Negative Personality Characteristics Research Articles

Alcohol portrayal on prime-time television: manifest and latent messages.

The research in this article is designed to improve our understanding of alcohol messages embedded in prime-time television, especially when adolescent characters are shown portraying or consuming alcohol. Manifest and latent content analyses are used to assess the frequency of alcohol portrayal in prime-time television and the personality traits (powerful, admirable, smart) of characters shown consuming or portraying alcohol on prime-time television. The sample includes 224 hours of programming across 276 programs on four major networks. Alcoholic beverages were the most frequently portrayed food or drink. The prominence of alcohol in prime-time television applies to all characters, including adolescents. The proportion of all food and drink incidents accounted for by alcohol equaled .14 for male and .20 for female adolescent television characters. Moreover, when adolescent characters are involved with alcohol incidents, they are more likely to be shown consuming this alcohol than are adults. A significant finding was that adolescents portraying alcohol in programming were shown to have significantly more negative personality characteristics than did characters in older age groups. Compared with other studies, this study finds higher rates of alcohol portrayal by adolescents on prime-time television. The negative character portrayal of adolescents involved with alcohol is encouraging. However, adult and high-income characters involved with alcohol, who might serve as role models for younger adults are, on average, shown with positive personality characteristics.

Individual differences in the experience of emotions

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the important role of individual difference factors in the experience of emotion. We begin by describing several commonalties across two major approaches to the study of emotion, namely, the neuropsychological and cognitive perspectives. Both approaches provide some degree of support for the role of individual differences and cognitive factors in the experience of emotion. This paper builds on these commonalities by reviewing personality and psychopathology findings that indicate the contribution of both positive and negative personality characteristics (e.g., extraversion, optimism vs. neuroticism, trait anxiety) to the types of cognitive appraisals and emotional responses exhibited by different individuals. A self-schema model of emotion is presented as a means of integrating more fully this individual differences perspective with a theory of emotion. In this model, self-schema content provides the basis for individual differences in underlying core themes and self-evaluative beliefs. The model describes how self-schema content distinctions across individuals may have a differential impact on the initial processing of an event, evaluation of this event with respect to the self, and emotional and behavioral output. Several examples are then presented to illustrate the increased predictability afforded by this individual differences-based self-schema model of emotion. The application of this model to treatment and prevention issues in clinical and health psychology is also briefly considered. Finally, the model is integrated with other theoretical perspectives on emotion by describing a number of additional research and theoretical implications. Emphasis is placed on the need for further clarification of both cognitive and emotional components of an individual differences perspective on the study of emotions.

Cardiac autonomic control and hostility in healthy subjects

Disordered autonomic regulation of the cardiovascular system has been implicated in sudden cardiac death and coronary artery disease in numerous studies. Bigger et al1 showed that survival after myocardial infarction was predicted by high-frequency (HF) power of the heart period power spectrum, a measure of vagal modulation of RR intervals,2 by power in other frequency bands, and by the low-frequency (LF) to HF power ratio, a measure that has been used to estimate sympathovagal balance. Increased heart rate, reflecting global cardiac autonomic control, is associated with development of atherosclerosis in animal models3 and age-adjusted levels of atherogenic lipoproteins in humans.4 Heart rate-lowering interventions such as surgical ablation of the sinoatrial node and β-adrenergic antagonists have antiatherogenic effects.3Cardiovascular regulation by the autonomic nervous system may link negative personality characteristics, e.g., hostility, with increased risk of coronary artery disease, an association generally supported by available data.5,6 Two views about the nature of the link, the constitutional and the transactional theories, specify different mechanisms. The constitutional theory holds that the autonomie activity associated with risk of coronary artery disease is caused by a constitutional characteristic which also accounts for hostility.5 In this view, hostility is a marker of factors that influence brainstem cardioregulatory centers. The transactional theory holds that hostile persons interact with their environment in a way that creates interpersonal conflict and reduces social support.5 Since in laboratory experiments, psychological Stressors decrease HF power in the heart period power spectrum,7 the stressfulness of the transactions that persons high in hostility have with their interpersonal environments suggests an inverse relation between hostility and HF power, which in turn may increase risk of coronary artery disease.

Previous personal experience and reactions to depression and physical disability.

AB STRACT: Interpersonal models of depression posit that the display of depressive behavior elicits interpersonal rejection and devaluation from others. Two experiments are reported that examined the effects of prior experience with people with disability on interpersonal reactions to depression expressed by a person with a disability. In the first study, subjects rejected further involvement with the depressed person and perceived this person to be socially impaired. In the second study, subjects ascribed significantly more negative personal characteristics to the depressed person and evidenced more stereotypic attitudes toward persons with disability than subjects who viewed the nondepressed person. These results provide evidence that regardless of prior personal experience with people with disability, subjects have negative perceptions and beliefs about a depressed person with a disability.

Young long distance runners. Physiological and psychological characteristics.

This study presents the physiological and psychological characteristics and the running histories of 16 subjects who began long distance running at age 4-12 years. Running duration was 3-15 years (mean 8.4 +/- 3.6 yrs). Seven children completed 41 marathons, seven 30-mile races, and eight 60-mile races. The other nine competed at shorter distances. All trained at 30-105 miles/week. Two stress fractures, one back sprain and one knee injury occurred. Athletes who reported injuries from recollection may have underreported some injuries. At age 15.4 +/- 4.2 years bone age was 15.3 +/- 2.6 years and height was at 51 +/- 26.0 percentile. Athletes had larger left ventricular diastolic diameter, higher max O2 uptake, and delayed onset of anaerobic metabolism compared to controls. Psychological profile: IQ = 121 +/- 11, scholastic grade point average (GPA) (n = 13) was less than or equal to 3.0 in four, 3.6-3.9 in four, and 4.0 in five. Cattell 16 personality factor (PF): Seven scored above the 85th percentile on boldness, warmth, conformity, sensitivity, dominance, and high drive with tension. Eight scored above the 93rd percentile for self discipline and emotional stability. Human Figure Drawing showed a distorted body image in seven. Two developed anorexia nervosa, and another girl committed suicide. Thus, high physical fitness and no growth retardation were observed. These runners, however, shared distinct positive and negative personality characteristics. The relatively high incidence of severe psychological disorders possibly suggests a need for psychological screening for young children entering a strenuous training program and for close monitoring for development of psychological problems during the program.

Personality Characteristics of Subjects High and Low in Apprehension about Communication

Subjects who were either high or low in apprehension about communication completed the 16 PF questionnaire. An analysis of variance was utilized to compare subjects' apprehension and personality characteristics. Subjects high and low in apprehension differed significantly on seven personality factors, but highly apprehensive subjects' scores still fell within the first standard deviation for the normal United States population. Subjects low in apprehension about communication scored outside the first standard deviation on three personality factors. High apprehension then is not necessarily associated with negative personality characteristics, while low apprehension about communication is associated with several positive attributes.

Analysis of selection criteria for medical residents: Differences between primary care and traditional pathway committees

A self-administered questionnaire was given to faculty members of resident selection committees for traditional and primary care medical residencies at one institution. Results from both committees revealed that applicant performance in medicine clerkships and communication from the applicant's department of medicine faculty, especially the chairman, were key criteria in evaluating the strength of each applicant. Negative personal characteristics were important in determining undesirable resident candidates. Primary care program selectors put more emphasis on the applicant's personal goals, skills, and interests, especially career plans in general internal medicine, than did their traditional program counterparts. Other differences included the tendency of traditional program committee members to value collegial communications and the perceived quality of the applicant's medical school more than the primary care members did.

Consistency of some personality measures as a function of stage of menstruation.

Two groups of college women were administered the Hand Test and selected scales from the Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey. One group was tested in the premenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle (days 20-25); the other group at the beginning of the cycle (days 5-9). Significant differences were obtained, but the results did not corroborate earlier findings that negative personality characteristics are associated with the premenstrual phase of the cycle. The implications of the results and relevant methodological considerations are discussed.

Overweight as master status: a replication.

The study reported here is a replication of an earlier study exploring association of body image with other personality characteristics. In both studies it was predicted that overweight body image would be associated with more negative personality characteristics than normal weight body image, and evidence was found supporting the predictions. In this second study 290 college students were asked to write stories about drawings of normal and overweight males or females and to describe the personalities they created on a personality scale. They were also asked to rank groups of people including overweight and obese persons on a social distance scale. In general the replication supported the findings of the first study.

The salience of overweight in personality characterization.

It is argued that the stigma attached to overweight or obesity often causes overweight to operate as a "master status." College students (N = 223) were asked to write stories about male and female stimulus characters who varied only in body image. It was hypothesized that subjects writing about overweight stimulus characters would be more likely than those writing about normal weight characters to (a) write sad or negative stories, (b) create unpleasant characters, and (c) describe their characters with more negative personality characteristics on a semantic differential personality scale. Support was found for part (a) and (b) of the hypothesis but not part (c). The relationships were stronger when the stimulus was a picture than when it was a descriptive paragraph and when the stimulus character was female rather than male. There was indication that female subjects were more likely to associate an overweight body image with an unpleasant personality than were male subjects.

MEMORY FOR DESIRABLE VERSUS UNDESIRABLE PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS

It was hypothesized that the results of memory searches are biased by an interaction between normative expectations about the relative preponderance of positive vs. negative personality characteristics and the evaluative nature of the question one is attempting to answer with memory-based information. To test the hypothesis, subjects viewed one of three slide sets in each of which equal numbers of desirable and undesirable personality characteristics were attributed to members of one of two groups. Amount of information to be processed was manipulated by the total number of slides to be viewed (48, 32, or 16). Following the slide presentations, half of the subjects in each condition were asked to estimate the number of desirable characteristics that had been attributed to the members of each of the two groups and half were asked to estimate the number of undesirable characteristics. As anticipated, with increasing amounts of information, subjects who were focused on undesirable characteristics in their memory search increasingly overestimated the number of desirable characteristics that had been presented. No such bias was found among subjects who were focused on desirable characteristics in their memory search.

Distortions of memory in depressed, formerly depressed, and never depressed college students.

Depressed, formerly depressed, and never depressed female college students were randomly assigned to success, failure, or neutral experiences on a sham measure of empathy ( ns = 12/cell). They then read descriptions of their supposed positive and negative intellectual and personality characteristics, and took a recognition memory test. Based on Beck's (1967) theory, it was predicted that depressed subjects would display negative biasing of memory after neutral or failure experiences and that the latent negative biases of the formerly depressed would be activated by failure. The predictions for depressed subjects were not confirmed. However, the memories of the formerly depressed for information about their intellectual qualities became negatively biased after failure. Beck's view that those predisposed to depression harbor latent negative cognitive biases received some support, but the results also indicated that his conception of global negative biasing of cognition during depression is over-simplified.

Projection: perceptions of causal responsibility and relative worth.

A number of social psychological studies have found that subjects “project” negative personal characteristics onto similar, but not different, others. A wide variety of theoretical explanations have been offered to explain these data. In order to advance conceptual understanding of the forces responsible for projection, two processes which may be operative are proposed and distinguished: (1) reference projection—in which the subject reduces his personal causal responsibility for a negative characteristic by believing that many others who are in his reference category share his fate, and (2) comparison projection—in which the subject reduces the negativeness of a characteristic by lowering the positions of others in his reference category, thereby raising his own relative position on the dimension. Factors which may influence the use of each technique are discussed, as is the connection between these processes and concepts from social comparison theory and attribution theory.

A prospective study of patients in chronic hemodialysis—IV: Pretreatment psychiatric and psychological variables predicting outcome

Twenty-three patients with chronic renal failure, described in a previous paper, who were psychiatrically and psychologically evaluated before beginning hemodialysis, were included in the study. Psychiatric and psychological pretreatment variables were intercorrelated to give a wider description of the patient group. Psychiatric and psychological data were also combined to better predict ability regarding rehabilitation. Positive ane negative personality characteristics are described. The rehabilitated patient seemed to be more stable, with an ability for positive identification and with a persistency of life pattern. Further prognostically favourable variables were regular social contacts, adequate reaction towards kidney disease, expectation of fast rehabilitation and other defence mechanisms than isolation only in the personality test. The presence or absence of all four variables gave a more valid prediction.