scholarly journals Looking Behind and Looking Ahead: Personality Differences in Counterfactual and Prefactual Thinking

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-125
Author(s):  
Alison M. Bacon ◽  
Clare R. Walsh ◽  
Raluca A. Briazu

Counterfactual thinking (CFT) involves the mental simulation of alternatives to the past. In contrast, prefactual thinking (PFT) simulates potential outcomes that have yet to happen. Individuals differ in the extent to which they think in these ways, but we know little about how personality is implicated in these differences. This study investigated the relationship between Big Five personality traits and levels of spontaneous CFT and PFT embedded within a fictional diary entry. Results indicated that CFT was related to high neuroticism and low agreeableness, while PFT was related to low neuroticism and high agreeableness, as well as high extraversion. This suggests that CFT and PFT are, in part, dispositionally based and may be predicted by Big Five measures. This has implications for our understanding of individual differences in terms of the functionality of CFT and PFT and their potential influence on life outcomes.

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824402110030
Author(s):  
Kai Kaspar ◽  
Lisa Anna Marie Fuchs

Stimulated by the uses-and-gratification approach, this study examined the joint relation of several consumer characteristics to news interest. In total, 1,546 German-speaking participants rated their interest in 15 major news categories and several personal characteristics, including gender, age, the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, as well as general positive and negative affect. Regression analyses examined the amount of interindividual variance in news interest that can be explained by this set of consumer characteristics. Overall, the amount of explained variance differed remarkably across news categories, ranging from 4% for entertainment-related news to 25% for news about technology. The most powerful explaining variables were participants’ gender, age, openness to experiences, and their amount of general positive affect. The results suggest that news interest should be defined and operationalized as a concept with multiple facets covering a huge range of content. Also, the results are important for media producers and journalists with respect to the conflict between increased need gratification of consumers and information filtering via personalized news content.


Author(s):  
Jose Luis Antoñanzas

An analysis of secondary students’ personality traits, along with a description of their emotional intelligence levels and their anger control, could be decisive when educating students to prevent anti-social behavior in academia. Very few studies on personality, emotional intelligence, and aggressive conduct exist in Spain. Some of the studies that do exist, however, only explore the relationship between emotional intelligence, personality, and prosocial behavior in secondary education students. Likewise, there are few studies focusing on personality and aggression control. In this study, using the Big Five personality models as predictors of aggressiveness in subjects and of emotional intelligence, we sought to contribute to the improvement of the education of students on aggressive behavior in education centers. To do this, we conducted a study using the Big Five Personality Questionnaire (BFQ) for Children and Adults (BFQ-NA), the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS-24) emotional intelligence test, and the State–Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) anger management test. Our main objective was to analyze the relationship of the BFQ with the variables of emotional intelligence and aggressiveness. This was achieved using a range of bivariate correlation and multiple regression tests. The results showed the correlation and predictive value of emotional intelligence and aggression in the Big Five model of personality. This study coincides with other research linking Big Five questionnaires with emotional intelligence and aggression.


Author(s):  
María Vicent ◽  
Cándido J. Inglés ◽  
Carolina Gonzálvez ◽  
Ricardo Sanmartín ◽  
José Manuel García-Fernández

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between Socially Prescribed Perfectionism (SPP) and the Big Five personality traits in a sample of 804 Primary School students between 8 and 11 years old (M=9.57; SD=1.12). The SPP subscale of the Child and Adolescent Perfectionism Scale (CAPS) and the Big Five Questionnaire for Children (BFQ-N), which evaluate the traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, were used. The mean difference analysis showed that students with high levels of SPP scored significantly higher on Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Openness, with small effect sizes for all cases. In contrast, no significant differences were observed in Neuroticism. Logistic regression analysis revealed that all personality traits, except neuroticism, whose results didn’t reach the statistical significance, significantly and positively predicted higher scores on PSP, with OR levels ranging from 1.01 (for Conscientiousness and Agreeableness) to 1.03 (for Openness and Extraversion).


Author(s):  
Danny Osborne ◽  
Nicole Satherley ◽  
Chris G. Sibley

Research since the 1990s reveals that openness to experience—a personality trait that captures interest in novelty, creativity, unconventionalism, and open-mindedness—correlates negatively with political conservatism. This chapter summarizes this vast literature by meta-analyzing 232 unique samples (N = 575,691) that examine the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and conservatism. The results reveal that the negative relationship between openness to experience and conservatism (r = −.145) is nearly twice as big as the next strongest correlation between personality and ideology (namely, conscientiousness and conservatism; r = .076). The associations between personality traits and conservatism were, however, substantively larger in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries than in non-WEIRD countries. The chapter concludes by reviewing recent longitudinal work demonstrating that openness to experience and conservatism are non-causally related. Collectively, the chapter shows that openness to experience is by far the strongest (negative) correlate of conservatism but that there is little evidence that this association is causal.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-112
Author(s):  
Asfa Ashraf ◽  
Kamran Ishfaq ◽  
Muhammad Umair Ashraf ◽  
Zahid Zulfiqar

The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative and permissive) and Big-five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness) among the students of Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan. For this purpose, a total number of 281 students from different faculties (Natural and social sciences) were selected through systematic sampling technique and the respondents responded to parenting authority questionnaire (PAQ) by Buri (1991) and Big-five inventory (BFI) john and Srivastava (1999). Data were analyzed by using SPSS-21 version, and Pearson correlation (r=0.01) was applied to find out the relationship, direction and consistency between predictor and criterion variable. Results indicated a directly proportional relationship between parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative & permissive) and big five personality traits.


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