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You Are What You See and Choose: Agreeableness and Situation Selection
Author(s) -
Bresin Konrad,
Robinson Michael D.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/jopy.12121
Subject(s) - agreeableness , psychology , social psychology , selection (genetic algorithm) , personality , big five personality traits , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , extraversion and introversion
Agreeableness positively predicts subjective well‐being, but why does it do so? Recent theorizing has highlighted possible substrates related to emotion regulation. Following suit, the present studies focus on the situation selection stage of the emotion regulation sequence. Undergraduate participants reported on their agreeableness levels and completed a picture‐viewing task (Studies 1 and 2) or a media choice task (Study 3). Studies 1 and 2 found that the tendency to view negative pictures for a longer period of time than positive pictures was evident at low levels of agreeableness and absent at high levels. The Study 3 paradigm asked individuals whether they typically choose to expose themselves to positive or negative stimuli across diverse media sources. Preferences for positive media were more pronounced at higher levels of agreeableness. The results have systematic implications for understanding the emotional lives of disagreeable versus agreeable people.