Relationship between attributional style and personality traits androle of gender differences

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.68099/ijabms.2017.248

Keywords:

Attributional style, personality types, neurotic

Abstract

A number of studies in the field of psychology found that negative and positive attributional styles leads different
cognitive differences. Also, personality related studies found neurotic and extrovert types have found similar
cognitive d ifferences as in attributional styles. Although, the related literature shows similarities in terms of
empirical findings, the studies about the relationship between these concepts are sparse. Importantly, as we
observe gender differences may lead distinct influences in emotion, cognition as well as in daily life, it is
important to include role of gender differences in the potential relationship between attributional style and
personality types. Therefore, in the present study we include gender differences as well to investigate
relationships between these concepts. Overall, we aim at investigating relationship between attributional style
and personality by putting into account gender differences. To do that, 110 (50 Women, 60 Men) were employed
to fill att ributional style questionnaire and Eysenck personality questionnaire. As a result, negative attributional
style was positively correlated with neurotic personality whereas positive attributional style was positively
correlated with extravert personality. T hese correlations were stronger in men than in women. However, no
significant correlations were found between attributional styles and psychotic personality. We concluded that
there is a potential relationship between attributional styles and neurotic and extravert personality types and this
relationship may be moderated by gender differences as evident by strong correlation between this concepts in
men.

References

Alloy, L. B., Abramson, L. Y., & Francis, E. L. (1999). Do negative cognitive styles confer vulnerability to depression? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8(4), 128-132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00030

Anderson, S.M.: 1991, ‘The inevitability of future suffering: The role of depressive certainty in depression’, Social Cognition 8, pp. 203–229 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.1990.8.2.203

Ashby, F. G., Valentin, V. V., & Turken, A. U. (2002). The effects of positive affect and arousal on working memory and executive attention. Advances in consciousness research, 44, 245-288. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.44.11ash

Chan, S. W., Goodwin, G. M., & Harmer, C. J. (2007). Highly neurotic never-depressed students have negative biases in information processing. Psychological medicine, 37(9), 1281-1291. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291707000669

Chan, S. W., Norbury, R., Goodwin, G. M., & Harmer, C. J. (2009). Risk for depression and neural responses to fearful facial expressions of emotion. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 194(2), 139-145. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.107.047993

Costa, P. and R. McCrae: 1980, ‘Influence of extroversion and neuroticism on subjective well-being: Happy and unhappy people’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38, pp. 668–678. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.38.4.668

Duff, S. J., & Hampson, E. (2001). A sex difference on a novel spatial working memory task in humans. Brain and cognition, 47(3), 470-493. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1006/brcg.2001.1326

Eysenck, H. J. (1967). Biological basis of personality. Nature, 199(4898), 1031-1034. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1991031a0

Eysenck, H. J., & Eysenck, S. B. G. (1975). Manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (junior and adult): Hodder and Stoughton. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/t05462-000

Eysenck, M., Payne, S., & Derakshan, N. (2005). Trait anxiety, visuospatial processing, and working memory. Cognition & Emotion, 19(8), 1214-1228. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930500260245

Eysenck, M. W., & Calvo, M. G. (1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition & Emotion, 6(6), 409-434. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208409696

Eysenck, M. W., & Derakshan, N. (2011). New perspectives in attentional control theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(7), 955-960. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.08.019

Gur, R. C., Erwin, R. J., Gur, R. E., Zwil, A. S., Heimberg, C. & Kraemer, H. C. (1992). Facial emotion discrimination: II. Behavioural findings in depression. Psychiatry Research 42, 241–251. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-1781(92)90116-K

Haas, B. W., Omura, K., Constable, R. T., & Canli, T. (2006). Interference produced by emotional conflict associated with anterior cingulate activation. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(2), 152-156. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.6.2.152

Harness, A., Jacot, L., Scherf, S., White, A., & Warnick, J. E. (2008). Sex differences in working memory. Psychological reports, 103(1), 214-218. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.103.1.214-218

Hancock, P. A., & Szalma, J. L. (2008). Performance under stress: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Helton, W. S., Dember, W. N., Warm, J. S., & Matthews, G. (1999). Optimism, pessimism, and false failure feedback: Effects on vigilance performance. Current Psychology, 18(4), 311-325. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-999-1006-2

Johnson, J.G. and S.M. Miller: 1990, ‘Attributional, life-event, and affective predictors of onset of depression, anxiety, and negative attributional style’, Cognitive Therapy and Research 14, pp. 417–430 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01172936

Kaufman, S. B. (2007). Sex differences in mental rotation and spatial visualization ability: Can they be accounted for by differences in working memory capacity? Intelligence, 35(3), 211-223. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.07.009

Osorio, L. C., Cohen, M., Escobar, S. E., Salkowski-Bartlett, A., & Compton, R. J. (2003). Selective attention to stressful distracters: effects of neuroticism and gender. Personality and Individual Differences, 34(5), 831-844. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00074-0

Owen, A. M., Downes, J. J., Sahakian, B. J., Polkey, C. E., & Robbins, T. W. (1990). Planning and spatial working memory following frontal lobe lesions in man. Neuropsychologia, 28(10), 1021-1034.

Levens, S. M., & Gotlib, I. H. (2012). The effects of optimism and pessimism on updating emotional information in working memory. Cognition & emotion, 26(2), 341-350. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2011.574110

Mahasneh, A. M., Al-Zoubi, Z. H., & Batayeneh, O. T. (2013). The Relationship between Optimism-Pessimism and Personality Traits among Students in the Hashemite University. International Education Studies, 6(8), 71. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v6n8p71

Mahasneh, D. A. M., Al-Zoubi, D. Z. H., & Batayeneh, D. O. T. (2013). The Relationship between Attribution Styles and Personality Traits, Gender and Academic Specialization among the Hashemite University Students. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(9).

Maruta, T., Colligan, R. C., Malinchoc, M., & Offord, K. P. (2000). Optimists vs pessimists: survival rate among medical patients over a 30-year period. Paper presented at the Mayo Clinic Proceedings. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0025-6196(11)64184-0

Owen, A. M., Downes, J. J., Sahakian, B. J., Polkey, C. E., & Robbins, T. W. (1990). Planning and spatial working memory following frontal lobe lesions in man. Neuropsychologia, 28(10), 1021-1034. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(90)90137-D

Romney, D.M.: 1994, ‘Cross-validating a causal model relation attributional style, self- esteem, and depression: An heuristic study’, Psychological Reports 74, pp. 203–207. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1994.74.1.203

Sanjuan, P. and A. Palomares: 1998, ‘Analysis of attributional style in depressed students’, Estudios-de-psicologia 61, pp. 25–33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1174/02109399860341861

Saylik, R. (2017). Neuroticism related differences during porcessing of controlled congnitive tasks. Brunel University London,

Stuhrmann, A., Suslow, T., & Dannlowski, U. (2011). Facial emotion processing in major depression: a systematic review of neuroimaging findings. Biology of mood & anxietydisorders, 1(1), 10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/2045-5380-1-10

Surguladze, S. A., Young, A. W., Senior, C., Brébion, G., Travis, M. J., & Phillips, M. L. (2004). Recognition accuracy and response bias to happy and sad facial expressions in patients with major depression. Neuropsychology, 18(2), 212. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0894-4105.18.2.212

Sawada, R., Sato, W., Uono, S., Kochiyama, T., Kubota, Y., Yoshimura, S., & Toichi, M. (2016). Neuroticism delays detection of facial expressions. PloS one, 11(4), e0153400. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153400

Downloads

Published

2017-11-29

Issue

Section

Research Articles

How to Cite

Relationship between attributional style and personality traits androle of gender differences. (2017). International Journal of Applied Business and Management Studies, 2(2), 17-25. https://doi.org/10.68099/ijabms.2017.248