The cognitive-adaptive framework for personality identifies individual
differences in skills for real-world adaptation as a central issue for personality
research. Figure 6.2 shows what Zeidner and Matthews (2000) called the
adaptive triangle. Personality traits entail a set of intrinsic biases in neural
and cognitive functioning that are shaped by genetics and early learning, al-
though each individual bias may be quite small in magnitude. The package of
biases facilitates or impairs the learning of contextualized skills, which in turn
support adaptation to the context concerned. However, adaptation is not
solely dependent on cognitive skills. The person’s motivations to learn, de-
ploy, and refine skills are also important, as are the emotional factors that
may impinge on skill execution. In broad terms, these factors can be grouped
together as self-knowledge: the stable goals, beliefs, and emotional disposi-
tions that support or interfere with skilled behavior. Thus, we can see the
adaptive process as an interplay between cold cognitive skills, hot self-
knowledge, and action in significant real-world settings.
Figure 6.3 illustrates in more detail how this framework applies to ex-
traversion. Basic component processes such as low cortical arousability,
sensitivity to reward, and the various information-processing correlates of
extraversion provide a platform for acquiring skills such as effective conver-
sation, and handling cognitive overload. Two types of positive feedback op-
erate. Going clockwise around the adaptive triangle, effective skills build
positive self-appraisals, leading to increased self-efficacy, and other aspects
of self-knowledge, that in turn encourages the extravert to participate in so-
cial encounters, further enhancing skill. Going counter-clockwise, expertise
leads to more effective behaviors and successful outcomes, leading to posi-
tive appraisals of outcomes, that build self-confidence for demanding social
settings, and coping strategies (e.g., task-focus) that allow skills to be de-
ployed to maximum effect. Although we cannot review empirical studies in
any detail here, there is evidence from studies of self-regulation, coping, and
activity preference that links extraversion to each of the six feedback arrows
150 MATTHEWS AND ZEIDNER
FIG. 6.2. Adaptive processes supporting personality traits.