Personality & Social Interactions

Mechanisms of Interaction

• Personality interacts with the situation in 3 ways:

– Selection: who we select to be around

– Evocation: the reactions that our personalities evoke in others

– Manipulation: how we manipulate other people to get what we want

Who do we choose for a mate?

• Study of 33 countries found that personality processes are the second biggest factor in mate selection (behind attraction/love)

• No support for the complementary needs theory

• Attraction similarity theory is supported.

• Assortative mating: the finding that people marry those who are similar to themselves.

Key to Marital happiness

• Having a partner who has the following characteristics (regardless of what you thought you were looking for):

– Agreeable– Emotionally stable– Open

– The difference scores between what you wanted in a partner and what you got does NOT predict marital satisfaction.

Ratings of spouses’ personalities

• After the first year (honeymoon effect), in which people rated their partners as high on all of the good traits, perceptions of personality traits became more negative.

• Those who maintain positive illusions about their partner’s personality maintain high levels of satisfaction.

Violation of Desire Theory

• Breakups occur more often when one’s desires are violated than when they’re fulfilled.

• People whose spouses lack desired characteristics will more frequently dissolve the marriage.

• Those dissimilar in personality will most often break up.

• Research finds that being married to someone who lacks the personality characteristics that most people desire (dependable, agreeable, stable) puts one at risk of breakup.

Shyness

• The tendency to feel tense, worried, or anxious during social interactions or even anticipating interactions

• Experienced by 90% at some point, but some are dispositionally shy.

• May be related to objective self-awareness. They’re too self-conscious.

• Kagan found that 20% of 4-month-olds show signs of shyness, but half are no longer shy in childhood.

• Parents who push their shy children into interactions can make their children less shy.

• Parents who give in to child’s shyness reinforce the shyness.

Causes of Shyness

• Seems to have both a genetic and learned component.• Shy people have an overreactive amygdala.• Learned component is that shy people learn to have

evaluation apprehension (fear of being negatively evaluated by others).

• Shy people ruminate over social interactions and wonder if they’ve said something wrong. They’re high in social anxiety.

• Others may interpret shyness as unfriendliness.

Tips for shyness

• Show up and force yourself to talk to people.

• Give yourself credit; stop being your own worst critic.

• Take baby steps and make small goals at first.

• Shift your attention to other people—ask them questions.

• Exude warmth. Smile, make eye contact, and look relaxed.

• Anticipate failure. It’s a learning curve.

• Realize that many people are shy, and no one is perfect all the time.

Evocation

• Reactions that we evoke from other people because of our personalities

• Hostile attributional bias: the tendency to infer hostile intent on the part of others in the face of ambiguous behaviors from them.

• Aggressive people are more likely to interpret behaviors from others as being hostile

• Expectancy confirmation: like self-fulfilling prophecy; beliefs about personality characteristics of others cause them to evoke in others actions that are consistent with the initial beliefs

How personality evokes conflicts in relationships

• Someone can behave in ways that make the partner upset.• Someone can elicit actions from another that in turn upset the

original elicitor. • Links between personality & conflict show up at least as early

as early adolescence.

• Strongest predictor of evoked anger and upset are two personality characteristics:

– Disagreeableness—the #1 predictor of wife’s being upset with husband

– Emotional instability

Gottman’s tips for a happy marriage

• Get to know your partner’s world. Be empathic.

• Remember what made you fall in love with your partner in the first place.

• Turn toward, not away from, each other in times of stress.

• Share power, even if you think you’re the expert.

• Start gently when arguing and back off when feelings get hurt.

• Agree to disagree when problems can’t be solved.

• Become a “we” instead of an “I.”

Manipulation: Social Influence

• Charm• Coercion• Silent treatment• Reason• Regression• Self-abasement

• Responsibility invocation

• Hardball• Pleasure induction• Social comparison• Monetary reward

Only gender difference in these is that women are more likely to use regression.

Personality Traits and Manipulation Tactics

• Dominance/extraversion: coercion and responsibility invocation

• Submission: self-abasement and (surprisingly), hardball• Agreeableness: pleasure induction and reason• Disagreeableness: silent treatment, coercion, revenge• Conscientiousness: reason• Intellect/openness: reason, pleasure induction, responsibility

invocation• Low on intellect/openness: social comparison• Neurosis: hardball, coercion, reason, monetary reward, and

especially regression

Dark Triad of Personality Traits

• Narcissism• Psychopathy• Machiavellianism• All of these types manipulate others through coercion,

hardball, reciprocity, social comparison, monetary reward, and charm.

• Hardball is particularly common.