The effects of personality and mood states on stress appraisals

This study investigated the influence of neuroticism, extraversion, cognitive processing, and experimentally induced mood states on stress appraisals made for five hypothetical stressors. Each of the five stressors was described by a written vignette, and contained an equal number of positive and negative elements. The cognitive processing bias was measured by having participants rate the extent to which, when making appraisals, they attended to the positive or negative elements present in the stressors. Participants first responded to the NEO-PI-R, a personality questionnaire measuring neuroticism and extraversion. Next, participants were randomly assigned to a negative, neutral, or positive mood condition, and watched a short video designed to induce the assigned mood. Following the video participants completed a mood-adjective checklist, made appraisals for the five hypothetical stressors, and completed a four-item questionnaire asking about their use, when making appraisals, of the positive and negative features of the stressors. It was predicted that experimentally induced mood would lead to mood-congruent attention and appraisal patterns, and also that mood and the cognitive processing bias would act as mediators between personality and appraisals. Consistent with predictions, positive mood-condition participants reported paying less attention to the negative elements of the hypothetical stressors, and made more positive appraisals than did negative or neutral mood-condition participants. Multiple regression and structural equation modeling techniques showed that, as predicted, neuroticism had indirect effects on appraisal patterns that were mediated by negative mood and by a cognitive bias which led neurotics to pay more attention to the negative, and less attention to the positive, stressor elements. Extraversion predicted positive mood and positive cognitive processing, but had only direct effects on appraisal patterns. Overall the results of this study support mood and cognitive processing as significant mediators between personality and appraisal processes. These findings suggest that both affective and cognitive components of personality are useful in understanding the association between stable dimensions of personality and stress appraisals

The Effects of an Appraisal Manipulation: Affect, Intrusive Cognitions, and Performance for Two Cognitive Tasks

We examined the relationship between trait measures of general appraisal and test anxiety, state measures of stress appraisals, affect, and intrusive cognition, andperformance measures on two cognitive tests (mental math and Raven matrices). Participants were randomly assigned to threat, challenge, or control conditions that were created by manipulating both primary and secondary appraisals. We predicted that the threat condition would lead to more negative affect, stress appraisals, intrusive cognitions, and more errors. While our manipulated conditions led to inconsistent effects, path analyses tended to confirm predictions that negative task appraisals and trait test anxiety lead to negative affect and to intrusive cognitions, and that for mental math test performance a path from intrusive cognitions to test errors was established. Theimportance of understanding dispositional and situational variables and their interactions during stress encounters are discussed, as is future research involving the general appraisal dimension

What Do We Assess When We Assess a Big 5 Trait? : A Content Analysis of the Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive Processes Represented in Big 5 Personality Inventories

What are personality traits? Are all “broad” traits equally broad in the constructs they encompass and in the pervasiveness of their effects? Or are some traits more or less affective, behavioral, or cognitive in nature? The present study examined these issues as they applied to the Big 5 traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Expert and novice raters judged the extent to which items from four popular Big 5 inventories contain behavioral, cognitive, or affective components. Traits and inventories were then compared in terms of their relative assessment of these components. Results indicate convergence among inventories but remarkable differences between traits. These findings have implications for the conceptualization and assessment of traits and suggest directions for future research

Effects of Weapons on Guilt Judgments and Sentencing Recommendations for Criminals

In Study 1,we explored whether guns presented for target shooting would lead subjects to assign longer prison sentences for crimes unrelated to the guns. Weapon-condition subjects recommended longer sentences than did control subjects, who had experienced equally energizing sports activities. In Study 2, subjects acting as jurors watched a police officer’s videotaped deposition about a burglary arrest. Through the deposition, subjects in all conditions received identical information about the gun. However, some subjects heard the description of the gun taken from the burglar; some heard the description and saw the gun when it was placed on the evidence table near them; and some heard the description and handled the gun. Burglary-tool salience was manipulated similarly for another crime, but it had no effect. With increased weapon salience, subjects attributed more guilt and assigned longer sentences, but there were some differences betweenmen and women, and we found unexpected positive relations between sentence severity and empathy. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our general finding that weapon salience elicits harsher criminal sentences