evading rather than confronting danger. The strategy may work well in terms
of preempting and avoiding threats, but poorly when the context requires
that the threat be confronted directly, as in the case of taking a test or manag-
ing a necessary social encounter.
Personality Traits as Self-Regulative Constructs
To summarize, personality traits have a coherence that derives from their
status as adaptations. The multiple emotional, cognitive, and motivational
correlates of traits in one sense represent quite different psychological attrib-
utes and processes. However, they are interrelated because they subserve
common adaptive goals. To function effectively in stressful environments
takes more than just a calm disposition, for example. Adaptation requires the
capacity to cope through taking direct action, despite the potential risks. It
also requires motivations that support such active engagement, such as seek-
ing challenges. Hence, traits represent a set of biases in emotion, cognition,
and motivation that work together to prepare the person to acquire and exe-
cute the skills needed for specific environments. These biases may also be ex-
pressed, modestly, via intellectual functions, such as the deficits on ability
tests shown by individuals high in neuroticism, trait anxiety, and test anxiety
(Zeidner & Matthews, 2000). The anxious person allocates attention to self-
evaluative processing that interferes with intellectual functioning, especially
in stressful environments.
The structure of personality traits tell us something about the main adap-
tive challenges of human life are organized. As we have already described,
extraversion–introversion is associated with social relationships. Should one
be a pack animal, seeking success by climbing the social hierarchy, or a lone
wolf, with less social support but free from the distractions of social competi-
tion? Neuroticism and emotional stability similarly relate to the choice be-
tween avoidance and confrontation of threat and danger, as do the contex-
tualized anxiety traits. Other traits of the Five Factor Model may also refer to
adaptive tradeoffs (Matthews, Zeidner, & Roberts, 2003). Conscientiousness
refers to the adaptive choice between sustained work for long-term benefit
and capitalization on short-term opportunities. Agreeableness may refer to
choosing between cooperation and competition (note that extraversion en-
tails more of both types of interaction). Openness may describe choosing self-
directed intellectual analysis of one’s environment, over reliance on tradi-
tional wisdom and authority.
This perspective also contributes to understanding traits as a product of
both genetics and the social environment (see Zeidner, Matthews, Roberts, &
McCann, 2003, for a more detailed developmental account). The human spe-
cies is unique in the varied nature of the physical and social environments
within which people may thrive. There are more degrees of freedom to being
human than to being other animals. We are forced to choose between different
158 MATTHEWS AND ZEIDNER