Most people's life satisfaction matches their personality traits: True correlations in multitrait, multirater, multisample data.

Despite numerous meta-analyses, the true extent to which life satisfaction reflects personality traits has remained unclear due to overreliance on a single method to assess both and insufficient attention to construct overlaps. Using data from three samples tested in different languages (Estonian, N = 20,886; Russian, N = 768; English, N = 600), we combined self- and informant-reports to estimate personality domains' and nuances' true correlations (rtrue) with general life satisfaction (LS) and satisfactions with eight life domains (DSs), while controlling for single-method and occasion-specific biases and random error, and avoiding direct construct overlaps. The associations replicated well across samples. The Big Five domains and nuances allowed predicting LS with accuracies up to rtrue ≈ .80-.90 in independent (sub)samples. Emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness correlated rtrue ≈ .30-.50 with LS, while its correlations with openness and agreeableness were small. At the nuances level, low LS was most strongly associated with feeling misunderstood, unexcited, indecisive, envious, bored, used, unable, and unrewarded (rtrue ≈ .40-.70). Supporting LS's construct validity, DSs had similar personality correlates among themselves and with LS, and an aggregated DS correlated rtrue ≈ .90 with LS. LS's approximately 10-year stability was rtrue = .70 and its longitudinal associations with personality traits mirrored cross-sectional ones. We conclude that without common measurement limitations, most people's life satisfaction is highly consistent with their personality traits, even across many years. So, satisfaction is usually shaped by these same relatively stable factors that shape personality traits more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Self- and informant-reported personality traits and vaccination against COVID-19.

As COVID-19 vaccines' accessibility has grown, so has the role of personal choice in vaccination, and not everybody is willing to vaccinate. Exploring personality traits' associations with vaccination could highlight some person-level drivers of, and barriers to, vaccination. We used self- and informant-ratings of the Five-Factor Model domains and their subtraits (a) measured approximately at the time of vaccination with the 100 Nuances of Personality (100NP) item pool (N = 56,575) and (b) measured on average ten years before the pandemic with the NEO Personality Inventory-3 (NEO-PI-3; N = 3,168). We tested individual domains' and either items' (in the 100NP sample) or facets' (in the NEO-PI-3 sample) associations with vaccination, as well as their collective ability to predict vaccination using elastic net models trained and tested in independent sample partitions. Although the NEO-PI-3 domains and facets did not predict vaccination ten years later, the domains correlated with vaccination in the 100NP sample, with vaccinated people scoring slightly higher on neuroticism and agreeableness and lower on openness, controlling for age, sex, and education. Collectively, the five domains predicted vaccination with an accuracy of r = .08. Associations were stronger at the item level. Vaccinated people were, on average, more science-minded, politically liberal, respectful of rules and authority, and anxious but less spiritual, religious, and self-assured. The 100NP items collectively predicted vaccination with r = .31 accuracy. We conclude that unvaccinated people may be a psychologically heterogeneous group and highlight some potential areas for action in vaccination campaigns.

Processing emotions from faces and words measured by event-related brain potentials.

Affective aspects of a stimulus can be processed rapidly and before cognitive attribution, acting much earlier for verbal stimuli than previously considered. Aimed for specific mechanisms, event-related brain potentials (ERPs), expressed in facial expressions or word meaning and evoked by six basic emotions - anger, disgust, fear, happy, sad, and surprise - relative to emotionally neutral stimuli were analysed in a sample of 116 participants. Brain responses in the occipital and left temporal regions elicited by the sadness in facial expressions or words were indistinguishable from responses evoked by neutral faces or words. Confirming previous findings, facial fear elicited an early and strong posterior negativity. Instead of expected parietal positivity, both the happy faces and words produced significantly more negative responses compared to neutral. Surprise in facial expressions and words elicited a strong early response in the left temporal cortex, which could be a signature of appraisal. The results of this study are consistent with the view that both types of affective stimuli, facial emotions and word meaning, set off rapid processing and responses occur very early in the processing stage.

Conceptual and methodological issues in the study of the personality-and-culture relationship.

Culture-and-personality studies were central to social science in the early 20th century and have recently been revived (as personality-and-culture studies) by trait and cross-cultural psychologists. In this article we comment on conceptual issues, including the nature of traits and the nature of the personality-and-culture relationship, and we describe methodological challenges in understanding associations between features of culture and aspects of personality. We give an overview of research hypothesizing the shaping of personality traits by culture, reviewing studies of indigenous traits, acculturation and sojourner effects, birth cohorts, social role changes, and ideological interventions. We also consider the possibility that aggregate traits affect culture, through psychological means and gene flow. In all these cases we highlight alternative explanations and the need for designs and analyses that strengthen the interpretation of observations. We offer a set of testable hypotheses based on the premises that personality is adequately described by Five-Factor Theory, and that observed differences in aggregate personality traits across cultures are veridical. It is clear that culture has dramatic effects on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from which we infer traits, but it is not yet clear whether, how, and in what degree culture shapes traits themselves.

How much time does it take to discriminate two sets by their numbers of elements?

The ability to evaluate the number of elements in a set-numerosity-without symbolic representation is a form of primitive perceptual intelligence. A simple binomial model was proposed to explain how observers discriminate the numerical proportion between two sets of elements distinct in color or orientation (Raidvee et al., 2017, Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 79[1], 267-282). The binomial model's only parameter ß is the probability with which each visual element can be noticed and registered by the perceptual system. Here we analyzed the response times (RT) which were ignored in the previous report since there were no instructions concerning response speed. The relationship between the mean RT and the absolute difference |ΔN| between numbers of elements in two sets was described by a linear regression, the slope of which became flatter as the total number of elements N increased. Because the coefficients of regression between the mean RT and |ΔN| were more directly related to the binomial probability ß rather than to the standard deviation of the best fitting cumulative normal distribution, it was regarded as evidence that the binomial model with a single parameter - probability ß - is a viable alternative to the customary Thurstonian-Gaussian model.

How are local orientation signals pooled?

Visual perception is capable of pooling multiple local orientation signals into a single more accurate summary orientation. However, there is still a lack of systematic inquiry into which summary statistics are implemented in that process. Here, the task was to recognize in which direction, clockwise or counter-clockwise, the mean orientation of a set of randomly distributed Gabor patches (N = 1, 2, 4, and 8) was rotated from the implicit vertical. The mean orientation discrimination accuracy did not improve with the increase of the number N of elements in proportion to the square-root-N, as could be expected if noisy internal representations were arithmetically averaged. The Proportion of Informative Elements (PIE), defined as the percentage of elements having an orientation different from the vertical, also affected the discrimination precision, violating the arithmetic averaging rules. The decrease in the orientation discrimination precision with the increase of the PIE would suggest that the orientation pooling could be more adequately described by a quadratic or higher power mean. Thus, we parameterized the averaging process for the power parameter of the generalized mean formula. The results indicate that different pooling rules in different trials may apply, for example, the arithmetic mean in some and the maximal deviation rule in others. It is concluded that pooling of orientation information is a relatively inaccurate process for which different perceptual cues and their combination rules can be used.

Personality traits relate to chronotype at both the phenotypic and genetic level.

INTRODUCTION: Diurnal preferences have been linked to personality but often with mixed results. The present study examines the relationships between sleep timing (chronotype), diurnal preferences, and the Five-Factor Model of personality traits at the phenotypic and genetic level. METHODS: Self- and informant-reports of the NEO Personality Inventory-3, self-reports of the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, and DNA samples were available for 2,515 Estonian adults (Mage  = 45.76 years; 59% females). Genetic correlations were obtained through summary statistics of genome-wide association studies. RESULTS: Results showed that higher Conscientiousness and lower Openness to Experience were significant predictors of earlier chronotype. At the level of facets, we found that more straightforward (A2) and excitement-seeking (E5), yet less self-disciplined (C5) people were more likely to have later chronotypes. The nuance-level Polypersonality score was correlated with chronotype at r = .28 (p < .001). Conscientiousness and Openness were genetically related with diurnal preferences. The polygenic score for morningness-eveningness significantly predicted the Polypersonality score. CONCLUSION: Phenotypic measures of chronotype and personality showed significant associations at all three of levels of the personality hierarchy. Our findings indicate that the relationship between personality and morningness-eveningness is partly due to genetic factors. Future studies are necessary to further refine the relationship.

Proximity model of perceived numerosity.

The occupancy model (OM) was proposed to explain how the spatial arrangement of dots in sparse random patterns affects their perceived numerosity. The model's central thesis maintained that each dot seemingly fills or occupies its surrounding area within a fixed radius ro and the total area collectively occupied by all the dots determines their apparent number. Because the perceptual system is not adapted for the precise estimation of area, it looks likely that the OM is just a convenient computational algorithm that does not necessarily correspond to the processes that actually take place in the perceptual system. As an alternative, the proximity model (PM) was proposed, which instead relies on a binomial function with the probability ß characterizing the perceptual salience with which each element can be registered by the perceptual system. It was also assumed that the magnitude of ß is proportional to the distance between a dot and its nearest neighbor. A simulation experiment demonstrated that the occupancy area computed according to the OM can almost perfectly be replicated by the mean nearest neighbor distance. It was concluded that proximity between elements is a critical factor in determining their perceived numerosity, but the exact algorithm that is used for the measure of proximities is yet to be established.

A method for detection of inattentional feature blindness.

In ensemble displays, two principal factors determine the precision with which the mean value of some perceptual attribute, such as size and orientation, can be discriminated: inefficiency and representational noise of each element. Inefficiency is mainly caused by biased inference, or by inattentional (feature) blindness (i.e., some elements or their features are not processed). Here, we define inattentional feature blindness as an inability to perceive the value(s) of certain feature(s) of an object while the presence of the object itself may be registered. Separation of the effects of inattentional (feature) blindness and perceptual noise has escaped traditional analytic methods because of their trade-off effects on the slope of the psychometric discrimination function. Here, we propose a method that can separate the effects of inattentional feature blindness from that of the representational noise. The basic idea is to display a set of elements from which only one contains information relevant for solving the task, while all other elements are "dummies" carrying no useful information because they do not differ from the reference. If the single informative element goes unprocessed, the correct answer can only be given by a random guess. The guess rate can be modeled similarly to the lapse rate, traditionally represented by λ. As an illustration, we present evidence that the presence versus lack of inattentional feature blindness in orientation pooling depends on the feature types present in the display.

Intraindividual Variability and Temporal Stability of Mid-Sleep on Free and Workdays.

People differ in their sleep timings that are often referred to as a chronotype and can be operationalized as mid-sleep (midpoint between sleep onset and wake-up). The aims of the present studies were to examine intraindividual variability and longer-term temporal stability of mid-sleep on free and workdays, while also considering the effect of age. We used data from a 2-week experience sampling study of British university students (Study 1) and from a panel study of Estonian adults who filled in the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire twice up to 5 years apart (Study 2). Results of Study 1 showed that roughly 50% of the variance in daily mid-sleep scores across the 14-day period was attributed to intraindividual variability as indicated by the intraclass correlation coefficient. However, when the effect of free versus workdays was considered, the intraindividual variability in daily mid-sleep across 2 weeks was 0.71 the size of the interindividual variability. In Study 2, mid-sleep on free and workdays showed good levels of temporal stability-the retest correlations of mid-sleep on free and workdays were 0.66 and 0.58 when measured twice over a period of 0-1 to 5 years. The retest stability of mid-sleep scores on both free and workdays sharply increased from young adulthood and reached their peak when participants were in late 40 to early 50 years of age, indicating that age influences the stability of mid-sleep. Future long-term longitudinal studies are necessary to explore how age-related life circumstances and other possible factors may influence the intraindividual variability and temporal stability of mid-sleep.

Perception of means, sums, and areas.

In this age of data visualization, it is important to understand our perception of the symbols that are used. For example, does the perceived size of a disc correspond most closely to its area, diameter, circumference, or some other measure? When multiple items are present, this becomes a question of ensemble perception. Here, we compare observers' performance across three different tasks: judgments of (i) the mean diameter, (ii) the total diameter, or (iii) the total area of (N = 1, 2, 3, or 7) test circles compared with a single reference circle. We draw a parallel between Anne Treisman's feature integration theory and Daniel Kahneman's cognitive systems, comparing the preattentive stage to System 1, and the focused attention stage to System 2. In accordance with Kahneman's prediction, average size (diameter) of the geometric figures can be judged with considerable accuracy, but the total diameter of the same figures cannot. Like the total length, the cumulative area covered by circles was also judged considerably less accurately than the mean diameter. Differences in efficiency between these three tasks illustrate powerful constraints upon visual processing: The visual system is well adapted for the perception of the mean size while there are no analogous mechanisms for the accurate perception of the total length or cumulative area. Thus, in visualizing data, using bubble charts proportional to area may be misleading as our visual system seems better adapted to perceive disc size by the radius rather than the area.

The Scientific Impact Derived From the Disciplinary Profiles.

The disciplinary profiles of the mean citation rates across 22 research areas were analyzed for 107 countries/territories that published at least 3,000 papers that exceeded the entrance thresholds for the Essential Science Indicators (ESI; Clarivate Analytics) during the period from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2019. The matrix of pairwise differences between any two profiles was analyzed with a non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS) algorithm, which recovered a two-dimensional geometric space describing these differences. These two dimensions, Dim1 and Dim2, described 5,671 pairwise differences between countries' disciplinary profiles with a sufficient accuracy (stress = 0.098). A significant correlation (r = 0.81, N = 107, p < 0.0001) was found between Dim1 and the Indicator of a Nation's Scientific Impact (INSI), which was computed as a composite of the average and the top citation rates. The scientific impact ranking of countries derived from the pairwise differences between disciplinary profiles seems to be more accurate and realistic compared with more traditional citation indices.

Does goal congruence dilate the pupil over and above goal relevance?

To better understand the mechanisms underlying preferential processing of affective stimuli (i.e., affective attention), it is useful to ask which appraisal dimensions characterize stimuli that capture affective attention. Viewed from such appraisal perspective, most accounts of affective attention predict that the appraisal of goal relevance (i.e. the overall relevance of a stimulus/event to one's current goals) should attract attention whereas some accounts also implicate the appraisal of goal congruence (i.e. the value of the stimulus with respect to these goals). We compared these accounts by investigating independent effects of goal relevance and goal congruence on attention capture operationalized through pupil dilation. Forty-seven participants completed a modified Monetary Incentive Delay task (MID) where they sought to maximize the amount of chocolate received at the end of the experiment, pupil data from forty-two participants were used in the final analysis. Implicating attention capture by goal relevance, we found that pupil size was increased by all win- and loss-related compared to neutral stimuli and by materialized wins and losses compared to non-materialized ones. By contrast, we did not find pupil dilation effects of goal congruence across three different operationalizations of this appraisal dimension. These findings suggest that goal congruence appraisal may not contribute to the aspects of affective attention reflected in pupil dilation over and above goal relevance appraisal.

Source method biases as implicit personality theory at the domain and facet levels.

OBJECTIVE: We tested predictions about the structure and magnitude of method biases in single-source personality trait assessments. We expected a large number of distinct biases that would parallel the observed structure of traits, at both facet and item levels. METHOD: We analyzed multimethod ratings on the Estonian NEO Personality Inventory-3 in a sample of 3,214 adults. By subtracting informant ratings from self-reports, we eliminated true score variance and analyzed the size and structure of the residual method biases. We replicated analyses using data (N = 709) from the Czech Revised NEO Personality Inventory. RESULTS: The magnitude of method biases was consistent with predictions by McCrae (2018, Psychological Assessment). Factor analyses at the facet level showed a clear replication of the normative Five-Factor Model structure in both samples. Item factor analyses within domains showed that facet-level method biases mimicked the facet structure of the instrument. CONCLUSIONS: Method biases apparently reflect implicit personality theory (IPT)-beliefs about how traits and trait indicators covary. We discuss the (collective) accuracy and possible origins of IPT. Because method biases limit the accuracy of single-source assessments, we recommend assessments that combine information from two or more informants.

Role of personality traits in reporting the development of adverse drug reactions: a prospective cohort study of the Estonian general population.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the role of the Five Factor Model (FFM) personality traits in reporting the development of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) when controlling for sociodemographic variables and health status. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: The Estonian Biobank of the Estonian Genome Centre, University of Tartu. PARTICIPANTS: 814 women and 543 men (mean age=47.9 years; SD=15.2) who after the initial enrolment in the Estonian Biobank were re-contacted for follow-up purposes about 5.3 years after the enrolment and for whom both self- and informant-reported personality data were available. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Participants who did not report having any ADRs at baseline but who reported ADRs at the follow-up about 5.3 years later versus participants who did not report any ADRs at either time point. The reports of developing ADRs were predicted from the FFM personality traits after statistically controlling for sociodemographic variables (age, gender and education), baseline indicators of health status (number of diagnoses and medicines taken, body mass index and blood pressure), and the change in health status between the two measurements. RESULTS: The results of a hierarchical binary logistic regression analysis showed that participants who reported the development of ADRs between the two measurements had higher levels of conscientiousness, were more likely to be women, were taking more medicines at baseline and had a higher increase in the number of medicines taken during the study period than participants who did not report any ADRs at either time point (all p values <0.05). Higher neuroticism (p=0.067) and a higher number of diagnosed diseases at baseline (p=0.053) also made marginal contributions to predicting the development of ADRs. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows for the first time that higher levels of conscientiousness and neuroticism are associated with reporting the development of ADRs.

Unusual Configurations of Personality Traits Indicate Multiple Patterns of Their Coalescence.

It is widely accepted that the Five Factor Model (FFM) is a satisfactory description of the pattern of covariations among personality traits, which supposedly fits, more or less adequately, every individual. As an amendment to the FFM, we propose that the customary five-factor structure is only a near-universal, because it does not fit all individuals but only a large majority of them. Evidences reveal a small minority of participants who have an unusual configuration of personality traits, which is clearly recognizable, both in self- and observer-ratings. We identified three types of atypical configurations of personality traits, characterized mainly by a scatter of subscale scores within each of the FFM factors. How different configurations of personality traits are formed, persist, and function needs further investigation.

The Role of Co-occurring Emotions and Personality Traits in Anger Expression.

The main aim of the current study was to examine the role of co-occurring emotions and their interactive effects with the Big Five personality traits in anger expression. Everyday anger expression ("anger-in" and "anger-out" behavior) was studied with the experience-sampling method in a group of 110 participants for 14 consecutive days on 7 random occasions per day. Our results showed that the simultaneously co-occurring emotions that buffer against anger expression are sadness, surprise, disgust, disappointment, and irritation for anger-in behavior, and fear, sadness and disappointment for anger-out reactions. While previous studies have shown that differentiating one's current affect into discrete emotion categories buffers against anger expression (Pond et al., 2012), our study further demonstrated the existence of specific interactive effects between the experience of momentary emotions and personality traits that lead to higher levels of either suppression or expression of anger behavior (or both). For example, the interaction between the trait Openness and co-occurring surprise, in predicting anger-in behavior, indicates that less open people hold their anger back more, and more open people use less anger-in behavior. Co-occurring disgust increases anger-out reactions in people low in Conscientiousness, but decreases anger-out reactions in people high in Conscientiousness. People high in Neuroticism are less likely to engage in anger-in behavior when experiencing disgust, surprise, or irritation alongside anger, but show more anger out in the case of co-occurring contempt. The results of the current study help to further clarify the interactions between the basic personality traits and the experience of momentary co-occurring emotions in determining anger behavior.

The Almost Unbearable Lightness of Personality.

Researchers seem to believe that accepting the reality of personality traits inevitably leads to a dogma about the incredible complexity of these traits and their judgment. This article challenges this thesis and its assertion that the accuracy of personality judgment can only be achieved when a "good target" or a "good trait" is being judged using "good information," and when a "good judge" makes the judgment. It is argued that because trait dimensions are universally applicable to all persons, there is no stable ranking of good targets. The independence of major personality dimensions is incompatible with the distinction between good and bad traits. There seems to be no privileged source of information because information is everywhere, and its retrieval requires unsophisticated skills. Because of the simplicity of the task, it is usually impossible to determine who a good judge is. A new thesis of simplicity is proposed as a guide through equally plausible personality theories.

Educational Attainment and Personality Are Genetically Intertwined.

Heritable variance in psychological traits may reflect genetic and biological processes that are not necessarily specific to these particular traits but pertain to a broader range of phenotypes. We tested the possibility that the personality domains of the five-factor model and their 30 facets, as rated by people themselves and their knowledgeable informants, reflect polygenic influences that have been previously associated with educational attainment. In a sample of more than 3,000 adult Estonians, education polygenic scores (EPSs), which are interpretable as estimates of molecular-genetic propensity for education, were correlated with various personality traits, particularly from the neuroticism and openness domains. The correlations of personality traits with phenotypic educational attainment closely mirrored their correlations with EPS. Moreover, EPS predicted an aggregate personality trait tailored to capture the maximum amount of variance in educational attainment almost as strongly as it predicted the attainment itself. We discuss possible interpretations and implications of these findings.

SNP-Based Heritability Estimates of Common and Specific Variance in Self- and Informant-Reported Neuroticism Scales.

OBJECTIVE: Our study aims to estimate the proportion of the phenotypic variance of Neuroticism and its facet scales that can be attributed to common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two adult populations from Estonia (EGCUT; N = 3,292) and the Netherlands (Lifelines; N = 13,383). METHOD: Genomic-relatedness-matrix restricted maximum likelihood (GREML) using genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) software was employed. To build upon previous research, we used self- and informant reports of the 30-facet NEO personality inventories and analyzed both the usual sum scores and the residual facet scores of Neuroticism. RESULTS: In the EGCUT cohort, the proportion of phenotypic variance explained by the additive effects of common genetic variants in self- and informant-reported Neuroticism domain scores was 15.2% (p = .070, SE = .11) and 6.2% (p = .293, SE = .12), respectively. The SNP-based heritability estimates at the level of Neuroticism facet scales differed greatly across cohorts and modes of measurement but were generally higher (a) for self- than for informant reports, and (b) for sum than for residual scores. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that a large proportion of the heritability of Neuroticism is not captured by additive genetic effects of common SNPs, with some evidence for Gene × Environment interaction across cohorts.