types and levels of social engagement, beginning in infancy. Personality reflects
these choices—whether to specialize for one or more environments, or whether
to be moderately well-equipped to handle a variety of challenges. The intellect,
in the sense of use of reason and judgment, is one of several tools that can be
employed in meeting these challenges. The success with which intellectual ca-
pabilities can be directed toward specialized contextual challenges, such as in-
fluencing the opinions of others in a meeting at work, or evaluating the benefits
and risks of driving in icy conditions, depends on the overall self-regulative
process, including its emotional and motivational aspects. In turn, the goals
and functions of self-regulation relate to personality traits.
The heritability of traits reflects the fact that adaptive choices are part of
the human condition, that cut across different cultures (although culture has
a moderating effect). People, of course, have common adaptations that are
characteristic of the species. However, personality is perhaps also shaped by
adaptations to more marginal environments with which engagement may or
not be profitable, such as some threatening or stressful situations. The emo-
tionally stable person can survive and reproduce in such situations, passing
on a package of genes that allows his or her offspring to also thrive under
stress.
At the same time, the diversity of the environment requires a learned ele-
ment to personality. Children are typically exposed to a variety of different
types of situation, with opportunities to learn through conditioning, model-
ing and insightful understanding (Zeidner et al., 2003). The outcomes of these
learning will bias personality. For example, even a child with an emotionally
stable temperament may be traumatized by adverse events, leading to a bias
toward a more neurotic personality. More typically, the child’s constitutional
temperament will steer it toward congruent learning experiences. For exam-
ple, emotionally stable children appear to handle stressful encounters more
effectively (Kochanska & Coy, 2002). Goldberg (1993) referred to the Big
Five as corresponding to the main themes of human life: power, emotion,
work, love, and intellect. Inherited traits and social learning work together to
shape the individual’s adaptation to these challenges, an adaptation that in-
cludes specialized intellectual competencies.
TRANSIENT STATES AND SITUATIONAL
ADAPTATION
By comparison with studies of traits, the development of validated measures
of transient states has been uneven. Most work has focused on affective
states. Studies support either a two-dimensional model of basic affect or
mood, or a three-dimensional model discriminating energy, tension and
pleasantness of mood (Schimmack & Grob, 2000). Most investigations of
cognitive states have been inspired by anxiety research, which suggests that
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