Trustworthiness, Emotional stability and Personality

Stereotyping is a mechanism that helps humans to make decisions quicker; we can say they are mental shortcuts. It helps us to make judgments really fast. We have this natural tendency of categorizing things into specific group or individuals. We sometimes unconsciously make generalizations of characteristics to project what we think. This can be very helpful! right? But sometimes we go beyond that.  Stereotypes can be positive or negative. Stigma and negative stereotypes in the other hand are always abusive because they rob the person to be perceived as an individual with his own trait. We can harm people by stigmatizing them. It is believed that individuals that are not involved in traditional roles such as parental and marital roles usually are stigmatized as less favorable in society. Single people nowadays are perceived as unstable and less reliable when compared to married people.

Today’s society is changing, this norm is not as strict as it was in the past. In the past people used to be more traditional, and the idea of marriage and family as the building block of society was strongly reinforce by society. For example having children out of the wedlock was something to be ashamed of.  Marry was the right thing to do. Today this norm still persist as a life goal but  and people who are single tend to be judged, stigmatized and discriminated. I believed that based on these societal norms we sometimes display-distorted perceptions about singles and married people.  In the emotional part we tend to believe married and coupled people are more emotionally and socially stable, or the contrary singles are perceived as selfish and egotistical.  This prejudice against singles is even stronger when they are individuals older. Older singles are perceived as more immature and unstable in comparison to younger’s.  Why does this matter? This stereotypes can a great impact in people’s psychological wellbeing. They can intervene with job interviews decisions, salary decisions, even the time of buying a house or a car stereotypes play a big role, you will be surprise!   For example people that combine family roles and work are seem as more socially competent, also married men earn higher wages than unmarried and therefore are seen as more productive and attractive. Being married has economic advantages such, social security and taxes benefits and also more opportunities to get discounts for being perceive as stable and devoted. isn’t this crazy ? ). 

In general people believe that there is something wrong with single people; that is something about their personality, either they are too insecure to develop a romantic relationship or therefore unable to maintain one, or they are too independent, selfish and confident that they do not need a relationship to be happy. I think that singilism can be related to personality but also life style plays a role. Clearly our environment, people we are surround to, shapes our relationships. Being married or in a relationship doesn’t necessarily means you are emotional stable. After all, divorce rates remain high because people fail to find happiness with their partners. These rates suggest that being married does not necessarily lead to that people being well adjusted and emotionally stable.

Social competence, personality and adult attachment style in a Portuguese sample. Personality and Individual Differences, 24 (4), 565-570.

Shaver, P., & Brennan, K.A. (1992). Attachment styles and the “Big Five” personality traits: Their connections with each other and with romantic relationship outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18 (5), 536-545.

A Personality Trait related to Motivation and Success

According to the OCEAN theory, personality is divided into five important factors, also called "The Big Five personality traits", these are: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. If we talk about motivation and success I think that the main personality behind these self-regulatory skills is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is the state or quality of awareness, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. Consciousness enclosed the following characteristics: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. When we are motivated we engage in a task for the rewards outside of the task for example good grades and money. Consciousness involved important cognitive skills such of awareness and alertness. Is this state of mind that gives us the desire of doing certain things because we know that as a consequences it will benefit us. An example of this is a good academic performance. A good academic standing is a product are the products of cognitive capabilities implemented throughout motivational and other self-regulatory skills, in English! its a product of our efforts because we know that it will be rewarded.

Cheng, W.& Ickes, W. (2009). Conscientiousness and self-motivation as mutually compensation predictors of university-level GPA. Personality and Individual Differences: Elsevier. 47 (8) 817-822

Funder D.(2013). The personality puzzle. New York: W.W.W Norton & Companie, Inc.

Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. (2003).A Very Brief Measure of the Big        Five Personality Domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504-528.

Media Representation of the Self and Subliminal Messages :Past and Present

According to Cushman analysis on his work in the Self in America personality was associated with power and superiority, in order to achieve acceptance and fame, people wanted to adopt societal expectations, such as beauty standards. The social performance played a very important role in the developing of personality. According to Cushman the concept of personality was associated with identity. People were in a constant battle trying to find themselves, who they were, but at the same time that they were supposed to be. Cushmans talks about how advertising emerged and persuaded people to “improve their social life”. How was this possible? As we know advertisement main goal is to sell, and accomplish their marketing purposes. Throughout ads the population was receiving messages of how important was physical health and appearance to achieved power and acceptance. There was this inner desire of physical perfection, however people were emotionally distorted and mentally disoriented.  People were unconsciously influenced by the new trends and culture. Also they were bombarded with ads and subliminal messages that promote sexism, machismo, and gender inequality. Ads being one of the most powerful forms of media persuade people unconsciously by manipulating their emotions, feelings, overall their perception of themselves. Wow ! We are talking about the 19^th, surprisingly today nothing has changed! We are still experiencing this phenomenon. This ads were directed to promote perfection that in that time was a synonym of power.

 

I believed that today more than ever body image standards has become significantly influenced by society through the media such as TV, Internet, magazines, newspapers, etc. This social problem affects women more than men. The numbers of women that undergo into expensive and dangerous plastic surgeries are increasing every day. Society is building perfect women physically, but mentally insane. The majority of ads that we see today have high contents of sexism. The media is portraying women as sex objects for marketing purposes. These issues are degrading the value of women in society and also affecting them physically and psychologically. Why is so harmful? .Well The media also affects women self- perception in many ways. Men refers to women as objects but even women see themselves as objects and most of the time they act conforming to these attributions: this is the problem!  The media play a significant role on women misperception. Sexism and objectification in the media have been since a long time ago but every day this phenomenon is becoming more aggressive. 

If we compared today’s advertising with the past surprisingly almost nothing has changed, on the contrary women’s prejudice continues nowadays. Advertisements are sexually explicit and attack women capabilities very openly. ……Self-objectification and a distorted body image impact mental health in a significant way. According to research done on this topic, the cause of this issue has to do with the behavioral manifestations to what they referred as body surveillance. Women get obsessed with the idea of perfection and start extreme diets and routines of exercise. The problem with this is that many advertisement have the power of play with people emotions and feelings, they can change the way a person thinks about himself. Unfortunately ads have the potential of influence people’s minds at the point that they can manipulate their desires and the way the manifest their personality. Sometimes this message distorted self-identity. The message that the media should promote is that women and men do not need to conform to set of roles and that they have limitless possibilities for happiness, which involves mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual balance.

Cushman, P. (1996). Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy. Da Capo Press.

 Etaugh, C., & Bridges, J. (2010). Cultural representation of gender. In Women's lives: A psychological exploration (3nd ed., p. 34). Boston: Allyn & Bacon
 Neuman, W. (2013, November 6). Mannequins Give Shape to a Venezuelan Fantasy. Retrieved December 17, 2014.
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