1. Personality & Social Interactions

2. Mechanisms of Interaction
Personality interacts with the situation in 3 ways:
Selection: who we select to be around
Evocation: the reactions that our personalities evoke in others
Manipulation: how we manipulate other people to get what we want

3. Who do we choose for a mate?
Study of 33 countries found that personality processes are the second biggest factor in mate selection (behind attraction/love)
No support for the complementary needs theory
Attraction similarity theory is supported.
Assortative mating: the finding that people marry those who are similar to themselves.

4. Key to Marital happiness
Having a partner who has the following characteristics (regardless of what you thought you were looking for):
Agreeable
Emotionally stable
Open
The difference scores between what you wanted in a partner and what you got does NOT predict marital satisfaction.

5. Ratings of spouses’ personalities
After the first year (honeymoon effect), in which people rated their partners as high on all of the good traits, perceptions of personality traits became more negative.
Those who maintain positive illusions about their partner’s personality maintain high levels of satisfaction.

6. Violation of Desire Theory
Breakups occur more often when one’s desires are violated than when they’re fulfilled.
People whose spouses lack desired characteristics will more frequently dissolve the marriage.
Those dissimilar in personality will most often break up.
Research finds that being married to someone who lacks the personality characteristics that most people desire (dependable, agreeable, stable) puts one at risk of breakup.

7. Experienced by 90% at some point, but some are dispositionally shy.
Shyness
The tendency to feel tense, worried, or anxious during social interactions or even anticipating interactions
Experienced by 90% at some point, but some are dispositionally shy.
May be related to objective self-awareness. They’re too self-conscious.
Kagan found that 20% of 4-month-olds show signs of shyness, but half are no longer shy in childhood.
Parents who push their shy children into interactions can make their children less shy.
Parents who give in to child’s shyness reinforce the shyness.

8. Causes of Shyness
Seems to have both a genetic and learned component.
Shy people have an overreactive amygdala.
Learned component is that shy people learn to have evaluation apprehension (fear of being negatively evaluated by others).
Shy people ruminate over social interactions and wonder if they’ve said something wrong. They’re high in social anxiety.
Others may interpret shyness as unfriendliness.

9. Show up and force yourself to talk to people.
Tips for shyness
Show up and force yourself to talk to people.
Give yourself credit; stop being your own worst critic.
Take baby steps and make small goals at first.
Shift your attention to other people—ask them questions.
Exude warmth. Smile, make eye contact, and look relaxed.
Anticipate failure. It’s a learning curve.
Realize that many people are shy, and no one is perfect all the time.

10. Evocation
Reactions that we evoke from other people because of our personalities
Hostile attributional bias: the tendency to infer hostile intent on the part of others in the face of ambiguous behaviors from them.
Aggressive people are more likely to interpret behaviors from others as being hostile
Expectancy confirmation: like self-fulfilling prophecy; beliefs about personality characteristics of others cause them to evoke in others actions that are consistent with the initial beliefs

11. How personality evokes conflicts in relationships
Someone can behave in ways that make the partner upset.
Someone can elicit actions from another that in turn upset the original elicitor.
Links between personality & conflict show up at least as early as early adolescence.
Strongest predictor of evoked anger and upset are two personality characteristics:
Disagreeableness—the #1 predictor of wife’s being upset with husband
Emotional instability

12. Gottman’s tips for a happy marriage
Get to know your partner’s world. Be empathic.
Remember what made you fall in love with your partner in the first place.
Turn toward, not away from, each other in times of stress.
Share power, even if you think you’re the expert.
Start gently when arguing and back off when feelings get hurt.
Agree to disagree when problems can’t be solved.
Become a “we” instead of an “I.”

13. Manipulation: Social Influence
Charm
Coercion
Silent treatment
Reason
Regression
Self-abasement
Responsibility invocation
Hardball
Pleasure induction
Social comparison
Monetary reward
Only gender difference in these is that women are more likely to use regression.

14. Personality Traits and Manipulation Tactics
Dominance/extraversion: coercion and responsibility invocation
Submission: self-abasement and (surprisingly), hardball
Agreeableness: pleasure induction and reason
Disagreeableness: silent treatment, coercion, revenge
Conscientiousness: reason
Intellect/openness: reason, pleasure induction, responsibility invocation
Low on intellect/openness: social comparison
Neurosis: hardball, coercion, reason, monetary reward, and especially regression

15. Dark Triad of Personality Traits
Narcissism
Psychopathy
Machiavellianism
All of these types manipulate others through coercion, hardball, reciprocity, social comparison, monetary reward, and charm.
Hardball is particularly common.