Edited by Yavor Dragostinov and Lisanne de Moor
This Newsletter includes summaries of the published work from EJP’s May-June 2021 issue. The articles from this issue discuss topics such as the dimensions of creativity and how it affects factors such as cognitive abilities, personality and insight, the assessment of different types of predictions about the upcoming year, the impact of beliefs about personality change on actual personality change, the influence of sojourn effects on personality changes, the examination of cross-cultural differences in personality nuances, and the impact theories of willpower have on daily health behaviours.
May-June
On the trail of creativity: Dimensionality of divergent thinking and its relation with cognitive abilities, personality, and insight
Selina Weiss, Diana Steger, Yadwinder Kaur, Andrea Hildebrandt, Ulrich Schroeders, & Oliver Wilhelm
Researchers have been trying to understand creativity for over a century. The importance of the trait with respect to crucial outcomes from academic achievement to affective disorders has been emphasised in the last few years. This has led to an increase in the number of studies on creativity, however, creativity as a construct still lacks clarity. Weiss and colleagues aimed to change that.
Divergent thinking (DT) has been widely accepted as a measure of creativity, as it captures aspects of fluency and originality. Two studies (152 and 298 participants) were conducted in order to assess the relationship between DT and established cognitive abilities, personality traits, and insight. In Study 1, DT demonstrated a moderate link with working memory, fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, and mental speed. Those findings were replicated in Study 2. In addition to the moderate links of DT with these cognitive abilities, the findings from Study 2 demonstrated that insight was correlated with intelligence as well as with DT. Extraversion and honesty-humility predicted DT, while crystalised intelligence mediated the link between openness and DT. The specific originality factor was not associated with either intelligence or personality factors.
As the study reported moderate associations with intelligence, insight, or personality, the findings suggest that DT appears to be more than these constructs. Having that in mind could enhance the much-needed future work of creativity.
Who knows best what the next year will hold for you? The validity of direct and personality-based predictions of future life experiences across different perceivers
Nele Wessels, Johannes Zimmermann, & Daniel Leising
How well can people predict certain life experiences in their own lives and in the lives of others? Using a remarkably rigorous methodological approach, this group of researchers presented two sets of analyses that addressed two research questions: how strong is the validity of predictions of someone’s life experiences and how does it vary across different prediction types? And secondly, how do validity and positivity bias affect how well a perceiver knows and likes the person (i.e., the target) they are rating?
For the first question, variation in the validity of predictions was examined across three types of outcomes: Big Five domains, personality nuances (personality markers at the item-level), and direct predictions of life experiences (such as a number of new friendships). The sources of predictions of life experiences featured the targets themselves, their close friends, and acquaintances that were divided into two subgroups: those who liked the target and those who did not.
The findings demonstrated that individuals can predict, to some extent, what the next year will hold for them, their friend and their acquaintance. In terms of direct predictions, the targets made the most accurate predictions, followed by their close friends. Domain-based personality predictions were less accurate than nuance-based personality predictions. Perceivers did anticipate more positive things to happen to people they actually like; however, the findings suggest this did not negatively affect the validity of those predictions in terms of rank-order. This is good news for personality researchers, as it shows that the common practice of collecting data by targets and their informants is fairly reliable.
Your personality does not care whether you believe it can change: beliefs about whether personality can change do not predict trait change among emerging adults
Nathan Hudson, R. Chris Fraley, Daniel Briley, & William Chopik
There is a large body of evidence suggesting that personality traits can and do in fact, change. The literature demonstrates that across time, individuals tend to become more agreeable and conscientious, while also becoming less neurotic. However, people vary in the extent they believe their own personalities can change. Theorists have suggested that beliefs about the malleability of personality are very important in regards to how traits develop. Hudson and his colleagues decided to test that theory.
The authors conducted two studies that collected longitudinal data from a total of 1,339 emerging adults. The global beliefs that personality can change (Study 1) and the granular beliefs that the individual Big Five personality domains can change (Study 2) and actual personality on each of the Big Five domains were evaluated across 4 months. The findings indicated that the beliefs about whether personality can change – whether measured on a global level or trait-specific level – were not related to trait change across time. The authors also evaluated whether growth mindset – the belief that personality traits are malleable – might be more predictive of trait change among participants who wanted to change their personality. Once again, no evidence for such an effect was found. This study suggests that personality development processes tend to unfold in a similar way regardless of whether people believe that personality can change or not.
Do sojourn effects on personality trait changes last? A five-year longitudinal study
Julia Richter, Julia Zimmermann, Franz Neyer, & Christian Kandler
Past research has revealed some small but consistent effects of student sojourns – a temporary international mobility experience – on changes in students’ Big Five personality traits. However, what is yet to be evaluated is to what extent such changes last.
This study assessed sojourners’ long-term personality trait changes over five years. A sample of 1,095 German students was surveyed three times over the course of an academic year. During that year, 498 of the participants lived abroad (sojourners) shortly after the first examination for one or two semesters, while 597 students remained in their home country (stayers). Five years after the first wave of measurement, 441 of the same overall participants were assessed once again. The findings demonstrated that sojourners on average showed higher levels of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability compared to stayers. These changes appeared to occur during the first few months of a sojourn. This study provides the first hints on the possibility of whether sojourn effect could influence personality change. Such hints can help guide future studies to generate hypotheses on the magnitude, stability, and directions of the differences between sojourns and stayers.
Coffee or tea? Examining cross-cultural differences in personality nuances across former colonies of the British Empire
Priscilla Achaa-Amankwaa, Gabriel Olaru, & Ulrich Schroeders
Personality is conceptualized as a higher-order construct. At the top of the hierarchy are personality domains, which are then divided into facets. Research on cross-cultural personality differences has found small but consistent mean-level differences in the trait domain and facet levels. This study evaluated those cross-cultural differences at an even lower level of personality – personality “nuances”.
The authors compared the degree of cultural differences at the trait domain, facet, and nuance level by predicting the nationality of 9,110 participants in a pairwise country comparison with scores of the respective level of personality. Classification accuracy was then used as an estimate of the cross-cultural differences at the different levels in the personality hierarchy. Using trait domain and facets scores, the country of residence was correctly identified for 60% and 73% of the participants, respectively. When using the nuance level, nationality was correctly identified 89% of the time. These findings suggest that there is only a limited proportion of cross-cultural personality differences that manifests at the broad trait domain level. The facet, and most notably the nuance levels appear to carry the most essential information on cross-cultural differences. The fact that nuances appear to carry such essential information using scales that are not designed to capture them is a great sign for future research on the matter.
Morning resolutions, evening disillusions: Theories of willpower affect how health behaviours change across the day
Zoë Francis, Jutta Mata, Lavinia Flückiger, & Veronika Job
Pursuing healthy lifestyle choices such as healthy eating and physical activity is often difficult as it requires self-control. The ability to exert self-control might decrease across the course of the day, resulting in less-healthy choices in the afternoon or evening. Some people may be particularly susceptible to experiencing such a decrease in self-control.
In this study, Francis and colleagues examined physical activity levels and snacking behaviour across several days in two studies – one using an adult community sample of people (mostly women) with health-improvement goals and the other an undergraduate student sample. Participants were asked whether they believed their willpower decreases with use (limited willpower) or whether exerting willpower fuels them with more energy to tackle activities that require willpower in the future (non-limited willpower). Findings from both studies demonstrated that across the day, participants reported becoming more active and eating more snacks. However, the increase in physical activity was moderated by the beliefs participants had about willpower. Participants who held more limited willpower beliefs were relatively less likely to be physically active later in the day compared to those with more nonlimited beliefs. These findings suggest that encouraging beliefs in nonlimited willpower could be a way to improve some health behaviours.
Do you have any questions or comments regarding this newsletter or its contents? Please contact:
Lisanne de Moor (Research Communications Editor; e.l.demoor@gmail.com) or
Yavor Dragostinov (Research Communications Assistant; y.dragostinov@sms.ed.ac.uk)