Agentic personality as mediator of social capital on developmental outcomes in the transition to adulthood: Evidence from Shanghai,China

Drawing upon a sample of 1153 young people in Shanghai, China, this study investigates how agentic personality mediates between social capital embedded in a range of social contexts (family, friendship, association, and linking connection) and developmental outcomes during the transition to adulthood. The results of a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis provide a good fit for the sample as a whole. The overall findings support the hypotheses that a higher level of agentic personality, including resilience, self-efficacy, and self-esteem, is associated with higher levels of developmental outcomes. Agentic personality also mediates the effects of family, friendship, associational, and linking social capital on developmental outcomes. Family social capital is predictive of university students' identity achievement and academic achievement, but not of their mental health. Linking social capital is only predictive of identity achievement. Unexpectedly, friendship social capital and associational social capital are predictive of a lower level of academic achievement and mental health, respectively, despite their positive influences on all three developmental outcomes through their significant effects on agentic personality. The study provides empirical support for the importance of social capital in promoting young people's transition to adulthood. Implications for theory, practice, and policy are also discussed.     

Path analysis of relationship among personality,perceived stress,coping, social support,and psychological outcomes

AIM: To provide a structural model of the relationship between personality traits, perceived stress, coping strategies, social support, and psychological outcomes in the general population. METHODS: This is a cross sectional study in which the study group was selected using multistage cluster and convenience sampling among a population of 4 million. For data collection, a total of 4763 individuals were asked to complete a questionnaire on demographics, personality traits, life events, coping with stress, social support, and psychological outcomes such as anxiety and depression. To evaluate the comprehensive relationship between the variables, a path model was fitted. RESULTS: The standard electronic modules showed that personality traits and perceived stress are important determinants of psychological outcomes. Social support and coping strategies were demonstrated to reduce the increasing cumulative positive effects of neuroticism and perceived stress on the psychological outcomes and enhance the protective effect of extraversion through decreasing the positive effect of perceived stress on the psychological outcomes. CONCLUSION: Personal resources play an important role in reduction and prevention of anxiety and depression. In order to improve the psychological health, it is necessary to train and reinforce the adaptive coping strategies and social support, and thus, to moderate negative personality traits.     

Relations entre le Big Five Inventory français et le manuel diagnostique des troubles mentaux dans un échantillon clinique français

The Big Five Inventory (BFI) was designed to provide researchers and clinicians with an efficient measure of individual differences on the so-called Big Five factors of normal personality: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. The present article has two objectives: a) to introduce the BFI-Français, a French language version of the BFI; and b) to use the BFI-Français to study the relations between normal personality traits and the DSM classification of psychiatric disorders. Three French samples (161 medical students, 200 hospital employees, 106 psychiatric inpatients) completed the 44-item BFI-Français. DSM-IV diagnoses were made for each inpatient. The psychometric data obtained from the combined French samples were compared to US and Spanish samples. Means, standard deviations, internal consistency reliabilities, and factor structure were similar in all samples; thus, the BFI-Français provides an efficient, psychometrically sound way to measure the five personality factors in French samples. As expected, scores on the BFI-Français were related systematically to DSM diagnoses on both Axis I and II. Findings were consistent with the recent literature; since past research has relied primarily on Anglo-American and non-clinical samples, the present findings contribute importantly to establishing the generality of the links between personality traits and DSM.     

Parenting and social competence in school: The role of preadolescents' personality traits

In a study of 230 preadolescent students (mean age 11.3 years) from the wider area of Athens, Greece, the role of Big Five personality traits (i.e. Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness and Extraversion) in the relation between parenting dimensions (overprotection, emotional warmth, rejection, anxious rearing) and social competence in school was examined. Multiple sets of regression analyses were performed. Main effects of Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience were identified. Limited evidence for moderation and some support of gender-specific parenting was found. Agreeableness and Extraversion interacted with paternal overprotection, whereas Neuroticism interacted with maternal and paternal rejection in predicting social competence. Mean differences in gender and educational grade were reported. The relationship between environmental effects (such as parenting during early adolescence) and social adjustment in school is discussed in terms of the plasticity and malleability of the preadolescents' personality characteristics.     

A multi-label,semi-supervised classification approach applied to personality prediction in social media

Social media allow web users to create and share content pertaining to different subjects, exposing their activities, opinions, feelings and thoughts. In this context, online social media has attracted the interest of data scientists seeking to understand behaviours and trends, whilst collecting statistics for social sites. One potential application for these data is personality prediction, which aims to understand a user’s behaviour within social media. Traditional personality prediction relies on users’ profiles, their status updates, the messages they post, etc. Here, a personality prediction system for social media data is introduced that differs from most approaches in the literature, in that it works with groups of texts, instead of single texts, and does not take users’ profiles into account. Also, the proposed approach extracts meta-attributes from texts and does not work directly with the content of the messages. The set of possible personality traits is taken from the Big Five model and allows the problem to be characterised as a multi-label classification task. The problem is then transformed into a set of five binary classification problems and solved by means of a semi-supervised learning approach, due to the difficulty in annotating the massive amounts of data generated in social media. In our implementation, the proposed system was trained with three well-known machine-learning algorithms, namely a Naïve Bayes classifier, a Support Vector Machine, and a Multilayer Perceptron neural network. The system was applied to predict the personality of Tweets taken from three datasets available in the literature, and resulted in an approximately 83% accurate prediction, with some of the personality traits presenting better individual classification rates than others.     

Heritability estimates of the Big Five personality traits based on common genetic variants

According to twin studies, the Big Five personality traits have substantial heritable components explaining 40–60% of the variance, but identification of associated genetic variants has remained elusive. Consequently, knowledge regarding the molecular genetic architecture of personality and to what extent it is shared across the different personality traits is limited. Using genomic-relatedness-matrix residual maximum likelihood analysis (GREML), we here estimated the heritability of the Big Five personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness for experience) in a sample of 5011 European adults from 527 469 single-nucleotide polymorphisms across the genome. We tested for the heritability of each personality trait, as well as for the genetic overlap between the personality factors. We found significant and substantial heritability estimates for neuroticism (15%, s.e.=0.08, P=0.04) and openness (21%, s.e.=0.08, P<0.01), but not for extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. The bivariate analyses showed that the variance explained by common variants entirely overlapped between neuroticism and openness (rG=1.00, P <0.001), despite low phenotypic correlation (r=−0.09, P <0.001), suggesting that the remaining unique heritability may be determined by rare or structural variants. As far as we are aware of, this is the first study estimating the shared and unique heritability of all Big Five personality traits using the GREML approach. Findings should be considered exploratory and suggest that detectable heritability estimates based on common variants is shared between neuroticism and openness to experiences.     

Effects of Big Five,HEXACO, and Dark Triad on Counterproductive Work Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis

Purpose: This study investigates the effects of Big Five, HEXACO, and Dark Triad personality traits on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), and examines the moderating effects of countries where the studies were carried out, gender rate of samples, and scales used to measure personalities. Method: Following the rules of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), we include 74 empirical studies published between 2007 and September 2022 with 83 samples and 394 correlations. Studies are selected from both English databases such as Web of Science and Chinese databases such as CNKI. The meta-analysis and metaregression analysis were both performed using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) program, version 3.7. Results: Although emotionality is irrelevant to CWBs, other Big Five, HEXACO, and Dark Triad personality factors are all significant predictors of CWBs. The effect of Dark Triad (ρ = 0.412) is stronger than that of Big Five (ρ = −0.176) and HEXACO (ρ = −0.221). Gender negatively moderates the positive relationship between Dark Triad traits (total and subdimensions) and CWBs. The moderating effects of countries and scales are only significant for very few personalities. Conclusion: Personality traits are important antecedents of CWBs, and gender ratio plays a role as moderator for some personality traits. We propose that organizations should pay more attention to the mental health of employees and future studies could investigate other types of characteristics and moderators.     

Some Youths have a Gloomy Side: Correlates of the Dark Triad Personality Traits in Non-Clinical Adolescents

This cross-sectional study examined the Dark Triad personality traits and their correlates in non-clinical youths aged 12–18 years (N = 117). Child- and parent-report data were obtained on Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy as well as on Big Five personality factors and symptoms of aggression and delinquency. Results indicated that especially Machiavellianism and psychopathy were in a theoretically meaningful way related to Big Five factors: that is, both traits were associated with lower levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness/intellect, and higher levels of emotional instability. Further, Machiavellianism and psychopathy also emerged as significant and unique correlates of symptoms of aggression and delinquency, which further underlines the importance of these Dark Triad traits in the pathogenesis of disruptive behavior problems in youths.     

Brain correlates of pro-social personality traits: a voxel-based morphometry study

Of the five personality dimensions described by the Big Five Personality Model (Costa and McCrae 1992), Extraversion and Agreeableness are the traits most commonly associated with a pro-social orientation. In this study we tested whether a pro-social orientation, as expressed in terms of Extraversion and Agreeableness, is associated with a specific grey matter phenotype. Fifty-two healthy participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and completed the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), a self-report measure of the Big Five personality traits. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to investigate the correlation between brain structure and the personality traits of Agreeableness and Extraversion. We found that Extraversion was negatively correlated with grey matter density in the middle frontal and orbitofrontal gyri while Agreeableness was negatively correlated with grey matter density in the inferior parietal, middle occipital and posterior cingulate gyri. No positive correlations were found. These results suggest that pro-social personality traits seem to be associated with decreases in grey matter density in more frontal regions for Extraversion, and more posterior regions for Agreeableness.     

Self-reported reactive and regulative temperament in early adolescence: relations to internalizing and externalizing problem behavior and "Big Three" personality factors

The present study examined the relations between self-reported reactive and regulative temperament factors and psychopathological symptoms and personality traits in a group of non-clinical youths aged 9-13 years (N=208). Results showed that the reactive temperament factor of negative affectivity was positively associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms, whereas the regulative temperament factor of effortful control was negatively related to such symptoms. Further analyses provided some support for the notion that in particular the combination of high negative affectivity and low effortful control was associated with high symptom levels. Results also revealed specific relations between lower-order temperament traits and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. That is, fear and (low) attention control appeared to be more clearly associated with internalizing symptoms, whereas anger/frustration and (low) activation and inhibitory control were more convincingly linked to externalizing symptoms. Finally, relations with the "Big Three" personality traits were as anticipated, with high positive correlations between negative affectivity and extraversion/surgency and their Eysenckian counterparts of neuroticism and extraversion, respectively.     

Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions

Objectives

To test whether individual differences in gratitude are related to sleep after controlling for neuroticism and other traits. To test whether pre-sleep cognitions are the mechanism underlying this relationship.

Method

A cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted with a large (186 males, 215 females) community sample (ages=18-68 years, mean=24.89, S.D.=9.02), including 161 people (40%) scoring above 5 on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, indicating clinically impaired sleep. Measures included gratitude, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), self-statement test of pre-sleep cognitions, the Mini-IPIP scales of Big Five personality traits, and the Social Desirability Scale.

Results

Gratitude predicted greater subjective sleep quality and sleep duration, and less sleep latency and daytime dysfunction. The relationship between gratitude and each of the sleep variables was mediated by more positive pre-sleep cognitions and less negative pre-sleep cognitions. All of the results were independent of the effect of the Big Five personality traits (including neuroticism) and social desirability.

Conclusion

This is the first study to show that a positive trait is related to good sleep quality above the effect of other personality traits, and to test whether pre-sleep cognitions are the mechanism underlying the relationship between any personality trait and sleep. The study is also the first to show that trait gratitude is related to sleep and to explain why this occurs, suggesting future directions for research, and novel clinical implications.     

The association between the suicide crisis syndrome and suicidal behaviors: The moderating role of personality traits

BackgroundPersonality traits have been associated with long-term suicide risk but their relationship with short-term risk is still unknown. Therefore, to address this gap, we explored the moderating effect of personality traits on the relationship between the Suicide Crisis Syndrome (SCS) and short-term suicidal behaviors (SB).Sampling and MethodsAdult participants (N = 459) were administered the Suicide Crisis Inventory (SCI), a validated self-report questionnaire designed to measure the intensity of the Suicidal Crisis Syndrome, the Big Five Inventory for personality traits, and the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale for SB at intake and at a 1-month follow-up. The PROCESS macro in SPSS was used to test the moderation model. Covariates hypothesized to influence the results were added: age, gender, ethnicity, years of education, and depressive symptomatology on the Beck Depression Inventory. This study was a secondary analysis drawn from a larger study on the SCS.ResultsSCI total score had a significant positive relationship with SB at the 1-month follow-up for patients with lower levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness, respectively. Hence, these four traits were protective against SB. There was an association between SCI and SB for patients with high levels of neuroticism at the 1-month follow-up.ConclusionsHigh levels of neuroticism served as a risk factor, whereas high levels of the other Big Five traits were protective factors against short-term SB in the context of elevated SCS symptoms. Thus, personality traits play a role in moderating the relationship between the SCS and imminent SB.     

Resilience in relation to personality and intelligence

Resilience is a construct of increasing interest, but validated scales measuring resilience factors among adults are scarce. Here, a scale named the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA) was crossvalidated and compared with measures of personality (Big Five/5PFs), cognitive abilities (Raven's Advanced Matrices, Vocabulary, Number series), and social intelligence (TSIS). All measures were given to 482 applicants for the military college. Confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the fit of the five-factor model, measuring 'personal strength', 'social competence', 'structured style', 'family cohesion' and 'social resources'. Using Big Five to discriminate between well adjusted and more vulnerable personality profiles, all resilience factors were positively correlated with the well adjusted personality profile. RSA-personal strength was most associated with 5PFs-emotional stability, RSA-social competence with 5PFs-extroversion and 5PFs-agreeableness, as well as TSIS-social skills, RSA-structured style with 5PFs-conscientiousness. Unexpectedly but interestingly, measures of RSA-family cohesion and RSA-social resources were also related to personality. Furthermore, the RSA was unrelated to cognitive abilities. This study supported the convergent and discriminative validity of the scale, and thus the inference that individuals scoring high on this scale are psychologically healthier, better adjusted, and thus more resilient.     

Schizotypy versus openness and intelligence as predictors of creativity

Schizophrenia-spectrum risk alleles may persist in the population, despite their reproductive costs in individuals with schizophrenia, through the possible creativity benefits of mild schizotypy in non-psychotic relatives. To assess this creativity-benefit model, we measured creativity (using 6 verbal and 8 drawing tasks), schizotypy, Big Five personality traits, and general intelligence in 225 University of New Mexico students. Multiple regression analyses showed that openness and intelligence, but not schizotypy, predicted reliable observer ratings of verbal and drawing creativity. Thus, the 'madness-creativity' link seems mediated by the personality trait of openness, and standard creativity-benefit models seem unlikely to explain schizophrenia's evolutionary persistence.     

Trait emotional intelligence,the Big Five personality traits and isometric maximal voluntary contraction level under stress in athletes

ObjectivesThe purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of trait emotional intelligence (EI) and the Big Five personality traits on athletes’ ability to tolerate stress during isometric maximal voluntary contraction (MVC).MethodsFifty-two elite athletes with a mean age of 21.5 year (17 female) volunteered to participate. The Short Form Big Five Inventory and the Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test measured personality and trait EI, respectively. Electromyography (EMG) determined the MVC level of the triceps surae muscle group in the absence and presence of a stressor. The mental stressor was to count downwards, repeatedly subtracting 13 from a starting value of 1000.ResultsAthletes’ MVC values were positively associated with conscientiousness and trait EI regardless of the presence or absence of a mental stressor. Two hierarchical regressions were conducted to determine whether personality traits and trait EI could predict MVC values measured during the absence and presence of mental stressor. Results show that personality traits explain variability in MVC values measured in both the absence and the presence of a mental stressor. Further, trait EI increased the model's ability to predict MVC. Personality traits combined with trait EI had stronger predictive ability for MVC values during exposure to a mental stressor.ConclusionAthletes with higher levels of conscientiousness and trait EI may be able to tolerate more stress without a decrease in performance.     

Handedness predicts Conservative-Republican preference and eliminates relations of Big Five personality to political orientation using the 48 contiguous American states as analytical units

The two present nomothetic studies focused on the period from 1996 to 2012 to determine relations between handedness and political orientation using the 48 contiguous American states as analytical units. The estimated percentage of left-handers in each state operationally defined handedness. A composite measure of Conservative-Republican preference was created from CBS/New York Times/Gallup polls of state resident conservatism and the percent in each state voting Republican in each presidential election from 1996 to 2012. Study 1 showed that state levels of left-handedness correlated to an extremely high degree with Conservative-Republican preference (r?=??.80). As well, with common demographic differences between states reflected in socioeconomic status, White population percent, and urban population percent controlled through multiple regression, handedness still accounted for an additional 37.2% of the variance in Conservative-Republican preference. Study 2 found that each of the Big Five personality variables correlated significantly with handedness and with Conservative-Republican preference, but in the opposite direction. Furthermore, Study 2 demonstrated quite surprisingly that all Big Five personality relations to Conservative-Republican preference were eliminated when handedness was controlled in multiple regression equations. For all regression equations, the global Moran’s I test specifically developed for detecting residual spatial autocorrelation indicated no significant spatial autocorrelation.     

Personality traits in early psychosis: relationship with symptom and coping treatment outcomes

Aims: This study aimed to determine personality profiles of individuals with early psychosis based on the Five Factor Model of personality and assess the predictive value of personality traits or profiles on therapeutic outcomes of two group treatments for recent onset psychosis: cognitive behaviour therapy or skills training for symptom management. Methods: One hundred and twenty‐nine individuals with early psychosis were recruited to participate in a randomized controlled trial. The participants were randomized to one of two group treatments or to a wait‐list control group. Measures included a personality inventory (NEO Five Factor Inventory) and outcome measures of symptomatology (Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale‐Expanded) and coping strategies (Cybernetic Coping Scale). Results: Cluster analyses revealed three different personality profiles (based on the Five Factor Model) – none specifically linked to psychotic symptoms. No links were revealed between personality traits and symptom change scores. Personality traits were linked to therapeutic improvements in active coping strategies, with extraversion accounting for 17% of the variance. Neuroticism was linked to increased use of passive coping strategies. Active coping strategies were also predicted by profile 1 (holding the highest openness score) with 26% of the variance explained and by profile 3 (the highest extraversion score), with 14% of the variance explained. Conclusions: Individuals with early psychosis can present with distinct personality profiles as would be expected in a non‐clinical population. Personality traits do not appear to influence symptomatic treatment outcomes but are linked to behavioural changes, such as the use of coping strategies.     

Étudiants à risque de décrochage selon le profil de personnalité : Resilients,Overcontrollers et Undercontrollers

IntroductionPreventing students from dropping out of higher education, and particularly university, requires understanding the different factors that can lead to individuals failing to complete their studies. The role of personality in academic success or failure remains poorly understood. Block's personality profile model (Resilients, Overcontrollers, Undercontrollers) has been used to link personality traits to academic performance. The objective of this study is to apply this model to the risk factors of dropping out of higher education courses, including psychological vulnerability, level of autonomy, and the feeling of not being able to keep up. This involved validating Block's profiles in relation to the Big Five personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness), and their links with the risk factors for dropping out.MethodsThis study is based on a quantitative survey of 196 students (mean age 21.32 years ± 3.11 years, with 63% females) taking higher education courses in France. Three measuring instruments were used: a French scale of Autonomy-situnomy, the French version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI-Fr) for personality traits, and the French version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) for psychiatric morbidity. One item empirically evaluated the feeling of not being able to keep up. Data was processed using a k-average cluster analysis to establish the personality profiles, then by analysis of variance measures to evaluate the differences between them, and Bravais-Pearson correlation coefficient to identify links between risk factors and profiles.ResultsConscientiousness (Control) was the trait most strongly associated with high autonomy and a low feeling of not being able to keep up. There was also a positive influence of Extraversion and Agreeableness on autonomy. On the other hand, Neuroticism scores were related to greater psychiatric morbidity, a greater feeling of not keeping up, and lower autonomy. The results for personality profiles confirm the stability of Block's profiles (Resilients, Overcontrollers and Undercontrollers) and their relevance in higher education contexts. Resilients and Overcontrollers had greater autonomy and a lower feeling of not keeping up, but Resilients had the lowest psychiatric morbidity. Undercontrollers were associated with the greatest risk factors: lowest autonomy, the highest psychiatric morbidity and the strongest feeling of not keeping up. Gender comparisons indicated that women were more affected by psychiatric morbidity, but had higher Conscientiousness and autonomy.     

Social capital and psychiatry: review of the literature

Social capital is an umbrella term used to describe aspects of social networks, relations, trust, and power, as a function of either the individual or a geographical entity (e.g., a city neighborhood). Increased attention is being paid to the role that social capital can play in determining a variety of physical health outcomes, though less attention has been paid to its role in determining mental health outcomes. This relative inattention continues despite a long historical tradition in psychiatry of exploring the role that socio-environmental factors can play in the etiology and course of mental illness. In this review, we begin by tracing the historical development of the concept of social capital, describing and analyzing competing definitions. We then proceed to review the published studies that examine the relationship between social capital and mental health-looking first at studies that focus on depression and anxiety, and second at studies that focus on psychoses. After briefly exploring whether social capital can have a detrimental effect on mental health, we discuss how knowledge regarding social capital may aid the clinician and mental health services. We go on to make a number of suggestions relevant to methodological, theoretical, and empirical advancement. These suggestions include refining the definitions of social capital, paying attention to communities without propinquity, and constructing contextual indicators of social capital. We conclude by remarking that social capital may be a promising heuristic for studies in community psychiatry and may even help individual clinicians in designing treatment plans. Despite all this promise, however, there is a lack of strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that social capital protects mental health.