Alternative perspectives on personality and individual differences

1
Alternative perspectives on personality and
individual differences

• Dr. Christine Simmonds

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Will the best theory please stand up?

• Important to understand the strengths and
  weaknesses of each approach to personality
• Where does personality theory go next?
• Interactionism
• Critical psychology and personality
• Meehl there are infinite factors contributing
  to an individual personality
• Eysenck study personality at many levels
• Simmonds hierarchical approach to the Boundary
  construct

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Overview

• Personality as a state of consciousness
• If so, our behaviours may be driven by
  environmental factors that influence altered
  states of consciousness
• Personality and the continuua model
• Mental health and illness are on the same
  continuum
• People differ in how likely they are to access a
  state of consciousness
• Illustration of a hierarchical view of personality

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What is an altered state of consciousness?

• Comes about via complex changes in brain
  chemistry/modulation, but is subjective
• ASC is relative to ones baseline state
• E.g., falling asleep
• This happens in 9 stages!
• Sleep is not all or nothing
• parts of you can be asleep while others are
  awake

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Drugs and personality?

• Mental illness and neurochemical intervention
• Shift to designer personality?
• Choosing to shift modes/adjust to societal
  expectations
• Ritalin?

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Is personality a state

• Mulitple personality disorder
• Dissociation, other personalities, other
  potentials
• Recent research with dissociation
• Traumatic experience ? spirituality
• Sleep quality is a predictor of dissociation
• Sleep quality is related to aggression in prison
  setting
• Sleep length and hallucinatory experiences
• My work with schizotypy
• Personality and flexibility in accessing states
  of consciousness

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The continuity models of mental health and
illness and states of consciousness

• Schizophrenia is a group of psychotic disorders
  characterised by thought disorder, delusions,
  catatonia, negative symptoms
• 1 incidence
• Continuity of mental health and illness
  personality dimension
• The construct of schizotypy
• Personality dimensions reflecting traits which in
  extreme form are associated with mental illness
• Continuity of consciousness

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Continuua of schizotypal traits

• Rado (1953) schizophrenic genotype
• Meehl (1962) phenotype
• Claridge (1997) Schizotypy
• is the less deviant bedfellow of
  schizophrenia
• Schizoidness
• Psychosis proneness
• Psychoticism
• Bioeccentricity? (Brod, 1997)

There is such a thing as latent schizophrenia
and I almost believe that it is the most
frequently occurring form even though it comes
under treatment the least oftenAll the symptoms
and symptom combinations which can be found in
the fully developed illness can appear here in
nuce Bleuler 1911
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Debates on the schizotypy construct

• Dimensionality
• Quasi dimensional
• Fully dimensional
• Kendler (1985)
• Personality
• Psychotic symptoms
• Eysencks Psychoticism
• Claridge, 1997 environment and predisposition
• Blood pressure and strokes

• How many factors?
• 2-4
• 4 factors of schizotypy are analogues of factors
  of schizophrenia
• Positive/unusual experiences
• Cognitive disorganisation
• Impulsive nonconformity
• Introvertive anhedonia

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The happy or benign schizotype

• A normal cognitive/perceptual analogue of
  schizophrenia
• Later breakdown is related to negative symptoms
• Healthy schizotypy is associated with
• spirituality
• creativity
• meaningfulness
• psi experiences

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A hierarchy of boundaries

• Chemical
• Neurological
• Cognitive
• States of consciousness
• Interpersonal
• Society

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Connections in the brain

• Reduced inhibition and increased neural
  connectivity
• Increase in influence of sub-cortical processes
  on the cortex
• Increase in the influence of the right hemisphere
  on the left

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Associational thinking

• Increased activation of associational networks
• Particularly in the Right Hemisphere

14
Cognitive Biases

• Two thinking styles
• Rational
• Intuitive
• The Type I error
• Reporting a signal in noise
• Confidence in judgement
• Perception of meaning in randomness
• Perception of causal relationships where there
  are none
• More hypothesis generation but less testing

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Attentional widening

• Idea of the filter for incoming information
• Cortex filters incoming information
• Thin boundary nervous system has increased
  excitation and less inhibition
• Attention spotlight becomes wider
• More pre-conscious information available
• Better performance on experiments assessing
  negative inhibition and lateral inhibition

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Boundary thinness and subliminal perception

• More recall of dreams nightmares
• Better subliminal perception
• Particularly emotional and images
• Pseudo psi task with subliminal priming

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Sleep wake boundaries

• The chemicals of sleep are those involved in
  focusing unfocusing attention
• More sleep like thinking in those with thinner
  boundaries
• More hypnagogic microsleeps among positive
  scoring schizotypes
• More hypnagogic indices in the EEG of those with
  temporal lobe lability

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Path model of personality, sleep related
demographic variables and anomalous experiences
Handedness
.13
Boundary thinness
Transliminality
.51
.48
.45
-.094
.52
Hours of sleep needed
Temporal lobe lability
Anomalous experiences
.53
-.18
.40
Schizotypy
Gender
-.11
-.10
.13
Quality of sleep
Age
-.15

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Interpersonal boundaries

• Thin boundaried people tend to get too close to
  others
• Schizophrenics problems in emotional
  processing, etc.

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Why does the schizophrenia gene stay in the gene
pool?
Unless social and reproductive disadvantages
are balanced by some kind of positive the gene
would be selected out (Huxley et al.,1964)
psi
creativity
spirituality
meaningfulness
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Evolution and schizotypy

• Fitness and adaptive schizotypy
• Miller artistic production like a costly signal
  to attract mates
• More sexual partners among those with positive
  and impulsive aspects of schizotypy (Nettle
  Clegg, 2005)
• Less sexual partners among those with negative
  aspects of schizotypy

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Geomagnetism, weather, brain, experience,
personality?

• The limbic system is affected by geomagnetism
• Early exposure to geomagnetism relates to
  increased temporal lobe lability
• The weather affects behaviour
• Thunderstorms sferics
• Barometric pressure ? medical accidents
• Geomagnetic variation ? first aid accidents
• Weather matrix and mood
• 30-60 of variance in daily mood

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Eerie places

• Piezoelectricity materials that convert
  pressures and mechanical strains into electricity
  and vice versa
• Quartz is highly piezoelectric
• Granite
• Many ancient sites are composed of these
  materials

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References

• Various Chapters from Claridge G (1997).
  SchizotypyImplications for illness and health.
  New York Oxford University Press IN THE
  LIBRARY
• Hartmann E (1991). Boundaries in the Mind a new
  psychology of personality. New York Basic Books.
• http//www-rcf.usc.edu/raine/spqrel.html -
  Adrian Raine
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypy -
  wikipedia
• Giraldez SL, Caro MI, Rodrigo AML, Pineiro MP and
  Gonzalez JLB (2000). Assessment of essential
  components of schizotypy using neurocognitive
  measures. Psychology in Spain, 4 (1), 183-194.
• http//www.psychologyinspain.com/content/full/2000
  /14.htm
• Meehl on the genetic construct of schizophrenia
  and schizotypy http//www.psych.umn.edu/faculty/m
  eehlp/befintegratedtheorysc.pdf
• http//www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/jrp.pdf
• - creativity and schizotypy
• http//www.datadiwan.de/SciMedNet/library/reviewsN
  81/N81Clarke_psychosis.htm
• http//www.scispirit.com/Psychosis_spirituality/fi
  nding_a_language.htm - both on spirituality