User:S.emp/Week 11 lecture 9

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=Week 11, Lecture 9=

Personality Characteristics
I found this particular week extremely interesting as I was able to examine why are people different? Why are some people interested in one thing, while other people are not? And why do some people do things like sensation seeking while others do not?

Five Factor Model
There are five main personality traits widely accepted in the literature, these five personality traits are called the Big Five or the Five Factor Model (Barta & Kiene, 2005),


 * Neuroticism: The tendency to experience negative affective states, for example, worry.
 * Extroversion: The tendency to experience positive affective states, for example, happiness.
 * Agreeableness: The tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict and seek harmonious relationships.
 * Conscientiousness: The tendency to preserver at tasks and follow rules.
 * Openness to experience: The tendency to expose oneself to novel, unconventional or even difficult and challenging thoughts and sensations.

Interestingly my textbook on adultery has found a link between cheating and these five personality traits.

Happiness
According to Reeve (2009) people are generally happy, regardless of situational factors. I find this statement interesting because I had never thought of most people as generally happy, I think that people grasp on to happiness, as this is ideally what people want to feel, they do not want to feel upset or angry and therefore, I think people try to appear happy, as this is what is expected. In one day I can feel many emotions and I see people going through times in their lives when they are anything but happy due to factors or evens outside of their control, sometimes it is something that they have gotten themselves into and they cannot escape. Therefore, I think that it is important to note that while generally most people are happy there are moments or long periods of time in a person’s life where they unhappy and trying to appear happy for society sake, as it is what is expected. Happiness is said to be as much about a person’s genes and personality, as it is about the events in a person’s life. Happiness has been linked to extraversion, this is because they are more sensitive to positive feelings and therefore, these people approach and enjoy rewarding situations. Unhappiness has been lined to neuroticism. As these people have a greater capacity to experience negative emotions and negative thoughts. According to Reeve (2009) there are two types of happiness;   phedonic (a pleasant life and what most people think of as happiness) and eudaimonic (self-realisation, engaging oneself in meaningful pursuits and in doing what is worth doing).

Arousal
Arousal symbolises a selection of processes that govern alertness, wakefulness and activation. The motivational construct is made up of cortical (brain activity), behavioural (skeletal muscular system) and autonomic mechanisms. According to Reeve (2009) there are four main principles that explain arousal’s contribution to emotion:


 * A individual’s arousal level is largely a function of how much stimulation they are receiving from their environment.
 * People engage in behaviour to increase or decrease their level of arousal.
 * When underaroused people seek out opportunities to increase their level of arousal.
 * When overaroused people seek out opportunities to decrease their arousal levels.

One area of arousal that I find fascinating is sensation seeking. Zuckerman (1994) defined sensation seeking as 'the seeking if varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risks for the sake of such experiences.' Sensation seeking is related to a high arousal need and these people seek out new, exciting situations and accept the cost of the risks of the experience. I have done one sensation seeking thing in my life and that is to go sky diving, it was amazing and when you land you feel alive, you feel energised and you want to experience that feeling again. When I went skydiving afterwards I was hugging my instructor because it was an amazing experience and my friends thought I was going to kiss him, I was that excited. Personally I don’t go out of my way to do sensation seeking activities but I can understand the appeal and I plan on sky diving again.

Control
This week we also discussed control and how this can effect motivation and engagement. Perceived control is about differences in people’s performance expectancies of processing the needed capacity to produce positive outcomes. To be able to have perceived control over a situation a person must;  be capable of obtaining the available desired outcome and the situation much be somewhat predictable and responsive.

The level of perceived control can affect a person is relation to:
 * goal setting
 * task choice
 * effort
 * concentration
 * persistence in the face of difficulty
 * positive emotional states
 * problem-solving strategies
 * performance

Desire for control is the extent to which we are motivated to establish control over the events in our lives. People want to establish control and if control is lost a person wants to restore this control. I agree with this point, I like to be in control of things, especially if I feel that I will get the task done properly. For example, at work when magazines that are not sold need to be returned to the company, so that my store can be reimbursed, I need control, as I feel that I am the only one that gets in done properly and if I am not working I only like a select few doing the return as I only trust them to get it done right. In this area I have a desire for control and if I lose this control I become unhappy and seek to regain this loss of control.