myPersonality Research

Back in October 2009 myPersonality advertised a study by Dr Gareth Hagger-Johnson and Professor Vincent Egan on “personality and attitudes”, which many of you were kind enough to help out with. Gareth has written us a summary of their research and what they were looking for as a way of saying thank-you for helping and also to let you know what it was all about!

Forensic psychologists have learned that personality traits are a key predictor of antisocial and violent behaviour. Evaluating personality underlies the accurate prediction of risk behaviour in offenders. Traditional demographic variables (age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status) are too broad for use with individual offenders since they are such a small section of the population. Environmental factors (e.g. where one lives) are mediated through the individual, so it is important to focus on the specific personality and individual differences that offenders have.

Extremism is a form of antisocial behaviour that is less well understood. It is not ’caused’ by poverty or ignorance, and we know little about how personality might influence the development of extremist attitudes. In our pilot study, a set of extremist attitudes were used to develop an Ideological Opinions Scale, derived from an analysis of 933 Hezbollah Militia interviews that looked for common themes. The attitudes appeared to cluster around four dimensions: fanatical zealousness, alienated alternativism, dogmatic individualism, and destructive terrorism. Additional research is required before using this scale in practice, because some of the attitudes appeared to show strong gender differences.

Gareth Hagger-Johnson is a lecturer in public health at the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences at Leeds University.
Vincent Egan is a professor of forensic psychology in the School of Psychology at Leicester University.

Gareth has also cheekily asked us to link to his JustGiving page. He’s running a half marathon in aid of UNICEF – any donations would be much appreciated!

If all 16,551 people who have taken myPersonality’s Satisfaction With Life Scale were lined up from those most satisfied with their lives to those least satisfied, then the average person from the US’s most satisfied State, Vermont, would be in the 36th percentile, but the average person from the least satisfied State, Rhode Island, would be down in the 68th percentile. That’s a big difference considering that they are only about 80 miles apart.

Our data are shown in the graph below, displaying the aggregate Satisfaction With Life scores for all of the 50 US States and the District of Columbia. Also shown are error bars. Broadly, large error bars mean that we can be less certain of where the true score lies. For example, Wyoming has a large error bar because since it is the least populated state it is the one that we have the least amount of data for.

We compared the myPersonality rankings to those from the recent Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which also ranks US States, and found a favourable correlation between the two sets of rankings, suggesting that myPersonality’s analyses have validity when compared to this much more comprehensive poll.

Method & Results
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Our final world trait map based on myPersonality data is for aggregate Agreeableness. Agreeableness can broadly be characterised as co-operative (high Agreeableness, high rank and dark orange on the map) vs. competitive (low Agreeableness, low rank and light orange on the map). myPersonality has already shown that high Agreeableness is associated with studying more social majors like massage therapy, sociology, and elementary education, whereas low Agreeableness is associated with studying more combative majors such as law, international relations and political science (see our Personality Matches feature to see which college major is closest to your personality).

Agreeableness shows the most clear geographical distinction out of the five traits, although perhaps not in the direction that one would expect. The most competitive area is Central and Eastern Europe, followed by South America. South East Asia has average to high Agreeableness scores, and the most co-operative countries are in North America and Africa.

That concludes our aggregate trait world mapping series, we hope you found it interesting and surprising.

Method & Results
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Our latest map based on myPersonality data is for aggregate Neuroticism. Dark purple and a high rank denotes a high Neuroticism score, suggesting that the country’s population considers themselves in touch with their emotions but are liable to get stressed our more easily. Lighter purple and a low rank denotes a low Neuroticism score, suggesting that the population are more laid back than other countries’ citizens but at the extremes may be too emotionless. Sometimes a bit of stress is important in order to spur one to get something finished.

Countries clustered around the Mediterranean tend to have high Neuroticism scores, whereas those in Central America seem to have particularly low scores.

Next week will bring our final world map, for the Agreeableness trait. Which countries do you think will be the most competitive or most cooperative?

Method & Results
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Continuing our aggregate trait mapping series, below we include the world map for Conscientiousness based on myPersonality data. Dark green and a high rank denotes a high Conscientiousness trait score, suggesting that citizens like to plan their actions in advance and complete their tasks reliably. Low Conscientiousness scores indicate that they consider themselves more flexible, and may be more able to cope when things go wrong and a plan cannot be followed rigidly.

Central and Northern Europe seems to be the least conscientious area, although the pattern is not clear cut as Germany and Switzerland are relatively better at planning than those around them, whereas much of Africa describe themselves as the most conscientious.

The remaining 2 traits will follow in the coming weeks! Next week: Neuroticism.

Method & Results
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