{"title":"Decoding genius: Big data insights into the evolution of genius personalities","authors":"Liang Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2025.104580","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2025.104580","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This research investigates the depiction of the Big Five personality traits in geniuses using a dataset comprising millions of English-language books published from 1800 to 2019. This analysis uncovers significant historical shifts in the traits attributed to geniuses, particularly a persistent emphasis on openness and a decrease in mentions of extraversion. Word frequency analysis shows that geniuses are often described as more extraverted, open, and neurotic, but less agreeable and conscientious compared to the general population, challenging traditional stereotypes of high intellectual and creative abilities and shedding light on the “mad genius” stereotype. This study illuminates the changing perceptions of genius, highlighting how these transformations mirror broader cultural and historical shifts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"115 ","pages":"Article 104580"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143142406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gabriel Bernardes, Beatriz Bozza, Marina Motta, Paulo Mattos, Ronald Fischer
{"title":"Semantic meaning means a lot: Exploring the role of semantics in the development of a Big Five taxonomy","authors":"Gabriel Bernardes, Beatriz Bozza, Marina Motta, Paulo Mattos, Ronald Fischer","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104570","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104570","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Developing a Big Five adjective taxonomy in Brazilian Portuguese, we explored the effects of linguistic properties in our classification processes. The first two studies implement top-down (expert ratings) and bottom-up (self-ratings from a community sample; N = 500) strategies for taxonomy classification and validation. We identified a clear five-factor structure with 171 adjectives supporting the Big Five. Study 3 correlated frequency of use and the semantic dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance to Big Five measures for each adjective. We found weak effects of frequency, but systematic effects of semantic dimensions with expert ratings and component loadings, that were congruent with differences and overlaps between the five traits. We discuss the potential role of linguistic effects on personality structure and assessment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"115 ","pages":"Article 104570"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143142407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dark tetrad traits in politicians and voter behavior: Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election","authors":"Monika Prusik","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104568","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104568","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While the erosion of democracy is often tied to specific political figures, not many studies have examined how perceived aversive personality traits in politicians relate to voter behavior. In our study (<em>N</em> = 456), we investigated how dark tetrad traits (DTTs) − subclinical Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism − observed in presidential candidates Biden and Trump related to potential voters’ willingness to support them. Both candidates were perceived as exhibiting significant DTT levels, except Biden showed average everyday sadism. Trump was seen as higher on most DTTs compared to Biden, except for Machiavellianism. Trump was predominantly characterized as narcissistic, sadistic, psychopathic, and Machiavellian, while Biden was viewed as mostly Machiavellian, narcissistic, and psychopathic. Perceptions correlated with political orientation, showing ingroup favoritism. Democrats attributed dark triad traits—especially narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism—more to Trump than Biden, whereas Republicans viewed them more homogeneously. Importantly, DTT attributions associated with voting willingness accounted for substantial variance. However, this relationship was nuanced: political favoritism impacted results, with e.g. Trump’s narcissism increasing Republican’s but decreasing Democrat’s voting intention towards him; trait severity mattered, with lighter narcissism and Machiavellianism more accepted than darker psychopathy and sadism; asymmetry existed, with Biden’s narcissism viewed positively regardless of political orientation but in Trump’s case it did not; and an opponent effect occurred where DTTs mattered more as seen in un unfavored candidate. The modified SD4 scale proved psychometrically sound for measuring politician DTTs. The findings underscore the importance of investigating such traits in politicians, especially during 2024—a global election year.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"115 ","pages":"Article 104568"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143142405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Malte Runge , Birk Hagemeyer , Franz J. Neyer , Stefan Engeser
{"title":"Transgenerational Transmission: An Investigation of Parents’ Achievement Motives, Achievement Imagery in Children’s Books and Children’s Academic Performance","authors":"J. Malte Runge , Birk Hagemeyer , Franz J. Neyer , Stefan Engeser","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104569","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104569","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigated the relationship between parents’ implicit and explicit achievement motives and their children’s academic performance, examining whether achievement imagery in children’s books mediated this relationship. For <em>N</em> = 178 parents, we assessed achievement motives, prevalence of achievement imagery in children’s books at home, parental educational expectation, and children’s academic performance in Grade 4. The findings support a positive relationship between parents’ achievement motives and children’s performance, with some support for educational expectation. However, there was no evidence that achievement imagery mediated this relationship. Parents’ achievement motives did not correlate significantly with achievement imagery, nor did achievement imagery show expected positive relationships with grades. The implications for transgenerational transmission of achievement striving are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"115 ","pages":"Article 104569"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143142408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Associations Among the Big Five, Health Values, and Health Behaviors","authors":"Priscilla H. Whang , Olivia E. Atherton","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104567","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104567","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Prior work shows that the Big Five are associated with goals and values. However, we know less about whether personality traits are related to health values, if these associations vary by age and sex, and whether health values explain the associations between personality traits and health behaviors. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a sample of Dutch adults (N = 1,986–2,876, 53% female, age = 17–91) we found that Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness were positively, and Openness to Experience was negatively, associated with health values. However, there were some different patterns in these associations by age and sex. Longitudinal mediation models showed that personality traits predicted physical activity and excessive alcohol consumption, but health values did not mediate the associations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"115 ","pages":"Article 104567"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143142409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dark and Blue: A meta-analysis of the relationship between Dark Triad and depressive symptoms","authors":"Chunwei Lyu , Danna Xu , Guo Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104553","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104553","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Certain personality traits and depression formation are closely related, but when exploring the relationship between personality traits and depressive symptoms, researchers have paid little attention to dark personality traits. Although current studies have explored the correlations between the dark triad and depressive symptoms, different findings have been provided. This study conducted a <em>meta</em>-analysis that included 31 studies involving 15,567 participants. The results indicated that both psychopathy and machiavellianism had significant positive correlations with depressive symptoms, while the correlation between narcissism and depressive symptoms was not significant. In addition, this correlation varies due to the different instruments. Psychologists and healthcare professionals need to take into account the important role of the dark triad traits when identifying, preventing, and treating depressive symptoms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"114 ","pages":"Article 104553"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142744293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Henry Putney , Sarah Silver , Paul J. Silvia , Alexander P. Christensen , Katherine N. Cotter
{"title":"Why does Creativity Foster Well-Being? Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness during Everyday Creative Activities","authors":"Henry Putney , Sarah Silver , Paul J. Silvia , Alexander P. Christensen , Katherine N. Cotter","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104552","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104552","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The study of creativity in daily life explores creativity as it happens. A consistent finding is that engaging in creative activities predicts greater positive emotions, particularly for activated positive states. To understand why creative activity might foster well-being, we turned to self-determination theory’s (SDT) organismic needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We conducted a seven-day experience sampling study of 125 university students, many majoring in creative fields. We asked about current creative activity, emotional state, and experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. At the within-person level, all three needs significantly mediated the relationship between doing something creative and increased positive emotion and reduced negative emotion, with the most consistent effects for high arousal positive emotion and low arousal negative emotion.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"113 ","pages":"Article 104552"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142704903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tim Temizyürek , George B. Richardson , Gillian R. Brown
{"title":"Comparability of personality facets between men and women: A test of measurement invariance in IPIP-NEO facets in 49 countries","authors":"Tim Temizyürek , George B. Richardson , Gillian R. Brown","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104551","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104551","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Identifying whether men and women differ in their personalities, and whether such differences are robust across populations, requires researchers to consider measurement invariance (MI) when comparing between groups. Here, we examined thirty facets of the 120-item IPIP-NEO personality measure between genders (49 countries, N = 831,849). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) revealed that only about half of the facets exhibited robust factor structure within each gender. Based on multi-group CFAs, some facets consistently exhibited scalar MI between the genders in the majority of countries, whereas others reached this MI level in few, or zero, countries. These findings suggest that caution is warranted when comparing personality between genders in cross-cultural datasets and that such comparisons might be more appropriate for some facets than others.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"113 ","pages":"Article 104551"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142704904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erica Baranski , Ramona L. Martinez , Zihan Liu , Kevin Hoff
{"title":"Exploring the dynamics of volitional personality change: A psychoeducational intervention study with young adults transitioning to the workforce","authors":"Erica Baranski , Ramona L. Martinez , Zihan Liu , Kevin Hoff","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104549","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104549","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>College graduates transitioning to the workforce completed a 13-week, light, psychoeducation intervention designed to increase volitional personality change motivation via weekly email newsletters. Contrary to expectations, the intervention did not significantly enhance overall change motivation or consistently inspire desired trait change goals following the study period or after 6 or 10 months. However, participants in the intervention group did report increased desire to change emotional stability at specific points during the study. These findings underscore the limitations of this particular psychoeducational intervention approach and help to fill in the boundary conditions of when and how personality change is possible. Additionally, using pre-registered analyses, we successfully replicated key findings in volitional personality change literature, effectively laying a foundation for future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"114 ","pages":"Article 104549"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142744292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The dynamic relationship between state extraversion and the subjectively perceived situational sociality in continuous time","authors":"Gaja Zager Kocjan , Gregor Sočan , Vesna Buško , Andreja Avsec","doi":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104550","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jrp.2024.104550","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examined the dynamic interplay between extraversion and subjectively perceived sociality of situations using continuous-time dynamic modeling. In a week-long experience sampling study, we collected 4,694 reports of state extraversion and perceived sociality from a sample of university students. Results showed that changes in state extraversion lasted longer and took longer to return to baseline than changes in perceived sociality. Increases in state extraversion predicted subsequent increases in perceived sociality, whereas increases in perceived sociality predicted subsequent decreases in state extraversion. Cross-lagged effects reached their maximum at 1.5 h lag. The negative cross-lagged effect of sociality on state extraversion suggests a compensatory mechanism of temporal reduction of extraverted behavior in an effort to balance the level of social engagement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48406,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Research in Personality","volume":"113 ","pages":"Article 104550"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142653846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}