Spite or spitefulness as a sentiment, action, or a personality trait has several possible meanings. [1] According to the American Psychological Association there is "no standard definition of spitefulness. Spite can be broadly defined to include any vindictive or mean-spirited actions. Alternatively, a narrower definition includes the requirement that spiteful acts involve some degree of self-harm." [1] One possible definition of spite is to intentionally annoy, hurt, or upset even when there might be no (apparent) gain, and even when those actions might cause the person spiting harm, as well. [2] Spiteful words or actions are delivered in such a way that it is clear that the person is delivering them just to annoy, hurt, or upset. [3]
In his 1929 examination of emotional disturbances, Psychology and Morals: An Analysis of Character, J. A. Hadfield uses deliberately spiteful acts to illustrate the difference between disposition and sentiment. [4]
Spite has also been studied as a trait of human personality; [5] although in general spite has been largely ignored in academic literature. [6] University of Washington researchers David K Marcus, Virgil Zeigler-Hill, Sterett H Mercer, and Alyssa L Norris were the first to develop a personality scale designed to measure and assess the trait of spitefulness which was published in 2014 in Psychological Assessment . [1]
The Underground Man, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella Notes from Underground , is an example of spite. His motivation remains constantly spiteful, undercutting his own existence and ability to live.
Guilt is a moral emotion that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that they have compromised their own standards of conduct or have violated universal moral standards and bear significant responsibility for that violation. Guilt is closely related to the concept of remorse, regret, as well as shame.
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally covers specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and related activities. Psychometrics is concerned with the objective measurement of latent constructs that cannot be directly observed. Examples of latent constructs include intelligence, introversion, mental disorders, and educational achievement. The levels of individuals on nonobservable latent variables are inferred through mathematical modeling based on what is observed from individuals' responses to items on tests and scales.
Personality is any person's collection of interrelated behavioral, cognitive and emotional patterns that comprise a person’s unique adjustment to life. These interrelated patterns are relatively stable, but can change over long time periods.
In social psychology, fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is a cognitive attribution bias in which observers underemphasize situational and environmental factors for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional or personality factors. In other words, observers tend to overattribute the behaviors of others to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.
The Big Five personality traits, sometimes known as "the five-factor model of personality" or "OCEAN model", are a grouping of five unique characteristics used to study personality.
Personality development encompasses the dynamic construction and deconstruction of integrative characteristics that distinguish an individual in terms of interpersonal behavioral traits. Personality development is ever-changing and subject to contextual factors and life-altering experiences. Personality development is also dimensional in description and subjective in nature. That is, personality development can be seen as a continuum varying in degrees of intensity and change. It is subjective in nature because its conceptualization is rooted in social norms of expected behavior, self-expression, and personal growth. The dominant viewpoint in personality psychology indicates that personality emerges early and continues to develop across one's lifespan. Adult personality traits are believed to have a basis in infant temperament, meaning that individual differences in disposition and behavior appear early in life, potentially before language of conscious self-representation develop. The Five Factor Model of personality maps onto the dimensions of childhood temperament. This suggests that individual differences in levels of the corresponding personality traits are present from young ages.
Robert Hogan is an American personality psychologist and organizational psychologist known for developing socioanalytic theory, which fuses psychoanalytic theory, role theory, and evolutionary theory. Hogan is the president of Hogan Assessment Systems, which he co-founded in 1987. He is the author of three widely used personality inventories—the Hogan Personality Inventory; the Hogan Development Survey; and the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory—along with more than 300 scholarly articles, chapters, and books.
Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative emotions. It is one of the Big Five traits. Individuals with high scores on neuroticism are more likely than average to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. Their behavioral responses may include procrastination, substance use, and other maladaptive behaviors, which may aid in relieving negative emotions and generating positive ones.
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual curiosity, and challenging authority. A great deal of psychometric research has demonstrated that these facets or qualities are significantly correlated. Thus, openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of a set of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.
Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views. It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment and self-verification . Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.
Implicit self-esteem refers to a person's disposition to evaluate themselves in a spontaneous, automatic, or unconscious manner. It contrasts with explicit self-esteem, which entails more conscious and reflective self-evaluation. Both explicit and implicit self-esteem are constituents of self-esteem.
Impression formation in social psychology refers to the processes by which different pieces of knowledge about another are combined into a global or summary impression. Social psychologist Solomon Asch is credited with the seminal research on impression formation and conducted research on how individuals integrate information about personality traits. Two major theories have been proposed to explain how this process of integration takes place. The Gestalt approach views the formation of a general impression as the sum of several interrelated impressions. As an individual seeks to form a coherent and meaningful impression of another individual, previous impressions significantly influence the interpretation of subsequent information. In contrast to the Gestalt approach, the cognitive algebra approach asserts that individuals' experiences are combined with previous evaluations to form a constantly changing impression of a person. A related area to impression formation is the study of person perception, making dispositional attributions, and then adjusting those inferences based on the information available.
In psychology, grit is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on a person's perseverance of effort combined with their passion for a particular long-term goal or end state. This perseverance of effort helps people overcome obstacles or challenges to accomplishment and drives people to achieve.
In psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment. Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to increase when a will or goal is denied or blocked. There are two types of frustration: internal and external. Internal frustration may arise from challenges in fulfilling personal goals, desires, instinctual drives and needs, or dealing with perceived deficiencies, such as a lack of confidence or fear of social situations. Conflict, such as when one has competing goals that interfere with one another, can also be an internal source of frustration or annoyance and can create cognitive dissonance. External causes of frustration involve conditions outside an individual's control, such as a physical roadblock, a difficult task, or the perception of wasting time. There are multiple ways individuals cope with frustration such as passive–aggressive behavior, anger, or violence, although frustration may also propel positive processes via enhanced effort and strive. This broad range of potential outcomes makes it difficult to identify the original cause(s) of frustration, as the responses may be indirect. However, a more direct and common response is a propensity towards aggression.
Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.
Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.
Persistence(PS) is a key personality trait identified by psychiatrist C. Robert Cloninger in his Psychobiological Model of Personality. It describes an individual's propensity to remain motivated, resilient and goal-driven in the face of challenges and difficulties they may encounter whilst carrying out tasks and working towards goals. More precisely, persistence refers to “perseverance in spite of fatigue or frustration”. According to Cloninger, this perseverance demonstrates a psychological determination that is foundational in aiding an individual's long-term success in achieving goals.
Intellectual curiosity is curiosity that leads to an acquisition of general knowledge. It can include curiosity about such things as what objects are composed of, the underlying mechanisms of systems, mathematical relationships, languages, social norms, and history. It can be differentiated from another type of curiosity that does not lead to the acquisition of general knowledge, such as curiosity about the intimate secrets of other people. It is a facet of openness to experience in the Five Factor Model used to describe human personalities. It is similar to need for cognition and typical intellectual engagement.
In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is the name of a personality trait construct characterized by interpersonal manipulation, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a strategic focus on self-interest. Psychologists Richard Christie and Florence Geis named the construct after Niccolò Machiavelli, as they used edited statements inspired by his works to study variations in human behaviors. Their Mach IV test, a 20-question, Likert-scale personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool and scale of the Machiavellianism construct. Those who score high on the scale are more likely to have a high level of manipulativeness, deceitfulness and a cynical, unemotional temperament.
Nickola Christine Overall is a New Zealand academic, and is a professor of psychology at the University of Auckland, specialising in relationship, family and couples psychology. She is especially interested in communication strategies to overcome conflict.