that both neuroticism and extraversion are relevant to happiness because of the research that suggests there being a positive relationship between happiness and extraversion and a negative relationship between happiness and neuroticism. This is what leads researchers to believe that happiness is generally set. But, apparently, some psychologists believe that heredity is indirect, meaning that you can get past unwanted aspects of personality by taking deliberate action. This supports the thought that personality is only one single influence on happiness and that other factors probably play a part.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr03/acting.aspx
This link said that people who display extraverted characteristics are happier at those moments that when acting introverted. Professor William Fleeson from Wake Forest University did a study, hoping to show whether introverts who display extravert characteristics are happier in the same way that actual extraverts are. Researchers measured four extraverted characteristics of talkativeness, assertiveness, adventurousness, and energy level in 46 college students. What they ultimately found was that it was possible to predict a person’s positive affect based on the extraversion of that person’s behavior. Energy level was the characteristic that was most strongly related to happiness. Therefore, it can be said that acting extraverted is pleasurable for both extraverts and introverts alike. Fleeson stated that people could take control of their personalities to lead happier lives, which is pretty big information.
Terms: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, motivation, emotion, major life event, happiness set points, positive emotionality, negative emotionality, introversion, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, inverted-U curve, risk taking
Chapter 13 explains different personality characteristics that go along with happiness, arousal and control. The chapter starts off with happiness and states that truly most people are happy. The personality characteristic that is associated with being happy is extraversion. Extraversion is defined as having a preference for being social, assertive and likes to seek out exciting situations. Extraverts have been found to be happier than introverts emotionally. This is because extraverts experience a bigger threshold to be able to experience positive emotions compared to introverts. Those who are unhappy are associated with neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as being chronically unhappy and experiencing negative emotions. This is the opposite of what extraverts tend to be. The next personality trait talked about in this chapter is arousal. Arousal is when a person is feeling more alert, awake and activated. Arousal can affect how someone performs at everyday tasks. If a person is under aroused they may seek out situations that will bring up their arousal and if someone is over aroused they will seek out a way to decrease their arousal. With either of these a person is more likely to perform badly. Only when a person is aroused at a normal level is when they perform to their fullest. The last personality trait talked about in chapter 13 is control. This chapter splits control into two important types: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is explained as the beliefs and expectations a person holds that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes (p. 384). This can predict how much effort a person will put into doing something in life. If they believe that they can achieve it they are more likely to feel control over the situation. The other type of control is desire for control and this is defined as the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives (p.386). This is different than perceived control because people with high desire for control want control over their lives no matter how much control they currently have in a situation. Overall, these three personality traits are the most common that are seen in everyday living.
I went on the internet and researched a little bit more on how introverts and extraverts differ when it comes to happiness. I found some information at foxnews.com about this topic. http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/. This article explains that research had found that extroverts have a more positive view about their past than introverts do. This is why they tend to have more positive emotions and feel happier than introverts who look at the past in a bad way. The researchers do say it is difficult to change your personality, but if someone wants to try to be happier they can just look back at the positive things in life and try to avoid thinking about the negative. This may start to put people in the right direction when trying to change their outlook on life.
The second article I read was from psychology today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201207/introverts-extroverts/are-extroverts-happier-introverts?quicktabs_5=0. This article talked more about what extroverts and introverts are and how they interact, but it also talked about whether or not extroverts are happier. They state that it is hard to answer that question because research only looks at happiness in the light of socializing. This is something that extroverts need to be able to survive, but for introverts happiness comes from more low key activities. These types of activities are not accounted for in most tests. This article also states that there is a culture factor that plays a part in this as well. Westernized cultures tend to favor extroverts while eastern cultures favor the introverts. So this can also play a role in why westernized extroverts tend to be happier. I looked up this information because I consider myself to be an introvert, but I also consider myself to be a happy person, so when I read in the book that extraverts are associated with happiness I was a little confused since I know I am happy. After looking up the info on the internet I feel better about what I read in the book because I am happier in low key activities more than social ones. Which is what brings me happiness and I tend to keep that happiness to myself more than an extrovert would.
Terms: Extraversion, neuroticism, arousal, perceived control, desire of control
Chapter 13 examined personality characteristics and how they influence and how they are affected by motivational principles. Our personality plays a large role in how we decide what is important in our lives and how we allow those experiences to impact us. For example we all react in different ways to positive and negative experiences. Three aspects of personality are different in all of us happiness, arousal, and control. Some of us are sensation seekers, some of avoid and most of us are in the middle somewhere. Personality characteristics exist in all of us but only a few of us harbor a high or intense level of their personality characteristic, and most people harbor a moderate amount of the personality characteristic, and a few harbor only a low level.
It was interesting to see that literary everyone is happy at some point not matter what their situation is. For example individuals who are low income say they are happy even though their economic or family situation is not what others would classify as happy. Basically if you are happy when you are younger no matter what your situation is you are likely to be happy in your older age as well. In general it is found that extraverts are happier than introverts. Extraverts are individuals who are sociable, assertive, and exciting; while introverts are the complete opposite. Extraverts are seen as happier because they enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts. They are also more sensitive to positive feelings which cause them to approach rewarding situations more than introverts.
Arousal represents a variety of process that is involved in alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Thus the activity of the brain, skeletal system, and autonomic nervous system constitute most of the motivational construct of arousal. An interesting aspect of arousal in the inverted U curve which illustrates that a low level of arousal produces relatively poor performance. And as arousal increases performance quality decreases. Basically you want to be aroused but not too aroused. Overall low stimulation produces boredom and restlessness, while high stimulation produces tension and stress.
The most interesting part of the chapter was the section on sensation seeking. We all have a baseline level of arousal; however some of us do not like to stay at our baseline. Sensation seeking is the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation. They often become bored with routine, thus causing them to constantly search for ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. They constantly seek novel experiences and some may become involved in is risky behaviors. Very high sensation seekers voluntarily engage in physically risky hobbies, such as motorcycling or skydiving. There is a possible biological basis for individuals being sensation seekers. They have low levels of monoamine oxidase and serotonin, which fails to inhibit individuals from risky behaviors.
This article discusses and individual named Rita who is involved in several risky behaviors that will have a large influence on her future. The author states that risk taking is not the main point of sensation seeking; it is the price that people pay for certain kinds of activities that satisfy their need for novelty, change, and excitement. Also not all sensation seekers seek risky behavior, for example some individuals enjoy music, movies, or travel. Not surprisingly the article states young males in their adolescent years are at a higher risk of being sensations seekers. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker
This article looks more into aspects of their brain and how they influence individual’s risky behaviors. In the study they showed individuals pictures of different objects; they found that the high-sensation seekers showed early and strong activation in the insula this brain structure acts in part as a gateway where visceral signals from the body are first received and interpreted by the brain. However in the low-sensation seekers, insula activity barely rose above baseline levels. Instead, there were pronounced early activity in the anterior cingulate, a part of the cortex strongly linked to the regulation of emotions. Basically high sensations seekers are unable to stop their need for risky behaviors because their brain wants them. https://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=23620
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. We all seek control of our environment and our personality influences how much control we expect. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in way that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. This concept influences how much effort and individual is willing to exert. Overall this chapter was very interesting as I have always wondered how our personality influences our actions.
Terms: personality, happiness, arousal, control, introversion, extraversion, baseline, performance, emotion, inverted-U curve, under aroused, stimulation, over aroused, sensation seeking, risk taking, biological basis, perceived control, desire for control.
Chapter 13, on personality, talks about two personality characteristics that relate to happiness, two that relate to arousal, and two that relate to control. The two personality characteristics that relate to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. The characteristic that explains who is happy is extraversion. People who are extraverted are happier than people who are introverted. Extraverts are happy because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them more responsive of signals of reward in the environment. The personality characteristic that explains who is unhappy is neuroticism. These are people who suffer emotionally. They suffer because they have a strong behavioral inhibition system that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. Extraversion predisposes people toward a positive emotionality, the behavioral activation system, and an approach temperament. Neuroticism predisposes people toward a negative emotionality, the behavioral inhibition system, and an avoidance temperament. When extraverts enter a situation, they are predisposed to be sensitive to its potentially rewarding aspects and they experience positive emotions and show approach-oriented behavior. When neurotics enter a situation, they are predisposed to be sensitive to its potentially punishing aspects and they experience negative emotions and show avoidance-oriented behavior.
The two personality characteristics that are related to arousal and to the interverted U cure of arousal, performance, and emotion and mood are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations as well as a willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks just to gain such experiences. Sensation seekers seek new experiences through behaviors such as sex and drug use, and they engage in risk-accepting behavior. Affect intensity represents the strength that individuals typically experience in emotions. Affect-intense people experience strong emotions and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion-eliciting situations. Affect-stable people experience their emotions mildly and show minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions.
The two personality characteristics that are related to control are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and to regulate the behavior that is needed to gain desirable outcomes. When someone has strong perceived control, they engage in tasks with active coping and positive emotion. On the other hand, when perceived control is not strong, people engage in tasks half-heartedly and show negative emotion. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to have control over the events in their lives. People who have a high desire for control approach situations by wanting to control what happens, so they strive to establish control and to restore it if it is lost.
Something that I was interested in is neuroticism and if it can be treated. If people who have such personalities are suffering, is there a way that this can be helped?
Obviously we have all heard of the Big Five, where neuroticism is the “N”. This trait shows up as a slight downer compared to the others (agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion). When neuroticism is identified, it begins to show up as a correlate of all sorts of other potentially harmful and unpleasant psychological states. These can range from lower intelligence test scores, greater distractibility in tests, poorer memory, greater reactivity to stress, poorer coping skills, and lower feelings of self-efficacy or self-confidence. The bad part of what I found is that these traits are viewed as unchanging throughout life. Turning around a neurotic personality requires a lot of effort and a great deal of time. People with high neuroticism can have difficulty adapting to everyday challenges.
Even though neuroticism may be difficult to change, there are glimmers of hope. For example, in the 1970s, researchers began to talk about the virtues of “depressive realism”, or the more honest perceptions of self and world in people who typically feel unhappy. In a particular study by Alloy and Abramson in 1979, nondepressed undergraduates were more likely than the depressed to think that they were in control of a random event (turning on and off a light bulb). The results of this study showed that the nondepressed tent to over-emphasize their own role in the events in their lives, part of a general tendency for non-depressed people to view themselves in an unrealistically positive light. This website identifies ways to make positive changes to increase fulfillment. These are, don’t be worried about worrying, when real worries come your way, take practical steps to turn things around, and use depressive realism to your advantage.
This site covers various treatments for neurosis or neurotic disorder. These disorders can be treated with an individualized combination that can include medications, cognitive therapy, and anxiety management. Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, may also be prescribed. In psychotherapy, a psychotherapist builds a relationship with a client that establishes trust and helping the client to address the neurosis through techniques such as communication and behavior therapy. These techniques are helpful for people to recognize and work through anxiety and fear that may underlie neurosis and can teach more effective ways of thinking and behaving.
Terms: extraversion, neuroticism, arousal, happiness, control, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Personality is the chapter that I was most excited to learn about. Personality is one of the most predominant things that we see in our everyday lives. Someone’s Personality drives relationships—whether romantic or not—and helps us understand the people that live around us as well as ourselves. One major goal I hope to achieve with my more advanced understanding of personality is how my personality has affected who I have close relationships with. I also want to understand better is my specific personality has been influenced from biology or from how I was raised. As I summarize this chapter, I hope the concepts from the book help me answer these questions.
The first section of the chapter deals with the differences in the “three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: (1) happiness, (2) arousal, and (3) control.” (Page 368) Any event that we occur in our environment has the potential to affect all of these principles. The main differences are how intensely the situation affects the principles. For example, if a student shows up to an exam completely unaware that there is an exam that day, they will most likely feel a large amount of unhappiness. That specific situation will produce a low amount of control because the student is unable to control/change the outcome or environment.
The first principle that is described is happiness. Studies have shown that most people are happy—or claim to be. Even people in low-income settings still claim that they are generally happy. The book even says that people who won the lottery and people who suffered an accident that left them handicapped were followed up about a year after said life event. Both parties did not differ much from the average person. Studies have also shows that high amounts of negative feelings are present throughout a week after a negative event, but the person starts to return to normal around two short months. Being an extravert is more likely to be correlated with being happier.
The next term in the chapter is arousal. Arousal is something that makes our brain light up with an alert feeling and activation. Arousal can be either a good stimulation or a bad stimulation. For example, the trailer for Grand Theft Auto V comes out next week, so every time the company that produces that game posts something on Facebook, my brain activates telling me I should read it. Arousal also plays a big role when it comes to things that scare or disgust someone. Let’s say that someone just got done eating at a restaurant with their roommates. One of their roommates orders a rare steak and it’s extremely undercooked. You think nothing of it, but when you all get home, said roommate starts complaining of nausea. The roommate gets extremely ill and you can’t handle that. The act of getting sick will cause an arousal, not positively, but it still activates your brain because you view it in such a negative way.
The third and final principle is control. Control is the ability to manipulate one’s environment to produce the desired positive outcome. Someone having a high desire for control tend to be people that make their own decisions, achieves to be leaders, and are overly prepared for situations. Perceived control is how much someone feels they are capable at achieving these positive outcomes. The desire for control is how much someone is motivated to control these events in their lives.
The first link that I found online was “9 Tips in Life That Lead to Happiness.” (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/9-tips-in-life-that-lead-to-happiness.html) This website offers great points on how to do this and is great for someone who has a high desire for control. In summary, the article explains that to achieve happiness, we need to define what makes us happy and set a goal to achieve it. Along the path we need to surround ourselves with others that help increase our happiness and take time out of each day to do something that brings us joy.
I was pretty interested with the ideas of negative arousal. One big example of this is phobias. The website I looked up (http://www.freeatlasthypnosis.com/origin-of-phobias-why-have-them-they-mean/) said that the nature of phobias is still a mystery to scientists. What they assume is that phobias grow from frightening experiences. Scientists have observed a P300 scale reacting to a phobia at a much greater level than other simulations.
Chapter 13 covers three personality characteristics which are happiness, arousal, and control. The first section of the chapter talks about happiness. In this section we learn that most people are happy no matter what social economic status, education, or background they have. People react strongly to life events but they will return back to the same level of happiness after the events occurs. Just like people have a set point that regulates their body weight, people also seem to have a set point that regulates their happiness and subjective well-being. People have two set points, one for positive emotion and one for negative emotion.
The personality characteristic associated with “Who is happy?” is extraversion. Extraversion is defined in three facets; sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Emotionally, extraverts are happier than are introverts and they enjoy more frequent positive moods than do introverts. The idea that extraversion is associated with brain functioning means that extraversion is a biologically based individual difference. The personality characteristic of “Who is unhappy?” is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics experience greater stress, more negative emotions, and steady mood states such as anxiety, fear, and irritability.
There are two types of happiness. Hedonic well-being is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It reflects the pleasant life. Eudaimonic well-being concerns self-realization; it involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing.
The next section in the chapter is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and automatic mechanisms. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation. 1) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulation the environment is. 2) People engage is behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. 3) When under aroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels. 4) When over aroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels.
A moderate level of arousal coincides with the experience of pleasure. Low stimulation produces boredom and restlessness; high stimulation produces tension and stress. Sensory deprivation refers to an individual’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. Sensory deprivation studies underscore the fact that the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal generated by environmental stimulation.
Sensation seeking is the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. Baseline level of arousal is how aroused a person is without external stimulation and reactivity refers to one’s arousal reaction when exposed to external stimulation. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with the routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. A low sensation seeker prefers less brain stimulation and tolerates routine relatively well. Sensation seeking 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.
The last section the chapter talks about is control. Two personality characteristics capture most of the spirit of control beliefs: perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. In order to perceive that one has control over a given situation, one needs to first be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome and second, the situation in which one attempts to exercise control needs to be at least somewhat predictable and responsive. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert and also perceived control beliefs influence the individual’s engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge-seeking.
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. High-DC individuals approach situations by asking themselves whether they will be able to control what happens. They also prefer making their own decisions, prepare for situations in advance, avoid dependence on others, and assume leadership roles in group settings. Low-DC individuals tend to avoid responsibilities, and feel comfortable having other make decisions for them.
The first article I found was titled “An Introvert’s Guide to Happiness”. This article listed 7 ways to be a happy introvert. They were indulge, scrap the small talk, chalk yourself up without talking yourself up, make pals with public speaking, be the “go-to” person, practice you lines, and be a matchmaker. http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/an-introverts-guide-to-happiness.aspx
The second article I found was titled “Why Extraverts are Happier”. A new study finds that the root of their happiness may be in their memories. Extraverts remember the past in a more positive light than other personality types. Extraverted people are happier with their lives because they tend to hold a more positive, nostalgic view of the past and are less likely to have negative thoughts and regrets. People high on the neurotic scale have the exact opposite view of the past and are less happy. People may not be able to change their personality type completely but we can change some things to help us feel happier. http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/
Lucky number 13, this chapter is on personality. More importantly it takes an in-depth look at the three motivational principles of happiness, arousal, and control. Everyone is different and with that, we all have a unique set of personalities. This contributes to who we are as individuals. Our personalities help energize and direct our behavior.
Happiness is a very biological based characteristic. Happiness is related to extraversion. Extraverts tend to be happier than introverts. Within happiness, it is found that most people have so-called “set points” for their happiness. Over years, one’s happiness will stay about the same despite what actually occurs. On the other hand of happiness is unhappiness. This is said to correlate with neuroticism. Neuroticism can be defined as “a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” In other words, they tend to be more introverted
Arousal is the next common theme. This process governs alertness, wakefulness, and activation. With arousal there are four main principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation: 1) Person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating environment is 2) People engage in behavior to increase/decrease their level of arousal 3) When underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal level 4) When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. It is said that relatively low levels and extremely high levels of arousal typically produce low performance. The ideal is to experience a moderate level of arousal. If underaroused, we are bored, on the other hand, if we are too aroused we may experience stress and pressure and not perform well because of it. Arousal levels all depend on personalities. We are motivated to seek out different activities and take different risks which, in essence, mirror how arousal levels can increase/decrease. Some of us experience emotional extremes while others are constantly balance and level-headed.
The third and final main concept is control. Individuals vary on how much control they desire. Some drool over it while others are okay with taking the back seat and listening. The book states it as “desire for control.” Another aspect is the idea of perceived control. Perceived control is defined as “the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcome and prevent undesired outcomes.” In other words, it is the effort an individual will put forth. The more perceived control a person has, the more effort they will put into it. This can then lead into better performance, which leads into feelings of competence. It is almost like a snow ball effect. Individuals who have a high desire attempt to establish control in all situations and regain control whenever they feel they can. If this does not happen, the quickly get ticked off and are rattled.
http://www.doctoroz.com/quiz/how-happy-are-you
This is a quick fun little quiz that asks, “How happy are you?” This is off of the Dr. Oz website so it has some prestigious value and truth to it. I took the quiz and my results showed that I am an average happiness guy. College students tend to score lower than working adults and older, retired people. I thought that was somewhat surprising. The idea of happiness is such a main theme in chapter 13, I thought to myself, I am a happy person. Let’s find a happiness quiz to see how it works.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/sexual-arousal-dampens-ick-factor/story?id=17221134
I feel like the word arousal has such a sexual connotation with it. I know that I am not the only one that feels this way. You say the word and majority of people instantly think it is “hand-in-hand” with sexually. The link above does have to do with sexual arousal though. This ABC news article is interesting in the aspect that if you are turned on, you are less likely to be grossed out. Women who were sexually aroused felt less disgust when doing the tasks than the participants who were not sexually aroused. All in all, the findings suggest sexual arousal decreases women’s so-called disgust response.
Chapter 13 talked about Personality Characteristics; specifically Happiness, arousal, and control. Most people would say there are happy. In the book, it describes people with different income levels and yet they both share the same happiness. People react strongly to events, like winning the lottery, but usually come back down to normal levels after a few weeks. Everyone seems to have a happiness set point that they continue to come back to regardless of being happy or sad. This usually carries over as one ages as well. The personality characteristic best associated with happiness would be extraversion. Extraverted people tend to be sociable and venturous; they love to seek stimulating situations in life. The reason extraverted people are so much happier than, let’s say, an introverted person, is because they are more sensitive to rewards and have a greater positive feeling towards them. Therefore, extroverts experience stronger incentive motivational states that energize and guide their approach behavior. On the other hand, neuroticism is the main characteristic for someone who is unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally; they do so mostly because of their greater capacity to experience negative emotions and because they chronically harbor disturbed and troubling thoughts.
Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Thus, the activity of the brain, skeletal muscular system, and autonomic nervous system together constitute most of the motivational construct of arousal. A person’s arousal level is usually stimulated by one’s environment. People usually engage in behavior that increase or decrease stimulation. When under aroused, people seek our out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance. When over aroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance. Human beings differ on the baseline of arousal. Sensation seekers prefer engaging activities that provide brain activity, while the opposite can be said for a low sensation seeker. Sensation seekers also take risks in order to stimulate their brains.
Control beliefs can be broken down into two categories; perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert on something. People with high perceived control show high effort, concentrate, pay attention, persist in the face of failure, and maintain interest. Someone with desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. Desire for control people want control over their fates in their everyday life situations. When high desire control people have little control, they experience anxiety and stress.
This article talked about the need for control in our everyday life. He talks about how if we have more control over risks, the less scary they become to us. People seem to like to drive more than fly because they seem to think they have more control over it even though statistically it’s safer to fly. He claims that the more you feel you have some influence over how things are going, and how they're going to turn out, the safer you feel. It’s a pretty interesting article that really summarizes why we feel the need to be in control.
Terms: desire for control, perceived control, control, risk taking, sensation seeking, under and over arousal, happiness, arousal, extroversion, neuroticism.
Chapter thirteen breaks down personality characteristics based on individual differences. Happiness is the main component measured in chapter thirteen. Six types of personalities are described in this chapter including; extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. These personalities are measured by how they react to the three aspects of differences including; happiness, arousal, and control. Personality reflects how we react to emotions and situations. The main aspect in this chapter that interested me was happiness.
Happiness can be broken down into two different categories: hedonic or eudaimonic. Hedonic is the response to a pleasurable life full of pleasurable moments. Eudaimonic happiness is self-realization and self-worth. Eudaimonic happiness is seeking meaningful opportunities and engaging in them based on personal growth. Everyone wants to be happy, this chapter makes it sound so simple and measurable. To seek out happiness a person must be sensitive to rewards. This statement made me think and realize that many situations have affected how sensitive I am to rewards. For example on a normal day a small success just keeps me going and on a terrible day something small happens and it can create laughter. Successes reflects happiness based on personality and situation. The incentive for happiness is that it creates emotion which leads to a goal directed behavior. The next question in the book is who is happy? The idea of who is happy can be based on the factors of neuroticism and suffering. The idea of not being happy is to have negative situations that leave an individual unsatisfied. Happiness is another aspect of emotionally stable. The behavioral activating system detects the positive emotions and extraverts arousal to stimulate positive hormones. The Behavioral inhibition system detects and regulates punishment. This system leaves an individual vulnerable and engages them in avoidance. Extraverts generally react more often with the BAS, while introverts are more likely to use the BIS. People engage in behaviors to increase arousal, arousal then increases functioning. Arousal leads us to further understand personality characteristics.
Sensation seeking individuals generally need brain stimulation and interact with risk taking behaviors. Their biological factors include a low level of monoamine oxidate, this hormones function is the break down of dopamine and serotonin. Affect intensity is the ablity to become aroused. Affect-intense people have strong emotions as well as show a strong reaction to emotions. Affect-stable maintain mild experiences with minor reactions. Perceived control maintains beliefs and expectations based on a situation while being capable of predicting or controlling the outcome. Above are just some personality characteristics. Many things influence how a person relays emotion and behaves. This influences can include; engagement, emotion, coping, challenge, and other environmental influences. Generally this chapter helped me gain a further understanding of myself and others. Happiness is a very important aspect of life, and this chapter helped develop my understanding of the authenticity of being happy.
After reading this chapter I was curious at where I rate on some of these scales, so I took a personality test. The test overall categorized me as a good-natured realist. The site then gave four scales: how much you like to be around people, how you process information,how you make decisions and how you structure your life. I maintained in the middle for the first three categories, however the final scale rated me as judging vs. perceiving. I found this interesting, yet very true. It also gave you careers and people that you can relate to that are famous. This chapter helped me develop a scenes of myself and this sight was free and correct.
I got invested in taking these tests so then I researched the idea of a sensation seeking person. I learned more about the sensation seeking scale and took another test. I discovered I am a sensation seeing individual. Personally from this chapter I reflected my happiness correlating with more experience with the likelihood of a valuable success.This can also play on the categories of happiness. I am more happy by challenging myself and reaching new hight rather then being content with small situational success.
Chapter 13 discusses individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. There are two personality characteristics that are related to happiness: extraversion and neuroticism. The personality characteristic that explains “Who is happy?” is extraversion. According to the text, extraverts are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. On the other hand, the personality characteristic that explains “Who is unhappy?” is neuroticism. According to the text, neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. Therefore, when extraverts enter a situation they experience positive emotions as well as approach-oriented behavior and when neurotics enter a situation they experience negative emotions and show avoidance-oriented behavior.
The two personality characteristics related to arousal are sensation seeking and affect intensity. According to the text, sensations seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. For example, sensation seekers might engage in drug use or gambling to stratify their sensation needs. According to the text, affect intensity represents the strength in which individuals typically experience their emotions. Affect-intense individuals experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in certain situations whereas affect-stable individuals experience their emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions.
Finally, the chapter discusses control. The two personality characteristics for control are perceived control and the desire for control. According to the text, perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and prevent undesired ones. When perceived control is strong it increases the likelihood for an individual to attain the outcomes they seek, however, when it is weak people enter tasks half-hearted and typically don’t attain desired outcomes. According to the text, the desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. Individuals with a high desire for control want to control what happens to them by trying to control situations. When control is threatened these individuals exhibit distress and depression.
A topic that I found interesting and decided to research more about was happiness set points. This refers to how individuals respond to life changing events – both positive and negative. I found it interesting to read that individuals who have experienced either a positive or negative life event typically (overtime) end up just as happy as they were before the event happened – even if the event was negative. This intrigued me to find out more information in regards to set points. http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec07/happiness.aspx
This article challenged the existence of set points. Some of the researchers in this article challenging this phenomenon suggest that despite people’s resiliency, they do not necessarily return to a particular level of happiness. They also suggest that it’s important to account the impact that environmental factors have on well-being. However, this article does seem to state that set points do exist, but that the concept needs to be redefined and shouldn’t be applied to every situation. http://mysuperchargedlife.com/blog/the-science-of-happiness-your-happiness-set-point/
This article highlights the importance of our happiness set point and the affect it has on our overall happiness. This article claims that by understanding your happiness set point you can understand your own behavior better. It also states that knowing your happiness set point can tell you how much effort you need to exert to become happier. However, if your happiness set point is already you may not need to exert any more effort than you already do. All in all, this article (unlike the first one) supports happiness set points and believes they can be used to your advantage.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, happiness set point
Chapter thirteen is about personality characteristics. Finding the individual differences to happiness, arousal and control. We can see through individual differences in peoples personality explain why people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation.
Happiness is usually associated with extroversion. The book discusses three further facets that help produce happiness. Sociability is the facet that concludes the preference or enjoyment of people and social situations. The second facet is known as assertiveness, which means the probability someone will show social dominance in a given situation. And the last facet thrill seeking and how the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting events, causing stimulating sensations. Extroverts have a greater tendency towards all these facets. Also extroverts tend to be more happy than introverts as they enjoy more frequent positive moods. With extroversion personalities it gives the person a greater capacity to feel positive emotions. The other trait related to happiness is neuroticism but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Neuroticism is a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Causing more stress and further negative emotions and channeling mood states with anxiety, fear and irritability. Neuroticism gives the person a greater capacity to feel negative characteristics.
Arousal is a process that represents alertness, wakefulness and activation. Arousal contributes to motivation through the level of arousal, the behavior the arousal causes, and what affects are caused from over and underarousal. Affect intensity is the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. With affect intense individuals they tend to experience their emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity across many different emotion eliciting situations.
Control can be split up into two main personality characteristics, perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in peoples expectations of a performance and the capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control is concerned with the extent people strive to make decisions, influence others and enter situations in overly prepared ways.
I looked at a few websites concerning how arousal and stress go together. Arousal can affect performance in different ways. There are several theories to show how stress affects performance. This site summarizes different theories of arousal. The drive theory says that the more arousal and anxiety that a person experiences, the higher their performance will be. The inverted U hypothesis theory, which is also something our book talks about, says that there is a medium amount of arousal and anxiety that causes someone to perform higher. Too little anxiety or arousal and too much anxiety or arousal will cause performance to be poorer. The theory of individual zones of optimal functioning says that people have different levels of anxiety and arousal that are unique in making them perform at their best. This means that some people perform their best with low anxiety, some with a medium amount, and some with a high amount. The amount of anxiety or arousal that someone requires to perform at their best is based on individual characteristics. The multidimensional anxiety theory says that when someone has anxious thoughts, they will have poorer performance. Anxiety that is felt by the body will have an affect on performance. The catastrophe model says that as long as there are lower thoughts of anxiety, then performance will be best at a medium level of physical arousal. The reversal theory says that the way arousal affects performance depends on an individual’s interpretation of their arousal. Arousal can be interpreted as either pleasant or unpleasant.
Another site that I found also talked about the Yerkes-Dodson law, which predicts an inverted U shaped function between arousal and performance. A certain amount of arousal can be a motivator, however too much or too little will work against you. There has been a lot of research indicating the correlation between arousal and performance. This idea says that there are optimal levels of arousal for each task that is learned. There needs to be lower levels for more difficult or intellectually cognitive tasks, and higher levels for tasks requiring endurance and persistence. Another interesting point that this website makes is about the optimal arousal level. Freud thought of anxiety as three different terms: reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and moral anxiety. Reality anxiety is the fear of real danger in the external world that alerts the ego to danger. The neurotic anxiety is the fear that one’s inner impulses can’t be controlled (id). Finally, moral anxiety is the fear of the retributions of one’s own conscience (superego).
Terms: Happiness, extraversion, neuroticism, Arousal, Affect intensity, Perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discussed a lot of different personality aspects of motivation and emotion. There are two personality characteristics related to happiness. These are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains who is happy. Extraverts are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them more responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Their extraversion also pushes them to a more positive emotionality and they experience approach oriented behavior. People high in neuroticism, however, have high behavioral inhibition systems. These make them highly receptive to punishment signals in the environment. These people also experience more negative behaviors as well as avoidance-oriented behavior. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations. According to the text, it is also the need to take risks for the sake of these experiences. Affect intensity is the strength that people experience their emotions. So, affect-intense people experience strong emotions whereas affect-stable people experience mild emotions. Lastly, perceived control and the desire for control were discussed. Perceived control is the ability to regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent outcomes that are undesirable. Desire for control, however, is the extent to with people want and are motivated to control events in their daily lives.
I chose to look up more information on extraversion in relation to happiness because this really interested me. Not to portray too many life details, but I tend to see myself more as an introvert than an extrovert, and I can definitely see how extroverts can be happy more of the time. They often have more friends and happier emotions throughout their lives. From my personal point of view, anyway. So I typed in happiness and extroversion into Google and came up with some pretty interesting information. The correlation for happiness tends to be around .61, which is a fairly high correlation in comparison to other things. So this article agrees that happiness is very much related to extraversion. But it also indicates that since the correlation is .61, that still leaves a lot of room for something else to be related to happiness even for introverts. The article states also that if an introverted person simply acts extroverted they may become happier overall. The person has to make an effort to be outgoing, optimistic, and active. To do this they even give instructions to start one conversation per day with someone new. It can be a light conversation, but it will help improve social skills.
Another website talked about extraversion and happiness as well. According to this article, extroverts make up 50 to 74 percent of the population. These people strive for social stimulation and focus on the external environment. This correlates with the book in that extroverts are aware of external rewards. Extroverts also thrive in fast-paced environments and multi-task well. This article indicates that extroverts need more dopamine to stimulate their brains and introverts need less stimulation to feel rewarded. It also indicates that there’s no clear answer to whether extroverts are happier than introverts. It states that extroverts and introverts just experience happiness differently. Extroverts obviously get their happiness from social stimulation but introverts experience happiness with other activities. So researchers are clearly divided on this issue, but I can see where extroverts would be happier.
Chapter 13 discusses the characteristics of personality by breaking things down into three motivational principles: happiness, arousal, and control. All individuals are open to experiencing each of these in response to situations in their every day life, though it is worth noting that different people will respond differently to the same situation.
Most people are generally happy, and though they may experience events that cause them extreme happiness or extreme unhappiness, they eventually return to their original level of happiness. This leads researchers to believe that everyone has a "set point," which is the general level of happiness an individual will always return to. It has since been decided that individuals actually have two "set points," one of happiness emerging from extroversion, and one of unhappiness emerging from neuroticism. Additionally, extroverts posses a greater ability to experience positive emotions while neurotics are much more sensitive to negative emotions.
Arousal is dependent upon how stimulating an individuals environment is, and concerns feelings such as those of alertness, wakefulness, and activation. According to the "inverted-U curve" too much arousal can cause an individual to experience anxiety, while too little arousal causes an individual to feel bored and relentless. Thus in order to maximize performance and productivity, and individual needs to find a balance. Thus individuals seek stimulation within their environment to increase arousal, and avoid it to decrease arousal. Individuals practice sensation seeking when looking to increase arousal, constantly searching for contemporary experiences.
Control encases a number of varying personality characteristics, so it is often subdivided into two categories: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is an individuals expectations and how they interact with their environment to produce a desired outcome, and is useful when predicting an individuals level of effort concerning tasks. Desired for control on the other hand, concerns the "extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives." Individuals with a high desire for control want control over the outcomes of the life regardless of their current level of control. Desire of control predicts personality characteristics such as learned helplessness, depression, illusion of control, hypnosis, achievement, perceived crowding, stress and coping, among many others.
I was personally very interested and intrigued by the correlation between extroversion and happiness. The first article I found presents a study which attempted to explore the theory that extroverts are more sensitive to positive stimuli and rewards. A study by Lucas and Diener found that extroverts had more positive ratings on positive situations than introverts, but what was interesting was that when the situations were unpleasant there was no distinction between the two. The article also presented an idea that extroverts report being happier because they actively seek out social situations which will be rewarding. The experiment which serves as the focus of this article sets out to explore the relationship between happiness and extroversion. Participants were asked to keep daily diaries of their activities and answered specific questions about each of the events or 'episodes' in their day including things like the amount of social interaction they participated in, and their rate of happiness. The study found that "participation in social situations is a positive predictor of happiness in both extroverts and introverts." It also explored the theory that extroverts are more sensitive to rewarding stimuli, and found no evidence to suggest such. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/3032/Relationship%20between%20Extraversion%20and%20Happiness.pdf?sequence=1
Another article I found discussed a study by William Fleeson based on William James' theory that an individual can manipulate their feelings through action, that "by regulating the action...we can indirectly regulate feeling." Fleesons study suggested that if an individual acts more introverted they will be happier. The experiment asked college students to "act cheerful and outgoing," as well as "withdrawn and shy" and document their mood. Students reported being happier when acting extroverted. http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Extroversion.htm
Terms: Set Point, Inverted-U Curve Relationship, Perceived Control, Desire for Control
Chapter 13 in our text covers personality characteristics. The three main personality characteristics discussed in this chapter are: happiness, arousal, and control.
The first main personality characteristic is happiness. According to the text, people seem to have a set point that regulates happiness and subjective well-being. One of the set points is for positive emotionality – the happiness set point. The happiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion. The other set point is for negative emotionality – the unhappiness set point. The unhappiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in neuroticism. Extraversion is the personality characteristic that is associated with the question, “who is happy?” It has three faucets which are: sociability (preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations), assertiveness (tendency toward social dominance), and venturesomeness (tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations). Neuroticism is the personality characteristic that is associated with the question, “who is unhappy?” Those with the personality characteristic of neuroticism have a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.
The second main personality characteristic is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Arousal has numerous contributions to motivation. According to the text, these are the four contributions: (1) 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) underarousal which is when 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), and (4) overarousal which is when people seek out opportunities to decrease arousal levels (because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance). Underarousal is also known as sensory deprivation and is the individual’s sensory and emotional experience in rigidly unchanging environments. To better understand arousal, the text describes the inverted-U curve which explains the relationship between felt arousal and people’s ensuing motivational and emotional states. The two main criticisms of the inverted-U curve are that the curve is descriptive rather than explanatory and that even if the hypothesis is true, it is still trivial. The curve does not apply to everyday affairs in which arousal level changes relatively little. Under the personality characteristic of arousal falls those who are sensation seekers. Sensation seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and a willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience. Also under arousal, falls the topic of affect intensity. Affect intensity is people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally. Individuals who are affect-intense experience emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity and variability across many different emotion-eliciting situations. These individuals vary however from those individuals who are affect-stable. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in emotional reactions from moment-to-moment or from day-to-day.
Finally, the third personality characteristic discussed in this chapter is that of control. Control beliefs are made up of perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the difference in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. To perceive that one has control one must: “be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome,” and the “situation in which one attempts to exercise control needs to be at least somewhat predictable and responsive.” Desire for control is the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. Finally, engagement is defined in relation to control in which it captures the intensity of emotional quality of a person’s participation during somewhat difficult undertakings to control the outcomes that matter to them. According to the text, “when highly engaged, people exert strong and persistent effort and express positive emotion; when disaffected, people behave passively and express negative emotion.”
The first research topic that I would like to discuss is that about neuroticism and its effects on gained weight and personality changes. The article is entitled Pounds of Personality and was published on November 1, 2012. What I found from this article is that people who have the personality characteristic of neuroticism are more impulsive and are less likely able to control their cravings, thus leading to weight gain (as compared to those who do not have the personality characteristic of neuroticism). The article states that because people who are neuroticisms are unable to control their cravings, “they are more prone to overindulge and gain weight, but their weight gain in turn increases their neuroticism and impulsivity.” The article describes this process as a “viscous downward spiral” that ends up “depleting cognitive control” in general. The final point made in this article is that if one “[yields] to temptation today [it] diminishes the[ir] ability to resist cravings” in the future. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/pounds-of-personality.html#.UJsr93XAenp
The second research topic that I would like to discuss in relation to chapter 13 is also about neuroticism. This article discusses how neuroticism tends to “be accompanied by several pervasive avoidance behaviors.” There is situational avoidance, subtle avoidance, and cognitive avoidance. Reading further into the article, these avoidance behaviors are explained a bit more in depth. Situational avoidance is described as when a person is “fearful of social setting,” they might avoid a crowd. Subtle avoidance is when someone who is “fearful of losing control might become a perfectionist.” Cognitive avoidance is portrayed as someone who watches television or listens to music to “distract from unpleasant thoughts.” This article was very interesting to me and I thought it was interesting that it described different avoidance behaviors of those who have neuroticism. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/obsonline/inside-the-neurotic-mind.html#.UJssGXXAenp
Chapter 13 is about the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. The first principle discussed is happiness. Happiness is set by each individual's personality. It is generally at a consistent level over the long term. When very happy or very sad events occur, happiness levels still typically wind up at about the same level after about a year. Whether a person is an extrovert or an introvert depends a lot on happiness. Extroverted people tend to be happier and enjoy more frequent positive moods more than introverts. They also have a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system)than introverts. There are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one's pleasurable moments; whereas, eudaimonic happiness is the actualization of the self. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic associated with "Who is unhappy?" Neurotics are more vulnerable and more susceptible to negative emotions. Therefore, extroversion and neuroticism represent two basic personality dimensions.
Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. A moderate level of arousal coincides with the experience of pleasure. We harbor motives to counteract insufficient stimulation and underarousal, as well as excessive stimulation and overarousal. Sensation seeking is a characteristic associated with arousal. People that are high sensation seekers are usually more willing to stray from routine and take risks; whereas low sensation seekers like to still to routine. Affect intensity concerns people's capacity to become aroused emotionally and is defined in terms of the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions.
Control is the third motivational principle of personality characteristics that the chapter discusses. 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. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. When a person has a high perceived control, they tend to set higher goals and generate more sophisticated plans for the future. When people desire control but the environment refuses to afford it, the person becomes vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression. In controllable environments, the desire for control works as a motivational asset, but, in uncontrollable environments, the desire for control works as a motivational liability.
I am very interested in the general idea of happiness. I know that everyone has a different definition of happiness when it comes to specifics, and when the word happiness is said aloud, each person will think of a different person, place, or thing that they associate most with the word. The Happiness Project is a chronicle or Gretchen Rubin's attempt to test-drive every tip, principle, and scientific study that promotes happiness. She has written two books about happiness, and has a blog site about her findings and tests. It is a very interesting site that discusses concepts that I wouldn't have thought to write about when talking about happiness. This is a very interesting website. http://happiness-project.com/
I am also very interested in the section on extroverts and introverts. Up until college, I was always told I was an introvert. I was shy and quiet around big groups of people, but loud and crazy with my friends and family, but I was almost always happy. That is why I am interested in this. I know that the book doesn't say that introverts are necessarily unhappy, but it talks a lot about how much more positive extroverts are. Now that I am have had a couple years of college, and become more confident, more people would say that I am an extrovert. This makes me question if I am more happy and positive than I was in high school because I had never considered myself anything else. So I found this quiz in Psychology Today about whether you are an extrovert or introvert. This quiz had me in the middle, but more introverted than extroverted. This is interesting to me knowing now how both are associated with happiness. I still consider myself happy and positive though! http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201103/quiz-are-you-introvert-or-extrovert-and-why-it-matters
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics, and more specifically, three motivational principles; happiness, arousal, and control. The book suggests that people have a happiness "set point". They gave the example of a person who got in a big car accident vs. a person who had just won the lottery. Big life events make us happy for a while, but we always come back to a "set" happy point after such big event. There was a study done on paraplegics; they were obviously not as happy just months after their accident, but eventually they seem to equalize back to original happiness. To answer the question, "who is happy?" is extraversion. Extroverted people come from three facets; sociability-the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness-striving for social dominance, and venturesomeness (yes this is a word)- the tendency to seek out and exciting situations. The book tells us that emotionally, extroverts are happier than introverts and enjoy on a more frequent basis, more positive moods. There are two types of happy; hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic well being is the totality of one's pleasurable moments and eudaimonic involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing, or the true self. This section goes on to talk about neuroticism which is people who experience negative feelings all the time and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. They are obviously very unhappy people.
The second motivational personality characteristic explained in chapter 13 is arousal. Arousal comes from processes in which the brain, skeletal muscular system and the autonomic nervous system work together to create alertness, wakefulness and activation. The amount of arousal that someone has about a task is based on motivation. For example, when people are lacking arousal, they seek out more opportunities to increase it, thus motivation to do something. This explains people who are "adrenalin junkys". People who find the need to always be seeking out an increase in arousal, like EMT medics. They are always looking forward to that next call when their adrenalin gets pumping, when their arousal is high.
The third personality characteristic is control. Control, stemming from perceived control which is the difference between ones expectancy of their performance of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control is when people want to make their own decisions, influence others, take up leadership roles and be extra prepared when faced with difficult situations or problem solving situations.
I am a visual learner so I chose to look up videos to exemplify two aspects of chapter 13.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSPfuu-XeEc&feature=related
Here is a good example of an introvert compared to an extrovert. The extrovert starts off the skit by talking on the phone with a friend about some personal things. He is pretty care-free and doesn't mind talking about anything, especially knowing that others can probably hear him. Meanwhile, the introvert is displeased with the noise and isn't much interested in hearing what this strange man has to say. The introvert man is displaying normal signs, as he rather not be bothered and simply sit alone and not initiate any conversation with a stranger. Although, being the extroverted guy that the other one is, he easily and willfully tries to start up a conversation with the not-so-pleased older introvert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkprv-Upco
Everyone loves Spongebob Squarepants! Here we see Mr. Krabs demonstrating the personality characteristic of control. His perceived control efforts are very high in that he wants people to come to his pool so he will go to great lengths to do so. Whether or not you believe in global warming, this is a good example of Krabs taking control. He has a very high level of engagement with his carbon monoxide machine and is very excited about the perceived outcome. Spongebob, on the other hand gets a heightened state of arousal when he finds out about an "endless summer". This is very stimulating to him and he wishes to help.
Chapter 13 discussed the individual differences found in the three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. These characteristics include happiness, arousal and control. Within these principles, personality characteristics exist which include extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. At any time, in any situation, these characteristics can arise. It is important to keep in mind that most people fall in between the extremes of each characteristic and that extremes are rare.
Happiness is found in nearly everyone regardless of the negativity of the situation they are in. It obviously affects the happiness of a person, but for the most part people are not unhappy. Extremely large events, even though they may create temporary euphoria, do not create long-standing happiness. There are two set points for happiness, one negative and one positive, and the stay generally the same throughout one’s life. If one is happy at one age, they will likely have the same amount of happiness ten years from that date. Extraversion is the personality characteristic that is the strongest indicator for who is happy and who is not happy. Someone who is more of an extravert is happier than an introvert. Not only do they have more social connections, but they are also more socially intelligent. They are able to pick up on social cues that are often rewarding. The introverts cannot pick up on these cues as well so they are not rewarded as much. In turn, they are not as happy. Extraverts also experience positive emotion more often than introverts do because of stronger behavioral activating systems. This appears to be an innate ability and not a learned behavior. There are two types of happiness and these are hedonic and eudaimonic. The first is simply experiencing a pleasant life and the latter is experiencing self-actualization. The second point of happiness, the negative and unhappy point, is predicted by neuroticism. The more neurotic the person, the more unhappy they are. They have a greater capacity for negative emotions.
Arousal is the second principle discussed in the book and represents processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. If one is very aroused, common sense would tell us that they would perform very well if someone who is not aroused underperforms. The latter is true, but if one is very aroused, they also perform poorly. As arousal reaches its peak at a moderate level, performance is its highest. As arousal continues towards a high amount, performance decreases due to anxiety. Boredom is experienced if arousal is not high enough, the individual loses interest and does not perform as well as if arousal was stimulated at a moderate level. Sensation seeking is a characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. The higher an individual’s tendency for sensation seeking is, the more they prefer consistent arousal and vice versa. These people enjoy new experiences and do not enjoy routine.
Control is the last concept the text touched on and is heavily related to perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the likelihood one can interact with the environment and produce desired rather than undesired outcomes. If someone feels like they have a lot of perceived control, they are more likely to put more effort forth. They believe they can affect what happens so it motivates them to exert more effort. Desire for control is the amount a person is motivated to control a given situation. A person with a high desire for control wants to achieve higher goals and complete difficult tasks and the opposite is the case for low desire for control individuals.
I decided to look up neuroticism further and found an article about what neuroticism is and what causes neurosis. According to the article, neuroticism is a long-term tendency to be in a negative emotional state. These people are sensitive to stress and do not respond to it very well. They are also typically shy and get nervous in everyday situations. It also stated neurosis is an actual disorder and neuroticism is the actual disorder which is an important distinction that parallels the concepts of mood and emotion. It also states health professionals don’t use the term in everyday practice anymore. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/246608.php
The second page I found is an abstract for a published article about neuroticism and extraversion. It showed that neuroticism is strongly linked to depression and anxiety while introversion is only moderately associated with these symptoms. Anxiety is especially linked with neuroticism and extraversion was negatively correlated with depression. This study examined a sample from two Finnish cities. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16688731
Personality, people are always judging others and choosing friends biased on their personality and how well it goes with the another persons. What is personality? That is what chapter 13 is all about. People all have different personalities. There are three concepts that help figure out personality characteristics and how they affect motivation. They are happiness, arousal and control. Everyone has all three, just in different amounts.
Happiness is the first one look at in the chapter. Everyone is happy at some point. There are different types of happiness. There is joy, laughing, or just feeling content. Some people are just happier then others. Everyone seems to have a set happiness point. Something can happen that makes them really happy but eventually it will come back to the curtain point. The same with if they are sad, their happiness will go back up to the normal happiness point. The same way people have a set sad point. How is this point set? Many believe it is due to how much of an extrovert a person is. If a person is outgoing, and always around people then they tend to be more happy then those who are introvert, alone all the time. The book surprised me by saying it is not the fact they are more social but they get more positive feeling from being around other it is more rewarding for them. Extroverts are happier because they have more positive experiences which can lead to a higher BAS (biological activating system). BAS is how much reward response the brain produces in certain situations. Since an extrovert gets lots of pleasure from being around others and positive events, they are motivated to be social and find fun situations. If a person is an introvert and does not get as much of a pleasure feeling from being around others, they will not seek out the social factor or the positive fun situation making them less happy.
Arousal is the second main topic discussed in this chapter that lead to motivation. There are four reasons why arousal leads to motivation: The first is a person arousal is biased in the situation. Second a person is motivated to either raise or lower their arousal state. Third is, when a person is not aroused, they will find situations that raise their arousal. The fourth is the opposite of three, when over aroused people will find activities to lower their arousal. When someone is not aroused it leads to lower performance because their body is not in high response. Having a too high of arousal is not good either. It causes lots of stress. A person needs that nervous energy to help them to the task to their best. I think of speaking in front of people. I have been in plays and musicals my whole life and know that the nervous energy is what gets a person pumped and ready to go. It is the same logic for spots. There has to be an element of nervousness to be able to perform your best.
The book has talked about control and autonomy which is perceived control, doing what you want when you want, how you want, and when you want. Control is also a major factor in personality. Some people need lots of control and some need little. There is perceived control which is how much a person believes they have and then there is real control. How much desired control a person wants is biased on their need to feel like they are in change. It is how much power a person thinks they have over themselves and others. They want to be leaders, and make own decisions. So people are more driven to be in power and have a higher need for autonomy. They need to control everything. Others do not want any power. Both situations are bad. The over controlling one will never feel satisfied because it is impossible to control everyone and everything. The person who does not want power will never step up there for will always be told what to do. Most people are in the middle and know how much power they need but can still let others take over. People know that they cannot control everything and are ok with that.
Some people are sensation seekers and some are sensation avoiders meaning that. This mean that the sensation seekers try to put themselves into situations that have high amount of happiness, avoiders try to stay away from happiness, arousal and control.
The most interesting thing to be with this chapter was the introvert and extrovert. I know some people were more social. I did not know it was about reward and it effects motivation so much. I figured it would dictate what types of activities they were in. Most introverts seem really happy that I know. My friend is almost always reading or playing video games. Every time I visit he seems fine in his own little world. The book says he should be less happy so I looked into this topic more. I found http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201112/are-extroverts-happier-introverts-yes it is a blog about how yes studies show that extrovert do have higher reward receptors. They get more please from social and being active. They are more likely to get involved. The article then went on to talk about what I was thinking about with my friend Matt. It talked about happiness of being alone. Some please do get pleasure from just reading. The article says that yes extroverts are happier, but introverts are happy to just doing different activities.
The next article I looked at was http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/an-introverts-guide-to-happiness.aspx this is a post about how introverts can still be happy even if they do not have as much reward censors. The site tells introverts how to be just as happy. I’m convinced that some up the suggestions would not work but a few were, be a matchmaker so you are not in the limelight, practice talking in a mirror, don’t so small talk since you are not comfortable, and give short to the point information/advice and know what you are talking about.
I am not sold on the concept of extroverts being happier and introverts not as happy. I know it is what our text book says, and yet I have trouble believe it. I am an in between. Sometimes I am very quiet and just want to read, and other I want to be center stage in a play. I love being around people and talking. I also get tired of people and just want to be alone. I enjoy both. I feel like it just being happy doing different activities. I know my friend Matt is happy with video games and books. He does not know or think he is unhappy or not as happy as, his twin brother who is the extrovert. Andrew the other twin has lots of friends and is involved. Matthew has a few close friendships. They are both happy and loving their life. This topic really interests me and I am not sold for sure on how I feel about the idea. A brain scan may show one thing, but if a person feels happy and does not think they are missing anything, then why should we think they are not living as happy life as they could be?
Terms: personality, happiness, introvert, extrovert, arousal, control, autonomy, desire for control, perceived control, drive, social needs
There are two personality characteristics related to happiness and well-being. Two personality characteristics related to arousal and two related to control. The two personality characteristics related to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains who is happy. Extraverts are happier than the introverts. Extraverts are happy because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Who is unhappy is neuroticism. These people suffer emotionally.
Sensation seeking and affect intensity are two arousal related characteristics. Sensation is the need for novel, varied and intense situations and the willingness to take physical, social and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. To attain sensations, they seek new experiences and engage in risk-taking behaviors. Affect intensity is the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotion. They experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion-eliciting situations.
Perceived control and desire for control are related to control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes. This initiates a self-confirming cycle in which people with high perceived control initiate the effort that produces positive outcomes and increases subsequent perceptions of high control. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. High desire to control people want to approach situations by wanting to control what happens to them, so they establish control and restore it. They embrace high standards, put forth the effort, persist at difficult tasks and interpret success/failure. When the control is threatened or lost, people exhibit distinct reactions of distress and depression.
I thought that sensation seeking and affect intensity were very interesting. I looked at sensation seeking to see more about it. The article that I was read was from 2 years ago and it talked about how sensation seeking is an inheritable personality trait associated with behavioral disorders that have high social costs. Dopamine is related to sensation seeking and because we all have different levels of dopamine, it makes us react differently to a situation than someone else. Although it may be in a person’s genes, it doesn’t mean that the person will for sure partake in a risk-taking behavior. http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20101006/sensation-seeking-may-be-in-the-genes
The second article I found on sensation seeking talked about how risk-taking isn’t the main point of sensation seeking, but instead it is the price people pay to experience these needs, change and excitements. Sensation seeking personalities can also be related to sociability because most risky behaviors, such as partying, reckless driving and sky diving are done with other people, not alone. This article also confirmed that it is a neurotic trait and relates to our genes. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker
Chapter 13 discusses personality characteristics. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal and control. These three characteristics can vary tremendously from individual to individual.
Happiness is the first characteristic discussed. The book says that most people are happy despite differences in life circumstances. People tend to return back to their original level of happiness even after a life changing event. The book used the example of a person winning the lottery and a person in a car accident. These two events changed an individual’s life and produced two very different emotions. One experienced negative emotions and the other experienced positive emotions. Later these individuals were re-assessed, their level of happiness had returned to normal, to the level they experienced before the events. A personality characteristic that is associated with happiness is extraversion. People that have an extravert personality are often social able and enjoy being around others. Extraverted people are more likely to experience positive moods. Happiness comes in two forms: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic well-being is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It represents what people think of as happiness. Eudaimonic involves engaging yourself in meaningful activities and doing what is worth doing.
The next thing this chapter discusses is arousal. Arosual represents a variety of processes that oversee alertness, wakefulness and activation. Arousal is depended on the environment around us. Arousal plays apart in our ability to perform. The inverted U-curve displays how performance and arousal are related. Too little stimulation or having excessive stimulation is not good for anyone. Too little stimulation is bad because the brain and nervous system need a moderate level of arousal. Too much stimulation can be stressful. Having a happy medium between the two is what most individuals strive for.
The last characteristic discussed is control. Control can be divided into two sub-categories: perceived control and desired control. Perceived control reflects the individual’s expectations that they can engage themselves in with the environment. Desired control is how individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives.
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. I found this to be a very interesting chapter and the introduction was particularly good at summarizing what would be covered and warning away from generalizations. Not all people fall into extremes that are discussed in this chapter, and the extreme on either side are small percentages that are not the only options for a person’s personality trait in that area. The visuals from the chapter, especially the first, were very helpful. People are not either one or the other personality characteristic, they can be in the middle, either, neither, or some of both. The motivation of personality characteristics is based upon three main areas in this chapter; happiness, arousal, and control.
Happiness is the first discussion point of the chapter though it is not defined. I suppose it is a commonly understood concept, being happy, the feeling of pleasantness it brings is universal. People are generally happy regardless of situation and status. Even those who go through major life events, both positive and negative, return to being a fairly static level of happy a year or so afterwards. Those who tend to be more happy, compared to others, are extraverts. An extravert is someone who has a few key characteristics; sociability, assertiveness or social dominance, and adventurous. They are more sensitive to the rewards in social situations and tend to have a greater capacity for emotion than their counterparts, introverts. An introvert is the opposite of an extravert, they tend to be withdrawn and avoid social situations. Neuroticism is the opposite of happy extraversion, it is characterized by negative affect and regular dissatisfaction. Those high in neuroticism experience more negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, fear, and anger.
The second characteristic mentioned in the chapter is arousal. It is defined as “a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation”. Within the topic of arousal, there are four principles connecting arousal and motivation; arousal level is a function of environmental stimulation, behavior occurs to increase or decrease arousal, underaroused persons seek an increase in arousal, and overaroused persons seek a decrease in arousal. Levels of arousal are cause for different levels of engagement. Low arousal is boredom, medium levels of arousal are associated mostly with pleasure, and high arousal is stress and anxiety. There is an inverted “u” diagram to show this phenomenon and the main argument against that “u” is there is no explanation, just the depiction. Sensation seekers are people who are constantly searching for arousal increases and stimulation. They thrive on novel experience and taking risks they consider worthwhile. Those who rate high on sensation seeking typically have low levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO) in their brains. MAO is used to break down neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Having less breakdown means they have more of those in their body which can generate approach behavior and decrease inhibitions. Another facet of arousal is affect intensity; the intensity with which someone feels their emotions. Someone who is affect intense would feel emotion experiences strongly while those who are affect stable feel emotion in a more mild way. The affect intense person may be more sensitive to changes in arousal as an explanation for the difference.
Lastly, the chapter discusses control. Control is defined in two ways; perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is the belief that one has control over the environment and the outcomes of events they attempt to influence. For someone to have perceived control, the outcome they desire must be attainable and the environment must be somewhat predictable. Those high in perceived control with persist longer and put in more effort than those with low perceived control when encountering a semi-structured event. There exists a self-fulfilling cycle with perceived control. Those who are high will put forth more effort and thus typically affect the outcome in the way they desire, solidifying their perception. Those with low perceived control will typically put forth less effort and persist for less time typically resulting in their low perception solidifying, as well. Desire for control differs from perceived control in that those high in desire for control want control regardless of how much impact they actually have and the situations level of responsiveness to their efforts. So, the desire for control is the extent to which a person desires to have control over their life. Those high in desire for control tend to take on leadership positions in groups and want to make their own decisions in life. Those low in desire for control tend to avoid responsibility and prefer to have others make their decisions for them. Those high in desire for control feed into their own illusion of control, the overestimation of how much actual control they have over their environment. This illusion of control impacts the high desire for control person’s evaluations of their own impact. They would typically take the credit when things go well and blame outcomes on unstable things when it didn’t go their way. When they lose control, those high in desire for control respond with learned helplessness. If a situation is uncontrollable, they are stressed and anxious, becoming depressed.
When doing my internet search, I first typed “desire for control” into Google and clicked the fourth hit. A blog post reviewing a book about choices and choosing (“The Art of Choosing” by Sheena Iyengar). The information the author presented was very interesting and they mention how the desire to control leads to our desire to have choices and then a subsequent inability to make a choice. It starts at a young age she says and I can see that in kids, especially when I think about the little boy I used to babysit always asking for me to think of new things to do. I wonder if the desire for control is something we teach our kids or if it is more innate, like extraversion/introversion. I then typed “child personality” in and got a hit that made me feel more on the innate side. There are definite personality traits for younger kids, the shy ones that venture out slowly or the ones that bolt away constantly, claiming things for their own. I feel that a lot of what this chapter discusses has a base in innate temperament; personality is more biological than situational. Maybe the idea that people never really change isn’t too far from true. Some change is possible but if personality is more biological, then there isn’t much we can do about it. That would bring about a whole different discussion in parenting and how much of a child’s temperament is the “fault” of their parents’ upbringing. A few very interesting finds and topic overall.
Terms: extravert, introvert, neuroticism, arousal, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, illusion of control
The chapter begins with the suggestion to look at personality characteristics in normal distribution. This perspective is better than dividing people into categories. Then a section describes how extraversion and neuroticism affect happiness. The three facets of extraversion are sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. People with these qualities experience positive emotion more frequently. Neuroticism is the opposite of emotional stability. Neurotic people are more sensitive to negative emotion. A strong BAS leads to extraversion, while a strong BIS leads to neuroticism. The terms BAS and BIS were explained in the Prefrontal Cortex and Affect section of Chapter 3. The author also introduced the hedonic and eudaimonic types of well-being. Hedonic well-being is the kind of happiness in this chapter, and eudaimonic well-being will be presented in Chapter 15.
The section on arousal first presents the inverted-U curve, which shows us that moderate arousal leads to best performance. It also describes human differences in arousal baseline and reaction to stimulation. These differences explain the behavior of sensation seeking. Then affect intensity is described as the psychological appraisal of physiological responses. The author selected perceived control and desire for control to explain personal control beliefs. Perceived control influences engagement, and the influence of desire for control is shown in Figure 13.7. The desire for control also becomes a liability when the situation allows little control.
I looked up assertiveness, and found many products and services that use this specific quality to facilitate stress management or stress reduction. Several websites provide an interesting comparison between being assertive and being aggressive. An aggressive person often harms others in the search of satisfaction, while an assertive person treats others with respect and trust. This characteristic distinguishes between an assertive person and a bully. Several products on websites teach people how to be assertive so they can get what they want and reduce stresses in their lives. Two websites provide steps we can follow for free.
Chapter thirteen discusses personality characteristics such as extraversion and neuroticism in regards to happiness. Extraversion explains, “Who is happy?” and neuroticism explains, “Who is unhappy?” Extraverts are more responsive to rewards in the environment and neurotics are more responsive to punishments in the environment. This chapter also discussed control. The perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is when you believe you are able to produce desired outcomes. Desire for control is how motivated a person is to produce their desired outcomes.
I found it interesting when the book discussed the idea that everyone has a happiness set point. Meaning that people react to different life events, but they eventually always come back to their normal level of happiness. The book gave two different examples. There were a lottery winner and the victim of a serious injury. They are two different examples. One has a positive impact and the other has a negative impact. However a year after both situations most people would be back at their normal happiness set point. I found this to be an interesting topic so this is what I chose to look up.
I found the above article online and it had the same examples that the book had. It also went on to discuss the idea that if people wish to make themselves happier that may want to focus more on changing their situation and focus less on changing their specific emotional mood. Meaning that the environment has an impact on our happiness. If you continue to have happy events going on in your life (wedding or having a child) then you are going to be happier than if you have sad events (death in the family or losing a job) going on in your life. This makes perfect sense to me because obviously if we have certain big life events going then it will change our mood, but then we eventually go back to our normal or set point.
This website had a chart of our happiness. It was a pie chart that showed that fifty percent of our happiness is from our set point, ten percent is from circumstances, and forty percent is from intentional activity. I think this makes quite a bit of sense because I do think that our set point is a big chunk of our happiness. However I do think that our circumstance would account for more than just ten percent. I guess you could argue that your intentional activity can lead to your circumstance because if you are intentionally trying to make something happen then eventually that is going to land you in some sort of circumstance. That sounded confusing, but hopefully you understand what I am trying to say.
Terms: Personality, extraversion, neuroticism, rewards, punishment, perceived control, desire for control, happiness set point
In Chapter thirteen there’s a discussion of happiness, arousal, and control. Each one of these topics are motivational principles that relate to personality characteristics. Happiness can be found in most people, it just depends on their life circumstances. The book mentions how both a lottery winner and accident victims can all shed light on being happy, even though they are involved with dramatic life events which lead into strong emotions. People react strongly to life events, but they somehow return to the level of happiness they had experienced before these events happened. Extraversion and happiness play a big role in personality characteristics on defining being a happy person. There are three ways to define extraversion, the first is sociability, the second is assertiveness, and the third is venturesomeness. Sociability is being able to interact with people during social situations. Assertiveness is connected to social dominance. Venturesomeness is where you seek out and look for stimulation situations that you’ll enjoy be apart of. Extraverts are generally more happier and have positive moods, than introverts do. There are two types of happiness, the first is hedonic which reflects a pleasant life. The second is eudaimonic which concerns self-realization. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic that feels dissatisfied and unhappy. They suffer more emotionally, then those who are emotionally stable. Here is where they normally harbor disturbed and troubling thoughts, so because they’ve experienced a bad life event they will have a more pessimistic outlook and continue to hang unto that bad event, long after the bad event is over. Basically to sum extraverts and neurotics up, extraverts are generally happy people, while neurotics are generally unhappy people.
Arousal govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation and are all apart of the processes that are cortical, behavioral, and automatic mechanisms. Performance and emotion play a big role. If you have a low level of arousal you’ll produce a poor performance, where if you have a moderate level of arousal the experience will come out more pleasurable. Low stimulation produces boredom and restlessness, high stimulation produces tension and stress. People generally want to escape from over stimulating environments. A sensation seeking person is a personality characteristic that’s related to arousal, a high seeker is always in search of ways to increase their arousal through new and exciting experiences. While low seekers tolerate having a regular routine. Risk-takers are the ones who seek to be involved with risky hobbies and are the high seekers. Some hobbies could include, gambling, cigarette smoking, travel, skiing or snowboarding, boxing, etc.
Then there’s control, here is where some people desire to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and be more prepared for certain situations. Perceived control is the way people can interact with their environment that either produce desired or undesired outcomes. When dealing with engagement, when someone has high engagement they are strong and persistent which leads to having positive emotions, while having low engagement people tend to be more passively, so therefore negative emotions are brought about. The want to have desire for control is how individuals are motivated to have control over their own life styles.
I did some more research on risk taking events. In this article I found that one in five people, who are mainly young males. It’s not just a simple “death wish” anymore, but studies have shown that the brain is possibly linked to the arousal and pleasure mechanisms that it may offer a thrill that could be connected to addiction. This may help us out when it comes to survival mode as a species.
In this article it talks about taking dumb and intelligent risks. They say it’s a bad idea to take a dumb risk, but in turn it’s as equally stupid to pass up an intelligent risk, where you have a positive outcome and your potential downside can be very limited.
Chapter 13 first started out by talking about experience-sampling methods and how people would wear a palm pilot and record throughout the day how they were feeling. The findings showed that a majority of people stated that they were feeling happy. The chapter later discussed how every person has a different level of happiness. Everyone is different. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics, one is happiness, two is arousal, and three is control. The book later discusses these in depth. Any situational event offers the potential to affect all three of these subject experiences. The book gave a lot of personality characteristics. Extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control are all reasons why different people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation and event. All situations vary in how they stimulate and arouse a person. They also vary in the amount of control given. Many people are in a balance between sensation seekers and sensation avoiders. There are a few people who are on one end of the spectrum or the other. The chapter then talked about a person’s set point and how happiness is as much in our genes as it is in our personality and the events in our life only control how happy we are for a short amount of time. In the book it took two people who were in a horrible car accident and someone who won the lottery and measured there happiness. One person was very happy and one person was traumatized and felt little happiness but after about a year both people was on the same level of happiness or set point of happiness. Everyone has two set points. One is for positive emotionality and one is for negative emotionality. Happiness can be an independent indicator of our well-being. The book then talked about extraversion and how people who are extroverted tend to be happier than people who are introvert. Extroversion has three facets. One is sociability, or the preference for an enjoyment of other people and social situations. Two is assertiveness, or a tendency toward social dominance, and three is venturesomeness, or a tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations. Extroverts are happy whether they are with others or alone and they posses a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions. Behavioral activating system or BAS is the brain system that detects and regulates signals of reward in the environments. The motivational function of the BAS is to energize approach-oriented, goal directed behavior. Their signal of reward strongly activates their BAS. Introverts only mildly activate their BAS. Arousal represents a variety of processes that create alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The processes that are activated by arousal are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Under arousal is shown to enable a person to think clearly and create a person to run out of things to think of. A person may begin to dream while awake after long periods of under arousal. Over arousal can be just as bad as under arousal. Stressful environments upset a person emotional state, impair cognitive activity, and accelerate physiological processes. Over stimulation can cause anxiety, irritability, and anger. Many people have a desire for control. They have perceived control and desired control. Perceived control can create positive outcomes and desire for control makes people strive to make their own decisions and influence others.
Terms: perceived control, desired control, set points, over arousal, under arousal, extroverts, introverts, Behavioral activating system or BAS, experience-sampling methods, happiness, Extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, positive emotionality, negative emotionality
After reading the chapter I wanted to figure out what kind of person I was, if I was introvert or extrovert. I first took a test that was in TIME Health and Family. The test said that many people fall along a continuum and people can express both quality’s but if it had to pick I fell more along the line of an extrovert. http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/27/quiz-are-you-an-introvert-an-extrovert-or-an-ambivert/ I also looked at how well couples work if one person is introvert and one is extrovert and I looked at a dating do’s and don’ts written by Jeannie Assimos and she said couple work out very well if they are opposites. She said introverts often feel grateful that their extroverted partners make the atmosphere light-hearted and casual and they do so much of the talking. Extroverts in the relationship like it because introverts give them permission to explore their serious and introspective sides. I thought this was really interesting. http://www.eharmony.com/blog/2012/01/24/five-tips-for-a-great-introvert-extrovert-relationship/
Chapter 13 is a discussion of personality characteristics focusing on the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics including happiness arousal and control. There are many different constructs to happiness and it is a common topic of research. Research shows that many people from different parts of life will claim that they are happy. Many people have a ‘set point’ that regulates their happiness that can be explained by individual differences in our personalities. When comparing extroverted personality types and introverted personality types, extraverts are emotionally happier because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions. Another personality trait that is associated with un-happiness is neuroticism, a person who feels chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Happiness is also broken into two types, hedonic well-being-ones pleasurable moments and reflects a pleasant life, and eudaimonic well-being- engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and doing what is worth doing.
The second principle discussed in this chapter was arousal. Arousal is a process that controls alertness, wakefulness, and activation and has four principles that contribute to motivation. First, a persons arousal level is a function of how stimulating the environment is. Second, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal levels. Third, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels and when over aroused they will seek opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. Being both over aroused in stressful situations and under aroused in non stimulating situations can be detrimental to a person and people usually tend to try and escape from these situations. These four levels create motivation in individuals to create a balance in arousal levels. The relationship of arousal level and performance level is been shown in what is called a U-Shaped curve. When people prefer a continual external supply of brain stimulation they are said to be sensation seeking. Sensation seekers tend to seek out varied, novel, complex and intense experiences even if they come with a high cost of physical, social, or legal well being. They also tend to seek out new experiences constantly and tend to participate in risky behavior like riding a motorcycle.
The final personality characteristic is that of control. There are two forms of control, perceived control which is the differences in people’s performance and the need to produce positive outcomes, and desire control which is the extent to which people strive to make their own decision, assume leadership, influence others, and enter situations in overly prepared ways and reflex the extent to which individuals are willing to take control over the events in their lives. Perceived control influences ones engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge seeking meaning that high perceived control people show higher levels of effort. Desire control individuals tend to perceive that they can control such outcomes through their personal effect which often creates what is know as control illusion. When an individual with high desire for control power and control is threatened, they tend to experience anxiety, depression, dominance, and assertive coping.
In this chapter the topic that I found most interesting was that of happiness and how it is important to both emotion and motivation. When doing some further research online, I found a lot of the same information that chapter 13 presented in the book. LiveScience.com talked about how different life events can bring up different levels of happiness for individuals, but we tend to always revert back to the previous level of happiness. They are also looking into research in how individuals hold on to the extra burst of happiness they may be experiencing. CNN.com also stresses on the importance of happiness in saying that happiness raise nearly every business and educational outcome, having more of a motivational affect in these areas.
Chapter 13 talking about three main aspects of personality; control, arousal, and happiness. It talked about six different types of personality characteristics, and was very interesting to me. The two personality characteristics related to happiness and well-being that the book talked about was extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains to us who’s happy. Extraverts are happier individuals than introverts, because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Extraversion predisposes someone to have a positive emotionality, and an approach temperament. When they enter a new situation, they seek out the potential benefits of the situation and experience positive emotions and show approach-orientated behavior. Neuroticism explains the opposite of extraversion, or who is unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a higher behavioral inhibition system and respond more to signals of punishment in the environment. When they enter a new situation, they seek out the potential punishing aspects of it and experience negative emotions and show avoidance-orientated behavior. Sensation seekers have the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and are willing to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the these purposes. They seek new experiences and engage in risk-accepting behavior. Affect intensity is the strength in which someone experiences their emotions. Affect-intense people experience emotions very strongly and show emotional hyperactivity when the elicit their emotions. Affect-stable people experience things mildly and only show minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions. Perceived control is the capacity to start and regulate one’s behavior to achieve the desire outcome while avoiding the negative outcome. When this is strong, people engage in tasks with active coping and positive emotion, and stay on-task and the probability that they will achieve their desired outcome increases. When perceived control is weak, they engage in tasks half-heartedly and show passivity and negative emotion, and this decreases the likelihood of favorable outcomes. Desire for control reflects the motivation a person has to control the events in their lives.
I decided to look at sensation seeking, as that seemed the most interesting topic in this chapter. I always like to know why people do the things they do, especially obscure things like engaging in risky behavior. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-real-story-risk/201210/sex-and-the-single-primate
This is the first article I looked at, and it talks about how people are driven to engage in risky behaviors, and talked a little bit about research that was done that consisted of forty male students who were given information about these women who were in flattering and not-so-flattering photographs, about whether or not they used condoms, and how many sexual partners they had. And consistently the males chose the women who were more attractive in the photographs to engage in sexual activities with, regardless of the information presented and the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. It also talked about the theory that men have shorter lives than women because they are more likely to engage in risk-related competitive behavior than women. https://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=23620
This is the second article I looked at, which talked about neuroscience, and was pretty interesting because I’m currently in a biopsychology class. A study done using fMRI show that different brain areas are activated in high- vs. low-sensation seekers in response to strongly arousing stimuli. This article also talked about Marvin Zuckerman’s research on the topic. It also talked about various ways that this is expressed behaviorally, by disinhibtion, thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, and boredom susceptibility. Identical twin studies show that heritability accounts for about 60 percent of individual variance in sensation-seeking behavior, and it has to do with the dopamine receptors in the brain.
Terms: control, arousal, happiness, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control.
Chapter 13 was the first chapter that started the discussion of individual differences and highlighted personality characteristics. The motivational principles of a person’s personality are happiness, control and arousal. This makes sense if you think about it, as if someone asked you what parts of your personality motivated your behaviors you would probably answer what makes you happy, what makes you aroused (granted, unless you are a weirdo or very familiar with personality and psychology you probably wouldn’t use that wording) and control. The book gave the example of taking a test can make you unhappy, it has a high arousal rate, and the outcome is somewhat within your control. You may not enjoy taking them and try to get out of taking tests as much as possible in your choices in life (which is a motivating adaptive behavior) but when you are faced with one, it is physiologically arousing (it creates tension, stress, or can be stimulating) and it can be within your control as you can study as much as you want within the time restrictions of learning of the test and taking the test. All of these can move you to motivate different behaviors. Happiness is very much a subjective experience as the majority of people, no matter their situation will say they are generally happy. We can feel different ways of happiness by winning a lotto scratch game in contrast with having a serious car accident and experiencing happiness that we made it out alive. These are very different views on happiness but affect our emotions and motivations differently. The man that wins the lotto scratch game may find that he wants to experience that sensation and happiness again so the emotion, arousal and happiness motivate him to continue playing the game, continuing the behavior that gave him the feeling in the first place. However, the man that survived the car wreck may not wish to ever feel the arousal and happiness like that again and decides to take the subway to work from now on, changing the behaviors that lead to the situation. Personality type can also affect happiness. The Five Factor model of personality is the most widely accepted model of personality today. It splits the personality up in to 5 different facets to which the individual can be measured a long a spectrum of: either very high, very low or somewhere in the middle. These five facets are: extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness. Those that score high on extraversion usually tend to experience a higher rate of happiness, just like those that score low on neuroticism may feel similarly high feelings of happiness. This is because extraverts enjoy more positive moods, more sociable, and are more sensitive to the rewards in most social situations. On the flip side, neurotics have a predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied. This might because a person high in neuroticism tends to be emotionally unstable and a ‘slave to their emotions’. Arousal is controlled by the brain, skeletal muscular system and autonomic nervous system. It is the physiological response to situational experiences and is the bodily feeling of an experienced emotion. The book breaks how arousal affects emotion and thus motivation in to 4 parts: (1) the arousal level is dependent on the stimulation level of the environment, (2) people’s behavior is based on increase or decrease in arousal, (3) when under aroused, people seek out situations to increase arousal, (4) when over aroused, people seek out situations to decrease arousal. The arousal process is best understood by likening it with my 3 year old son. If he is under aroused then he is bored and I know that he will be especially naughty trying to get attention (good or bad, any attention is good to him during these times) and be bouncing off the walls – this tends to look a lot like boredom. When he is over aroused or over stimulated, he can become cranky and lead to behaviors that he knows will motivate me to take him out of the situation (more than likely home from Chuck E. Cheese) so that he can decrease his arousal and ends up cuddled up with me on the couch. The desire for control is the extent to which the individual is motivated to be in control of the events in their lives. Some have a low desire and some have a high desire – both can affect the way we are motivate our behaviors. Perceived control is the way in which people feel in control of the events in their lives. This can lead to different emotions and motivations because those that have a high perceived control tend to be happier and have more positive life outcomes. This is because when bad things happen they feel that it is something they are in control of; the same is experienced when good things happen. When bad things happen to those who have a low perceived control they think it is because of bad luck. This outlook leads to the way we view outcomes and emotions. http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/381/Control-Perceived.html
This perceived control can effect an individual’s health as well. Those people that have a strong sense of perceived control tend to be healthier because “Perceived control reflects the degree to which an individual believes that a situation is controllable and that he or she has the skills necessary to bring about a desired outcome” and therefore feel they are in more control of their lives no matter the outcome. They are able to say ok, I need to do this differently. I thought this site was extremely interesting. http://dccps.cancer.gov/brp/constructs/perceived_control/pc3.html
This was yet another example of a person’s perceived control on their health and gave an example of a two-process model of perceived control. It highlighted the importance of the relationship between perceived control and secondary control. Secondary control is the way we adapt and change to the environment.
TERMS: happiness, extraversion, introversion, neuroticism, arousal, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, sensation seeking, control, perceived control, desire for control, brain, skeletal muscular system, autonomic nervous system
Chapter 13 was about three motivations principals related to personality characteristics, happiness, arousal and control. Within these motivational principals discussed were two personality characteristics. The book states that happiness is as much in our genes and personality as it is in the events in our lives. The two personality characteristics that are discussed in the chapter about happiness are extroversion and neuroticism. To define extraversion, personality psychologists discuss its three facets, sociability, the performance for and enjoyment of other people and social situations. Assertiveness is a tendency toward social dominance. Ventursomeness, a tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations. Extroverts are happier than introverts because they have stronger BAS that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Neuroticism is defined as predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally, they had an avoidant temperament. Neurotics have stronger BIS that make them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. Arousal, one of the motivational principals, represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness and activation. The two personality characteristics that the book discusses for arousal are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risk for the sake of such experience. People seek sex and drugs and engage in risk-accepting behaviors. Affect Intensity represents the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. Individuals experience their emotions only mildly and show only minor variations in their emotional reactions. The last motivational principal is control, the two personality characteristics are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and prevent undesirable ones. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives.
Terms: Happiness, Extroversion, Neuroticism, Arousal, Sensation Seeking, Affect Intensity, Control, Perceived Control, Desire for Control
Chapter 13 talks about individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. It first identified two personality characteristics related to happiness and well-being, two related to arousal, and two related to control. This explains why we have personality differences and what they mean for motivation and emotion.
The two personality characteristics for happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains the "Who is happy?" question while neuroticism explains the "Who is unhappy?" question. Extraverts are happier than introverts. Extraverts are happy because they ave a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that is highly responsive to reward. Neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system (BIS) that makes them more responsive to punishment.
Extraversion has a predisposition that guides the individual toward a positive emotion (BAS) and approach temperament, while neuroticism is toward a negative emotion (BIS) and avoidance temperament.
Two characteristics for arousal are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks just for the thrill. To get this thrill, sensation seekers try to find new experience and have a risk-accepting behavior (such as gambling). Affect intensity refers to the strength of the emotion that they individual experiences. Affect-intense individuals experience strong emotions and show emotional hyperactivity. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions mildly and show minor spikes in their emotional reactions.
Perceived control and the desire for control are two characteristics related to control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and prevent undesirable ones. When perceived control is strong, individuals do tasks with active coping and positive emotion. Whereas if it is weak, you will see half-hearted effort and signs of passive and negative emotion. The desire for control reflects how motivated people are to control their lives. High desire for control will reflect that a person will want to control what happens to them. So they strive for control and restore it when it is lost or threatened. To establish control, high desire for control people will embrace high standards and aspirations. They will put forth great effort when challenged, persist on difficult tasks, and interpret success/failure feedback in a self-serving or control-enhancing way.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr03/acting.aspx
I chose to do search extraversion and happiness because it interested me. In this article, it discusses research done on extroverts and introverts relating to happiness. It says that generally, extraverts are happier, but research has not been done on introverts acting like extroverts (until this article). They studied college students on four characteristics of extraversion (talkativeness, assertiveness, adventurousness and energy level). They found that extraverts were generally happy, but he did not expect to find that introverts acting like extraverts would also display happiness. In fact, they found that introverts were happier when they were displaying extraverted characteristics than when they acted introverted.
http://www.happinessstrategies.com/blog/2008/02/01/how-to-be-happy-13-act-like-youre-an-extravert-even-if-you-arent/
This is also on extraversion and happiness. This article supports the findings in the previous one. This article is part of a series of them that give tips to become happy. In this one, it says act like an extravert, even if you aren't on. It says that there is a strong correlation for extraversion and happiness. This also says that happy introverts act like extraverts. Also that simply acting extraverted leads to feeling happier. Then it goes on to suggest how to act this way by initiate a social date, or starting one conversation a day, or even plan activities for yourself.
Chapter 13 was all about personality and personality characteristics. It talked about how personality characteristics are related to different moods and/or attributes, such as happiness, arousal, and control. Two personality characteristics that are related to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. This is because extroverts are more in tune with rewards in the environment. Neurotics are sensitive to emotions, making them more prone to try harder to avoid negative emotions. The two personality characteristics related to arousal are sensation seekers and affect intensity. This is because sensation seekrs are more likely to take risks which causes arousal. Affect intensity is how strong or weak with which someone experiences emotions. I definitely have a strong affect intentisity. So the more intense your affect intensity is, the more arousal you experience. Finally, I mentioned control, or rather perceieved control. The two characteristics that affect perceived control are the ability to emit behcaiors to produce desired outcomes and avoid negative consequences.
The most interesting thing I read about and decided to research was self control or rather perception of control. I found some very interesting stuff on this, however my problem is I don't know how much I agree with what I found. Obviously since I found multiple articles on this subject, I would assume they were right. But is it still okay for me to disagree? I hope so, becuase I really do disagree with some of the research I found.
Most of the sites said the same as the textbook and that we do not control our environment, but rather we do control the perceptions of our levels of control. Basically we control how much control we THINK we have. It is kind of confusing. According to my research, this level of perceived control is regulated by negative feedback we recieve from the actions and behaviors we emit. This is the part I do not agree with. Last year I took Behavior Modification and I really liked that class. We talked about in this class how reinforcement is much more powerful than punishment. Basically, getting rewarded is better than getting punished and will have a strong effect on our behaviors that we emit in the future. Therefore I found it interesting that this was said that our perceptions of our control deal with negative feedback rather than positive feedback.
Along those lines I also found interesting the questions you should ask yourself to evaluate how much self control (or rather perceived self control) you have. I found this surprising because I thought the questions seemed overly simple. This would maek sense since they were tailored to an elementary grade students to ask themselves these questions. Though as a college senior, I thought I could also apply these questions to myself. When I did ask myself these questions, I really think that what they said my level of perceived control matched with how much control I really thought I had. I found out that I believe that I have high control in my life. I have confidence that I'm able to emit the necessary behaviors that can produce desireable outcomes and avoid aversive consequences.
Chapter 13 discussed personality differences in happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter began with happiness. It stated that most people are generally happy, but their level of happiness changes slightly from day to day. We, as human beings, have a happiness “set point.” People tend to remain overall steadily happy, or unhappy, over the course of their life. People who are generally happy have positive emotionality, while people who are generally unhappy have a negative emotionality. Those who are more extraverted are typically those individuals with higher levels of positive emotionality. Extraversion is characterized by sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. People who possess high levels of all of these traits are considered extraverts. Extraverts have a strong behavioral activating system, a system that generates People who lack these traits are typically considered introverts. According to the text, extraverts are happier than introverts because they are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most social situations and because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions.
On the other side of the coin are neurotics, people who possess a generally negative affect and are dissatisfied and unhappy with life in general. They are individuals who lack emotional stability. They are often worried, distressed, angry, depressed, etc.
Next, the chapter discussed arousal. According to the chapter, “arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation.” Arousal contributes a great deal to performance and emotion. When an individual’s arousal level is too high or too low, it can cause the individual to perform worse. When an individual’s arousal level is moderate, the individual’s performance tends to be optimal. The moderate level of arousal is also when a person experiences the greatest feeling of pleasure. Research has shown that the brain and nervous system need and want a moderate level of arousal. It is when they function best. Being over- or under-stimulated can affect cognition in a negative way. People also have different baselines of arousal. Some people are sensation seeking, that is, they seek out new and novel experiences and are willing to face risks that they may encounter along the way. Those who are sensation avoidant become overwhelmed, distressed, and anxious in experiences that cause high brain stimulation and arousal. These individuals prefer to live by daily routines. Humans possess different levels of affect intensity as well. Affect-intense individuals are more sensitive to changes and experiences and have a wider range of emotions day to day. Affect-stable individuals experience a much more narrow range of emotions and remain relatively stable emotionally. Most people experience affect intensity at more moderate levels.
Lastly, the chapter addressed control, more specifically, perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is how much an individual believes they can interact with the environment to produce desired outcomes and avoid undesired outcomes. Perceived control contributes to an individual’s willingness to exert effort towards an activity or situation. Desire for control is defined in the chapter as “the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. These individuals always want control, whether they can obtain control or not over the situation. In many cases, they have the illusion of control, they believe they have control over a situation when they really do not. Desire for control is a positive characteristic to possess when put into achievement situations. People with a higher desire for control are more likely to persist longer than people who have a lower desire for control.
I find sensation seeking to be an interesting topic. It is fascinating to me how people will do anything and everything to achieve a high level of arousal. One article that I found discussed how people in the Winter Olympic games are more likely to be sensation seekers because of the high risks involved in the events. I also found an article that discussed recreational shark diving. How and why people would swim with sharks for fun I will never know. But the people that do definitely possess the quality of sensation seeker.
Chapter 13 begins with examining the question, “are you happy” and
that our happiness and unhappiness can actually be examined through
the “experience-sampling method”. This method basically requires the
participant to record their emotions throughout the day. This also
shows that people are generally more happy then unhappy, although some
may be happier than others but this can be due to different people’s
personality characteristics.
The chapter then leads into the individual differences in our
happiness, arousal and control, these are all motivational principles
related to personality characteristics. People’s happiness usually has
a “set point” in which your happiness ranging from different age
groupings doesn't drastically change. There are two different
personality characteristics related to our happiness are extroversion
and neuroticism. Extroversion is the characteristic that can help
explain who is happy, the book explains that extroverts are happier
then introverts because of their stronger behavioral activating system
which in turn makes them highly sensitive and responsive to rewarding
situations in their environment. The characteristic, neuroticism,
describes and explains who is unhappy. People who are neurotic suffer
emotionally and are emotionally unstable; this is due to their
behavioral inhibition system, which makes them just the opposite of
BAS in that they are highly sensitive and responsive to punishment in
their environment.
Looking at arousal it governs alertness, wakefulness, and activation
and these processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic
mechanisms. These four principles can be seen as an “inverted-U”
between arousal and performance. With the inverted-U it shows a low
level of arousal which produces poor performance and as arousal
increases so does performance; meaning that the function of optimal
performance means that you’re aroused but not too aroused.
Perceived control and the desire for control represent two
characteristics of personality. Perceived control concerns the
capacity to initiate behavior needed to gain our desired outcomes and
to prevent those outcomes we do not desire. When we have a strong
control we engage in things that active our coping and positive
emotions, meaning we will probably obtain the outcomes we desire. So
when our control is weak we engage in tasks with not as much desire
therefore our outcome is unsatisfying. This perceived control produces
a self-confirming cycle. With strong control you are most likely to
control the things that happen in your life, meaning you’re going to
strive for positive outcomes and set high goals and aspirations but
when are control is threatened or we are placed in an environment in
which we don’t feel comfortable or in control then we exhibit
reactions such as distress and depression.
For my article I looked at extroversion and introversion. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019188699090128E
- This article shows studies that correlates happiness with
extroversion, but the reason why is not known, it also points out that
the reason for this could be that extroverts are more sociable,
meaning they are more likely to engage in a survey or lab experiment. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2120187/Revenge-introverts-Its-assumed-extroverts-best-life-new-book-claims-quite-opposite-.html
The reason why I picked this article is because the title was
intriguing. This article just touches on that it may not be as
negative to be introvert as others make it out to be, introverts chose
their relationships wisely and would rather pick one friend to have a
meaningful conversation with then small talking with a bunch of
people. I think I can see both sides of being an introvert or
extrovert; I personally am more introvert and I wouldn't say im
antisocial or anything, im just more cautious about my actions and I
would rather be really close with a handful of people then have 18348
facebook friends.
Terms: happiness, unhappiness, experience-sampling method, personality
characteristics, set point, extroversion, neuroticism, extroverts,
introverts, behavioral activating system, neurotic, behavioral
inhibition system, intervted U, arousal , perceived control,
Please read the following link:http://www.psychologicalscience.com/kim_maclin/2010/01/i-learned-it-at-the-movies.html as well as the 3 resource links at the bottom of that article.This semester's movies:Teen DreamsCast…
Chapter 13 covers the personality characteristics of happiness, arousal and control. We are all different; therefore, we each have a unique set of personality characteristics. Not only do our personality characteristics display our individuality, they contribute our motivation. Our personalities help to energize and direct our behavior.
Our happiness, according to the book, is very biologically based. Happiness is related to extraversion. ..extroverted individuals tend to be happier. Prior to reading this chapter, I thought that extraversion was simply a desire to be around others and to be social. This chapter points out that extraversion has three parts to it: sociability, assertiveness and seeking out exciting things. Individuals who are high in these three areas are more extroverted. Extroversion is rooted biologically. More extroverted individuals have a stronger behavioral activation system (BAS). Because of this, they are more sensitive to the rewards that they may experience in a given situation. Their anticipation for these rewards leaves them feeling excited. Stronger BASExtrovertedhappy. Neuroticism on the other hand, is related to unhappiness. Biologically speaking, neuroticism opposes extroversion. Highly neurotic individuals have a stronger behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which leads them to foresee more negative consequences in situations. Because of this, individuals that are more neurotic are more sensitive to negative consequences. Because of their expectation for rewards, extroverts act in a more approach oriented manner while neurotics expect punishments and chose to avoid situations because of that. I was glad to see that the book mentioned that not all introverts are unhappy. They may simply have a different type of happiness. The book points our two types of happiness: hedonic (e.g. a pleasant life…common idea of happiness) and eudaimonic (e.g. self realization, being your true self). Introverts may experience the eudaimonic happiness more than hedonic happiness. One question I had, though, was this: the book mentions that there appears to be a biological happiness “set point” in people…can we ever change this set point??
Arousal is the second section in this book chapter. There is an optimal arousal level. Whether you are under aroused or over aroused, you will not be able to perform to the best of your abilities. If we are under aroused, we are bored and find it difficult to focus and have motivation to complete a task. On the other hand, though, if we are too highly aroused, we may experience stress and pressure and not perform well because of it. Optimally arousing situations lead to optimal performance. Certain individuals have a high sensation seeking side to their personality. These individuals are more likely to take risks than are individuals who are low in the need for sensation. Perhaps sensation seekers enjoy the highly arousing states and therefore seek them out. Depending on our personalities, we are motivated to seek out different activities. The final subsection discussed in the arousal section was on affect intensity. Affect intensity is how strongly we feel our emotions. Some of us experience emotional extremes while others are constantly on a more even keel.
The final section of this chapter is on control. Some individuals desire more control while others do not need as much. Simply enough, this is called: desire for control. Individuals who have a high desire for control attempt to establish control in all situations and regain control whenever they feel like they have lost control. When these individuals lose their control, they get flustered and are prone to experience learned helplessness. The more someone desires to have control the more prone they are to learned helplessness if they do not have control Perceived control is the other aspect of control that was discussed in the book. Perceived control is described in the book as the precursor to competency, efficacy and ability. The more perceived control a person has going into a task, the more effort they will put forth and, because of that, the more likely they will be to succeed. If they do succeed, this success will feed into their future feelings of perceived control on other tasks. Perceived control will likely lead to better performance and better performance leads to feelings of competence and efficacy which will give you confidence the next time you encounter the task again. This is a positive cycle.
The How of Happiness
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/living-well/articles/2008/01/18/want-to-be-happier-heres-how
Says that we are not bound to our happiness “set point”
I very much so dislike the idea of scientific happiness
Says that 40% of happiness is within our control
I like what they author of the book The How of Happiness says about “future nostalgia”thinking too much about the future takes away from the joy of the present
The How of Happiness Scale:
http://chass.ucr.edu/faculty_book/lyubomirsky/Quiz/subjective_happiness.html
I was a little confused when I was reading about the relation between extroversion and happiness. I felt bad for the introverts being deemed unhappy. Then I read the section on the two kinds of happiness and felt a bit better. I did a little searching online about eudaimonic happiness too and this is a website that I came up with.
http://www.positivepsychology.org.uk/pp-theory/eudaimonia/34-the-concept-of-eudaimonic-well-being.html
Chapter 13 examines the main question, "are you happy?" It will also focus on three motivational principles of happiness, arousal, and control. People have a "set point" of happiness when it comes to the question, "are you happy?" Those who are happy in their 20's are usually happy in the their 30's and those who are unhappy usually end up being unhappy later on as well. The status of our happiness and unhappiness set points can be explained by the individual differences in our personalities. The two personality characteristics looked at relating to this are extraversion and neuroticism. The book describes that extroverts are happier than introverts because they have a strong behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment.
The three aspects of extraversion are sociability which is the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness which is the tendency toward social dominance, and the last one is venturesomeness which is the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting and stimulating situations. Extraverts also are happier whether they live alone or with others, in small or big cities, and whether they work in social or nonsocial occupations. They also approach potentialy rewarding situations more than introverts because of their greater sensitivity to positive feelings. People who are unhappy have the characteristic of neuroticism because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. They are more vulnerable and more susceptible to negative emotions. It often leads them to having a avoidance behavior in many situations.
Going back to happiness though, there are two kinds of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one's pleasurable moments and reflects a pleasant life with self-realization. Eudaimonic happiness means living one's true self.
This chapter also discusses arousal which represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation which are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms and can be explained by four principles: 1.A person's arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating the environment is 2. People engage in behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal 3. When underaroused, people seek out opportunities in increase their arousal levels 4.When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal level. When being underaroused, there could be psychological consequences in sensory deprivation. This refers to an individual's sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. Sensory deprivation studies show that the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal generated by environmental stimulation.
The last section the chapter discusses is over control. Two personality characteristics can describe control beliefs: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people's preperformance 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 role, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. Perceived control beliefs influence the individual's engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge-seeking. People with high control usually show high effort, concentrate and pay attention, persist in the face of failure, maintain interest and curiosity in the task, and maintain optimism for future positive outcomes while people with low perceived control show relatively low effort, doubt their capacities, tend to give up in facing challenges or failure, become discouraged quickly, and are prone to passivity, anxiety, and even anger and go through just the motion of participating without trying very hard. I would say I have a somewhat high sense of perceived control. I don't believe in failure but I do believe in making mistakes. My mistakes push me to strive to become better at a task or whatever I am trying to accomplish at the time. I'm also very optimistic when it comes to my future. I do believe that I will have a happy life like I do right now and even though at times it does stress me out to think about what career I'll be in, it just motivates me even more to be successful and eventually have a family someday that I can help support with my career. People with high desire for control approach situations by wanting to control what happens to them so they strive to establish control and to restore it when it is lost or threatened. By establishing this control, they embrace high standards and aspirations and put high effort in doing so. People with low desire for control tend to avoid responsibilities an feel comfortable with having others make their decisions for them.
An article I found relating to this chapter dealt with people who have the characteristic of introversion. I wasn't intrigued on the story itself but there was a section in their about happiness and introversion.
The Truth About Introverts
http://www.psychworld.com/the-truth-about-introverts-2010-10
In this article, a psychologist named Dr. Helgoe makes two harmful claims about introverts: 1.introverts are damaged by extraversion 2.introverts do not wish to be happy.In this article, she tries to explain and back up her claims stated. With the second claim, she relates it to happiness. The article states that "a person cannot be happy by focusing on being happy. He or she must instead focus on doing the things that lead one to be happy, and that is not the same for everyone." while Helgoe claims that introverts prefer to be “neutral.” She also states that "In the united states [sic], people rank happiness as their most important goal. That view has a special impact on introverts. Happiness is not always their top priority; they don’t need external rewards to keep their brains in high gear. In fact, the pursuit of happiness may represent another personality-culture clash for them." This article definitely related to chapter 13 and I found it very interesting.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201008/revenge-the-introvert
This article relates to the last article. In this article though, a psychologist is telling her viewers about how she has never really enjoyed being a therapist and gives us an insight on her being an introvert. She says that introversion vs extraversion can be determined by conversation style and gives some examples: Introverts are the ones doing the listening while extraverts are more likely to pepper people with questions. Introverts like to think before responding—many prefer to think out what they want to say in advance—and seek facts before expressing opinions. Extraverts are comfortable thinking as they speak. Introverts prefer slow-paced interactions that allow room for thought.
Both of these articles are great articles over introversion and tie in with chapter 13.
Terms: happiness, unhappiness, set-points, extraversion, neuroticism, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, Hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness, sensory deprivation, overarousal, underarousal, perceived control, desire for control, high perceived control, low perceived control
Chapter thirteen’s focus was on personality. More specifically, three aspects within personality were analyzed: happiness, arousal, and control. Within happiness, it is discussed that most people, despite their life circumstances, are typically happy. In fact, it is stated that most people have set-points for their happiness and that over a period of many years, one’s happiness will stay about the same despite what occurs during those years. Happiness is discussed as being correlated with extraversion. As many might assume, extraverted (as opposed to introverted) people are happier. This is said to be due to three things: greater sociability, greater social dominance, and greater venturesomeness. Moreover, biologically speaking, extraverts have a stronger behavioral activating system than introverts. On the other end of happiness is unhappiness and this is said to be correlate with neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as “a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” The biological basis of this correlation stems from the sensitivity of the behavioral inhibition system. Neurotics have a highly sensitive BIS.
The second aspect, arousal, is discussed next. The relationship between performance, emotion, and arousal is gone over and it is said that relatively low levels and extremely high levels of arousal typically produce low performance. The ideal is to experience a moderate level of arousal. In addition, low arousal is correlated with boredom while high arousal is correlated with tension. Within the discussion of arousal, sensation seeking is talked about. Sensation seeking is described as “the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity.” The sensation seeker is constantly searching for new experiences and taking risks. In addition, sensation seekers are more likely to have low levels of monoamine oxidase, high levels of dopamine, and low levels of serotonin. The last topic discussed within arousal is affect intensity. Affect intensity “concerns people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally.” Affect intensity differs among individuals and people are labeled as being either affect-intense or affect-stable.
Finally in chapter thirteen the topic of control is discussed. More specifically, perceived control and the desire for control are focused upon. Perceived control is defined as “the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcome and prevent undesired outcomes.” Perceived control is said to predict how much effort a person is willing to put forth. In addition, perceived control is usually a predictor of how one will construct beliefs about their own competence, efficacy, and ability. The desire for control is defined as “the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives.” People in the desire for control like to make their own decisions, avoid being dependent on others, assume leadership roles, and prepare for situations in advance.
One of the topics in this chapter I was particularly interested in was the relationship between happiness and introversion/extraversion. Obviously the book discusses how extraverts are happier but only provides a very small paragraph on the happiness of introverts. Since I am more of an introverted person, I wanted to learn a little more. The first article I read discussed the “quiet joys of introverts.” The discussion was based upon the fact that most introverts are happy but that they attain their happiness from other sources such as reading a book or spending time with a few people rather than a large group. In addition, the sensitivity of introverts was said to be higher than extraverts. The article gave an example of babies crying with a greater sense of distress at unpleasant stimuli (popping balloons). These babies who were more sensitive to these stimuli grew up to be introverts. The benefits of being an introvert, according to the article, are that we listen better and we have a better ability to focus for long periods of time. This allows introverts to enjoy such occupations as musicians and scientists. These “quiet joys” don’t necessarily mean the extravert next to us is happier. The link to my first article is http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/26/shhhh-the-quiet-joys-of-the-introvert/.
The second article I found discussed the cultural bias of happiness and extraverts. It said that introverts and extraverts are both happy but express their happiness in different realms (much like the first article suggested). In addition, in our culture, happiness is seen as being outgoing, friendly, talkative, social, etc. All the characteristics of extraverts are seen as the prime definition for happiness. This article suggests that this is wrong and that introverts are happy, but in their own ways that are different from what society defines as “happy.” The link to this article is http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/an-introverts-guide-to-happiness.aspx.
Terms: extraversion, introversion, behavioral activation system, behavioral inhibition system, arousal, sensation seeking, monoamine oxidase, control, desire for control, perceived control, affect intensity
Chapter 13 discusses personality characteristics. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control.
Individuals seem to have a “set point” for their level of happiness, and even after big life events, they seem to return to their original level of happiness. Extroversion and neuroticism are the personality traits that seem to have an impact on levels of happiness. Extroverts tend to be happier than introverts. This is because they are more sociable, more sensitive to the rewards gained from social situations, and more susceptible to positive feelings. The level of sensitivity refers to an underlying biological motivation system: the behavioral activating system. For extroverts, signals of reward strongly activate their BAS, so they experience a stronger incentive motivational state, as well as positive emotions. Individuals high on neuroticism have a strong and highly sensitive behavioral inhibition system, which detects and regulates environmental signals of punishment. Signals of punishment are the source of negative emotions, so neurotics are more vulnerable and susceptible to negative emotions. The BIS also has a motivational function to energize avoidance-oriented behavior.
A person’s arousal level is a function of how stimulating the environment is. Both low levels and high levels of arousal can cause poor performance, but moderate arousal can cause optimal performance as well as pleasure. This can be seen on the Inverted-U diagram. The brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal, and people rely on cognitive and behavioral means to produce this arousal if their environment is not stimulating enough. Over-stimulating events cause us stress, negative emotional states, impaired cognitive activity, and accelerated physiological processes. The personality trait related to arousal is sensation seeking. High sensation seekers prefer a continual external supply of brain stimulation, and engage in new, exciting, and often risky behaviors to get that stimulation. Low sensation seekers prefer less brain stimulation, and are less likely to engage in risky behaviors.
Two personality characteristics involve control: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control refers to the expectations a person has about their actions and decisions having an impact on desired outcomes. Someone with high perceived control sets high goals, initiates action, exerts effort, has great concentration, and persists in the face of difficulty. They also maintain positive emotional states, keep their goals in mind, monitor progress, and look for feedback. Perceived control is necessary for competence, efficacy, and ability. Desire for control is the extent to which people are motivated to have control over the events in their life. Individuals with a high desire for control like to make their own decisions, while individuals with a low desire for control prefer others to make decisions for them.
The section on extroverts and introverts related to happiness was very interesting to me, as I see it was to others who blogged before me. The first article I read was from: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201112/are-extroverts-happier-introverts-yes
This article recognized the fact that extroverts are found to be happier than introverts. But it proposed the idea that there are different kinds of happy. For example, introverts want company just as much as extroverts do. But they prefer socializing with a few people that they know well, rather than a group of just anyone. Gratitude is another type of happiness that can be beneficial – having a quiet, content, internal sort of happiness. Raising children is another example. Research shows that parent of young children less “happy” than those without children, but most parents will not hesitate to talk about how their children bring them joy and meaning in life. Another important point on this deals with self-report. When asked to rate their emotional states, introvert will give less extreme answers than extroverts, which may tip the scale even more.
The second article I read was from: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/
This article talked about how extroverts may be happier because of their memories. Extroverts recall memories more positively than introverts. They tend to have a more positive view of their past and less regrets. This article compared extroverts to neurotics, but it still pertains to the idea of happiness.
Terms: Happiness, arousal, control, set point, extrovert, introvert, behavioral activation system, neuroticism, behavioral inhibition system, Inverted-U curve, sensation seeking, perceived control, desire for control, competence,
Chapter thirteen discusses three important personality characteristics that related to motivation. The three characteristics are happiness, arousal, and control. These three characteristics can be brought on by any situational event, and vary in the intensity by which one experiences these three emotion.
Happiness is the first characteristic discussed. The text says that most people are generally happy, despite differences in their SES. People tend to revert back to their original level of happiness even after life changing events. In the book, it talked about the example of a person winning the lottery and a person in a freak car accident. As we could expect, these two life events were changing, and produced different emotions, both positive and negative. But as these people were re-assessed a year later, their level of happiness had returned to normal, to the level they were before this event. One personality characteristic that is generally associated with happiness is extraversion. People that have an extravert personality are often more social, display their assertiveness and they look for self-stimulating situations. For example, people that love being outdoors try to find any activity they can where they can be outside, meet new people, and take control of their situation. These would be extravert people, and studies suggest that these people are more likely to experience positive moods, and ultimately happiness. Happiness comes in two forms, hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness come from an individual’s pleasures in life, such as positive stimulating events like doing the things one enjoys (golfing, fishing, etc.) having an enjoyable job and many other things. Eudaimonic involves “engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing (pg. 372).”
The chapter then talks about arousal, and how it directs alertness and activates physiological processes within us. Arousal is very dependent on the environmental events around us. Arousal plays a part in our ability to perform. The inverted-U curve best displays how performance and arousal are related. If arousal is too low, then we have decreased performance levels because we are not getting enough stimulation. If we are aroused to a medium level, that is when our performance is best, and were are able to carry out tasks with quality and efficiency. When we are moderately aroused, we are able to experience the pleasures in life. As people progress to a high level of arousal, performance tends to decrease. This is over-stimulation, such as stressful environments like finals week in college. As a result, this environment disrupts our ability to perform to the best of our abilities.
One of the topics concerning arousal had to deal with risk taking, which was later referred to as “risk-acceptance.” Interested on this topic, I researched risk-acceptance online and found an article titled “Forewarned is forearmed-the rationale for risk-acceptance (http://kbondale.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/forewarned-is-forearmed-the-rationale-for-risk-acceptance/).” This article talked about certain advantages of risk-acceptance in a business setting. One, risk-acceptance allows for identifying the unknowns, rather than an unexpected unknown showing up in the future. Risk-acceptance does not always mean an action will take place, but also does not mean that nothing will happen. Risk-acceptance can act as a preventative measure from future disasters. Third, risk-acceptance can aid to help avoid things from reoccurring, or facing an unknown event. Risk-acceptance allows for identification of certain possible outcomes, and the preparation that has to be done.
The last personality characteristic discussed is control. Control can be further divided into two sub-categories, perceived control and desired control. Perceived control reflects the individual’s expectations that they can engage themselves with the environment. For example, a pitcher coming into a game with a game plan of how he is going to pitch to batters displays perceived control. He believes that he is able to be in control of the game by throwing certain pitches and throwing them to certain areas of the plate. Through perceived control, it can easily be determined the action and effort put into specific events. Desire control refers to people that are pro-active. They take action by being prepared, make their own decisions and take responsibilities for their actions. People that are high in desired control are usually independent, and strive to be leaders rather than followers.
One of the interesting topics I found in this chapter was losing control. For further research I found an article called “The fear of Losing Control (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-would-aristotle-do/201105/the-fear-losing-control).” In this article, Dr. Cohen suggests that losing control results from the demand o “certainty in a world that is “uncertain.” People that lose control are perfectionists. Everything in their world has to be certain, an in an organized manner. Perfectionists are more likely to stress over the uncertainty of their lives. The best way to cope with losing control, or to prevent it, is by removing your perfectionist attitude. Gaining courage and realizing that there is great deal of uncertainty in this world is the best coping function for loss of control. Another article I found on this topic was called “Losing Control (http://panicend.com/co.html).” This article suggested that it is hard to attain control, and it requires us to control our subconscious processes. Once control is attained, the reason we lose control is out of fear. The desire for attaining control contributes to our fear, which ultimately leads us to lose control of certain aspects and situations of our lives.
Terms: perceived control, desired control, losing control, risk-accepting, inverted-U curve, hedonic happiness, eudaimonic happiness, happiness, extraversion, arousal, control, assertiveness, sociability
The chapter discusses three motivational principles that relate to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal and control. Within the happiness dimension, we learned that extraversion is a characteristic that is frequently associated with happiness, and its three facets include sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. The book states that those who are extraverted are happier than those who are introverted because they are more sensitive to the rewards that result from social situations. They also “possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions" (pg. 371). The opposite of happiness is neuroticism. Those who are neurotic are predisposed to have negative affect and to constantly feel unhappy and dissatisfied.
The second motivational principle related to personality characteristics is arousal, which controls how alert we feel, how awake we are, and our level of activity. The book tells us that we perform optimally when we have moderate levels of arousal, and more poorly when we have insufficient stimulation or excessive stimulation. We are all genetically programmed with our own baseline level of arousal, and we all react differently when we are exposed to stimuli in the environment. Those who are more sensation seeking tend to desire constant brain stimulation, which is achieved through excitement. For this reason, high sensation seekers tend to change their activities and are behave more promiscuously than low sensation seekers. High sensation seekers are also more likely to take risks.
The third motivational principle is control. When we have strong perceived control, we are more likely to attain the outcomes that we desire, because we are motivated to behave in ways that let us obtain them. When our perceived control is weak, we become more passive and only half-attempt to solve our problems. Those of us who set and embrace high standards are more likely to put forth effort when challenges arise, and are also more likely to persist in our behavior. On the other hand, those of us who do not feel any sense of control quickly become distressed or depressed.
I chose to look up extraversion and introversion. The book says that extraverts have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that “makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment” (pg. 389). This statement interested me, because I was much more of an extravert in high school than I am now. If we are biologically-prone to be extraverted or introverted, then how could I have changed that characteristic of my personality? I found on this website - http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201108/there-s-more-introversion-you-might-think - that there are six facets of introversion, and that most people are introverted in some of these facets, while extraverted in others. This website also tells us that our degrees of introversion vs. extraversion changes over time. So while our BAS may be more sensitive to reward stimuli in the environment, other factors must also contribute to how extraverted we are. Otherwise, I would still be extraverted, and would still have the same BAS sensitivity that I had in high school.
Still on the topic of introversion, I found a number of sites that gave self-help advice about how to overcome introversion – typically using the angle of how to stop being shy. I found this interesting, because not all introverts are shy. Regardless, these sites also had the mentality that one could change their position on the extraversion-introversion scale. One website - http://www.persuasive.net/introvert-to-extrovert-4-ways-to-take-control-of-your-shyness - included four steps for changing that personality characteristic. The first step was to acknowledge that you have the ability to change that aspect of you. The second step was to recognize all of the processes involved in regards to that characteristic. For instance, if you want to become the life of the party, you have to realize that you typically avoid conversations with others you don’t know, and that you do so because strangers make your heart rate increase, your hands shake, and they cause you to stutter. The third step was to take one of the processes and change it. For instance, your first step toward becoming the life of the party could be to smile and make eye contact with others at the party. The final step was to ultimately change your beliefs about yourself. If you believe you are introverted, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, if you begin believing that you are extraverted, you will begin to act in ways that reflect that belief.
Terms: extraversion, neuroticism, arousal, sensation seeking, perceived control, behavioral activating system
Chapter 13 is all about the personality characteristics of happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter states that most people are happy, even when they are from low income situations, or are not well educated. Extraversion is the personality trait that is associated with who is happy. People who are extraverted are socible, assertive, and venturesome. Extraverts are generally happier than introverts because they possess a greated inherent capacity to experience positive emotions.
The personality trait that is associated with who is unhappy is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. People who are neurotic have higher stress, more negative emotions, anxiety, and irritability, than people who are not. Neuroticism is basically the opposite of being an extravert. There are many personality tests that can tell you if you are someone who is neurotic or extraverted, although I feel it is fairly easy to tell if someone is at each end of the extreme.
Arousal is discussed next. The text states that arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. A low level of arousal produces poor performance, and when arousal is high people usually perform better. Sensory deprivation research can illustrate the psychological consequences of being under aroused. Sensory deprivation is an individuals sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. When life is stressful we may be experienceing overarousal. Overstimulation can cause bad emotional states, impaired cognitive activity, and accelerated physiological prosesses.
Everyone has different levels of arousal. No two people are the same. Sensation seeking is the personality characteristics related to arousal and reactivity. Sensation seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations.
Finally control is discussed. The text states that pereived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert. When someone has high perceived control they keep their plans and strategies in mind, maintain positive emotional states, monitor problem solving strategies, and generate and monitor feelback to adjust or imporve relevant skills.
The first article I found was called The neuroticism Paradox. It states that unfortunatly the trait is usually unchanging through out a person's life. it also says that neurosis used to be one of the main focuses of therapy. The article also gives a few steps of how to manage your mood and what to look out for. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201010/the-neuroticism-paradox
Another article that I found about neuroticism was called Neurotic Personality Disorders: Is There Hope For Change? The site helps to explain what neurotic personality is and what you can do to try and change it. http://www.lifescript.com/soul/self/growth/neurotic_personality_disorders_is_there_hope_for_change.aspx
Chapter 13 starts out by discussing happiness, arousal, and control. It expresses that individuals can experience different levels of each depending on their personality. The Personality characteristics that were looked at in the chapter are extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. Out of these there are 2 that relate to happiness. Those 2 are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraverts are happy because high BAS or behavioral activating systems. You can think of extraversion as “Who is happy?”. Neuroticism has to do with “Who is unhappy?” Individuals that are high in neuroticism have high behavioral inhibition system or BIS. This makes them a magnet for punishment in the environment. Sensation seekers and affect intensity individuals are related to arousal. These are based on how people seek new experiences and experience their emotions. Perceived control and desire of control relates to control. Perceived control allows individuals to activate tasks that allow them to cope effectively. It is just the opposite if the perceived control is weak. The chapter explains that the desire for control is what it sounds like. It is the frequency of control that individuals want to have in their daily lives. If it is desired, individuals may go out of their way to get the control.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/risk
I did some research pertaining to sensation seeking and risk. I found an article in psychology today that discusses how many of the popular sports today have to do with risk such as mountain climbing, extreme skiing, and cliff parachuting. It also talks about how under common personality theories, the common person avoids risks at any cost, however research is showing today that this need for risk is hard wired into the brain and linked with pleasure. This usually stays common with younger adults and filters out as individuals get older.
The article also talks not only can partaking in risk be a deadly thing but it also can cause individuals to get bored easy at their jobs and in “normal” life. This also might make them get bored with small risks so they keep increasing it. The article indicates this behavior may set them on the road to drug addiction as well.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/80914.php
Another article I found talks about how men are found to be more attracted to risk then women. It also indicates that there aren’t just people who take risks and people who don’t. There can be a mix within. It includes general competition as a risk. People could be considered risk takers just by involving themselves in competitions. The article also indicates that risk is nothing new. Our ancestors experience risk in gathering food and protecting their mates. The sensation that we get from risk has been around for a long time.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, express, extraversion, neuroticism, personality, sensation, affect intensity, risk
Chapter 13 is all centered on the topic of personality characteristics. It begins with discussing that there are individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control, which make up the three main sections of this chapter. It states in the textbook that extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control, all explain why different people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation (p.368).
Next, the subsection on happiness begins. Here, it explains how most people are typically happy. Even people who go through major life events return back to the same level of happiness they had before the event occurred. It also talked about how people have happiness “set points”, which essentially means that you remain as happy as you are throughout your life. One of the set points is for positive emotionality, and the other set point is for negative emotionality. The textbook states that the happiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion, whereas the unhappiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in neuroticism (p.370).
The subsection moves on to discuss how extraverts are emotionally happier than introverts, and they also enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts do (p.370). This is because of the fact that extraverts are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most social situations, which means that they are more susceptible to positive feelings. This is all tied in to the behavioral activating system (BAS) in extraverts being stronger than in introverts.
This subsection goes on to explain how the unhappiness set point is associated with the personality characteristic of neuroticism. Neurotics suffer emotionally because of their greater capacity to experience negative emotions and because they chronically harbor disturbed and troubling thoughts (p.372). All of this is tied into the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), because neurotics have a strong, highly sensitive BIS (p.373).
The next subsection is on the topic of arousal, which represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation (p.374). It discusses the inverted-U curve that illustrates the effects of arousal on performance efficiency and affect. This section states how having insufficient stimulation or how having excessive stimulation is not beneficial to anyone. Too little stimulation is bad because the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal, and too much stimulation is bad because it is stressful and can upset emotional states, impair cognitive activity, and accelerate physiological processes (p.377). Having a moderate level of stimulation is most optimal for people.
The subsection then moves on to discuss sensation seeking, which is the personality characteristic that is related to arousal and reactivity. In this section, the search for new experiences, risk taking, and biological basis are all covered. It then moves on to cover affect intensity, which concerns people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally (p.381).
The final subsection within the chapter is centered on the topic of control. The two personality characteristics that capture most of the meaning of control are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes (p.384). The desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives (p.386). It is obvious how both of these play into the whole concept of control.
All in all, this chapter did a great job of covering the different personality characteristics within the three broad topics of happiness, arousal, and control. I was interested in learning more about extraversion and happiness, though. Therefore, I did some research on the topic, and what I found is written below.
http://www.happinessstrategies.com/blog/category/positive-psychology/page/2/
This link discussed how even the strong correlations between extraversion and happiness allows for many happy introverts. This may be because the happy introverts act a lot like happy extraverts. It went on to say that simply acting extraverted could lead to feeling happier. It also touches on how genes link to happiness via personality and that it stays pretty stable throughout life. It talks about the “Big Five”, which are dimensions of personality. They include agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. It states that both neuroticism and extraversion are relevant to happiness because of the research that suggests there being a positive relationship between happiness and extraversion and a negative relationship between happiness and neuroticism. This is what leads researchers to believe that happiness is generally set. But, apparently, some psychologists believe that heredity is indirect, meaning that you can get past unwanted aspects of personality by taking deliberate action. This supports the thought that personality is only one single influence on happiness and that other factors probably play a part.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr03/acting.aspx
This link said that people who display extraverted characteristics are happier at those moments that when acting introverted. Professor William Fleeson from Wake Forest University did a study, hoping to show whether introverts who display extravert characteristics are happier in the same way that actual extraverts are. Researchers measured four extraverted characteristics of talkativeness, assertiveness, adventurousness, and energy level in 46 college students. What they ultimately found was that it was possible to predict a person’s positive affect based on the extraversion of that person’s behavior. Energy level was the characteristic that was most strongly related to happiness. Therefore, it can be said that acting extraverted is pleasurable for both extraverts and introverts alike. Fleeson stated that people could take control of their personalities to lead happier lives, which is pretty big information.
Terms: personality characteristics, happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, motivation, emotion, major life event, happiness set points, positive emotionality, negative emotionality, introversion, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, inverted-U curve, risk taking
Chapter 13 explains different personality characteristics that go along with happiness, arousal and control. The chapter starts off with happiness and states that truly most people are happy. The personality characteristic that is associated with being happy is extraversion. Extraversion is defined as having a preference for being social, assertive and likes to seek out exciting situations. Extraverts have been found to be happier than introverts emotionally. This is because extraverts experience a bigger threshold to be able to experience positive emotions compared to introverts. Those who are unhappy are associated with neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as being chronically unhappy and experiencing negative emotions. This is the opposite of what extraverts tend to be. The next personality trait talked about in this chapter is arousal. Arousal is when a person is feeling more alert, awake and activated. Arousal can affect how someone performs at everyday tasks. If a person is under aroused they may seek out situations that will bring up their arousal and if someone is over aroused they will seek out a way to decrease their arousal. With either of these a person is more likely to perform badly. Only when a person is aroused at a normal level is when they perform to their fullest. The last personality trait talked about in chapter 13 is control. This chapter splits control into two important types: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is explained as the beliefs and expectations a person holds that they can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes (p. 384). This can predict how much effort a person will put into doing something in life. If they believe that they can achieve it they are more likely to feel control over the situation. The other type of control is desire for control and this is defined as the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives (p.386). This is different than perceived control because people with high desire for control want control over their lives no matter how much control they currently have in a situation. Overall, these three personality traits are the most common that are seen in everyday living.
I went on the internet and researched a little bit more on how introverts and extraverts differ when it comes to happiness. I found some information at foxnews.com about this topic. http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/. This article explains that research had found that extroverts have a more positive view about their past than introverts do. This is why they tend to have more positive emotions and feel happier than introverts who look at the past in a bad way. The researchers do say it is difficult to change your personality, but if someone wants to try to be happier they can just look back at the positive things in life and try to avoid thinking about the negative. This may start to put people in the right direction when trying to change their outlook on life.
The second article I read was from psychology today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201207/introverts-extroverts/are-extroverts-happier-introverts?quicktabs_5=0. This article talked more about what extroverts and introverts are and how they interact, but it also talked about whether or not extroverts are happier. They state that it is hard to answer that question because research only looks at happiness in the light of socializing. This is something that extroverts need to be able to survive, but for introverts happiness comes from more low key activities. These types of activities are not accounted for in most tests. This article also states that there is a culture factor that plays a part in this as well. Westernized cultures tend to favor extroverts while eastern cultures favor the introverts. So this can also play a role in why westernized extroverts tend to be happier. I looked up this information because I consider myself to be an introvert, but I also consider myself to be a happy person, so when I read in the book that extraverts are associated with happiness I was a little confused since I know I am happy. After looking up the info on the internet I feel better about what I read in the book because I am happier in low key activities more than social ones. Which is what brings me happiness and I tend to keep that happiness to myself more than an extrovert would.
Terms: Extraversion, neuroticism, arousal, perceived control, desire of control
Chapter 13 examined personality characteristics and how they influence and how they are affected by motivational principles. Our personality plays a large role in how we decide what is important in our lives and how we allow those experiences to impact us. For example we all react in different ways to positive and negative experiences. Three aspects of personality are different in all of us happiness, arousal, and control. Some of us are sensation seekers, some of avoid and most of us are in the middle somewhere. Personality characteristics exist in all of us but only a few of us harbor a high or intense level of their personality characteristic, and most people harbor a moderate amount of the personality characteristic, and a few harbor only a low level.
It was interesting to see that literary everyone is happy at some point not matter what their situation is. For example individuals who are low income say they are happy even though their economic or family situation is not what others would classify as happy. Basically if you are happy when you are younger no matter what your situation is you are likely to be happy in your older age as well. In general it is found that extraverts are happier than introverts. Extraverts are individuals who are sociable, assertive, and exciting; while introverts are the complete opposite. Extraverts are seen as happier because they enjoy more frequent positive moods than introverts. They are also more sensitive to positive feelings which cause them to approach rewarding situations more than introverts.
Arousal represents a variety of process that is involved in alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Thus the activity of the brain, skeletal system, and autonomic nervous system constitute most of the motivational construct of arousal. An interesting aspect of arousal in the inverted U curve which illustrates that a low level of arousal produces relatively poor performance. And as arousal increases performance quality decreases. Basically you want to be aroused but not too aroused. Overall low stimulation produces boredom and restlessness, while high stimulation produces tension and stress.
The most interesting part of the chapter was the section on sensation seeking. We all have a baseline level of arousal; however some of us do not like to stay at our baseline. Sensation seeking is the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation. They often become bored with routine, thus causing them to constantly search for ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. They constantly seek novel experiences and some may become involved in is risky behaviors. Very high sensation seekers voluntarily engage in physically risky hobbies, such as motorcycling or skydiving. There is a possible biological basis for individuals being sensation seekers. They have low levels of monoamine oxidase and serotonin, which fails to inhibit individuals from risky behaviors.
This article discusses and individual named Rita who is involved in several risky behaviors that will have a large influence on her future. The author states that risk taking is not the main point of sensation seeking; it is the price that people pay for certain kinds of activities that satisfy their need for novelty, change, and excitement. Also not all sensation seekers seek risky behavior, for example some individuals enjoy music, movies, or travel. Not surprisingly the article states young males in their adolescent years are at a higher risk of being sensations seekers. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker
This article looks more into aspects of their brain and how they influence individual’s risky behaviors. In the study they showed individuals pictures of different objects; they found that the high-sensation seekers showed early and strong activation in the insula this brain structure acts in part as a gateway where visceral signals from the body are first received and interpreted by the brain. However in the low-sensation seekers, insula activity barely rose above baseline levels. Instead, there were pronounced early activity in the anterior cingulate, a part of the cortex strongly linked to the regulation of emotions. Basically high sensations seekers are unable to stop their need for risky behaviors because their brain wants them. https://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=23620
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. We all seek control of our environment and our personality influences how much control we expect. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in way that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired ones. This concept influences how much effort and individual is willing to exert. Overall this chapter was very interesting as I have always wondered how our personality influences our actions.
Terms: personality, happiness, arousal, control, introversion, extraversion, baseline, performance, emotion, inverted-U curve, under aroused, stimulation, over aroused, sensation seeking, risk taking, biological basis, perceived control, desire for control.
Chapter 13, on personality, talks about two personality characteristics that relate to happiness, two that relate to arousal, and two that relate to control. The two personality characteristics that relate to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. The characteristic that explains who is happy is extraversion. People who are extraverted are happier than people who are introverted. Extraverts are happy because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them more responsive of signals of reward in the environment. The personality characteristic that explains who is unhappy is neuroticism. These are people who suffer emotionally. They suffer because they have a strong behavioral inhibition system that makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. Extraversion predisposes people toward a positive emotionality, the behavioral activation system, and an approach temperament. Neuroticism predisposes people toward a negative emotionality, the behavioral inhibition system, and an avoidance temperament. When extraverts enter a situation, they are predisposed to be sensitive to its potentially rewarding aspects and they experience positive emotions and show approach-oriented behavior. When neurotics enter a situation, they are predisposed to be sensitive to its potentially punishing aspects and they experience negative emotions and show avoidance-oriented behavior.
The two personality characteristics that are related to arousal and to the interverted U cure of arousal, performance, and emotion and mood are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations as well as a willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks just to gain such experiences. Sensation seekers seek new experiences through behaviors such as sex and drug use, and they engage in risk-accepting behavior. Affect intensity represents the strength that individuals typically experience in emotions. Affect-intense people experience strong emotions and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion-eliciting situations. Affect-stable people experience their emotions mildly and show minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions.
The two personality characteristics that are related to control are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and to regulate the behavior that is needed to gain desirable outcomes. When someone has strong perceived control, they engage in tasks with active coping and positive emotion. On the other hand, when perceived control is not strong, people engage in tasks half-heartedly and show negative emotion. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to have control over the events in their lives. People who have a high desire for control approach situations by wanting to control what happens, so they strive to establish control and to restore it if it is lost.
Something that I was interested in is neuroticism and if it can be treated. If people who have such personalities are suffering, is there a way that this can be helped?
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201010/the-neuroticism-paradox
Obviously we have all heard of the Big Five, where neuroticism is the “N”. This trait shows up as a slight downer compared to the others (agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and extraversion). When neuroticism is identified, it begins to show up as a correlate of all sorts of other potentially harmful and unpleasant psychological states. These can range from lower intelligence test scores, greater distractibility in tests, poorer memory, greater reactivity to stress, poorer coping skills, and lower feelings of self-efficacy or self-confidence. The bad part of what I found is that these traits are viewed as unchanging throughout life. Turning around a neurotic personality requires a lot of effort and a great deal of time. People with high neuroticism can have difficulty adapting to everyday challenges.
Even though neuroticism may be difficult to change, there are glimmers of hope. For example, in the 1970s, researchers began to talk about the virtues of “depressive realism”, or the more honest perceptions of self and world in people who typically feel unhappy. In a particular study by Alloy and Abramson in 1979, nondepressed undergraduates were more likely than the depressed to think that they were in control of a random event (turning on and off a light bulb). The results of this study showed that the nondepressed tent to over-emphasize their own role in the events in their lives, part of a general tendency for non-depressed people to view themselves in an unrealistically positive light. This website identifies ways to make positive changes to increase fulfillment. These are, don’t be worried about worrying, when real worries come your way, take practical steps to turn things around, and use depressive realism to your advantage.
http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/n/neurosis/treatments.htm
This site covers various treatments for neurosis or neurotic disorder. These disorders can be treated with an individualized combination that can include medications, cognitive therapy, and anxiety management. Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, may also be prescribed. In psychotherapy, a psychotherapist builds a relationship with a client that establishes trust and helping the client to address the neurosis through techniques such as communication and behavior therapy. These techniques are helpful for people to recognize and work through anxiety and fear that may underlie neurosis and can teach more effective ways of thinking and behaving.
Terms: extraversion, neuroticism, arousal, happiness, control, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Personality is the chapter that I was most excited to learn about. Personality is one of the most predominant things that we see in our everyday lives. Someone’s Personality drives relationships—whether romantic or not—and helps us understand the people that live around us as well as ourselves. One major goal I hope to achieve with my more advanced understanding of personality is how my personality has affected who I have close relationships with. I also want to understand better is my specific personality has been influenced from biology or from how I was raised. As I summarize this chapter, I hope the concepts from the book help me answer these questions.
The first section of the chapter deals with the differences in the “three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: (1) happiness, (2) arousal, and (3) control.” (Page 368) Any event that we occur in our environment has the potential to affect all of these principles. The main differences are how intensely the situation affects the principles. For example, if a student shows up to an exam completely unaware that there is an exam that day, they will most likely feel a large amount of unhappiness. That specific situation will produce a low amount of control because the student is unable to control/change the outcome or environment.
The first principle that is described is happiness. Studies have shown that most people are happy—or claim to be. Even people in low-income settings still claim that they are generally happy. The book even says that people who won the lottery and people who suffered an accident that left them handicapped were followed up about a year after said life event. Both parties did not differ much from the average person. Studies have also shows that high amounts of negative feelings are present throughout a week after a negative event, but the person starts to return to normal around two short months. Being an extravert is more likely to be correlated with being happier.
The next term in the chapter is arousal. Arousal is something that makes our brain light up with an alert feeling and activation. Arousal can be either a good stimulation or a bad stimulation. For example, the trailer for Grand Theft Auto V comes out next week, so every time the company that produces that game posts something on Facebook, my brain activates telling me I should read it. Arousal also plays a big role when it comes to things that scare or disgust someone. Let’s say that someone just got done eating at a restaurant with their roommates. One of their roommates orders a rare steak and it’s extremely undercooked. You think nothing of it, but when you all get home, said roommate starts complaining of nausea. The roommate gets extremely ill and you can’t handle that. The act of getting sick will cause an arousal, not positively, but it still activates your brain because you view it in such a negative way.
The third and final principle is control. Control is the ability to manipulate one’s environment to produce the desired positive outcome. Someone having a high desire for control tend to be people that make their own decisions, achieves to be leaders, and are overly prepared for situations. Perceived control is how much someone feels they are capable at achieving these positive outcomes. The desire for control is how much someone is motivated to control these events in their lives.
The first link that I found online was “9 Tips in Life That Lead to Happiness.” (http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/9-tips-in-life-that-lead-to-happiness.html) This website offers great points on how to do this and is great for someone who has a high desire for control. In summary, the article explains that to achieve happiness, we need to define what makes us happy and set a goal to achieve it. Along the path we need to surround ourselves with others that help increase our happiness and take time out of each day to do something that brings us joy.
I was pretty interested with the ideas of negative arousal. One big example of this is phobias. The website I looked up (http://www.freeatlasthypnosis.com/origin-of-phobias-why-have-them-they-mean/) said that the nature of phobias is still a mystery to scientists. What they assume is that phobias grow from frightening experiences. Scientists have observed a P300 scale reacting to a phobia at a much greater level than other simulations.
Terms: Personality, nature/nurture, motivational principles, happiness, arousal, control, perceived control, desire for control, stimulation, phobia, P300
Chapter 13 covers three personality characteristics which are happiness, arousal, and control. The first section of the chapter talks about happiness. In this section we learn that most people are happy no matter what social economic status, education, or background they have. People react strongly to life events but they will return back to the same level of happiness after the events occurs. Just like people have a set point that regulates their body weight, people also seem to have a set point that regulates their happiness and subjective well-being. People have two set points, one for positive emotion and one for negative emotion.
The personality characteristic associated with “Who is happy?” is extraversion. Extraversion is defined in three facets; sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. Emotionally, extraverts are happier than are introverts and they enjoy more frequent positive moods than do introverts. The idea that extraversion is associated with brain functioning means that extraversion is a biologically based individual difference. The personality characteristic of “Who is unhappy?” is neuroticism. Neuroticism is defined as a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics experience greater stress, more negative emotions, and steady mood states such as anxiety, fear, and irritability.
There are two types of happiness. Hedonic well-being is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It reflects the pleasant life. Eudaimonic well-being concerns self-realization; it involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing.
The next section in the chapter is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and automatic mechanisms. There are four principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation. 1) A person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulation the environment is. 2) People engage is behavior to increase or decrease their level of arousal. 3) When under aroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels. 4) When over aroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels.
A moderate level of arousal coincides with the experience of pleasure. Low stimulation produces boredom and restlessness; high stimulation produces tension and stress. Sensory deprivation refers to an individual’s sensory and emotional experience in a rigidly unchanging environment. Sensory deprivation studies underscore the fact that the brain and nervous system prefer a continual and moderate level of arousal generated by environmental stimulation.
Sensation seeking is the personality characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. Baseline level of arousal is how aroused a person is without external stimulation and reactivity refers to one’s arousal reaction when exposed to external stimulation. A high sensation seeker prefers a continual external supply of brain stimulation, becomes bored with the routine, and is continually in search of ways to increase arousal through exciting experiences. A low sensation seeker prefers less brain stimulation and tolerates routine relatively well. Sensation seeking 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.
The last section the chapter talks about is control. Two personality characteristics capture most of the spirit of control beliefs: perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in people’s preperformance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. In order to perceive that one has control over a given situation, one needs to first be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome and second, the situation in which one attempts to exercise control needs to be at least somewhat predictable and responsive. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert and also perceived control beliefs influence the individual’s engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge-seeking.
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. High-DC individuals approach situations by asking themselves whether they will be able to control what happens. They also prefer making their own decisions, prepare for situations in advance, avoid dependence on others, and assume leadership roles in group settings. Low-DC individuals tend to avoid responsibilities, and feel comfortable having other make decisions for them.
The first article I found was titled “An Introvert’s Guide to Happiness”. This article listed 7 ways to be a happy introvert. They were indulge, scrap the small talk, chalk yourself up without talking yourself up, make pals with public speaking, be the “go-to” person, practice you lines, and be a matchmaker.
http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/an-introverts-guide-to-happiness.aspx
The second article I found was titled “Why Extraverts are Happier”. A new study finds that the root of their happiness may be in their memories. Extraverts remember the past in a more positive light than other personality types. Extraverted people are happier with their lives because they tend to hold a more positive, nostalgic view of the past and are less likely to have negative thoughts and regrets. People high on the neurotic scale have the exact opposite view of the past and are less happy. People may not be able to change their personality type completely but we can change some things to help us feel happier.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/05/05/extroverts-happier-introverts/
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraverts, introverts, sensation seeking, neuroticism, hedonic, eudaimonic, perceived control, desire for control.
Lucky number 13, this chapter is on personality. More importantly it takes an in-depth look at the three motivational principles of happiness, arousal, and control. Everyone is different and with that, we all have a unique set of personalities. This contributes to who we are as individuals. Our personalities help energize and direct our behavior.
Happiness is a very biological based characteristic. Happiness is related to extraversion. Extraverts tend to be happier than introverts. Within happiness, it is found that most people have so-called “set points” for their happiness. Over years, one’s happiness will stay about the same despite what actually occurs. On the other hand of happiness is unhappiness. This is said to correlate with neuroticism. Neuroticism can be defined as “a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.” In other words, they tend to be more introverted
Arousal is the next common theme. This process governs alertness, wakefulness, and activation. With arousal there are four main principles that explain arousal’s contribution to motivation: 1) Person’s arousal level is mostly a function of how stimulating environment is 2) People engage in behavior to increase/decrease their level of arousal 3) When underaroused, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal level 4) When overaroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. It is said that relatively low levels and extremely high levels of arousal typically produce low performance. The ideal is to experience a moderate level of arousal. If underaroused, we are bored, on the other hand, if we are too aroused we may experience stress and pressure and not perform well because of it. Arousal levels all depend on personalities. We are motivated to seek out different activities and take different risks which, in essence, mirror how arousal levels can increase/decrease. Some of us experience emotional extremes while others are constantly balance and level-headed.
The third and final main concept is control. Individuals vary on how much control they desire. Some drool over it while others are okay with taking the back seat and listening. The book states it as “desire for control.” Another aspect is the idea of perceived control. Perceived control is defined as “the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcome and prevent undesired outcomes.” In other words, it is the effort an individual will put forth. The more perceived control a person has, the more effort they will put into it. This can then lead into better performance, which leads into feelings of competence. It is almost like a snow ball effect. Individuals who have a high desire attempt to establish control in all situations and regain control whenever they feel they can. If this does not happen, the quickly get ticked off and are rattled.
http://www.doctoroz.com/quiz/how-happy-are-you
This is a quick fun little quiz that asks, “How happy are you?” This is off of the Dr. Oz website so it has some prestigious value and truth to it. I took the quiz and my results showed that I am an average happiness guy. College students tend to score lower than working adults and older, retired people. I thought that was somewhat surprising. The idea of happiness is such a main theme in chapter 13, I thought to myself, I am a happy person. Let’s find a happiness quiz to see how it works.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/sexual-arousal-dampens-ick-factor/story?id=17221134
I feel like the word arousal has such a sexual connotation with it. I know that I am not the only one that feels this way. You say the word and majority of people instantly think it is “hand-in-hand” with sexually. The link above does have to do with sexual arousal though. This ABC news article is interesting in the aspect that if you are turned on, you are less likely to be grossed out. Women who were sexually aroused felt less disgust when doing the tasks than the participants who were not sexually aroused. All in all, the findings suggest sexual arousal decreases women’s so-called disgust response.
Key Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraverts, introverts, set-points, neuroticism, perceived control
Chapter 13 talked about Personality Characteristics; specifically Happiness, arousal, and control. Most people would say there are happy. In the book, it describes people with different income levels and yet they both share the same happiness. People react strongly to events, like winning the lottery, but usually come back down to normal levels after a few weeks. Everyone seems to have a happiness set point that they continue to come back to regardless of being happy or sad. This usually carries over as one ages as well. The personality characteristic best associated with happiness would be extraversion. Extraverted people tend to be sociable and venturous; they love to seek stimulating situations in life. The reason extraverted people are so much happier than, let’s say, an introverted person, is because they are more sensitive to rewards and have a greater positive feeling towards them. Therefore, extroverts experience stronger incentive motivational states that energize and guide their approach behavior. On the other hand, neuroticism is the main characteristic for someone who is unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally; they do so mostly because of their greater capacity to experience negative emotions and because they chronically harbor disturbed and troubling thoughts.
Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. These processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Thus, the activity of the brain, skeletal muscular system, and autonomic nervous system together constitute most of the motivational construct of arousal. A person’s arousal level is usually stimulated by one’s environment. People usually engage in behavior that increase or decrease stimulation. When under aroused, people seek our out opportunities to increase their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are pleasurable and enhance performance. When over aroused, people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels, because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance. Human beings differ on the baseline of arousal. Sensation seekers prefer engaging activities that provide brain activity, while the opposite can be said for a low sensation seeker. Sensation seekers also take risks in order to stimulate their brains.
Control beliefs can be broken down into two categories; perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. Perceived control beliefs predict how much effort a person is willing to exert on something. People with high perceived control show high effort, concentrate, pay attention, persist in the face of failure, and maintain interest. Someone with desire for control reflects the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. Desire for control people want control over their fates in their everyday life situations. When high desire control people have little control, they experience anxiety and stress.
http://www.psychology.org.nz/cms_show_download.php?id=812
This piece of research looks at females with anxiety in their live. Researchers gave them the tridimensional anxiety scale which looks at three sub components of anxiety; cognitive, behavioral and somatic. The results of the test showed that people with low desire for control were the most effected cognitively compared to behavioral or somatic.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-ropeik/egypt-protests_b_822018.html
This article talked about the need for control in our everyday life. He talks about how if we have more control over risks, the less scary they become to us. People seem to like to drive more than fly because they seem to think they have more control over it even though statistically it’s safer to fly. He claims that the more you feel you have some influence over how things are going, and how they're going to turn out, the safer you feel. It’s a pretty interesting article that really summarizes why we feel the need to be in control.
Terms: desire for control, perceived control, control, risk taking, sensation seeking, under and over arousal, happiness, arousal, extroversion, neuroticism.
Chapter thirteen breaks down personality characteristics based on individual differences. Happiness is the main component measured in chapter thirteen. Six types of personalities are described in this chapter including; extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. These personalities are measured by how they react to the three aspects of differences including; happiness, arousal, and control. Personality reflects how we react to emotions and situations. The main aspect in this chapter that interested me was happiness.
Happiness can be broken down into two different categories: hedonic or eudaimonic. Hedonic is the response to a pleasurable life full of pleasurable moments. Eudaimonic happiness is self-realization and self-worth. Eudaimonic happiness is seeking meaningful opportunities and engaging in them based on personal growth. Everyone wants to be happy, this chapter makes it sound so simple and measurable. To seek out happiness a person must be sensitive to rewards. This statement made me think and realize that many situations have affected how sensitive I am to rewards. For example on a normal day a small success just keeps me going and on a terrible day something small happens and it can create laughter. Successes reflects happiness based on personality and situation. The incentive for happiness is that it creates emotion which leads to a goal directed behavior. The next question in the book is who is happy? The idea of who is happy can be based on the factors of neuroticism and suffering. The idea of not being happy is to have negative situations that leave an individual unsatisfied. Happiness is another aspect of emotionally stable. The behavioral activating system detects the positive emotions and extraverts arousal to stimulate positive hormones. The Behavioral inhibition system detects and regulates punishment. This system leaves an individual vulnerable and engages them in avoidance. Extraverts generally react more often with the BAS, while introverts are more likely to use the BIS. People engage in behaviors to increase arousal, arousal then increases functioning. Arousal leads us to further understand personality characteristics.
Sensation seeking individuals generally need brain stimulation and interact with risk taking behaviors. Their biological factors include a low level of monoamine oxidate, this hormones function is the break down of dopamine and serotonin. Affect intensity is the ablity to become aroused. Affect-intense people have strong emotions as well as show a strong reaction to emotions. Affect-stable maintain mild experiences with minor reactions. Perceived control maintains beliefs and expectations based on a situation while being capable of predicting or controlling the outcome. Above are just some personality characteristics. Many things influence how a person relays emotion and behaves. This influences can include; engagement, emotion, coping, challenge, and other environmental influences. Generally this chapter helped me gain a further understanding of myself and others. Happiness is a very important aspect of life, and this chapter helped develop my understanding of the authenticity of being happy.
After reading this chapter I was curious at where I rate on some of these scales, so I took a personality test. The test overall categorized me as a good-natured realist. The site then gave four scales: how much you like to be around people, how you process information,how you make decisions and how you structure your life. I maintained in the middle for the first three categories, however the final scale rated me as judging vs. perceiving. I found this interesting, yet very true. It also gave you careers and people that you can relate to that are famous. This chapter helped me develop a scenes of myself and this sight was free and correct.
http://www.41q.com/index.41q?a=1
I got invested in taking these tests so then I researched the idea of a sensation seeking person. I learned more about the sensation seeking scale and took another test. I discovered I am a sensation seeing individual. Personally from this chapter I reflected my happiness correlating with more experience with the likelihood of a valuable success.This can also play on the categories of happiness. I am more happy by challenging myself and reaching new hight rather then being content with small situational success.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/HSStest.pdf
Key terms: Happiness, extraversion, neuroticism,sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control,neuroticism, rewards, behavioral acivating system, behavioral inhibition system, extraverts, introverts,
Chapter 13 discusses individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. There are two personality characteristics that are related to happiness: extraversion and neuroticism. The personality characteristic that explains “Who is happy?” is extraversion. According to the text, extraverts are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. On the other hand, the personality characteristic that explains “Who is unhappy?” is neuroticism. According to the text, neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system (BIS) which makes them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. Therefore, when extraverts enter a situation they experience positive emotions as well as approach-oriented behavior and when neurotics enter a situation they experience negative emotions and show avoidance-oriented behavior.
The two personality characteristics related to arousal are sensation seeking and affect intensity. According to the text, sensations seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. For example, sensation seekers might engage in drug use or gambling to stratify their sensation needs. According to the text, affect intensity represents the strength in which individuals typically experience their emotions. Affect-intense individuals experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in certain situations whereas affect-stable individuals experience their emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions.
Finally, the chapter discusses control. The two personality characteristics for control are perceived control and the desire for control. According to the text, perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and prevent undesired ones. When perceived control is strong it increases the likelihood for an individual to attain the outcomes they seek, however, when it is weak people enter tasks half-hearted and typically don’t attain desired outcomes. According to the text, the desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. Individuals with a high desire for control want to control what happens to them by trying to control situations. When control is threatened these individuals exhibit distress and depression.
A topic that I found interesting and decided to research more about was happiness set points. This refers to how individuals respond to life changing events – both positive and negative. I found it interesting to read that individuals who have experienced either a positive or negative life event typically (overtime) end up just as happy as they were before the event happened – even if the event was negative. This intrigued me to find out more information in regards to set points.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec07/happiness.aspx
This article challenged the existence of set points. Some of the researchers in this article challenging this phenomenon suggest that despite people’s resiliency, they do not necessarily return to a particular level of happiness. They also suggest that it’s important to account the impact that environmental factors have on well-being. However, this article does seem to state that set points do exist, but that the concept needs to be redefined and shouldn’t be applied to every situation.
http://mysuperchargedlife.com/blog/the-science-of-happiness-your-happiness-set-point/
This article highlights the importance of our happiness set point and the affect it has on our overall happiness. This article claims that by understanding your happiness set point you can understand your own behavior better. It also states that knowing your happiness set point can tell you how much effort you need to exert to become happier. However, if your happiness set point is already you may not need to exert any more effort than you already do. All in all, this article (unlike the first one) supports happiness set points and believes they can be used to your advantage.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, neuroticism, behavioral activating system, behavioral inhibition system, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, happiness set point
Chapter thirteen is about personality characteristics. Finding the individual differences to happiness, arousal and control. We can see through individual differences in peoples personality explain why people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation.
Happiness is usually associated with extroversion. The book discusses three further facets that help produce happiness. Sociability is the facet that concludes the preference or enjoyment of people and social situations. The second facet is known as assertiveness, which means the probability someone will show social dominance in a given situation. And the last facet thrill seeking and how the tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting events, causing stimulating sensations. Extroverts have a greater tendency towards all these facets. Also extroverts tend to be more happy than introverts as they enjoy more frequent positive moods. With extroversion personalities it gives the person a greater capacity to feel positive emotions. The other trait related to happiness is neuroticism but on the opposite side of the spectrum. Neuroticism is a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Causing more stress and further negative emotions and channeling mood states with anxiety, fear and irritability. Neuroticism gives the person a greater capacity to feel negative characteristics.
Arousal is a process that represents alertness, wakefulness and activation. Arousal contributes to motivation through the level of arousal, the behavior the arousal causes, and what affects are caused from over and underarousal. Affect intensity is the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. With affect intense individuals they tend to experience their emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity across many different emotion eliciting situations.
Control can be split up into two main personality characteristics, perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control concerns differences in peoples expectations of a performance and the capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control is concerned with the extent people strive to make decisions, influence others and enter situations in overly prepared ways.
http://www.psychologycampus.com/sports-psychology/arousal-anxiety.html
I looked at a few websites concerning how arousal and stress go together. Arousal can affect performance in different ways. There are several theories to show how stress affects performance. This site summarizes different theories of arousal. The drive theory says that the more arousal and anxiety that a person experiences, the higher their performance will be. The inverted U hypothesis theory, which is also something our book talks about, says that there is a medium amount of arousal and anxiety that causes someone to perform higher. Too little anxiety or arousal and too much anxiety or arousal will cause performance to be poorer. The theory of individual zones of optimal functioning says that people have different levels of anxiety and arousal that are unique in making them perform at their best. This means that some people perform their best with low anxiety, some with a medium amount, and some with a high amount. The amount of anxiety or arousal that someone requires to perform at their best is based on individual characteristics. The multidimensional anxiety theory says that when someone has anxious thoughts, they will have poorer performance. Anxiety that is felt by the body will have an affect on performance. The catastrophe model says that as long as there are lower thoughts of anxiety, then performance will be best at a medium level of physical arousal. The reversal theory says that the way arousal affects performance depends on an individual’s interpretation of their arousal. Arousal can be interpreted as either pleasant or unpleasant.
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/arousal.html
Another site that I found also talked about the Yerkes-Dodson law, which predicts an inverted U shaped function between arousal and performance. A certain amount of arousal can be a motivator, however too much or too little will work against you. There has been a lot of research indicating the correlation between arousal and performance. This idea says that there are optimal levels of arousal for each task that is learned. There needs to be lower levels for more difficult or intellectually cognitive tasks, and higher levels for tasks requiring endurance and persistence. Another interesting point that this website makes is about the optimal arousal level. Freud thought of anxiety as three different terms: reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety, and moral anxiety. Reality anxiety is the fear of real danger in the external world that alerts the ego to danger. The neurotic anxiety is the fear that one’s inner impulses can’t be controlled (id). Finally, moral anxiety is the fear of the retributions of one’s own conscience (superego).
Terms: Happiness, extraversion, neuroticism, Arousal, Affect intensity, Perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discussed a lot of different personality aspects of motivation and emotion. There are two personality characteristics related to happiness. These are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains who is happy. Extraverts are happier than introverts because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them more responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Their extraversion also pushes them to a more positive emotionality and they experience approach oriented behavior. People high in neuroticism, however, have high behavioral inhibition systems. These make them highly receptive to punishment signals in the environment. These people also experience more negative behaviors as well as avoidance-oriented behavior. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations. According to the text, it is also the need to take risks for the sake of these experiences. Affect intensity is the strength that people experience their emotions. So, affect-intense people experience strong emotions whereas affect-stable people experience mild emotions. Lastly, perceived control and the desire for control were discussed. Perceived control is the ability to regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and to prevent outcomes that are undesirable. Desire for control, however, is the extent to with people want and are motivated to control events in their daily lives.
I chose to look up more information on extraversion in relation to happiness because this really interested me. Not to portray too many life details, but I tend to see myself more as an introvert than an extrovert, and I can definitely see how extroverts can be happy more of the time. They often have more friends and happier emotions throughout their lives. From my personal point of view, anyway. So I typed in happiness and extroversion into Google and came up with some pretty interesting information. The correlation for happiness tends to be around .61, which is a fairly high correlation in comparison to other things. So this article agrees that happiness is very much related to extraversion. But it also indicates that since the correlation is .61, that still leaves a lot of room for something else to be related to happiness even for introverts. The article states also that if an introverted person simply acts extroverted they may become happier overall. The person has to make an effort to be outgoing, optimistic, and active. To do this they even give instructions to start one conversation per day with someone new. It can be a light conversation, but it will help improve social skills.
http://www.happinessstrategies.com/blog/category/positive-psychology/page/2/
Another website talked about extraversion and happiness as well. According to this article, extroverts make up 50 to 74 percent of the population. These people strive for social stimulation and focus on the external environment. This correlates with the book in that extroverts are aware of external rewards. Extroverts also thrive in fast-paced environments and multi-task well. This article indicates that extroverts need more dopamine to stimulate their brains and introverts need less stimulation to feel rewarded. It also indicates that there’s no clear answer to whether extroverts are happier than introverts. It states that extroverts and introverts just experience happiness differently. Extroverts obviously get their happiness from social stimulation but introverts experience happiness with other activities. So researchers are clearly divided on this issue, but I can see where extroverts would be happier.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thrive/201205/are-extroverts-happier-introverts
Terms: extraversion, neuroticism, avoidance, approach, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control
Chapter 13 discusses the characteristics of personality by breaking things down into three motivational principles: happiness, arousal, and control. All individuals are open to experiencing each of these in response to situations in their every day life, though it is worth noting that different people will respond differently to the same situation.
Most people are generally happy, and though they may experience events that cause them extreme happiness or extreme unhappiness, they eventually return to their original level of happiness. This leads researchers to believe that everyone has a "set point," which is the general level of happiness an individual will always return to. It has since been decided that individuals actually have two "set points," one of happiness emerging from extroversion, and one of unhappiness emerging from neuroticism. Additionally, extroverts posses a greater ability to experience positive emotions while neurotics are much more sensitive to negative emotions.
Arousal is dependent upon how stimulating an individuals environment is, and concerns feelings such as those of alertness, wakefulness, and activation. According to the "inverted-U curve" too much arousal can cause an individual to experience anxiety, while too little arousal causes an individual to feel bored and relentless. Thus in order to maximize performance and productivity, and individual needs to find a balance. Thus individuals seek stimulation within their environment to increase arousal, and avoid it to decrease arousal. Individuals practice sensation seeking when looking to increase arousal, constantly searching for contemporary experiences.
Control encases a number of varying personality characteristics, so it is often subdivided into two categories: perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is an individuals expectations and how they interact with their environment to produce a desired outcome, and is useful when predicting an individuals level of effort concerning tasks. Desired for control on the other hand, concerns the "extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives." Individuals with a high desire for control want control over the outcomes of the life regardless of their current level of control. Desire of control predicts personality characteristics such as learned helplessness, depression, illusion of control, hypnosis, achievement, perceived crowding, stress and coping, among many others.
I was personally very interested and intrigued by the correlation between extroversion and happiness. The first article I found presents a study which attempted to explore the theory that extroverts are more sensitive to positive stimuli and rewards. A study by Lucas and Diener found that extroverts had more positive ratings on positive situations than introverts, but what was interesting was that when the situations were unpleasant there was no distinction between the two. The article also presented an idea that extroverts report being happier because they actively seek out social situations which will be rewarding. The experiment which serves as the focus of this article sets out to explore the relationship between happiness and extroversion. Participants were asked to keep daily diaries of their activities and answered specific questions about each of the events or 'episodes' in their day including things like the amount of social interaction they participated in, and their rate of happiness. The study found that "participation in social situations is a positive predictor of happiness in both extroverts and introverts." It also explored the theory that extroverts are more sensitive to rewarding stimuli, and found no evidence to suggest such.
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/3032/Relationship%20between%20Extraversion%20and%20Happiness.pdf?sequence=1
Another article I found discussed a study by William Fleeson based on William James' theory that an individual can manipulate their feelings through action, that "by regulating the action...we can indirectly regulate feeling." Fleesons study suggested that if an individual acts more introverted they will be happier. The experiment asked college students to "act cheerful and outgoing," as well as "withdrawn and shy" and document their mood. Students reported being happier when acting extroverted.
http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Extroversion.htm
Terms: Set Point, Inverted-U Curve Relationship, Perceived Control, Desire for Control
Chapter 13 in our text covers personality characteristics. The three main personality characteristics discussed in this chapter are: happiness, arousal, and control.
The first main personality characteristic is happiness. According to the text, people seem to have a set point that regulates happiness and subjective well-being. One of the set points is for positive emotionality – the happiness set point. The happiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in extraversion. The other set point is for negative emotionality – the unhappiness set point. The unhappiness set point emerges mostly from individual differences in neuroticism. Extraversion is the personality characteristic that is associated with the question, “who is happy?” It has three faucets which are: sociability (preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations), assertiveness (tendency toward social dominance), and venturesomeness (tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations). Neuroticism is the personality characteristic that is associated with the question, “who is unhappy?” Those with the personality characteristic of neuroticism have a predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.
The second main personality characteristic is arousal. Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. Arousal has numerous contributions to motivation. According to the text, these are the four contributions: (1) 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) underarousal which is when 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), and (4) overarousal which is when people seek out opportunities to decrease arousal levels (because increases in environmental stimulation are aversive and undermine performance whereas decreases are pleasurable and enhance performance). Underarousal is also known as sensory deprivation and is the individual’s sensory and emotional experience in rigidly unchanging environments. To better understand arousal, the text describes the inverted-U curve which explains the relationship between felt arousal and people’s ensuing motivational and emotional states. The two main criticisms of the inverted-U curve are that the curve is descriptive rather than explanatory and that even if the hypothesis is true, it is still trivial. The curve does not apply to everyday affairs in which arousal level changes relatively little. Under the personality characteristic of arousal falls those who are sensation seekers. Sensation seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and a willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience. Also under arousal, falls the topic of affect intensity. Affect intensity is people’s capacity to become aroused emotionally. Individuals who are affect-intense experience emotions strongly and show emotional reactivity and variability across many different emotion-eliciting situations. These individuals vary however from those individuals who are affect-stable. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions only mildly and show only minor fluctuations in emotional reactions from moment-to-moment or from day-to-day.
Finally, the third personality characteristic discussed in this chapter is that of control. Control beliefs are made up of perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the difference in people’s pre-performance expectancies of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. To perceive that one has control one must: “be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome,” and the “situation in which one attempts to exercise control needs to be at least somewhat predictable and responsive.” Desire for control is the extent to which people strive to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and enter situations in overly prepared ways. Finally, engagement is defined in relation to control in which it captures the intensity of emotional quality of a person’s participation during somewhat difficult undertakings to control the outcomes that matter to them. According to the text, “when highly engaged, people exert strong and persistent effort and express positive emotion; when disaffected, people behave passively and express negative emotion.”
The first research topic that I would like to discuss is that about neuroticism and its effects on gained weight and personality changes. The article is entitled Pounds of Personality and was published on November 1, 2012. What I found from this article is that people who have the personality characteristic of neuroticism are more impulsive and are less likely able to control their cravings, thus leading to weight gain (as compared to those who do not have the personality characteristic of neuroticism). The article states that because people who are neuroticisms are unable to control their cravings, “they are more prone to overindulge and gain weight, but their weight gain in turn increases their neuroticism and impulsivity.” The article describes this process as a “viscous downward spiral” that ends up “depleting cognitive control” in general. The final point made in this article is that if one “[yields] to temptation today [it] diminishes the[ir] ability to resist cravings” in the future.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/were-only-human/pounds-of-personality.html#.UJsr93XAenp
The second research topic that I would like to discuss in relation to chapter 13 is also about neuroticism. This article discusses how neuroticism tends to “be accompanied by several pervasive avoidance behaviors.” There is situational avoidance, subtle avoidance, and cognitive avoidance. Reading further into the article, these avoidance behaviors are explained a bit more in depth. Situational avoidance is described as when a person is “fearful of social setting,” they might avoid a crowd. Subtle avoidance is when someone who is “fearful of losing control might become a perfectionist.” Cognitive avoidance is portrayed as someone who watches television or listens to music to “distract from unpleasant thoughts.” This article was very interesting to me and I thought it was interesting that it described different avoidance behaviors of those who have neuroticism.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/obsonline/inside-the-neurotic-mind.html#.UJssGXXAenp
Terms: happiness, extraversion, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, neuroticism, arousal, underarousal, overarousal, sensory deprivation, inverted-U curve, sensation seekers, affect intensity, affect-intense individuals, affect-stable individuals, control, perceived control, desire for control, and engagement
Chapter 13 is about the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal, and control. The first principle discussed is happiness. Happiness is set by each individual's personality. It is generally at a consistent level over the long term. When very happy or very sad events occur, happiness levels still typically wind up at about the same level after about a year. Whether a person is an extrovert or an introvert depends a lot on happiness. Extroverted people tend to be happier and enjoy more frequent positive moods more than introverts. They also have a stronger BAS (behavioral activating system)than introverts. There are two types of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic happiness is the totality of one's pleasurable moments; whereas, eudaimonic happiness is the actualization of the self. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic associated with "Who is unhappy?" Neurotics are more vulnerable and more susceptible to negative emotions. Therefore, extroversion and neuroticism represent two basic personality dimensions.
Arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. A moderate level of arousal coincides with the experience of pleasure. We harbor motives to counteract insufficient stimulation and underarousal, as well as excessive stimulation and overarousal. Sensation seeking is a characteristic associated with arousal. People that are high sensation seekers are usually more willing to stray from routine and take risks; whereas low sensation seekers like to still to routine. Affect intensity concerns people's capacity to become aroused emotionally and is defined in terms of the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions.
Control is the third motivational principle of personality characteristics that the chapter discusses. 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. Perceived control refers to the beliefs and expectations a person holds that he or she can interact with the environment in ways that produce desired outcomes and prevent undesired outcomes. When a person has a high perceived control, they tend to set higher goals and generate more sophisticated plans for the future. When people desire control but the environment refuses to afford it, the person becomes vulnerable to learned helplessness and depression. In controllable environments, the desire for control works as a motivational asset, but, in uncontrollable environments, the desire for control works as a motivational liability.
I am very interested in the general idea of happiness. I know that everyone has a different definition of happiness when it comes to specifics, and when the word happiness is said aloud, each person will think of a different person, place, or thing that they associate most with the word. The Happiness Project is a chronicle or Gretchen Rubin's attempt to test-drive every tip, principle, and scientific study that promotes happiness. She has written two books about happiness, and has a blog site about her findings and tests. It is a very interesting site that discusses concepts that I wouldn't have thought to write about when talking about happiness. This is a very interesting website.
http://happiness-project.com/
I am also very interested in the section on extroverts and introverts. Up until college, I was always told I was an introvert. I was shy and quiet around big groups of people, but loud and crazy with my friends and family, but I was almost always happy. That is why I am interested in this. I know that the book doesn't say that introverts are necessarily unhappy, but it talks a lot about how much more positive extroverts are. Now that I am have had a couple years of college, and become more confident, more people would say that I am an extrovert. This makes me question if I am more happy and positive than I was in high school because I had never considered myself anything else. So I found this quiz in Psychology Today about whether you are an extrovert or introvert. This quiz had me in the middle, but more introverted than extroverted. This is interesting to me knowing now how both are associated with happiness. I still consider myself happy and positive though!
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201103/quiz-are-you-introvert-or-extrovert-and-why-it-matters
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extrovert, introvert, BAS, hedonic, eudaimonic, neurotism, sensation seekers, control, perceived control
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics, and more specifically, three motivational principles; happiness, arousal, and control. The book suggests that people have a happiness "set point". They gave the example of a person who got in a big car accident vs. a person who had just won the lottery. Big life events make us happy for a while, but we always come back to a "set" happy point after such big event. There was a study done on paraplegics; they were obviously not as happy just months after their accident, but eventually they seem to equalize back to original happiness. To answer the question, "who is happy?" is extraversion. Extroverted people come from three facets; sociability-the preference for and enjoyment of other people and social situations, assertiveness-striving for social dominance, and venturesomeness (yes this is a word)- the tendency to seek out and exciting situations. The book tells us that emotionally, extroverts are happier than introverts and enjoy on a more frequent basis, more positive moods. There are two types of happy; hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic well being is the totality of one's pleasurable moments and eudaimonic involves engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing, or the true self. This section goes on to talk about neuroticism which is people who experience negative feelings all the time and feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. They are obviously very unhappy people.
The second motivational personality characteristic explained in chapter 13 is arousal. Arousal comes from processes in which the brain, skeletal muscular system and the autonomic nervous system work together to create alertness, wakefulness and activation. The amount of arousal that someone has about a task is based on motivation. For example, when people are lacking arousal, they seek out more opportunities to increase it, thus motivation to do something. This explains people who are "adrenalin junkys". People who find the need to always be seeking out an increase in arousal, like EMT medics. They are always looking forward to that next call when their adrenalin gets pumping, when their arousal is high.
The third personality characteristic is control. Control, stemming from perceived control which is the difference between ones expectancy of their performance of possessing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. Desire for control is when people want to make their own decisions, influence others, take up leadership roles and be extra prepared when faced with difficult situations or problem solving situations.
I am a visual learner so I chose to look up videos to exemplify two aspects of chapter 13.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSPfuu-XeEc&feature=related
Here is a good example of an introvert compared to an extrovert. The extrovert starts off the skit by talking on the phone with a friend about some personal things. He is pretty care-free and doesn't mind talking about anything, especially knowing that others can probably hear him. Meanwhile, the introvert is displeased with the noise and isn't much interested in hearing what this strange man has to say. The introvert man is displaying normal signs, as he rather not be bothered and simply sit alone and not initiate any conversation with a stranger. Although, being the extroverted guy that the other one is, he easily and willfully tries to start up a conversation with the not-so-pleased older introvert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkprv-Upco
Everyone loves Spongebob Squarepants! Here we see Mr. Krabs demonstrating the personality characteristic of control. His perceived control efforts are very high in that he wants people to come to his pool so he will go to great lengths to do so. Whether or not you believe in global warming, this is a good example of Krabs taking control. He has a very high level of engagement with his carbon monoxide machine and is very excited about the perceived outcome. Spongebob, on the other hand gets a heightened state of arousal when he finds out about an "endless summer". This is very stimulating to him and he wishes to help.
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, extroverted, introverted, neuroticism, hedonic, eudaimonic, arousal, perceived control
Chapter 13 discussed the individual differences found in the three motivational principles that are related to personality characteristics. These characteristics include happiness, arousal and control. Within these principles, personality characteristics exist which include extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control. At any time, in any situation, these characteristics can arise. It is important to keep in mind that most people fall in between the extremes of each characteristic and that extremes are rare.
Happiness is found in nearly everyone regardless of the negativity of the situation they are in. It obviously affects the happiness of a person, but for the most part people are not unhappy. Extremely large events, even though they may create temporary euphoria, do not create long-standing happiness. There are two set points for happiness, one negative and one positive, and the stay generally the same throughout one’s life. If one is happy at one age, they will likely have the same amount of happiness ten years from that date. Extraversion is the personality characteristic that is the strongest indicator for who is happy and who is not happy. Someone who is more of an extravert is happier than an introvert. Not only do they have more social connections, but they are also more socially intelligent. They are able to pick up on social cues that are often rewarding. The introverts cannot pick up on these cues as well so they are not rewarded as much. In turn, they are not as happy. Extraverts also experience positive emotion more often than introverts do because of stronger behavioral activating systems. This appears to be an innate ability and not a learned behavior. There are two types of happiness and these are hedonic and eudaimonic. The first is simply experiencing a pleasant life and the latter is experiencing self-actualization. The second point of happiness, the negative and unhappy point, is predicted by neuroticism. The more neurotic the person, the more unhappy they are. They have a greater capacity for negative emotions.
Arousal is the second principle discussed in the book and represents processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation. If one is very aroused, common sense would tell us that they would perform very well if someone who is not aroused underperforms. The latter is true, but if one is very aroused, they also perform poorly. As arousal reaches its peak at a moderate level, performance is its highest. As arousal continues towards a high amount, performance decreases due to anxiety. Boredom is experienced if arousal is not high enough, the individual loses interest and does not perform as well as if arousal was stimulated at a moderate level. Sensation seeking is a characteristic related to arousal and reactivity. The higher an individual’s tendency for sensation seeking is, the more they prefer consistent arousal and vice versa. These people enjoy new experiences and do not enjoy routine.
Control is the last concept the text touched on and is heavily related to perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is the likelihood one can interact with the environment and produce desired rather than undesired outcomes. If someone feels like they have a lot of perceived control, they are more likely to put more effort forth. They believe they can affect what happens so it motivates them to exert more effort. Desire for control is the amount a person is motivated to control a given situation. A person with a high desire for control wants to achieve higher goals and complete difficult tasks and the opposite is the case for low desire for control individuals.
I decided to look up neuroticism further and found an article about what neuroticism is and what causes neurosis. According to the article, neuroticism is a long-term tendency to be in a negative emotional state. These people are sensitive to stress and do not respond to it very well. They are also typically shy and get nervous in everyday situations. It also stated neurosis is an actual disorder and neuroticism is the actual disorder which is an important distinction that parallels the concepts of mood and emotion. It also states health professionals don’t use the term in everyday practice anymore.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/246608.php
The second page I found is an abstract for a published article about neuroticism and extraversion. It showed that neuroticism is strongly linked to depression and anxiety while introversion is only moderately associated with these symptoms. Anxiety is especially linked with neuroticism and extraversion was negatively correlated with depression. This study examined a sample from two Finnish cities.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16688731
Personality, people are always judging others and choosing friends biased on their personality and how well it goes with the another persons. What is personality? That is what chapter 13 is all about. People all have different personalities. There are three concepts that help figure out personality characteristics and how they affect motivation. They are happiness, arousal and control. Everyone has all three, just in different amounts.
Happiness is the first one look at in the chapter. Everyone is happy at some point. There are different types of happiness. There is joy, laughing, or just feeling content. Some people are just happier then others. Everyone seems to have a set happiness point. Something can happen that makes them really happy but eventually it will come back to the curtain point. The same with if they are sad, their happiness will go back up to the normal happiness point. The same way people have a set sad point. How is this point set? Many believe it is due to how much of an extrovert a person is. If a person is outgoing, and always around people then they tend to be more happy then those who are introvert, alone all the time. The book surprised me by saying it is not the fact they are more social but they get more positive feeling from being around other it is more rewarding for them. Extroverts are happier because they have more positive experiences which can lead to a higher BAS (biological activating system). BAS is how much reward response the brain produces in certain situations. Since an extrovert gets lots of pleasure from being around others and positive events, they are motivated to be social and find fun situations. If a person is an introvert and does not get as much of a pleasure feeling from being around others, they will not seek out the social factor or the positive fun situation making them less happy.
Arousal is the second main topic discussed in this chapter that lead to motivation. There are four reasons why arousal leads to motivation: The first is a person arousal is biased in the situation. Second a person is motivated to either raise or lower their arousal state. Third is, when a person is not aroused, they will find situations that raise their arousal. The fourth is the opposite of three, when over aroused people will find activities to lower their arousal. When someone is not aroused it leads to lower performance because their body is not in high response. Having a too high of arousal is not good either. It causes lots of stress. A person needs that nervous energy to help them to the task to their best. I think of speaking in front of people. I have been in plays and musicals my whole life and know that the nervous energy is what gets a person pumped and ready to go. It is the same logic for spots. There has to be an element of nervousness to be able to perform your best.
The book has talked about control and autonomy which is perceived control, doing what you want when you want, how you want, and when you want. Control is also a major factor in personality. Some people need lots of control and some need little. There is perceived control which is how much a person believes they have and then there is real control. How much desired control a person wants is biased on their need to feel like they are in change. It is how much power a person thinks they have over themselves and others. They want to be leaders, and make own decisions. So people are more driven to be in power and have a higher need for autonomy. They need to control everything. Others do not want any power. Both situations are bad. The over controlling one will never feel satisfied because it is impossible to control everyone and everything. The person who does not want power will never step up there for will always be told what to do. Most people are in the middle and know how much power they need but can still let others take over. People know that they cannot control everything and are ok with that.
Some people are sensation seekers and some are sensation avoiders meaning that. This mean that the sensation seekers try to put themselves into situations that have high amount of happiness, avoiders try to stay away from happiness, arousal and control.
The most interesting thing to be with this chapter was the introvert and extrovert. I know some people were more social. I did not know it was about reward and it effects motivation so much. I figured it would dictate what types of activities they were in. Most introverts seem really happy that I know. My friend is almost always reading or playing video games. Every time I visit he seems fine in his own little world. The book says he should be less happy so I looked into this topic more. I found http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-the-power-introverts/201112/are-extroverts-happier-introverts-yes it is a blog about how yes studies show that extrovert do have higher reward receptors. They get more please from social and being active. They are more likely to get involved. The article then went on to talk about what I was thinking about with my friend Matt. It talked about happiness of being alone. Some please do get pleasure from just reading. The article says that yes extroverts are happier, but introverts are happy to just doing different activities.
The next article I looked at was http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/an-introverts-guide-to-happiness.aspx this is a post about how introverts can still be happy even if they do not have as much reward censors. The site tells introverts how to be just as happy. I’m convinced that some up the suggestions would not work but a few were, be a matchmaker so you are not in the limelight, practice talking in a mirror, don’t so small talk since you are not comfortable, and give short to the point information/advice and know what you are talking about.
I am not sold on the concept of extroverts being happier and introverts not as happy. I know it is what our text book says, and yet I have trouble believe it. I am an in between. Sometimes I am very quiet and just want to read, and other I want to be center stage in a play. I love being around people and talking. I also get tired of people and just want to be alone. I enjoy both. I feel like it just being happy doing different activities. I know my friend Matt is happy with video games and books. He does not know or think he is unhappy or not as happy as, his twin brother who is the extrovert. Andrew the other twin has lots of friends and is involved. Matthew has a few close friendships. They are both happy and loving their life. This topic really interests me and I am not sold for sure on how I feel about the idea. A brain scan may show one thing, but if a person feels happy and does not think they are missing anything, then why should we think they are not living as happy life as they could be?
Terms: personality, happiness, introvert, extrovert, arousal, control, autonomy, desire for control, perceived control, drive, social needs
There are two personality characteristics related to happiness and well-being. Two personality characteristics related to arousal and two related to control. The two personality characteristics related to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains who is happy. Extraverts are happier than the introverts. Extraverts are happy because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Who is unhappy is neuroticism. These people suffer emotionally.
Sensation seeking and affect intensity are two arousal related characteristics. Sensation is the need for novel, varied and intense situations and the willingness to take physical, social and financial risks for the sake of such experiences. To attain sensations, they seek new experiences and engage in risk-taking behaviors. Affect intensity is the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotion. They experience emotions strongly and show emotional hyperactivity in emotion-eliciting situations.
Perceived control and desire for control are related to control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes. This initiates a self-confirming cycle in which people with high perceived control initiate the effort that produces positive outcomes and increases subsequent perceptions of high control. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives. High desire to control people want to approach situations by wanting to control what happens to them, so they establish control and restore it. They embrace high standards, put forth the effort, persist at difficult tasks and interpret success/failure. When the control is threatened or lost, people exhibit distinct reactions of distress and depression.
I thought that sensation seeking and affect intensity were very interesting. I looked at sensation seeking to see more about it. The article that I was read was from 2 years ago and it talked about how sensation seeking is an inheritable personality trait associated with behavioral disorders that have high social costs. Dopamine is related to sensation seeking and because we all have different levels of dopamine, it makes us react differently to a situation than someone else. Although it may be in a person’s genes, it doesn’t mean that the person will for sure partake in a risk-taking behavior. http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20101006/sensation-seeking-may-be-in-the-genes
The second article I found on sensation seeking talked about how risk-taking isn’t the main point of sensation seeking, but instead it is the price people pay to experience these needs, change and excitements. Sensation seeking personalities can also be related to sociability because most risky behaviors, such as partying, reckless driving and sky diving are done with other people, not alone. This article also confirmed that it is a neurotic trait and relates to our genes. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/are-you-risk-taker
Terms: extraversion, neuroticism, happiness, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, self-confirming cycle, dopamine, risk-taking behavior, neurotic.
Chapter 13 discusses personality characteristics. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics: happiness, arousal and control. These three characteristics can vary tremendously from individual to individual.
Happiness is the first characteristic discussed. The book says that most people are happy despite differences in life circumstances. People tend to return back to their original level of happiness even after a life changing event. The book used the example of a person winning the lottery and a person in a car accident. These two events changed an individual’s life and produced two very different emotions. One experienced negative emotions and the other experienced positive emotions. Later these individuals were re-assessed, their level of happiness had returned to normal, to the level they experienced before the events. A personality characteristic that is associated with happiness is extraversion. People that have an extravert personality are often social able and enjoy being around others. Extraverted people are more likely to experience positive moods. Happiness comes in two forms: hedonic and eudaimonic. Hedonic well-being is the totality of one’s pleasurable moments. It represents what people think of as happiness. Eudaimonic involves engaging yourself in meaningful activities and doing what is worth doing.
The next thing this chapter discusses is arousal. Arosual represents a variety of processes that oversee alertness, wakefulness and activation. Arousal is depended on the environment around us. Arousal plays apart in our ability to perform. The inverted U-curve displays how performance and arousal are related. Too little stimulation or having excessive stimulation is not good for anyone. Too little stimulation is bad because the brain and nervous system need a moderate level of arousal. Too much stimulation can be stressful. Having a happy medium between the two is what most individuals strive for.
The last characteristic discussed is control. Control can be divided into two sub-categories: perceived control and desired control. Perceived control reflects the individual’s expectations that they can engage themselves in with the environment. Desired control is how individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives.
http://psychology.about.com/od/trait-theories-personality/f/introversion.htm
Introversion and extraversion became popular through the work of Carl Jung. According to many theories everyone has some degree of both introversion and extraversion. We just choose to prefer one or the other.
http://www.annholm.net/2012/03/introversion-vs-extraversion-the-tip-of-the-jungian-iceberg/
Susan Cain says that introversion is a preference for focusing one’s energy and attention.
I found both of the articles interesting to read about and there different arguments.
Terms used: introversion, extraversion, arousal, control, happiness, hedonic, eudaimonic, perceived control and desired control
Chapter 13 is about personality characteristics. I found this to be a very interesting chapter and the introduction was particularly good at summarizing what would be covered and warning away from generalizations. Not all people fall into extremes that are discussed in this chapter, and the extreme on either side are small percentages that are not the only options for a person’s personality trait in that area. The visuals from the chapter, especially the first, were very helpful. People are not either one or the other personality characteristic, they can be in the middle, either, neither, or some of both. The motivation of personality characteristics is based upon three main areas in this chapter; happiness, arousal, and control.
Happiness is the first discussion point of the chapter though it is not defined. I suppose it is a commonly understood concept, being happy, the feeling of pleasantness it brings is universal. People are generally happy regardless of situation and status. Even those who go through major life events, both positive and negative, return to being a fairly static level of happy a year or so afterwards. Those who tend to be more happy, compared to others, are extraverts. An extravert is someone who has a few key characteristics; sociability, assertiveness or social dominance, and adventurous. They are more sensitive to the rewards in social situations and tend to have a greater capacity for emotion than their counterparts, introverts. An introvert is the opposite of an extravert, they tend to be withdrawn and avoid social situations. Neuroticism is the opposite of happy extraversion, it is characterized by negative affect and regular dissatisfaction. Those high in neuroticism experience more negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, fear, and anger.
The second characteristic mentioned in the chapter is arousal. It is defined as “a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation”. Within the topic of arousal, there are four principles connecting arousal and motivation; arousal level is a function of environmental stimulation, behavior occurs to increase or decrease arousal, underaroused persons seek an increase in arousal, and overaroused persons seek a decrease in arousal. Levels of arousal are cause for different levels of engagement. Low arousal is boredom, medium levels of arousal are associated mostly with pleasure, and high arousal is stress and anxiety. There is an inverted “u” diagram to show this phenomenon and the main argument against that “u” is there is no explanation, just the depiction. Sensation seekers are people who are constantly searching for arousal increases and stimulation. They thrive on novel experience and taking risks they consider worthwhile. Those who rate high on sensation seeking typically have low levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO) in their brains. MAO is used to break down neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Having less breakdown means they have more of those in their body which can generate approach behavior and decrease inhibitions. Another facet of arousal is affect intensity; the intensity with which someone feels their emotions. Someone who is affect intense would feel emotion experiences strongly while those who are affect stable feel emotion in a more mild way. The affect intense person may be more sensitive to changes in arousal as an explanation for the difference.
Lastly, the chapter discusses control. Control is defined in two ways; perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is the belief that one has control over the environment and the outcomes of events they attempt to influence. For someone to have perceived control, the outcome they desire must be attainable and the environment must be somewhat predictable. Those high in perceived control with persist longer and put in more effort than those with low perceived control when encountering a semi-structured event. There exists a self-fulfilling cycle with perceived control. Those who are high will put forth more effort and thus typically affect the outcome in the way they desire, solidifying their perception. Those with low perceived control will typically put forth less effort and persist for less time typically resulting in their low perception solidifying, as well. Desire for control differs from perceived control in that those high in desire for control want control regardless of how much impact they actually have and the situations level of responsiveness to their efforts. So, the desire for control is the extent to which a person desires to have control over their life. Those high in desire for control tend to take on leadership positions in groups and want to make their own decisions in life. Those low in desire for control tend to avoid responsibility and prefer to have others make their decisions for them. Those high in desire for control feed into their own illusion of control, the overestimation of how much actual control they have over their environment. This illusion of control impacts the high desire for control person’s evaluations of their own impact. They would typically take the credit when things go well and blame outcomes on unstable things when it didn’t go their way. When they lose control, those high in desire for control respond with learned helplessness. If a situation is uncontrollable, they are stressed and anxious, becoming depressed.
When doing my internet search, I first typed “desire for control” into Google and clicked the fourth hit. A blog post reviewing a book about choices and choosing (“The Art of Choosing” by Sheena Iyengar). The information the author presented was very interesting and they mention how the desire to control leads to our desire to have choices and then a subsequent inability to make a choice. It starts at a young age she says and I can see that in kids, especially when I think about the little boy I used to babysit always asking for me to think of new things to do. I wonder if the desire for control is something we teach our kids or if it is more innate, like extraversion/introversion. I then typed “child personality” in and got a hit that made me feel more on the innate side. There are definite personality traits for younger kids, the shy ones that venture out slowly or the ones that bolt away constantly, claiming things for their own. I feel that a lot of what this chapter discusses has a base in innate temperament; personality is more biological than situational. Maybe the idea that people never really change isn’t too far from true. Some change is possible but if personality is more biological, then there isn’t much we can do about it. That would bring about a whole different discussion in parenting and how much of a child’s temperament is the “fault” of their parents’ upbringing. A few very interesting finds and topic overall.
Terms: extravert, introvert, neuroticism, arousal, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, desire for control, illusion of control
http://www.theteamw.com/2010/03/29/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-31-the-desire-for-control-and-choices-is-built-in/
http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/social/understanding-child-personality/
The chapter begins with the suggestion to look at personality characteristics in normal distribution. This perspective is better than dividing people into categories. Then a section describes how extraversion and neuroticism affect happiness. The three facets of extraversion are sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. People with these qualities experience positive emotion more frequently. Neuroticism is the opposite of emotional stability. Neurotic people are more sensitive to negative emotion. A strong BAS leads to extraversion, while a strong BIS leads to neuroticism. The terms BAS and BIS were explained in the Prefrontal Cortex and Affect section of Chapter 3. The author also introduced the hedonic and eudaimonic types of well-being. Hedonic well-being is the kind of happiness in this chapter, and eudaimonic well-being will be presented in Chapter 15.
The section on arousal first presents the inverted-U curve, which shows us that moderate arousal leads to best performance. It also describes human differences in arousal baseline and reaction to stimulation. These differences explain the behavior of sensation seeking. Then affect intensity is described as the psychological appraisal of physiological responses. The author selected perceived control and desire for control to explain personal control beliefs. Perceived control influences engagement, and the influence of desire for control is shown in Figure 13.7. The desire for control also becomes a liability when the situation allows little control.
I looked up assertiveness, and found many products and services that use this specific quality to facilitate stress management or stress reduction. Several websites provide an interesting comparison between being assertive and being aggressive. An aggressive person often harms others in the search of satisfaction, while an assertive person treats others with respect and trust. This characteristic distinguishes between an assertive person and a bully. Several products on websites teach people how to be assertive so they can get what they want and reduce stresses in their lives. Two websites provide steps we can follow for free.
Links:
http://www.mindtools.com/stress/pp/Assertiveness.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/assertive/SR00042
Terms: normal distribution, extraversion, neuroticism, sociability, assertiveness, venturesomeness, behavioral activation system, behavioral inhibition system, Prefrontal Cortex, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, arousal, affect intensity, perceived control, engagement
Chapter thirteen discusses personality characteristics such as extraversion and neuroticism in regards to happiness. Extraversion explains, “Who is happy?” and neuroticism explains, “Who is unhappy?” Extraverts are more responsive to rewards in the environment and neurotics are more responsive to punishments in the environment. This chapter also discussed control. The perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control is when you believe you are able to produce desired outcomes. Desire for control is how motivated a person is to produce their desired outcomes.
I found it interesting when the book discussed the idea that everyone has a happiness set point. Meaning that people react to different life events, but they eventually always come back to their normal level of happiness. The book gave two different examples. There were a lottery winner and the victim of a serious injury. They are two different examples. One has a positive impact and the other has a negative impact. However a year after both situations most people would be back at their normal happiness set point. I found this to be an interesting topic so this is what I chose to look up.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec07/happiness.aspx
I found the above article online and it had the same examples that the book had. It also went on to discuss the idea that if people wish to make themselves happier that may want to focus more on changing their situation and focus less on changing their specific emotional mood. Meaning that the environment has an impact on our happiness. If you continue to have happy events going on in your life (wedding or having a child) then you are going to be happier than if you have sad events (death in the family or losing a job) going on in your life. This makes perfect sense to me because obviously if we have certain big life events going then it will change our mood, but then we eventually go back to our normal or set point.
http://mysuperchargedlife.com/blog/the-science-of-happiness-your-happiness-set-point/
This website had a chart of our happiness. It was a pie chart that showed that fifty percent of our happiness is from our set point, ten percent is from circumstances, and forty percent is from intentional activity. I think this makes quite a bit of sense because I do think that our set point is a big chunk of our happiness. However I do think that our circumstance would account for more than just ten percent. I guess you could argue that your intentional activity can lead to your circumstance because if you are intentionally trying to make something happen then eventually that is going to land you in some sort of circumstance. That sounded confusing, but hopefully you understand what I am trying to say.
Terms: Personality, extraversion, neuroticism, rewards, punishment, perceived control, desire for control, happiness set point
In Chapter thirteen there’s a discussion of happiness, arousal, and control. Each one of these topics are motivational principles that relate to personality characteristics. Happiness can be found in most people, it just depends on their life circumstances. The book mentions how both a lottery winner and accident victims can all shed light on being happy, even though they are involved with dramatic life events which lead into strong emotions. People react strongly to life events, but they somehow return to the level of happiness they had experienced before these events happened. Extraversion and happiness play a big role in personality characteristics on defining being a happy person. There are three ways to define extraversion, the first is sociability, the second is assertiveness, and the third is venturesomeness. Sociability is being able to interact with people during social situations. Assertiveness is connected to social dominance. Venturesomeness is where you seek out and look for stimulation situations that you’ll enjoy be apart of. Extraverts are generally more happier and have positive moods, than introverts do. There are two types of happiness, the first is hedonic which reflects a pleasant life. The second is eudaimonic which concerns self-realization. Neuroticism is the personality characteristic that feels dissatisfied and unhappy. They suffer more emotionally, then those who are emotionally stable. Here is where they normally harbor disturbed and troubling thoughts, so because they’ve experienced a bad life event they will have a more pessimistic outlook and continue to hang unto that bad event, long after the bad event is over. Basically to sum extraverts and neurotics up, extraverts are generally happy people, while neurotics are generally unhappy people.
Arousal govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation and are all apart of the processes that are cortical, behavioral, and automatic mechanisms. Performance and emotion play a big role. If you have a low level of arousal you’ll produce a poor performance, where if you have a moderate level of arousal the experience will come out more pleasurable. Low stimulation produces boredom and restlessness, high stimulation produces tension and stress. People generally want to escape from over stimulating environments. A sensation seeking person is a personality characteristic that’s related to arousal, a high seeker is always in search of ways to increase their arousal through new and exciting experiences. While low seekers tolerate having a regular routine. Risk-takers are the ones who seek to be involved with risky hobbies and are the high seekers. Some hobbies could include, gambling, cigarette smoking, travel, skiing or snowboarding, boxing, etc.
Then there’s control, here is where some people desire to make their own decisions, influence others, assume leadership roles, and be more prepared for certain situations. Perceived control is the way people can interact with their environment that either produce desired or undesired outcomes. When dealing with engagement, when someone has high engagement they are strong and persistent which leads to having positive emotions, while having low engagement people tend to be more passively, so therefore negative emotions are brought about. The want to have desire for control is how individuals are motivated to have control over their own life styles.
I did some more research on risk taking events. In this article I found that one in five people, who are mainly young males. It’s not just a simple “death wish” anymore, but studies have shown that the brain is possibly linked to the arousal and pleasure mechanisms that it may offer a thrill that could be connected to addiction. This may help us out when it comes to survival mode as a species.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/risk
In this article it talks about taking dumb and intelligent risks. They say it’s a bad idea to take a dumb risk, but in turn it’s as equally stupid to pass up an intelligent risk, where you have a positive outcome and your potential downside can be very limited.
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/01/intelligent-risk-taking/
Terms: happiness, arousal, control, extraversion, hedonic, eudaimonic, neurotic, performance, emotion, sensation seeking, risk taking, perceived control, high and low engagement, desire for control
Chapter 13 first started out by talking about experience-sampling methods and how people would wear a palm pilot and record throughout the day how they were feeling. The findings showed that a majority of people stated that they were feeling happy. The chapter later discussed how every person has a different level of happiness. Everyone is different. There are three motivational principles related to personality characteristics, one is happiness, two is arousal, and three is control. The book later discusses these in depth. Any situational event offers the potential to affect all three of these subject experiences. The book gave a lot of personality characteristics. Extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, perceived control, and desire for control are all reasons why different people have different motivational and emotional states even in the same situation and event. All situations vary in how they stimulate and arouse a person. They also vary in the amount of control given. Many people are in a balance between sensation seekers and sensation avoiders. There are a few people who are on one end of the spectrum or the other. The chapter then talked about a person’s set point and how happiness is as much in our genes as it is in our personality and the events in our life only control how happy we are for a short amount of time. In the book it took two people who were in a horrible car accident and someone who won the lottery and measured there happiness. One person was very happy and one person was traumatized and felt little happiness but after about a year both people was on the same level of happiness or set point of happiness. Everyone has two set points. One is for positive emotionality and one is for negative emotionality. Happiness can be an independent indicator of our well-being. The book then talked about extraversion and how people who are extroverted tend to be happier than people who are introvert. Extroversion has three facets. One is sociability, or the preference for an enjoyment of other people and social situations. Two is assertiveness, or a tendency toward social dominance, and three is venturesomeness, or a tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations. Extroverts are happy whether they are with others or alone and they posses a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions. Behavioral activating system or BAS is the brain system that detects and regulates signals of reward in the environments. The motivational function of the BAS is to energize approach-oriented, goal directed behavior. Their signal of reward strongly activates their BAS. Introverts only mildly activate their BAS. Arousal represents a variety of processes that create alertness, wakefulness, and activation. The processes that are activated by arousal are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic mechanisms. Under arousal is shown to enable a person to think clearly and create a person to run out of things to think of. A person may begin to dream while awake after long periods of under arousal. Over arousal can be just as bad as under arousal. Stressful environments upset a person emotional state, impair cognitive activity, and accelerate physiological processes. Over stimulation can cause anxiety, irritability, and anger. Many people have a desire for control. They have perceived control and desired control. Perceived control can create positive outcomes and desire for control makes people strive to make their own decisions and influence others.
Terms: perceived control, desired control, set points, over arousal, under arousal, extroverts, introverts, Behavioral activating system or BAS, experience-sampling methods, happiness, Extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect intensity, positive emotionality, negative emotionality
After reading the chapter I wanted to figure out what kind of person I was, if I was introvert or extrovert. I first took a test that was in TIME Health and Family. The test said that many people fall along a continuum and people can express both quality’s but if it had to pick I fell more along the line of an extrovert. http://healthland.time.com/2012/01/27/quiz-are-you-an-introvert-an-extrovert-or-an-ambivert/ I also looked at how well couples work if one person is introvert and one is extrovert and I looked at a dating do’s and don’ts written by Jeannie Assimos and she said couple work out very well if they are opposites. She said introverts often feel grateful that their extroverted partners make the atmosphere light-hearted and casual and they do so much of the talking. Extroverts in the relationship like it because introverts give them permission to explore their serious and introspective sides. I thought this was really interesting. http://www.eharmony.com/blog/2012/01/24/five-tips-for-a-great-introvert-extrovert-relationship/
Chapter 13 is a discussion of personality characteristics focusing on the three motivational principles related to personality characteristics including happiness arousal and control. There are many different constructs to happiness and it is a common topic of research. Research shows that many people from different parts of life will claim that they are happy. Many people have a ‘set point’ that regulates their happiness that can be explained by individual differences in our personalities. When comparing extroverted personality types and introverted personality types, extraverts are emotionally happier because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions. Another personality trait that is associated with un-happiness is neuroticism, a person who feels chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Happiness is also broken into two types, hedonic well-being-ones pleasurable moments and reflects a pleasant life, and eudaimonic well-being- engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and doing what is worth doing.
The second principle discussed in this chapter was arousal. Arousal is a process that controls alertness, wakefulness, and activation and has four principles that contribute to motivation. First, a persons arousal level is a function of how stimulating the environment is. Second, people engage in behavior to increase or decrease their arousal levels. Third, people seek out opportunities to increase their arousal levels and when over aroused they will seek opportunities to decrease their arousal levels. Being both over aroused in stressful situations and under aroused in non stimulating situations can be detrimental to a person and people usually tend to try and escape from these situations. These four levels create motivation in individuals to create a balance in arousal levels. The relationship of arousal level and performance level is been shown in what is called a U-Shaped curve. When people prefer a continual external supply of brain stimulation they are said to be sensation seeking. Sensation seekers tend to seek out varied, novel, complex and intense experiences even if they come with a high cost of physical, social, or legal well being. They also tend to seek out new experiences constantly and tend to participate in risky behavior like riding a motorcycle.
The final personality characteristic is that of control. There are two forms of control, perceived control which is the differences in people’s performance and the need to produce positive outcomes, and desire control which is the extent to which people strive to make their own decision, assume leadership, influence others, and enter situations in overly prepared ways and reflex the extent to which individuals are willing to take control over the events in their lives. Perceived control influences ones engagement, emotion, coping, and challenge seeking meaning that high perceived control people show higher levels of effort. Desire control individuals tend to perceive that they can control such outcomes through their personal effect which often creates what is know as control illusion. When an individual with high desire for control power and control is threatened, they tend to experience anxiety, depression, dominance, and assertive coping.
In this chapter the topic that I found most interesting was that of happiness and how it is important to both emotion and motivation. When doing some further research online, I found a lot of the same information that chapter 13 presented in the book. LiveScience.com talked about how different life events can bring up different levels of happiness for individuals, but we tend to always revert back to the previous level of happiness. They are also looking into research in how individuals hold on to the extra burst of happiness they may be experiencing. CNN.com also stresses on the importance of happiness in saying that happiness raise nearly every business and educational outcome, having more of a motivational affect in these areas.
Terms: Happiness, Arousal, Control, Extraversion, Introversion, Neuroticism, Sensation Seeking, Control, Perceived Control, Desired Control
http://www.livescience.com/20131-study-finds-key-happiness.html
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/19/opinion/happiness-success-achor/index.html
Chapter 13 talking about three main aspects of personality; control, arousal, and happiness. It talked about six different types of personality characteristics, and was very interesting to me. The two personality characteristics related to happiness and well-being that the book talked about was extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains to us who’s happy. Extraverts are happier individuals than introverts, because they have a stronger behavioral activating system that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Extraversion predisposes someone to have a positive emotionality, and an approach temperament. When they enter a new situation, they seek out the potential benefits of the situation and experience positive emotions and show approach-orientated behavior. Neuroticism explains the opposite of extraversion, or who is unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a higher behavioral inhibition system and respond more to signals of punishment in the environment. When they enter a new situation, they seek out the potential punishing aspects of it and experience negative emotions and show avoidance-orientated behavior. Sensation seekers have the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and are willing to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the these purposes. They seek new experiences and engage in risk-accepting behavior. Affect intensity is the strength in which someone experiences their emotions. Affect-intense people experience emotions very strongly and show emotional hyperactivity when the elicit their emotions. Affect-stable people experience things mildly and only show minor fluctuations in their emotional reactions. Perceived control is the capacity to start and regulate one’s behavior to achieve the desire outcome while avoiding the negative outcome. When this is strong, people engage in tasks with active coping and positive emotion, and stay on-task and the probability that they will achieve their desired outcome increases. When perceived control is weak, they engage in tasks half-heartedly and show passivity and negative emotion, and this decreases the likelihood of favorable outcomes. Desire for control reflects the motivation a person has to control the events in their lives.
I decided to look at sensation seeking, as that seemed the most interesting topic in this chapter. I always like to know why people do the things they do, especially obscure things like engaging in risky behavior.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-real-story-risk/201210/sex-and-the-single-primate
This is the first article I looked at, and it talks about how people are driven to engage in risky behaviors, and talked a little bit about research that was done that consisted of forty male students who were given information about these women who were in flattering and not-so-flattering photographs, about whether or not they used condoms, and how many sexual partners they had. And consistently the males chose the women who were more attractive in the photographs to engage in sexual activities with, regardless of the information presented and the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. It also talked about the theory that men have shorter lives than women because they are more likely to engage in risk-related competitive behavior than women.
https://www.dana.org/media/detail.aspx?id=23620
This is the second article I looked at, which talked about neuroscience, and was pretty interesting because I’m currently in a biopsychology class. A study done using fMRI show that different brain areas are activated in high- vs. low-sensation seekers in response to strongly arousing stimuli. This article also talked about Marvin Zuckerman’s research on the topic. It also talked about various ways that this is expressed behaviorally, by disinhibtion, thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, and boredom susceptibility. Identical twin studies show that heritability accounts for about 60 percent of individual variance in sensation-seeking behavior, and it has to do with the dopamine receptors in the brain.
Terms: control, arousal, happiness, extraversion, neuroticism, sensation seeking, affect, affect-intense, affect-stable, perceived control, desire for control.
Chapter 13 was the first chapter that started the discussion of individual differences and highlighted personality characteristics. The motivational principles of a person’s personality are happiness, control and arousal. This makes sense if you think about it, as if someone asked you what parts of your personality motivated your behaviors you would probably answer what makes you happy, what makes you aroused (granted, unless you are a weirdo or very familiar with personality and psychology you probably wouldn’t use that wording) and control. The book gave the example of taking a test can make you unhappy, it has a high arousal rate, and the outcome is somewhat within your control. You may not enjoy taking them and try to get out of taking tests as much as possible in your choices in life (which is a motivating adaptive behavior) but when you are faced with one, it is physiologically arousing (it creates tension, stress, or can be stimulating) and it can be within your control as you can study as much as you want within the time restrictions of learning of the test and taking the test. All of these can move you to motivate different behaviors. Happiness is very much a subjective experience as the majority of people, no matter their situation will say they are generally happy. We can feel different ways of happiness by winning a lotto scratch game in contrast with having a serious car accident and experiencing happiness that we made it out alive. These are very different views on happiness but affect our emotions and motivations differently. The man that wins the lotto scratch game may find that he wants to experience that sensation and happiness again so the emotion, arousal and happiness motivate him to continue playing the game, continuing the behavior that gave him the feeling in the first place. However, the man that survived the car wreck may not wish to ever feel the arousal and happiness like that again and decides to take the subway to work from now on, changing the behaviors that lead to the situation. Personality type can also affect happiness. The Five Factor model of personality is the most widely accepted model of personality today. It splits the personality up in to 5 different facets to which the individual can be measured a long a spectrum of: either very high, very low or somewhere in the middle. These five facets are: extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness. Those that score high on extraversion usually tend to experience a higher rate of happiness, just like those that score low on neuroticism may feel similarly high feelings of happiness. This is because extraverts enjoy more positive moods, more sociable, and are more sensitive to the rewards in most social situations. On the flip side, neurotics have a predisposition to experience negative affect and feel chronically dissatisfied. This might because a person high in neuroticism tends to be emotionally unstable and a ‘slave to their emotions’. Arousal is controlled by the brain, skeletal muscular system and autonomic nervous system. It is the physiological response to situational experiences and is the bodily feeling of an experienced emotion. The book breaks how arousal affects emotion and thus motivation in to 4 parts: (1) the arousal level is dependent on the stimulation level of the environment, (2) people’s behavior is based on increase or decrease in arousal, (3) when under aroused, people seek out situations to increase arousal, (4) when over aroused, people seek out situations to decrease arousal. The arousal process is best understood by likening it with my 3 year old son. If he is under aroused then he is bored and I know that he will be especially naughty trying to get attention (good or bad, any attention is good to him during these times) and be bouncing off the walls – this tends to look a lot like boredom. When he is over aroused or over stimulated, he can become cranky and lead to behaviors that he knows will motivate me to take him out of the situation (more than likely home from Chuck E. Cheese) so that he can decrease his arousal and ends up cuddled up with me on the couch. The desire for control is the extent to which the individual is motivated to be in control of the events in their lives. Some have a low desire and some have a high desire – both can affect the way we are motivate our behaviors. Perceived control is the way in which people feel in control of the events in their lives. This can lead to different emotions and motivations because those that have a high perceived control tend to be happier and have more positive life outcomes. This is because when bad things happen they feel that it is something they are in control of; the same is experienced when good things happen. When bad things happen to those who have a low perceived control they think it is because of bad luck. This outlook leads to the way we view outcomes and emotions.
http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/381/Control-Perceived.html
This perceived control can effect an individual’s health as well. Those people that have a strong sense of perceived control tend to be healthier because “Perceived control reflects the degree to which an individual believes that a situation is controllable and that he or she has the skills necessary to bring about a desired outcome” and therefore feel they are in more control of their lives no matter the outcome. They are able to say ok, I need to do this differently. I thought this site was extremely interesting.
http://dccps.cancer.gov/brp/constructs/perceived_control/pc3.html
This was yet another example of a person’s perceived control on their health and gave an example of a two-process model of perceived control. It highlighted the importance of the relationship between perceived control and secondary control. Secondary control is the way we adapt and change to the environment.
TERMS: happiness, extraversion, introversion, neuroticism, arousal, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, sensation seeking, control, perceived control, desire for control, brain, skeletal muscular system, autonomic nervous system
Chapter 13 was about three motivations principals related to personality characteristics, happiness, arousal and control. Within these motivational principals discussed were two personality characteristics. The book states that happiness is as much in our genes and personality as it is in the events in our lives. The two personality characteristics that are discussed in the chapter about happiness are extroversion and neuroticism. To define extraversion, personality psychologists discuss its three facets, sociability, the performance for and enjoyment of other people and social situations. Assertiveness is a tendency toward social dominance. Ventursomeness, a tendency to seek out and enjoy exciting stimulating situations. Extroverts are happier than introverts because they have stronger BAS that makes them highly responsive to signals of reward in the environment. Neuroticism is defined as predisposition to experience negative affect and to feel chronically dissatisfied and unhappy. Neurotics suffer emotionally, they had an avoidant temperament. Neurotics have stronger BIS that make them highly responsive to signals of punishment in the environment. Arousal, one of the motivational principals, represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness and activation. The two personality characteristics that the book discusses for arousal are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risk for the sake of such experience. People seek sex and drugs and engage in risk-accepting behaviors. Affect Intensity represents the strength with which individuals typically experience their emotions. Individuals experience their emotions only mildly and show only minor variations in their emotional reactions. The last motivational principal is control, the two personality characteristics are perceived control and the desire for control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate the behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and prevent undesirable ones. Desire for control reflects the extent to which people are motivated to control the events in their lives.
Terms: Happiness, Extroversion, Neuroticism, Arousal, Sensation Seeking, Affect Intensity, Control, Perceived Control, Desire for Control
Chapter 13 talks about individual differences in happiness, arousal, and control. It first identified two personality characteristics related to happiness and well-being, two related to arousal, and two related to control. This explains why we have personality differences and what they mean for motivation and emotion.
The two personality characteristics for happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. Extraversion explains the "Who is happy?" question while neuroticism explains the "Who is unhappy?" question. Extraverts are happier than introverts. Extraverts are happy because they ave a stronger behavioral activating system (BAS) that is highly responsive to reward. Neurotics suffer emotionally because they have a stronger behavioral inhibition system (BIS) that makes them more responsive to punishment.
Extraversion has a predisposition that guides the individual toward a positive emotion (BAS) and approach temperament, while neuroticism is toward a negative emotion (BIS) and avoidance temperament.
Two characteristics for arousal are sensation seeking and affect intensity. Sensation seeking is the need for varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks just for the thrill. To get this thrill, sensation seekers try to find new experience and have a risk-accepting behavior (such as gambling). Affect intensity refers to the strength of the emotion that they individual experiences. Affect-intense individuals experience strong emotions and show emotional hyperactivity. Affect-stable individuals experience emotions mildly and show minor spikes in their emotional reactions.
Perceived control and the desire for control are two characteristics related to control. Perceived control concerns the capacity to initiate and regulate behavior needed to gain desirable outcomes and prevent undesirable ones. When perceived control is strong, individuals do tasks with active coping and positive emotion. Whereas if it is weak, you will see half-hearted effort and signs of passive and negative emotion. The desire for control reflects how motivated people are to control their lives. High desire for control will reflect that a person will want to control what happens to them. So they strive for control and restore it when it is lost or threatened. To establish control, high desire for control people will embrace high standards and aspirations. They will put forth great effort when challenged, persist on difficult tasks, and interpret success/failure feedback in a self-serving or control-enhancing way.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr03/acting.aspx
I chose to do search extraversion and happiness because it interested me. In this article, it discusses research done on extroverts and introverts relating to happiness. It says that generally, extraverts are happier, but research has not been done on introverts acting like extroverts (until this article). They studied college students on four characteristics of extraversion (talkativeness, assertiveness, adventurousness and energy level). They found that extraverts were generally happy, but he did not expect to find that introverts acting like extraverts would also display happiness. In fact, they found that introverts were happier when they were displaying extraverted characteristics than when they acted introverted.
http://www.happinessstrategies.com/blog/2008/02/01/how-to-be-happy-13-act-like-youre-an-extravert-even-if-you-arent/
This is also on extraversion and happiness. This article supports the findings in the previous one. This article is part of a series of them that give tips to become happy. In this one, it says act like an extravert, even if you aren't on. It says that there is a strong correlation for extraversion and happiness. This also says that happy introverts act like extraverts. Also that simply acting extraverted leads to feeling happier. Then it goes on to suggest how to act this way by initiate a social date, or starting one conversation a day, or even plan activities for yourself.
Chapter 13 was all about personality and personality characteristics. It talked about how personality characteristics are related to different moods and/or attributes, such as happiness, arousal, and control. Two personality characteristics that are related to happiness are extraversion and neuroticism. This is because extroverts are more in tune with rewards in the environment. Neurotics are sensitive to emotions, making them more prone to try harder to avoid negative emotions. The two personality characteristics related to arousal are sensation seekers and affect intensity. This is because sensation seekrs are more likely to take risks which causes arousal. Affect intensity is how strong or weak with which someone experiences emotions. I definitely have a strong affect intentisity. So the more intense your affect intensity is, the more arousal you experience. Finally, I mentioned control, or rather perceieved control. The two characteristics that affect perceived control are the ability to emit behcaiors to produce desired outcomes and avoid negative consequences.
The most interesting thing I read about and decided to research was self control or rather perception of control. I found some very interesting stuff on this, however my problem is I don't know how much I agree with what I found. Obviously since I found multiple articles on this subject, I would assume they were right. But is it still okay for me to disagree? I hope so, becuase I really do disagree with some of the research I found.
Most of the sites said the same as the textbook and that we do not control our environment, but rather we do control the perceptions of our levels of control. Basically we control how much control we THINK we have. It is kind of confusing. According to my research, this level of perceived control is regulated by negative feedback we recieve from the actions and behaviors we emit. This is the part I do not agree with. Last year I took Behavior Modification and I really liked that class. We talked about in this class how reinforcement is much more powerful than punishment. Basically, getting rewarded is better than getting punished and will have a strong effect on our behaviors that we emit in the future. Therefore I found it interesting that this was said that our perceptions of our control deal with negative feedback rather than positive feedback.
Along those lines I also found interesting the questions you should ask yourself to evaluate how much self control (or rather perceived self control) you have. I found this surprising because I thought the questions seemed overly simple. This would maek sense since they were tailored to an elementary grade students to ask themselves these questions. Though as a college senior, I thought I could also apply these questions to myself. When I did ask myself these questions, I really think that what they said my level of perceived control matched with how much control I really thought I had. I found out that I believe that I have high control in my life. I have confidence that I'm able to emit the necessary behaviors that can produce desireable outcomes and avoid aversive consequences.
terms
sensation seeking, affect intensity, neuroticism, extraversion, perceived control,
http://medicine.jrank.org/pages/381/Control-Perceived.html
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/nursing/kwallston/perceived%20control%20and%20health.pdf
http://www.apa.org/research/action/glossary.aspx
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051103001856
Chapter 13 discussed personality differences in happiness, arousal, and control. The chapter began with happiness. It stated that most people are generally happy, but their level of happiness changes slightly from day to day. We, as human beings, have a happiness “set point.” People tend to remain overall steadily happy, or unhappy, over the course of their life. People who are generally happy have positive emotionality, while people who are generally unhappy have a negative emotionality. Those who are more extraverted are typically those individuals with higher levels of positive emotionality. Extraversion is characterized by sociability, assertiveness, and venturesomeness. People who possess high levels of all of these traits are considered extraverts. Extraverts have a strong behavioral activating system, a system that generates People who lack these traits are typically considered introverts. According to the text, extraverts are happier than introverts because they are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most social situations and because they possess a greater inherent capacity to experience positive emotions.
On the other side of the coin are neurotics, people who possess a generally negative affect and are dissatisfied and unhappy with life in general. They are individuals who lack emotional stability. They are often worried, distressed, angry, depressed, etc.
Next, the chapter discussed arousal. According to the chapter, “arousal represents a variety of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness, and activation.” Arousal contributes a great deal to performance and emotion. When an individual’s arousal level is too high or too low, it can cause the individual to perform worse. When an individual’s arousal level is moderate, the individual’s performance tends to be optimal. The moderate level of arousal is also when a person experiences the greatest feeling of pleasure. Research has shown that the brain and nervous system need and want a moderate level of arousal. It is when they function best. Being over- or under-stimulated can affect cognition in a negative way. People also have different baselines of arousal. Some people are sensation seeking, that is, they seek out new and novel experiences and are willing to face risks that they may encounter along the way. Those who are sensation avoidant become overwhelmed, distressed, and anxious in experiences that cause high brain stimulation and arousal. These individuals prefer to live by daily routines. Humans possess different levels of affect intensity as well. Affect-intense individuals are more sensitive to changes and experiences and have a wider range of emotions day to day. Affect-stable individuals experience a much more narrow range of emotions and remain relatively stable emotionally. Most people experience affect intensity at more moderate levels.
Lastly, the chapter addressed control, more specifically, perceived control and desire for control. Perceived control is how much an individual believes they can interact with the environment to produce desired outcomes and avoid undesired outcomes. Perceived control contributes to an individual’s willingness to exert effort towards an activity or situation. Desire for control is defined in the chapter as “the extent to which individuals are motivated to establish control over the events in their lives. These individuals always want control, whether they can obtain control or not over the situation. In many cases, they have the illusion of control, they believe they have control over a situation when they really do not. Desire for control is a positive characteristic to possess when put into achievement situations. People with a higher desire for control are more likely to persist longer than people who have a lower desire for control.
I find sensation seeking to be an interesting topic. It is fascinating to me how people will do anything and everything to achieve a high level of arousal. One article that I found discussed how people in the Winter Olympic games are more likely to be sensation seekers because of the high risks involved in the events. I also found an article that discussed recreational shark diving. How and why people would swim with sharks for fun I will never know. But the people that do definitely possess the quality of sensation seeker.
Terms: Happiness, negative emotionality, extraversion, introversion, arousal, sensation seeking, sensation avoidant, affect-intense, affect-stable, control, perceived control, desire for control.
https://socialpsychologyeye.wordpress.com/tag/sensation-seeking/
http://www.sandiego.org/articles/scuba-diving/swimming-with-sharks-in-california.aspx
Chapter 13 begins with examining the question, “are you happy” and
that our happiness and unhappiness can actually be examined through
the “experience-sampling method”. This method basically requires the
participant to record their emotions throughout the day. This also
shows that people are generally more happy then unhappy, although some
may be happier than others but this can be due to different people’s
personality characteristics.
The chapter then leads into the individual differences in our
happiness, arousal and control, these are all motivational principles
related to personality characteristics. People’s happiness usually has
a “set point” in which your happiness ranging from different age
groupings doesn't drastically change. There are two different
personality characteristics related to our happiness are extroversion
and neuroticism. Extroversion is the characteristic that can help
explain who is happy, the book explains that extroverts are happier
then introverts because of their stronger behavioral activating system
which in turn makes them highly sensitive and responsive to rewarding
situations in their environment. The characteristic, neuroticism,
describes and explains who is unhappy. People who are neurotic suffer
emotionally and are emotionally unstable; this is due to their
behavioral inhibition system, which makes them just the opposite of
BAS in that they are highly sensitive and responsive to punishment in
their environment.
Looking at arousal it governs alertness, wakefulness, and activation
and these processes are cortical, behavioral, and autonomic
mechanisms. These four principles can be seen as an “inverted-U”
between arousal and performance. With the inverted-U it shows a low
level of arousal which produces poor performance and as arousal
increases so does performance; meaning that the function of optimal
performance means that you’re aroused but not too aroused.
Perceived control and the desire for control represent two
characteristics of personality. Perceived control concerns the
capacity to initiate behavior needed to gain our desired outcomes and
to prevent those outcomes we do not desire. When we have a strong
control we engage in things that active our coping and positive
emotions, meaning we will probably obtain the outcomes we desire. So
when our control is weak we engage in tasks with not as much desire
therefore our outcome is unsatisfying. This perceived control produces
a self-confirming cycle. With strong control you are most likely to
control the things that happen in your life, meaning you’re going to
strive for positive outcomes and set high goals and aspirations but
when are control is threatened or we are placed in an environment in
which we don’t feel comfortable or in control then we exhibit
reactions such as distress and depression.
For my article I looked at extroversion and introversion.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/019188699090128E
- This article shows studies that correlates happiness with
extroversion, but the reason why is not known, it also points out that
the reason for this could be that extroverts are more sociable,
meaning they are more likely to engage in a survey or lab experiment.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2120187/Revenge-introverts-Its-assumed-extroverts-best-life-new-book-claims-quite-opposite-.html
The reason why I picked this article is because the title was
intriguing. This article just touches on that it may not be as
negative to be introvert as others make it out to be, introverts chose
their relationships wisely and would rather pick one friend to have a
meaningful conversation with then small talking with a bunch of
people. I think I can see both sides of being an introvert or
extrovert; I personally am more introvert and I wouldn't say im
antisocial or anything, im just more cautious about my actions and I
would rather be really close with a handful of people then have 18348
facebook friends.
Terms: happiness, unhappiness, experience-sampling method, personality
characteristics, set point, extroversion, neuroticism, extroverts,
introverts, behavioral activating system, neurotic, behavioral
inhibition system, intervted U, arousal , perceived control,