The advantage of having an anxiously attached person on your team

Psychologists talk about different attachment styles, such as secure, anxious and avoidant. The secure style is usually the one we're supposed to aspire to. They're the calm people who find it easy to get close to others, but not in a clingy way. By contrast, those with an anxious or avoidant attachment style are often seen in a pathological light - being either too needy or too aloof, respectively. They might sound like the kind of people you want to steer clear of, but now Tsachi Ein-Dor and Orgad Tal have published new research showing the upside to having an anxiously attached person on your team.

Eighty undergrads (28 women) completed attachment style and personality questionnaires. High scorers in anxious attachment agreed with statements like "My desire to be very close sometimes scares people away". Two weeks later they returned for what they thought was a study into artistic preferences. Each participant sat down at a computer and was left to rate a series of paintings that appeared on-screen. After the third piece of art, an error message popped up and the next thing, after the participant clicked OK, the computer started running a virus that wiped the whole hard-drive. The experimenter - a trained actress - came back in the room, feigned horror, and asked the participant to take the flash-drive out of the computer and head to the Dean's assistant manager for help.

Over the next few minutes, four obstacles were thrown in the way of the participants, potentially diverting them from the aim of seeking help. Outside in the corridor a person asked them to complete a short survey; the Dean's assistant manager, when they got there, directed them to the lab manager, but asked them to do some photocopying first; the lab manager's door had a sign on it asking visitors to wait; and finally, after being directed to the lab technicians' room, the participants passed a student who dropped a load of papers on the floor.

The higher that participants scored on anxious attachment, the more likely they were to seek help about the virus with single-minded focus. They more often than others refused to do the survey, shrugged off the photo-copying request, sought help rather than waiting outside the lab manager's office, and left the student to pick up their own papers from the floor. In contrast, the personality variables of extraversion and neuroticism were not related to this single-mindedness.

Ein-Dor and Tal have nicknamed anxiously attached people "sentinels". In past research they've shown that they, like people of a generally anxious disposition, are quicker to detect threats (e.g. smoke in the room). This new result confirms the researchers' further prediction that anxiously attached people are also particularly motivated to seek help from others, to raise the alarm - a tendency that "in many real world situations, might save others from a serious threat". Concluding, Ein-Dor and Tal said their study offered "a new perspective on the strengths of individuals who have long been viewed as deficient and poorly adapted."

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Ein-Dor, T., and Tal, O. (2012). Scared saviors: Evidence that people high in attachment anxiety are more effective in alerting others to threat. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42 (6), 667-671 DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1895

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Introverts use more concrete language than extraverts

Your personality is revealed in the way you speak, according to new research. Introverts tend to use more concrete words and are more precise, in contrast to extraverts, whose words are more abstract and vague.

Many previous studies have looked at the links between personality and language, but usually this has been about the content of what different personalities choose to talk about. It's been shown, for example, that extraverts are more likely to talk about family and friends, and to use words like "drinks" and "dancing", which makes intuitive sense given that people matching that personality type are expected to spend more time socialising.

Camiel Beukeboom and his co-workers took a different tack, asking 40 employees (19 women; average age 34 years) at a large company in Amsterdam to describe out loud the same five photos depicting ambiguous social situations. Participants were told that "there are no right or wrong answers" and given as long as they wanted to describe each photo. Their answers were recorded and transcribed for later coding. Three days later, the participants also completed a personality questionnaire.

Participants who scored higher in extraversion tended to describe the photos in terms that were rated by an independent coder as more abstract. For example, they used more "state verbs" (e.g. Jack loves Sue) and adjectives, and they admitted to engaging in more interpretation - describing things that were not directly visible in the pictures. On the other hand, the higher a person scored in introversion, the more concrete and precise their speech tended to be, including more use of articles (i.e. "a", "the"), more mentions of numbers and specific people, and making more distinctions (i.e. use of words like "but" and "except").

The differences make sense in terms of what we know about social behaviour and the introvert-extravert personality dimension, with the introverted linguistic style being more cautious, and the extravert style being more casual and vague.

The researchers said their results have far-reaching implications because we know based on past research that the contrasting speech styles are interpreted differently. For instance, they said behaviour described in abstract terms, in the style of an extravert (e.g. Camiel is unfriendly), is usually attributed to personality, as opposed to the situation, and therefore interpreted as enduring, more likely to occur again, yet harder to verify. By contrast, behaviour described in more concrete terms, in the characteristic style of an introvert (e.g. Camiel yells at Martin), tends to be interpreted as situation-specific, and as more believable.

"Thus an introvert's linguistic style would induce more situational attributions and a higher perception of trustworthiness than an extravert's style," the researchers said.

The findings also complement past research showing how conversations between two introverts usually involve discussing one topic in more depth whereas two extraverts dance around more topics in less detail.

"By talking at different levels of abstraction, extraverts and introverts report information differently," the researchers concluded, "and induce different recipient inferences, memories, and subsequent representations of the information exchanged."

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Beukeboom, C., Tanis, M., and Vermeulen, I. (2012). The Language of Extraversion: Extraverted People Talk More Abstractly, Introverts Are More Concrete. Journal of Language and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1177/0261927X12460844

--Further reading--
The links between bloggers' personalities and their use of words.

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Is a taste for extreme answers distorting cross-cultural comparisons of personality?

Data on how personality varies around the world is puzzling. Take the dimension of conscientiousness. Among individuals within a particular country, those with higher conscientiousness tend to earn more money and live longer. This makes sense given the behavioural sequelae of conscientiousness, including diligence and attention-to-detail. Compare across countries, however, and what you find is that richer countries with longer life expectancy tend to have lower average conscientiousness. Now a new study has tested a possible explanation for this paradox - perhaps there's a systematic bias between countries in people's tendency to tick more extreme scores on questionnaires.

How do you tell if a population's higher scores are a reliable reflection of their underlying traits, or if they're caused by a proclivity for more extreme answers? One way is to ask them to rate not just their own personality, but also the personality of a number of fictional characters described in vignettes. Exaggerated scores for the fictional characters would be a sign of a skewed response style.

A small army of researchers around the world led by René Mõttus at the University of Tartu in Estonia has taken on this challenge, recruiting 2,965 people across 20 countries (including European, African, American and Asian nations) and asking them to rate their own personalities and the personalities described in vignettes.

Mõttus and his colleagues uncovered systematic differences between nations in people's proclivity for extreme responding. One pattern to emerge was that richer East Asian countries tended to avoid extreme scores, whereas poorer countries in Africa and SE Asia tended to give more extreme ratings. Adjusting for cross-cultural response styles, the puzzling negative correlation disappeared between average international conscientiousness scores and national longevity and wealth.

The researchers acknowledged that they haven't shown conclusively that extreme response tendencies cause higher conscientiousness ratings. Theoretically the causal direction could run backwards, although common sense suggests this is unlikely. You'd expect higher scorers on conscientiousness to avoid extreme scores, not embrace them. Another possibility is that another unknown factor is at play, inflating conscientiousness scores and encouraging extreme responding. However, it's difficult to imagine what such a factor might be. Taken altogether, the researchers think the most likely explanation is that a proclivity in some countries for extreme responding has had the effect of inflating their conscientiousness scores.

All this raises a further intriguing question ... why should people in some countries be more prone to giving extreme answers? The answer remains beyond the current study, but the researchers suggested one factor could be "dialectical thinking ... 'an emphasis on change, a recognition of contradiction and of the need for multiple perspectives, and a search for the "Middle Way" between opposing propositions'". Countries where dialectical thinking is more common would be expected to avoid extreme scores. Consistent with this, there's some evidence that dialectical thinking is higher in East Asian countries that were found in this study to refrain from giving extreme scores.
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Mõttus R, Allik J, Realo A, Rossier J, Zecca G, Ah-Kion J, Amoussou-Yéyé D, Bäckström M, Barkauskiene R, Barry O, Bhowon U, Björklund F, Bochaver A, Bochaver K, de Bruin G, Cabrera HF, Chen SX, Church AT, Cissé DD, Dahourou D, Feng X, Guan Y, Hwang HS, Idris F, Katigbak MS, Kuppens P, Kwiatkowska A, Laurinavicius A, Mastor KA, Matsumoto D, Riemann R, Schug J, Simpson B, Tseung-Wong CN, and Johnson W (2012). The Effect of Response Style on Self-Reported Conscientiousness Across 20 Countries. Personality and social psychology bulletin PMID: 22745332

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What your walk says about you ... is wrong

We garner a surprising amount of accurate information from the briefest glimpses of other people - their faces, voices and clothes. That much we know from past research. But what about the way they walk? Does a swagger betray an ego? A new study shows that in judging a person's personality from their gait, you and I (and others) are likely to agree with each other. And yet our judgments would be wrong.

John Thoresen and his colleagues created their stimuli for the study by asking 26 young people to walk naturally between two locations eight meters apart. The volunteers wore reflective markers on their joints so that the researchers could create simple point-light videos of their gait. In the videos, all visual detail is removed except for the movement of 13 main body joints.

Twenty-four participants then viewed the video clips and, instructed to "go with their gut", they rated the personalities of the different walkers. There was high consistency between the ratings of the participants - they agreed with each other. But they were wrong. At least they were wrong based on a comparison of their ratings with the walkers' scores on a personality questionnaire.

The researchers analysed the point-light videos to try to identify what cues the participants had used to make their judgments. This led to the identification of two main factors - one was related to an expansive, loose walking style, which participants tended to interpret as a sign of adventurousness, extraversion, trustworthiness and warmth; the other was a slow, relaxed style, which the participants interpreted as a sign of low neuroticism. Although linked with these observer perceptions, the two walking styles were not in fact associated with walkers' actual personalities (based on the questionnaires they completed).

In further experiments, the researchers used this information to doctor the point-light videos, to see if they could provoke particular personality judgements in a new set of viewing participants. This worked after exaggerating the first "expansive" cue (triggering stronger judgments of adventurousness, extraversion, trustworthiness and warmth), but not for the other cue, perhaps because the manipulations in this case led to unnatural looking walks. Thoresen's team also looked for other assumptions that might have mediated participants' judgements of personality from gait. Key here were emotion, masculinity and attractiveness - the two walking cues affected judgments of these factors, and in turn this influenced participants' inferences about personality.

The researchers said their findings could have practical relevance for the creators of computer avatars and cartoon characters. Another tantalising possibility is that people might be able to learn to walk a certain way to create a particular impression on others. However, Thoresen and his team urged caution about this: "it is not certain that minimal cues identified here can be taught or that such instructions may be effective," they said. "We also do not know whether people use bodily motion as cues for personality when information such as facial expressions, clothing or verbal behaviour is available."

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Thoresen JC, Vuong QC, and Atkinson AP (2012). First impressions: Gait cues drive reliable trait judgements. Cognition, 124 (3), 261-71 PMID: 22717166

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"Beauty in the eyes of the beer holder" - people who think they're drunk, think they're hot

The beer-goggle effect is well-documented - the way that being drunk makes everyone look wonderfully attractive. A new study asks whether the goggles work backwards. Does being drunk affect how we judge our own appeal?

Laurent Bègue and her team asked 19 patrons at a French bar to rate their own attractiveness and to puff into a breathalyser. The two measures correlated - the participants who were more drunk tended to rate themselves as more attractive. But maybe that was nothing to do with the effect of alcohol. Perhaps better-looking people like getting more drunk?

To find out, Bègue and her colleagues conducted a balanced placebo test with 86 Frenchmen. Half drank the equivalent of five to six shots of vodka, and in this group, half were told truthfully the minty lemon drink was alcoholic, whilst the other half were told it was a new, non-alcoholic beverage that tasted like alcohol. The remaining men drank an alcohol-free version of the minty, lemon drink - half of them were told it was alcoholic (alcohol was sprayed on the glass to make this more believable) and half were told truthfully that it was not. After a short break to allow the alcohol to work its effects, they all recorded an advertising message for the fictional beverage company that they'd been told had produced the drink. Right after, they then watched back the film they'd made and rated their own attractiveness.

The take-home finding - participants who thought they were drunk rated themselves as more attractive than did other participants, regardless of whether they'd really had any alcohol or not. In other words, it's not the chemical content of alcohol that makes us think we're more attractive, it's merely the belief that we're drunk that inflates our self-perceived appeal (up to a point - in fact the average self-judged attractiveness rating for the group who though they'd had alcohol still wasn't that high).

Maybe people who thought they were drunk really were more attractive than those who thought they were sober? A panel of 22 university students also watched the videos and rated the attractiveness of the men. There was no evidence in their ratings to suggest the participants who thought they were drunk were more attractive, so the inflated self-perceived appeal of these men was illusory.

Why should thinking we're drunk have this effect? The researchers believe it must have to do with implicit beliefs people hold about alcohol. If people associate alcohol and attractiveness in their minds, then thinking they've had alcohol could make thoughts about their own attractiveness more accessible. This would fit with past research showing that drinkers in films are usually portrayed as more attractive than non-drinkers.

Coincidentally, another study has just been published that asked a group of 100 young men to answer questions about how they think a typical young man's personality is affected by being drunk. They then said how they thought being drunk affected their own personality. There was a lot of agreement about the effect of being drunk on a typical young man - reduced conscientiousness, increased neuroticism, elevated extraversion, reduced openness and reduced agreeableness. When the young men then said how alcohol changed their own personalities, they again highlighted reduced conscientiousness, increased neuroticism and extraversion, but they thought their own agreeableness was unchanged and that they were actually more open to experience when intoxicated.

So, not only do people who think they're drunk find themselves more attractive, people (well, young men) also think that, whereas you are less agreeable when you're drunk, their own personality when drunk remains as likeable and friendly as ever!
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 Uusberg, Andero, Mõttus, René, Kreegipuu, Kairi, and Allik, Jüri (2012). Beliefs about the effects of alcohol on the personality of oneself and others Journal of Individual Differences DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001/a000084


Laurent Bègue, Brad J. Bushman, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, and Medhi Ourabah (2012). ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive. British Journal of Psychology DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02114.x

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What your choice of shoe says about you

When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes (from Good Advices by REM)

The UK's fashionistas are abuzz after the Duchess of Cambridge was pictured at the weekend sporting a £300 pair of Le Chameau wellington boots. Does her shoe choice tell us anything about her? In a culture where so much attention is paid to the material we strap to our feet, a new study asks this very question more generally - how is shoe choice associated with personality and what assumptions do onlookers make about people based on their shoes?

The new research builds on an existing literature that's shown we form impressions of strangers incredibly quickly, discerning a surprising amount of information about their sexuality, background and personality. However, much of the past research on these thin-slicing abilities has involved participants looking at the faces of strangers, not their shoes.

Omri Gillath started by getting 208 undergrads (aged 18 to 55) to fill out numerous questionnaires about their personality and background, as well as submitting a photograph of "the pair of shoes they wear most often." Next, a separate group of 63 undergrads each looked at a sample of these shoes and gave their best guess as to the personality and background of the wearers.

The participants in the role of observer tended to agree with each other in their judgments, suggesting that we make consistent assumptions about wearers based on their shoes, regardless of whether those assumptions are accurate or not.

In decreasing order, observers were most accurate in identifying the shoe-wearers': age, gender, income, attachment anxiety (as measured by the wearers' agreement with statements like "I worry that romantic partners won't care about me as much as I care about them") and their agreeableness. Observers were unsuccessful at identifying other aspects of personality such as political ideology, extraversion and conscientiousness, despite tending to agree with each other in their ratings of these traits.

So what cues did the observers use to make their judgments? First off, let's look at some of their mistakes. The observers assumed that colourful and bright shoes belonged to an extravert person. In fact, the only shoe characteristics that correlated with wearers' extraversion were being worn out and being of greater height (the top part, rather than the heel). Observers thought that attractive shoes in a good condition probably belonged to a conscientious person. In fact, the only relevant factors here were that conscientious people tended to have higher-topped shoes and to photograph them against a colourful background. And they assumed wrongly that less attractiveness shoes, with less pointy toes, in relatively poor repair, and low value price, probably belonged to someone with liberal political views. In fact there were no significant associations between political ideology and choice of shoe.

On the other hand, the observers discerned correctly that more agreeable people tended to wear shoes that were practical and affordable (pointy toes, price and brand visibility were negatively correlated with agreeableness); that anxiously attached people tended to wear shoes that look brand new and in good repair (perhaps in an attempt to make a good impression and avoid rejection); that wealthier people wear more stylish shoes; and that women wear more expensive-looking, branded shoes.

The study is obviously limited by its use of a narrow sample of Western university students. The assumptions observers make from shoes could be completely different in another culture, as could the links between shoe features and the traits of wearers. Another shortcoming is the reliance on the self-report ratings of the shoe wearers. Perhaps, for some of the personality factors, the observers were "seeing through" the shoe wearers' idealised selves. "Do people buy and wear shoes strategically to portray an image, and can observers detect the 'acquired image'?" the researchers asked. "These are fundamental questions in personality and social psychology, and they play out in many domains - shoes are merely one attractive alternative to research."
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  Omri Gillatha, Angela J. Bahnsb, Fiona Gea, & Christian S. Crandalla (2012). Shoes as a source of first impressions. Journal of Research in Personality DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2012.04.003

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Sweet-toothed and sweet natured - how people who like sweet things are sweet

"Honey", "Sweetheart", "Sugar": how come so many terms of endearment pertain to sweetness? Might the metaphor be grounded in a real link between sweet taste and pleasing personality traits and behaviour?

Brian Meier and his team had dozens of students rate the agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism of 100 people, based on pictures of their faces and a strap-line identifying each person's preference for a particular food, such as "I like grapefruit". People who said they liked a sweet food were judged by the students as more agreeable, suggesting that we implicitly recognise that a taste for sweet things is grounded in a sweet personality.

Are people right to make this implicit assumption? Further studies suggested so. Students who rated their own personality as more agreeable also tended to have a stronger preference (than their less agreeable peers) for sweet foods and drinks. Among a different set of students, a stronger preference for sweet foods correlated positively with their willingness to volunteer their time, unpaid, for a separate unrelated study - considered by the researchers as a sign of prosocial behaviour.

So, we assume that people who like sweet foods are nice people, and it turns out they are. Can this link be exploited? What if you give someone a sweet food to eat - will they feel more agreeable? Will they actually become more helpful? In two further studies, students given chocolate to eat (either a Hershey's Kiss or a piece of Dove Silky Smooth chocolate), rated themselves as more agreeable and actually volunteered more of their time to help an unknown researcher, as compared with students given a sour sweet or a water cracker.

"We are unaware of any studies showing that taste metaphors are consequential in predicting social functioning, and thus the findings are unique," the researchers said. Why is there this link between sweet taste and personality and behaviour? Meier and his team think one possible root cause may lie in breast-feeding. "... [H]uman breast milk is decidedly sweet in taste and chemical composition and feeding episodes are marked by a close bond of mother and child," they observed. "Thus, one of the earliest bases for later emotional attachments is also marked by a sweet-tasting ingested food."

The psychologists added that future research is needed to explore other potential links between tastes and personality. Might lovers of spicy foods have spicy personalities, for instance? Also, we need to find out if the same links pertain in languages other than English. "The general point is that taste-related metaphors may be useful in understanding other personality processes than those examined," they said.

Meanwhile, if wind of these results gets out, romantic liaisons could become a little more complicated. Has your partner given you that box of chocolates to make you "sweet", literally because they're after something and want you to be more amenable? On the other hand: maybe it's a test. If you turn your nose up at a chocolate, what will that tell them about your personality?
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Meier, B., Moeller, S., Riemer-Peltz, M., and Robinson, M. (2011). Sweet taste preferences and experiences predict prosocial inferences, personalities, and behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0025253

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Neurotics experience more immersion when watching films

Descriptions of neurotics are typically unflattering: they're fearful, tense people, prone to catastrophise and will often shy away from challenges. Well, here's some more uplifting news for folk matching this personality description. A study of film immersion has found that people who score highly in neuroticism (as measured by agreement with statements like "I worry a lot") tend to feel more absorbed in films. This is associated with their enjoying horror and sad films less, but comedies more.

David Weibel and his team had 64 participants (average age 28 years) watch three movie clips taken from The Shining (the scene where the boy is playing in the hallway); The Champ (a boy's father dies after suffering a severe beating in the ring); and When Harry Met Sally (the scene where Sally fakes an orgasm in a cafe). The participants, half of whom were students, rated how immersed they felt in the clips and how detached they felt from their real, physical environment. They also said how much they'd enjoyed the film excerpts.

The half of the participants who scored higher in neuroticism experienced more immersion during all three clips - happy, sad and scary - compared with the lower scorers in neuroticism. "A possible explanation," the researchers said, "could be that neurotics usually have a highly reactive sympathetic nervous system making them sensitive to any environmental stimulation."

The more neurotic participants also liked the scary and sad clips less, but enjoyed the funny clip more. The implication is that immersion mediates enjoyment, but unfortunately this wasn't tested.

Weibel's team said their finding has theoretical import because media experts tend to assume that engendering greater immersion in an audience will always lead to more enjoyment. "Our findings contradict this assumption," they said. "In the two negatively connotated conditions, participants scoring high on neuroticism experienced more presence than those scoring low, but at the same time reported less enjoyment than individuals with low neuroticism scores. We therefore assume that for these participants, the feeling of being there in the sad or fearful world was experienced in a negative way. This in turn resulted in decreased enjoyment."
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Weibel, D., Wissmath, B., & Stricker, D. (2011). The influence of neuroticism on spatial presence and enjoyment in films Personality and Individual Differences, 51 (7), 866-869 DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.07.011

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