| 1. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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A Ternary Model of Personality: Temperament, Character, and Identity
- 2020
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In: Statistical Semantics - Methods and Applications. - Cham : Springer. - 9783030372491 - 9783030372507
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Human beings are definitely storytellers capable of travel back and forward in time. We not only construct stories about ourselves, but also share these with others (McAdams and McLean 2013). We construct and internalize an evolving and integrative story for life, that is, a narrative identity (Singer 2004). However, the life story is just one of three layers of personality that are in a dynamical complex interaction, the other two being temperamental dispositions and goals and values (McAdams and Manczak 2011) or what Cloninger (2004) defines as temperament and character. The use of language, that is, words and their meaning or semantic content, to understand a person’s identity is definitely not new. On basis of the psycholexical hypothesis, for example, relevant and prominent features of personality are encoded in natural language (John et al. 1988), thus, individual differences are manifested in single words that people use to describe their own concept of the self or identity (cf. Boyd and Pennebaker 2017; McAdams 2008; Gazzaniga 2011; Koltko-Rivera 2004). However, although some models of personality, such as the Big Five, stem from natural person-descriptive language, the original clustering of the person-descriptive words used to develop these lexical models was conducted by a relatively small number of researchers who lacked the technical programs available today to handle large amounts of text (Leising et al. 2014; see also Garcia et al. 2015a). In addition, these approaches involved, to a larger degree, only one layer of personality for clustering the person- descriptive words, namely, temperamental dispositions (cf. Gunderson et al. 1999). Here, as a first step, we present a new approach to analyze the way people describe themselves and use Cloninger’s biopsychosocial theory to interpret our results.
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| 2. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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Resilience Profiles (Harm Avoidance, Persistence, and Self-directedness) among Swedish Clergy
- 2019
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In: 31st Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention. Washington, D.C., USA.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Clergy experience a large number of stressors in their work. In this context, resilience in the face of adversity is the result of low Harm Avoidance, high Persistence and high Self-Directedness. We found that, compared to the general population, only one in four Swedish clergymen/women had this specific personality profile.
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| 3. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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Twins’ and Their Mothers’ Personality: Temperament and Character Clusters
- 2019
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In: 3rd Biennial International Convention of Psychological Science, May 25-28, Boston.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In a sample of twins and their mothers we found, independent of zygosity, two clusters based on differences in the children’s (in)ability to be cooperative and self-directed and her/his level of reward dependence, together with differences in the mother’s levels of cooperativeness, self-directedness, reward dependence, and harm avoidance.
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| 4. |
- Schϋtz, Erica, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Character and Subjective Well-Being among Swedish Priests
- 2018
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In: 9th European Conference on Positive Psychology. Budapest, Hungary.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Background: Helping professionals have a working environment characterized by time pressure, unexpected challenges, and emotional issues [1]. According to statistics from The Swedish Social Insurance Agency, priests run a greater risk of being ill and burning out, which might impede their care for others due to stress and mental fatigue. Previous research by Cloninger and colleagues [2-4] indicates that character maturity (i.e., high self-directedness, high cooperativeness and high self-transcendence) contributes to both resilience and well-being, because these aspects influence human experiences in different life domains, in turn, facilitating the basis and extent of positive human development (see also [5]). Aim: Our aim was to first compare Swedish priests to the general population, with regard to character traits, and then to investigate the relationship between character and both resilience and subjective well-being within the priest population. Method: 515 Swedish priests (267 females, 246 males, 2 unreported) self-reported personality (Temperament and Character Inventory), resilience (Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale), and subjective well-being (Satisfaction with Life Scale, Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule, and Harmony in Life scale). Character traits Percentiles were computed using the Swedish norms. The relationship between priests’ character and self-reported resilience and well-being was investigated by first clustering priests according to all possible combinations of high (self-directedness: S, cooperativeness: C and self-transcendence: T) and low (self-directedness: s, cooperativeness: c and self-transcendence: t) scores in the character traits, which generated eight different profiles. Secondly, we conducted paired t-tests to compare resilience and well-being between profiles that differed in one character trait, while controlling for the other two. Results: As a group, the priests had a character profile high-average in self-directedness (percentile = 62.3), high in cooperativeness (percentile = 75.5) and very high in self-transcendence (percentile = 88.4). However, there was substantial variation in character profiles within the priest population (e.g., 21% SCT “creative”, 19.2% sct downcast, 11.5% Sct “authoritarian”, 10.3% SCt “organized”, and 9.3% ScT “absolutist”). Moreover, independent of any combination, self-directedness had a direct positive relationship to resilience and all well-being measures. Nevertheless, both cooperativeness and self-transcendence were related to resilience and well-being in certain conditions, but not in others. For example, cooperativeness was negatively related to negative affect when self-directedness and self-transcendence was high, but positively related to negative affect when both were low. Conclusions: Swedish priests, as a group, seem to have a "creative" character profile, which means they are personally organized and also self-transcendent. The large variation in the group suggests, however, a heterogeneity that might have important implications for their institutional roles, and their needs. In addition, self-directedness, the character trait in which the priests scored the lowest, was the trait of greatest importance for their resilience and well-being. Finally, the relationship between cooperativeness and self-transcendence to both resilience and well-being depended on its coherence to the other two character traits.
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| 5. |
- Schϋtz, Erica, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Swedish Priests’ Character, Resilience and Subjective Well-Being
- 2018
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In: 30th APS Annual Convention. San Francisco, CA, USA: 24-27 May 2018.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Swedish priests, as a group, were high-average in self-directedness, high in cooperativeness, and high in self-transcendence. Self-directedness was associated to resilience and different measures of subjective well-being. Nevertheless, there was a large variation in character profiles that might have important implications for priests’ institutional roles and overall health.
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| 6. |
- Anckarsäter, Henrik, 1966, et al.
(author)
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The impact of ADHD and autism spectrum disorders on temperament, character, and personality development.
- 2006
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In: The American Journal of Psychiatry. - 0002-953X .- 1535-7228. ; 163:7, s. 1239-1244
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- OBJECTIVE: The authors describe personality development and disorders in relation to symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorders. METHOD: Consecutive adults referred for neuropsychiatric investigation (N=240) were assessed for current and lifetime ADHD and autism spectrum disorders and completed the Temperament and Character Inventory. In a subgroup of subjects (N=174), presence of axis II personality disorders was also assessed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders (SCID-II). RESULTS: Patients with ADHD reported high novelty seeking and high harm avoidance. Patients with autism spectrum disorders reported low novelty seeking, low reward dependence, and high harm avoidance. Character scores (self-directedness and cooperativeness) were extremely low among subjects with neuropsychiatric disorders, indicating a high overall prevalence of personality disorders, which was confirmed with the SCID-II. Cluster B personality disorders were more common in subjects with ADHD, while cluster A and C disorders were more common in those with autism spectrum disorders. The overlap between DSM-IV personality disorder categories was high, and they seem less clinically useful in this context. CONCLUSIONS: ADHD and autism spectrum disorders are associated with specific temperament configurations and an increased risk of personality disorders and deficits in character maturation.
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| 7. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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A Quantification of Agentic and Communal Values in Adolescents’ Life Narratives
- 2014
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In: 167th American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, New York, New York, USA..
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Background Life stories emphasize the narrative and self-organizing aspects of human behaviors and complement personality traits in explaining human identity. In contrast to most research on narratives in which the analysis is restricted to the researcher’s subjective evaluations and interpretations, we used computational methods to quantitatively investigate the relationship between personality and narratives events. Meta-cognitive strategies and principles that guide agentic (self-directedness; e.g., being autonomous, responsible and having self-control), communal (cooperativeness; e.g., showing empathy, helping behavior, and social tolerance), and transcendental (self-transcendence; e.g., the sense of being part of the whole universe) behavior were of special interest. We also investigated which pronouns were most common in relation to personality constructs that were significantly related to the narratives. Method Personality was assessed among 79 adolescents at one point in time using the NEO Personality Inventory – Revised (NEO-PI-R) and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Six months later, adolescents were asked to write down the most positive or the most negative event that had happened to them in the last three months. Adolescents were explicitly instructed to answer the following questions within their narratives: What happened? Who were involved? Why do you think it happened? How did you feel when it happened? How do you think the involved persons felt? The descriptions were quantified using semantic spaces, a computational method in which the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm generates a semantic representation of the narratives. This representation was used to study whether it predicted the personality measures. Results Only Self-directedness and Cooperativeness were predicted by the semantic representation of the narratives. High levels of Self-directedness and Cooperativeness were associated with plural pronouns (e.g., us), whereas low levels were associated with singular pronouns (e.g., one-self, mine). Conclusions Agentic and communal values are involved when adolescents describe positive and negative life experiences.
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| 8. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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Agentic, communal, and spiritual traits are related to the semantic representation of written narratives of positive and negative life events
- 2015
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In: Psychology of Well-Being. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2211-1522. ; 5:8, s. 1-20
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: We used a computational method to quantitatively investigate the relationship between personality and written narratives of life events. Agentic (i.e., self- directedness), communal (i.e., cooperativeness), and spiritual (self-transcendence) traits were of special interest because they represent individual differences in intentional val- ues and goals, in contrast to temperament traits, which describe individual differences in automatic responses to emotional stimuli. We also investigated which pronouns were most common in relation to personality constructs that were significantly related to the narratives. Methods: Personality was assessed among 79 adolescents at one point in time using the NEO Personality Inventory—Revised (NEO-PI-R) and the temperament and char- acter inventory (TCI). Six months later, adolescents were asked to write down the most positive or the most negative event that had happened to them in the last 3 months. Adolescents were explicitly instructed to answer the following questions within their narratives: What happened? Who were involved? Why do you think it happened? How did you feel when it happened? How do you think the involved persons felt? The descriptions were quantified using a computational method in which the latent semantic analysis algorithm generates a semantic representation of the narratives. Results: Only self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence were related to the semantic representation of the narratives. Moreover, cooperativeness and self- transcendence were associated with less frequent usage of singular pronouns (e.g., me respectively mine). Conclusions: Agentic, communal, and spiritual traits are involved when adolescents describe positive and negative life experiences. Moreover, high levels of communal and spiritual traits are related to less self-focused narratives.
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| 9. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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Responsibility and Cooperativeness Are Constrained, Not Determined
- 2014
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In: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Neurobiological determinism has characterized later decades’ scientific approaches to the notion of free will. Scientists suggest that legal responsibility should be adjusted accordingly. We measured the genetic and environmental effects behind self-reported Self-directedness and Cooperativeness in a nation-wide population-based adolescent twin study. In spite of substantial overall genetic and shared environmental effects on these character scores, individual outcomes in both monozygotic and dizygotic co-twins of probands reporting severe personality problems varied widely into the normal range. Hence, even when constrained by genetic and environmental adversity, self-experienced responsibility and cooperation are not simply genetically determined but, to some extent, malleable.
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| 10. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(author)
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Temperament and Character in the Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS): Comparison to the General Population, and Genetic Structure Analysis
- 2013
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In: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 8:8
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background The Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS) is an on-going, large population-based longitudinal twin study. We aimed (1) to investigate the reliability of two different versions (125-items and 238-items) of Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) used in the CATSS and the validity of extracting the short version from the long version, (2) to compare these personality dimensions between twins and adolescents from the general population, and (3) to investigate the genetic structure of Cloninger's model. Method Reliability and correlation analyses were conducted for both TCI versions, 2,714 CATSS-twins were compared to 631 adolescents from the general population, and the genetic structure was investigated through univariate genetic analyses, using a model-fitting approach with structural equation-modeling techniques based on same-sex twin pairs from the CATSS (423 monozygotic and 408 dizygotic pairs). Results The TCI scores from the short and long versions showed comparable reliability coefficients and were strongly correlated. Twins scored about half a standard deviation higher in the character scales. Three of the four temperament dimensions (Novelty Seeking, Harm Avoidance, and Persistence) had strong genetic and non-shared environmental effects, while Reward Dependence and the three character dimensions had moderate genetic effects, and both shared and non-shared environmental effects. Conclusions Twins showed higher scores in character dimensions compared to adolescents from the general population. At least among adolescents there is a shared environmental influence for all of the character dimensions, but only for one of the temperament dimensions (i.e., Reward Dependence). This specific finding regarding the existence of shared environmental factors behind the character dimensions in adolescence, together with earlier findings showing a small shared environmental effects on character among young adults and no shared environmental effects on character among adults, suggest that there is a shift in type of environmental influence from adolescence to adulthood regarding character.
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