#personalitytraits — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #personalitytraits, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: September 2, 2026
SOURCE: AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONTITLE: What shapes your personality?
URL: https://www.popsci.com/science/what-determines-personality/
Genes and environment play a big role, but the ratio of each is up for debate.
URL: https://www.popsci.com/science/what-determines-personality/
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #personality #personalitytraits #genes #environment #naturevsnurture #psychology #selfdevelopment #behavior #identity #psychologyfacts
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DATE: September 5, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Massive review confirms the connection between emotional intelligence and human flourishing
A review of psychological research indicates that emotional intelligence has a robust and reliable connection to human flourishing, predicting success across school, work, and personal health. The findings suggest that people with higher emotional intelligence tend to experience greater well-being, though the strength of this connection depends on how the traits are measured. The research was recently published in the journal PNAS.
For decades, psychologists have debated what makes some people thrive while others struggle. One popular idea is emotional intelligence, a concept that rapidly gained public attention in the 1990s. Broadly speaking, the term refers to how well a person navigates their own feelings and the feelings of others.
Since its introduction, the idea has spawned thousands of academic papers and grown into a multibillion-dollar training industry. Yet, because researchers define and measure this concept in various ways, its exact relationship with life success has remained difficult to synthesize.
Psychologists generally divide emotional intelligence into three categories. The first is an ability-based model. This model treats emotional skills like a cognitive test, assuming there are objectively right and wrong answers when identifying or managing emotions.
The ability model specifically looks at how well people recognize emotions, use them to guide decisions, and regulate them. The second category is a trait-based model, which relies on self-reported personality characteristics. Under this model, researchers ask participants to rate their own adaptability, assertiveness, and impulse control.
A third category, called a mixed model, combines both objective abilities and self-reported traits into a single assessment. Beyond the differing definitions of emotional intelligence, researchers also look at a wide variety of life outcomes. To find out how these different models connect to positive life experiences, researchers Tyler J. Robinson and Ethan Zell from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro analyzed decades of data.
The researchers wanted to see if emotional intelligence consistently relates to human flourishing. Flourishing is a broad psychological term encompassing mental health, physical health, psychological adjustment, and workplace success. To answer this question, Robinson and Zell conducted a second-order meta-analysis.
A standard meta-analysis is a statistical technique that pools the results of many individual studies to find an overall trend. A second-order meta-analysis goes a step further, combining the results of multiple previous meta-analyses. This approach acts as a quantitative summary of previous summaries, providing a broad view of an entire scientific field.
By pooling data from 62 previous meta-analyses, the researchers gathered information from more than 3,000 individual studies. This massive sample included over one million participants, allowing the researchers to look for overarching patterns across different ages and cultures. The data included populations from Western nations, non-Western nations, children, adolescents, and adults.
The researchers found a reliable, positive association between overall emotional intelligence and human flourishing. This positive link appeared across 77 unique life outcomes. The most prominent associations emerged in areas like workplace leadership, job performance, and psychological adjustment.
The data showed that emotional intelligence was linked to better outcomes regardless of the participants’ age group or geographic region. When looking at different categories of life outcomes, the researchers noticed slight variations in the strength of the connection. Emotional intelligence was most strongly related to success in the workplace.
The connection was slightly weaker, though still reliably present, for cognitive abilities and general academic performance. The researchers also found strong associations between emotional intelligence and specific outcomes like lower rates of job burnout, higher subjective well-being, and better romantic relationship satisfaction.
To put these findings into perspective, the researchers compared emotional intelligence to the Big Five personality traits. The Big Five is a well-established psychological framework that measures openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The analysis revealed that emotional intelligence is just as strongly, if not more strongly, associated with human flourishing than any of the Big Five personality traits.
Out of all the specific outcomes analyzed, only one showed a negative relationship with emotional intelligence. That outcome was a form of self-centeredness known as nonpathological narcissism. The researchers noted that individuals with this specific type of narcissism tend to artificially inflate their own scores on self-report questionnaires.
Because they overrate their own emotional abilities, the data showed an inverse relationship between their actual traits and their reported emotional intelligence. More conventional, pathological narcissism was linked to lower emotional intelligence. Measurement styles heavily altered the broader results as well.
The association with human flourishing was most pronounced when researchers used the mixed or trait-based models, which rely on participants rating their own emotional skills. When studies used objective performance tests to measure emotional abilities, the association with life outcomes was weaker. This pattern became especially apparent when looking at how both emotional intelligence and life outcomes were measured.
The researchers found the strongest connections when both variables were assessed using self-report questionnaires. When one variable was measured subjectively and the other was measured objectively, the relationship between the two shrunk considerably. This dependence on measurement methods highlights an important limitation in the data.
When participants fill out multiple surveys about themselves, they may naturally rate themselves positively across the board. This shared method of data collection can artificially inflate the statistical connection between self-reported emotional intelligence and self-reported life satisfaction. The researchers noted that the particularly strong link to workplace outcomes might be partly driven by this shared measurement style, as many workplace studies rely on self-reported surveys.
Because the data in this review is entirely correlational, it cannot prove that high emotional intelligence causes a person to flourish. It is entirely possible that flourishing in life makes a person more emotionally intelligent over time. Alternatively, a third unmeasured factor, such as a stable upbringing or access to resources, could independently contribute to both higher emotional intelligence and greater life success.
The researchers also excluded studies that evaluated training programs. Because of this exclusion, they could not determine if actively training emotional intelligence causes a subsequent increase in human flourishing. Objective tests of emotional intelligence also face modern challenges.
The authors pointed out that recent studies show artificial intelligence language models perform just as well as, or better than, humans on objective emotional intelligence tests. This raises questions about what these tests are actually measuring. It remains debated whether text-based tests capture practical emotional skills or if they simply measure a person’s reading comprehension and ability to understand written scenarios.
To improve the quality of future research, the authors suggest refining how emotional intelligence is categorized. They recommend moving away from the mixed model, which blends traits and abilities in a way that creates conceptual confusion. Instead, they suggest that future studies explicitly separate objective emotional abilities from self-reported personality traits. Separating these variables would help scientists determine exactly how distinct emotional skills contribute to a fulfilling life.
The study, “Robust associations of emotional intelligence with human flourishing: A second-order meta-analysis,” was authored by Tyler J. Robinson and Ethan Zell.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EmotionalIntelligence #HumanFlourishing #WellBeing #WorkplaceLeadership #JobPerformance #PsychologicalHealth #WellBeingResearch #EI #PersonalityTraits #MetaAnalysis
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DATE: September 5, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Massive review confirms the connection between emotional intelligence and human flourishing
A review of psychological research indicates that emotional intelligence has a robust and reliable connection to human flourishing, predicting success across school, work, and personal health. The findings suggest that people with higher emotional intelligence tend to experience greater well-being, though the strength of this connection depends on how the traits are measured. The research was recently published in the journal PNAS.
For decades, psychologists have debated what makes some people thrive while others struggle. One popular idea is emotional intelligence, a concept that rapidly gained public attention in the 1990s. Broadly speaking, the term refers to how well a person navigates their own feelings and the feelings of others.
Since its introduction, the idea has spawned thousands of academic papers and grown into a multibillion-dollar training industry. Yet, because researchers define and measure this concept in various ways, its exact relationship with life success has remained difficult to synthesize.
Psychologists generally divide emotional intelligence into three categories. The first is an ability-based model. This model treats emotional skills like a cognitive test, assuming there are objectively right and wrong answers when identifying or managing emotions.
The ability model specifically looks at how well people recognize emotions, use them to guide decisions, and regulate them. The second category is a trait-based model, which relies on self-reported personality characteristics. Under this model, researchers ask participants to rate their own adaptability, assertiveness, and impulse control.
A third category, called a mixed model, combines both objective abilities and self-reported traits into a single assessment. Beyond the differing definitions of emotional intelligence, researchers also look at a wide variety of life outcomes. To find out how these different models connect to positive life experiences, researchers Tyler J. Robinson and Ethan Zell from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro analyzed decades of data.
The researchers wanted to see if emotional intelligence consistently relates to human flourishing. Flourishing is a broad psychological term encompassing mental health, physical health, psychological adjustment, and workplace success. To answer this question, Robinson and Zell conducted a second-order meta-analysis.
A standard meta-analysis is a statistical technique that pools the results of many individual studies to find an overall trend. A second-order meta-analysis goes a step further, combining the results of multiple previous meta-analyses. This approach acts as a quantitative summary of previous summaries, providing a broad view of an entire scientific field.
By pooling data from 62 previous meta-analyses, the researchers gathered information from more than 3,000 individual studies. This massive sample included over one million participants, allowing the researchers to look for overarching patterns across different ages and cultures. The data included populations from Western nations, non-Western nations, children, adolescents, and adults.
The researchers found a reliable, positive association between overall emotional intelligence and human flourishing. This positive link appeared across 77 unique life outcomes. The most prominent associations emerged in areas like workplace leadership, job performance, and psychological adjustment.
The data showed that emotional intelligence was linked to better outcomes regardless of the participants’ age group or geographic region. When looking at different categories of life outcomes, the researchers noticed slight variations in the strength of the connection. Emotional intelligence was most strongly related to success in the workplace.
The connection was slightly weaker, though still reliably present, for cognitive abilities and general academic performance. The researchers also found strong associations between emotional intelligence and specific outcomes like lower rates of job burnout, higher subjective well-being, and better romantic relationship satisfaction.
To put these findings into perspective, the researchers compared emotional intelligence to the Big Five personality traits. The Big Five is a well-established psychological framework that measures openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The analysis revealed that emotional intelligence is just as strongly, if not more strongly, associated with human flourishing than any of the Big Five personality traits.
Out of all the specific outcomes analyzed, only one showed a negative relationship with emotional intelligence. That outcome was a form of self-centeredness known as nonpathological narcissism. The researchers noted that individuals with this specific type of narcissism tend to artificially inflate their own scores on self-report questionnaires.
Because they overrate their own emotional abilities, the data showed an inverse relationship between their actual traits and their reported emotional intelligence. More conventional, pathological narcissism was linked to lower emotional intelligence. Measurement styles heavily altered the broader results as well.
The association with human flourishing was most pronounced when researchers used the mixed or trait-based models, which rely on participants rating their own emotional skills. When studies used objective performance tests to measure emotional abilities, the association with life outcomes was weaker. This pattern became especially apparent when looking at how both emotional intelligence and life outcomes were measured.
The researchers found the strongest connections when both variables were assessed using self-report questionnaires. When one variable was measured subjectively and the other was measured objectively, the relationship between the two shrunk considerably. This dependence on measurement methods highlights an important limitation in the data.
When participants fill out multiple surveys about themselves, they may naturally rate themselves positively across the board. This shared method of data collection can artificially inflate the statistical connection between self-reported emotional intelligence and self-reported life satisfaction. The researchers noted that the particularly strong link to workplace outcomes might be partly driven by this shared measurement style, as many workplace studies rely on self-reported surveys.
Because the data in this review is entirely correlational, it cannot prove that high emotional intelligence causes a person to flourish. It is entirely possible that flourishing in life makes a person more emotionally intelligent over time. Alternatively, a third unmeasured factor, such as a stable upbringing or access to resources, could independently contribute to both higher emotional intelligence and greater life success.
The researchers also excluded studies that evaluated training programs. Because of this exclusion, they could not determine if actively training emotional intelligence causes a subsequent increase in human flourishing. Objective tests of emotional intelligence also face modern challenges.
The authors pointed out that recent studies show artificial intelligence language models perform just as well as, or better than, humans on objective emotional intelligence tests. This raises questions about what these tests are actually measuring. It remains debated whether text-based tests capture practical emotional skills or if they simply measure a person’s reading comprehension and ability to understand written scenarios.
To improve the quality of future research, the authors suggest refining how emotional intelligence is categorized. They recommend moving away from the mixed model, which blends traits and abilities in a way that creates conceptual confusion. Instead, they suggest that future studies explicitly separate objective emotional abilities from self-reported personality traits. Separating these variables would help scientists determine exactly how distinct emotional skills contribute to a fulfilling life.
The study, “Robust associations of emotional intelligence with human flourishing: A second-order meta-analysis,” was authored by Tyler J. Robinson and Ethan Zell.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EmotionalIntelligence #HumanFlourishing #WellBeing #WorkplaceLeadership #JobPerformance #PsychologicalHealth #WellBeingResearch #EI #PersonalityTraits #MetaAnalysis
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DATE: September 5, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Massive review confirms the connection between emotional intelligence and human flourishing
A review of psychological research indicates that emotional intelligence has a robust and reliable connection to human flourishing, predicting success across school, work, and personal health. The findings suggest that people with higher emotional intelligence tend to experience greater well-being, though the strength of this connection depends on how the traits are measured. The research was recently published in the journal PNAS.
For decades, psychologists have debated what makes some people thrive while others struggle. One popular idea is emotional intelligence, a concept that rapidly gained public attention in the 1990s. Broadly speaking, the term refers to how well a person navigates their own feelings and the feelings of others.
Since its introduction, the idea has spawned thousands of academic papers and grown into a multibillion-dollar training industry. Yet, because researchers define and measure this concept in various ways, its exact relationship with life success has remained difficult to synthesize.
Psychologists generally divide emotional intelligence into three categories. The first is an ability-based model. This model treats emotional skills like a cognitive test, assuming there are objectively right and wrong answers when identifying or managing emotions.
The ability model specifically looks at how well people recognize emotions, use them to guide decisions, and regulate them. The second category is a trait-based model, which relies on self-reported personality characteristics. Under this model, researchers ask participants to rate their own adaptability, assertiveness, and impulse control.
A third category, called a mixed model, combines both objective abilities and self-reported traits into a single assessment. Beyond the differing definitions of emotional intelligence, researchers also look at a wide variety of life outcomes. To find out how these different models connect to positive life experiences, researchers Tyler J. Robinson and Ethan Zell from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro analyzed decades of data.
The researchers wanted to see if emotional intelligence consistently relates to human flourishing. Flourishing is a broad psychological term encompassing mental health, physical health, psychological adjustment, and workplace success. To answer this question, Robinson and Zell conducted a second-order meta-analysis.
A standard meta-analysis is a statistical technique that pools the results of many individual studies to find an overall trend. A second-order meta-analysis goes a step further, combining the results of multiple previous meta-analyses. This approach acts as a quantitative summary of previous summaries, providing a broad view of an entire scientific field.
By pooling data from 62 previous meta-analyses, the researchers gathered information from more than 3,000 individual studies. This massive sample included over one million participants, allowing the researchers to look for overarching patterns across different ages and cultures. The data included populations from Western nations, non-Western nations, children, adolescents, and adults.
The researchers found a reliable, positive association between overall emotional intelligence and human flourishing. This positive link appeared across 77 unique life outcomes. The most prominent associations emerged in areas like workplace leadership, job performance, and psychological adjustment.
The data showed that emotional intelligence was linked to better outcomes regardless of the participants’ age group or geographic region. When looking at different categories of life outcomes, the researchers noticed slight variations in the strength of the connection. Emotional intelligence was most strongly related to success in the workplace.
The connection was slightly weaker, though still reliably present, for cognitive abilities and general academic performance. The researchers also found strong associations between emotional intelligence and specific outcomes like lower rates of job burnout, higher subjective well-being, and better romantic relationship satisfaction.
To put these findings into perspective, the researchers compared emotional intelligence to the Big Five personality traits. The Big Five is a well-established psychological framework that measures openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The analysis revealed that emotional intelligence is just as strongly, if not more strongly, associated with human flourishing than any of the Big Five personality traits.
Out of all the specific outcomes analyzed, only one showed a negative relationship with emotional intelligence. That outcome was a form of self-centeredness known as nonpathological narcissism. The researchers noted that individuals with this specific type of narcissism tend to artificially inflate their own scores on self-report questionnaires.
Because they overrate their own emotional abilities, the data showed an inverse relationship between their actual traits and their reported emotional intelligence. More conventional, pathological narcissism was linked to lower emotional intelligence. Measurement styles heavily altered the broader results as well.
The association with human flourishing was most pronounced when researchers used the mixed or trait-based models, which rely on participants rating their own emotional skills. When studies used objective performance tests to measure emotional abilities, the association with life outcomes was weaker. This pattern became especially apparent when looking at how both emotional intelligence and life outcomes were measured.
The researchers found the strongest connections when both variables were assessed using self-report questionnaires. When one variable was measured subjectively and the other was measured objectively, the relationship between the two shrunk considerably. This dependence on measurement methods highlights an important limitation in the data.
When participants fill out multiple surveys about themselves, they may naturally rate themselves positively across the board. This shared method of data collection can artificially inflate the statistical connection between self-reported emotional intelligence and self-reported life satisfaction. The researchers noted that the particularly strong link to workplace outcomes might be partly driven by this shared measurement style, as many workplace studies rely on self-reported surveys.
Because the data in this review is entirely correlational, it cannot prove that high emotional intelligence causes a person to flourish. It is entirely possible that flourishing in life makes a person more emotionally intelligent over time. Alternatively, a third unmeasured factor, such as a stable upbringing or access to resources, could independently contribute to both higher emotional intelligence and greater life success.
The researchers also excluded studies that evaluated training programs. Because of this exclusion, they could not determine if actively training emotional intelligence causes a subsequent increase in human flourishing. Objective tests of emotional intelligence also face modern challenges.
The authors pointed out that recent studies show artificial intelligence language models perform just as well as, or better than, humans on objective emotional intelligence tests. This raises questions about what these tests are actually measuring. It remains debated whether text-based tests capture practical emotional skills or if they simply measure a person’s reading comprehension and ability to understand written scenarios.
To improve the quality of future research, the authors suggest refining how emotional intelligence is categorized. They recommend moving away from the mixed model, which blends traits and abilities in a way that creates conceptual confusion. Instead, they suggest that future studies explicitly separate objective emotional abilities from self-reported personality traits. Separating these variables would help scientists determine exactly how distinct emotional skills contribute to a fulfilling life.
The study, “Robust associations of emotional intelligence with human flourishing: A second-order meta-analysis,” was authored by Tyler J. Robinson and Ethan Zell.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EmotionalIntelligence #HumanFlourishing #WellBeing #WorkplaceLeadership #JobPerformance #PsychologicalHealth #WellBeingResearch #EI #PersonalityTraits #MetaAnalysis
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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DATE: August 22, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: People who favor dark humor tend to exhibit more problematic personality traits
The way a person jokes may offer a subtle glimpse into their underlying psychological makeup and how they handle interpersonal relationships. A recent study published in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts suggests that people who favor darker forms of humor, such as sarcasm and cynicism, tend to show higher levels of maladaptive personality traits. In contrast, those who use lighter, more playful humor tend to display fewer traits associated with personality disorders.
Humor is a universal human behavior that does more than just make people laugh. It serves as a tool for emotional regulation, social bonding, and communicating complex ideas. “Humor is one of the most fascinating forms of human communication, and I have been studying its psychological functions for about 15 years,” said lead author Alberto Dionigi, a psychologist and cognitive behavioral psychotherapist at the Noesis Clinical Center in Italy.
“I am a psychologist and Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapist, and my main research interest is understanding how humor can influence the way we cope with emotions, relate to other people, and express our personality,” Dionigi explained. Psychologists often break humor down into different comic styles. Lighter styles include fun, benevolent humor, nonsense, and wit, which generally promote positive feelings and social connection.
Darker comic styles include irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism. These styles often rely on criticism, mockery, or a sense of superiority, which can strain relationships if used excessively. “We often think of humor as something inherently positive, but this is not always the case,” Dionigi said. “Humor can promote wellbeing, reduce stress, and facilitate social relationships, but it can also be used to criticize, distance ourselves from others, express hostility, or protect ourselves from vulnerability.”
Past research linking humor to personality mostly focused on standard traits, like extraversion or agreeableness. The authors of this new research wanted to explore how these eight specific comic styles align with a wider range of personality disorder traits.
“For this reason, we decided to investigate whether different ways of using humor are associated with specific maladaptive personality traits,” Dionigi added. “Rather than simply asking whether someone has a “good sense of humor,” we examined eight different comic styles, ranging from lighter forms such as fun, benevolent humor, nonsense, and wit to darker forms such as irony, satire, sarcasm, and cynicism.”
The scientists focused on a normative adult sample. This means they studied everyday people rather than patients formally diagnosed with a psychiatric condition. Mental health professionals recognize that personality disorder traits exist on a continuous spectrum. Many people possess subclinical levels of these traits, meaning they have certain cognitive or behavioral tendencies that do not meet the threshold for a full medical diagnosis.
The researchers surveyed 599 Italian adults with an average age of 40. Participants completed the survey online, answering questions from the Comic Style Markers questionnaire. This tool measures how frequently a person uses the eight different humor styles. The survey asked participants to rate statements on a scale from one to seven based on how well the descriptions matched their behavior.
For example, a statement measuring fun was “I am a funny joker,” while a statement measuring sarcasm was “Biting mockery suits me.” Next, the participants completed the Personality Belief Questionnaire-Short Form. This tool measures dysfunctional thinking patterns associated with ten different personality disorder traits. These traits include avoidant, dependent, passive-aggressive, obsessive-compulsive, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, schizoid, paranoid, and borderline tendencies.
An avoidant trait was measured with statements like “I should avoid unpleasant situations at all costs.” An antisocial trait was measured with statements such as “Force or cunning is the best way to get things done.” The researchers analyzed the collected data to see which personality traits predicted which humor styles. The authors controlled for the age and sex of the participants during their statistical analysis to isolate the effects of personality.
The findings indicate that darker comic styles are consistently linked to more problematic personality features. “I think the main message is that humor is not simply positive or negative: how we use humor matters,” Dionigi explained. “In our study of 599 Italian adults, we found that darker comic styles, particularly sarcasm and cynicism, were more strongly associated with maladaptive personality traits.”
Sarcasm and cynicism showed the strongest positive associations with passive-aggressive, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline traits. The statistical models explained up to 23 percent of the variance in the use of cynical humor. This indicates a moderate statistical relationship, meaning that almost a quarter of the differences in how often people use cynical humor can be predicted by these specific personality traits.
These patterns suggest that individuals with antagonistic or impulsive tendencies might use sarcasm and cynicism as socially acceptable ways to express dominance. “For example, they were related to traits involving interpersonal antagonism, distrust, hostility, and emotional dysregulation,” Dionigi said. “This does not mean, of course, that a sarcastic person has a personality disorder. Our participants came from the general population, and we investigated personality traits on a continuum, not clinical diagnoses.”
Irony and satire also showed positive links to maladaptive traits, though the associations were slightly weaker. Satire, which involves mocking foolish behavior to correct it, was associated with both narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive traits. The researchers propose that narcissistic individuals might use satire to mask their feelings of superiority in a socially acceptable format.
Meanwhile, those with obsessive-compulsive traits might use satirical humor as a way to enforce moral rules and maintain a sense of order. Irony was positively linked to borderline, paranoid, and obsessive-compulsive patterns. The authors suspect irony provides a cognitive distance that helps people regulate intense emotions. “Similarly, irony may sometimes help people create emotional distance from difficult experiences,” Dionigi noted.
The researchers caution against labeling any humor style as strictly good or bad. “One aspect I would emphasize is that our results should not be interpreted as saying that some forms of humor are “healthy” and others are “pathological.” Humor is much more complex than that,” Dionigi explained. “Even darker styles can have adaptive functions depending on the context. Satire, for example, can be used to criticize problematic behaviors or social norms and encourage reflection and change.”
Lighter comic styles were mostly isolated from these darker personality traits. “On the other hand, lighter forms of humor were generally less strongly related to maladaptive personality traits and were more connected with social affiliation, playfulness, and cognitive flexibility,” Dionigi added. Fun and benevolent humor showed weak or negative associations with maladaptive tendencies.
Avoidant personality traits, which involve a deep fear of social rejection, were negatively associated with fun, benevolent humor, nonsense, and wit. People with high avoidant traits tend to withdraw from social situations, which likely reduces their opportunities to engage in playful banter and share jokes.
“A frequent reliance on cynical or sarcastic humor, for example, may sometimes offer clues about hostility, distrust, or the need to maintain emotional distance, while difficulty using more affiliative forms of humor may be associated with social withdrawal or vulnerability,” Dionigi said.
The histrionic personality trait, characterized by excessive attention-seeking and emotionality, heavily predicted the use of fun and humor. Individuals with these traits may use playful jokes to maintain the spotlight and engage with their audience. Wit, which involves clever verbal associations, was positively associated with narcissism, suggesting that self-enhancing individuals might use intellectual humor to impress others. Additionally, men in the sample reported higher scores on the darker, more maladaptive forms of humor than women did.
“So, perhaps the most interesting takeaway is that our sense of humor may tell us something about the way we relate to ourselves and to other people,” Dionigi said. “Humor can be a way of connecting, playing, and sharing positive emotions, but it can also become a socially acceptable way of expressing hostility, keeping emotional distance, or defending ourselves.”
A cross-sectional design was used for this research, meaning all data was collected at a single point in time. This setup indicates associations between variables but cannot determine cause and effect. “An important caveat is that this was a cross-sectional study, so we cannot establish causality,” Dionigi explained. “We can say that certain personality traits and comic styles are associated, but we cannot say that personality traits cause a particular type of humor, or vice versa.”
The study relied entirely on self-reported questionnaires. People often lack objective self-awareness, especially regarding their own negative traits, and they may answer in ways that make them look better than they actually are.
“Humor is a highly interpersonal behavior, so future studies could include ratings from partners, friends, or clinicians, as well as behavioral measures of how people actually use humor in real-life interactions,” Dionigi noted.
The sample consisted primarily of Italian adults, and nearly 73 percent of the participants were women. This demographic imbalance and specific cultural setting might limit how well the findings apply to other populations. “Our sample was also composed mainly of nonclinical Italian adults, so the findings should not automatically be generalized to people diagnosed with personality disorders or to other cultures,” Dionigi said.
Future studies could track people over time and across different cultures to better understand how humor and personality interact throughout a lifespan.
“One question I find particularly interesting for future research is whether it is not only which humor style people use, but also how effectively they use it that matters,” Dionigi explained. “Two people may both use sarcasm, for example, but with very different interpersonal effects. It would also be interesting to study these relationships in clinical populations and among professional humor performers.”
As a psychotherapist, Dionigi hopes this research encourages people to think more deeply about their own habits. “So, rather than asking “Is humor good or bad?”, perhaps we should ask: “What kind of humor am I using, with whom, and what function is it serving in this particular moment?””
The study, “Humor and Personality Disorders: Associations Between Comic Styles and Maladaptive Personality Traits in a Normative Adult Sample,” was authored by Alberto Dionigi, Mirko Duradoni, and Laura Vagnoli.
-------------------------------------------------
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DarkHumor #HumorAndMentalHealth #ComicStyles #PersonalityTraits #Sarcasm #Cynicism #Satire #HumorResearch #PsychologyOfHumor #SocialBehavior
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Psychologist explains 7 personality traits of people who walk fast
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Expert on high-intelligence shares 9 'unspoken' signs someone might be a genius
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.upworthy.com/signs-one-has-high-intelligence
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Maladaptive personality traits linked to hypersexual disorder in men, study finds https://www.psypost.org/maladaptive-personality-traits-linked-to-hypersexual-disorder-in-men-study-finds/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #HypersexualDisorder #MentalHealth #EmotionalInstability #PersonalityTraits #MenMentalHealth
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On the cult of #personality and #PersonalityTests that abuse #psychology:
"Sorting The Self", The Hedgehog Review (https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/missing-character/articles/sorting-the-self).
#PersonalityTraits #MBTI #MMPI #Hiring #Pseudoscience #FakeScience #Charlatans