Jordan B Peterson

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Psychology

Trata-se da tradução para o português do artigo "Why I am no longer a tenured professor at the University of Toronto", da autoria do Prof. Dr. Jordan Peterson. O artigo foi publicado originalmente em inglês no National Post, em 19/01/2022 (https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-why-i-am-no-longer-a-tenured-professor-at-the-university-of-t...

The Big Five traits of Conscientiousness and Openness may be distinguished by the capacity to maintain vs. reallocate task and goal focus, respectively. We herein investigate whether these differences in focus translate into differences in attentional scope. Consistent with our hypothesis, Conscientiousness and Openness emerged as the sole personal...

Background Baron-Cohen (2002) proposed the Extreme Male Brain Theory (EMB) to suggest that foetal testosterone (FT) (1) is a component of the complex neurobiological aetiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and (2) accounts for its high male prevalence. The theory suggests that ASD is more common in males to an extreme manifestation of psycholog...

Research investigating performance-related outcomes has established that the predictive validity of Big Five models can be doubled, simply by contextualizing scale items. We herein test whether this contextualization effect can be leveraged to universally improve the predictive validity of Big Five models by considering the breadth, depth, and natu...

Individuals who are more easily disgusted tend to be more politically conservative. Individuals who have a preference for order also tend to be more politically conservative. In the present research, we hypothesised that these three variables are psychologically interrelated. Specifically, trait disgust encourages a generalised search for order, wh...

We propose an interpersonal biofeedback technology which uses music-like stimuli to convey a user’s physiological information to another observer. It is argued that this interpersonal biofeedback may facilitate empathy and interpersonal entrainment. We argue that music is an optimal carrier for biofeedback because it naturally regulates psychophysi...

DOI:10.1080/00223891.2017.1339711The cohen’s d’s were not calculated correctly in the descriptive statistics for Study 1–the effect sizes in the paper are double what they should be. On Page 3, the cohen’s d’s in the following paragraph should read as follows: We performed Bonferroni-corrected pairwise t tests to examine differences in composite sc...

Although performance feedback is widely employed as a means to improve motivation, the efficacy and reliability of performance feedback is often obscured by individual differences and situational variables. The joint role of these moderating variables remains unknown. Accordingly, we investigate how the motivational impact of feedback is moderated...

Playful puzzle task example. (PDF)

Difficult puzzle task example. (PDF)

Neutral puzzle task example. (PDF)

In the original publication, Fig. 6 does not properly label the values. The revised version of the Fig. 6 is given below.

Each year as the number of graduate students in psychology increases, there is also increased competition for academic positions. The general consensus is that there is higher pressure for students to publish prolifically, yet there is little information as to what this exactly means. The main aim of the present study was to examine the average pub...

A voluminous literature has documented the importance of emotion regulation for health and well-being. The studies in this literature, however, have generally focused on the down-regulation of negative affect. Few studies have examined the down-regulation of positive affect. In Study 1, we constructed a scale, the revised Regulatory Emotional Self-...

Previous studies on discourse have employed a self-paced sentence-by-sentence paradigm to present text and record reading times. However, presenting discourse this way does not mirror real-world reading conditions; for example, this paradigm prevents regressions to earlier portions of the text. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the...

Conservatives are often thought to have a negativity bias—responding more intensely to negative than positive information. Yet, recent research has found that greater endorsement of conservative beliefs follows from both positive and negative emotion inductions. This suggests that the role of affect in political thought may not be restricted to neg...

We review existing research on the associations between political orientation and Big Five traits such as Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness. We suggest that analyzing these traits at the aspect level sheds light on motivational mechanisms underlying these links. For example, we present evidence that only one of the two aspects of Conscie...

Objective The Big Five personality dimension Openness/Intellect is the trait most closely associated with creativity and creative achievement. Little is known, however, regarding the discriminant validity of its two aspects— Openness to Experience (reflecting cognitive engagement with sensory and perceptual information) and Intellect (reflecting co...

Despite a high level of interest in quantifying the scientific output of established researchers, there has been less of a focus on quantifying the performance of junior researchers. The available metrics that quantify a scientist’s research output all utilize citation information, which often takes a number of years to accrue and thus would disadv...

Research has consistently demonstrated that political liberalism is predicted by the personality trait Openness to Experience and conservatism by trait Conscientiousness. Less well studied, however, is how trait personality influences political orientation. The present study investigated whether differences in media preference might mediate the lin...

The gender and ethnicity gap in academic achievement constitutes one of today's key social problems. The current study, therefore, assessed the effects of a brief, evidence-based online intervention aimed at enhancing goal-directed conceptualization and action among first year college students (N = 703) at a large European business school. The acad...

Previous studies suggest that conservatives in the United States are happier than liberals. This difference has been attributed to factors including differences in socioeconomic status, group memberships, and system-justifying beliefs. We suggest that differences between liberals and conservatives in personality traits may provide an additional acc...

The negative valence model of political orientation proposed by Hibbing and colleagues is comprehensive and thought-provoking. We agree that there is compelling research linking threat to conservative political beliefs. However, we propose that further research is needed before it can be concluded that negative valence, rather than arousal more gen...

An instrument designed to separate 2 midlevel traits within each of the Big Five (the Big Five Aspect Scales [BFAS]) was used to clarify the relation of personality to cognitive ability. The BFAS measures Openness to Experience and Intellect as separate (although related) traits, and refers to the broader Big Five trait as Openness/Intellect. In 2...

Conservatives, compared to liberals, are consistently found to exhibit physiological sensitivity to aversive stimuli. However, it remains unknown whether conservatives are also sensitive to salient positively valenced stimuli. We therefore used event-related potentials to determine the relationship between system justification (SJ), a fundamental c...

While church and state are officially separated in many Western nations, there is nonetheless a great deal of overlap between the religious beliefs and political orientations of individual citizens. Religious individuals tend to be more conservative, placing a greater emphasis on order, obedience, and tradition. While many religious movements empha...

Differences in political orientation are partly rooted in personality, with liberalism predicted by Openness to Experience and conservatism by Conscientiousness. Since Openness is positively associated with intellectual and creative activities, these may help shape political orientation. We examined whether exposure to cultural activities and histo...

It is widely held that negative emotions such as threat, anxiety, and disgust represent the core psychological factors that enhance conservative political beliefs. We put forward an alternative hypothesis: that conservatism is fundamentally motivated by arousal, and that, in this context, the effect of negative emotion is due to engaging intensely...

Objective: Two dimensions of the Big Five, Extraversion and Agreeableness, are strongly related to interpersonal behavior. Factor analysis has indicated that each of the Big Five contains two separable but related aspects. The present study examined the manner in which the aspects of Extraversion (Assertiveness and Enthusiasm) and Agreeableness (C...

An instrument designed to separate 2 midlevel traits within each of the Big Five (the Big Five Aspect Scales [BFAS]) was used to clarify the relation of personality to cognitive ability. The BFAS measures Openness to Experience and Intellect as separate (although related) traits, and refers to the broader Big Five trait as Openness/Intellect. In 2...

We suggest that the hierarchical predictive processing account detailed by Clark can be usefully integrated with narrative psychology by situating personal narratives at the top of an individual's knowledge hierarchy. Narrative representations function as high-level generative models that direct our attention and structure our expectations about un...

Most psychological models, even those as sophisticated as Gray’s (1982), are based on the assumption that the world is made of objects, existing independently and given, or, more abstractly, of stimuli. That assumption is wrong: the boundaries between objects or stimuli are situation-dependent and subjectively-determined. Half our brain is devoted...

Entropy, a concept derived from thermodynamics and information theory, describes the amount of uncertainty and disorder within a system. Self-organizing systems engage in a continual dialogue with the environment and must adapt themselves to changing circumstances to keep internal entropy at a manageable level. We propose the entropy model of uncer...

Previous research has demonstrated that art can produce some variation in self-reported personality traits. The present experiment addressed two questions. First, does visual art cause greater fluctuations in personality for unsettled or serene individuals, and second, do unsettled individuals respond more to art as a function of its narrative stru...

A novel theory of Openness/Intellect is proposed, which integrates intelligence and positive schizotypy (or apophenia, false detection of patterns or causal connections) within the Big Five. Openness/Intellect comprises a simplex of subtraits arrayed along a single scaling dimension. Openness traits fall in one half of the simplex, bounded by apoph...

Previous research has demonstrated that art can produce some variation in self-reported personality traits. The present experiment addressed two questions. First, does visual art cause greater fluctuations in personality for unsettled or serene individuals, and second, do unsettled individuals respond more to art as a function of its narrative stru...

The world is too complex to manage without radical functional simplification. Meaning appears to exist as the basis for such simplification. The meaning that guides functional simplification may be usefully considered as consisting of three classes. The first class consists of meanings of the determinate world. These are meanings based in motivatio...

Political conservatism has been characterized by resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, with liberalism characterized by the polar opposite of these values. Political attitudes are heritable and may be influenced by basic personality traits. In previous research, conservatism (vs. liberalism) has been associated positively with Conscien...

Delay discounting is the process by which the value of an expected reward decreases as the delay to obtaining that reward increases. Individuals with higher discounting rates tend to prefer smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards. Previous research has indicated that personality can influence an individual's discounting rates, with hi...

This is a brief review of the benefits of writing about uncertainty and trauma (including expressive writing and future goal-setting) prior to and including 2010.

Of students who enroll in 4-year universities, 25% never finish. Precipitating causes of early departure include poor academic progress and lack of clear goals and motivation. In the present study, we investigated whether an intensive, online, written, goal-setting program for struggling students would have positive effects on academic achievement....

The prisoner’s dilemma has been used to study self-interest and cooperation in a variety of contexts. Applying an individual differences approach to this paradigm allows for the examination of dispositional factors that predict the likelihood of betraying one’s game partner. An iterative prisoner’s dilemma was administered to undergraduate students...

Readers of fiction tend to have better abilities of empathy and theory of mind (Mar et al., 2006). We present a study designed to replicate this finding, rule out one possible explanation, and extend the assessment of social outcomes. In order to rule out the role of personality, we first identified Openness as the most consistent correlate. This t...

An experiment tested the hypothesis that art can cause significant changes in the experience of one's own personality traits under laboratory conditions. After completing a set of questionnaires, including the Big-Five Inventory (BFI) and an emotion checklist, the experimental group read the short story The Lady With the Toy Dog by Chekhov, while t...

An experiment tested the hypothesis that literature can subvert habitual emotional disengagement of avoidantly attached individuals. After completing the Attachment Style Questionnaire and an Emotion Checklist, 166 participants were randomly assigned to either an Art or a Control condition. Those in the Art condition read the short story The Lady w...

Although initially believed to contain orthogonal dimensions, the Big Five personality taxonomy appears to have a replicable higher-order structure, with the metatrait of Plasticity reflecting the shared variance between Extraversion and Openness/Intellect, and the metatrait of Stability reflecting the shared variance among Neuroticism, Agreeablene...

Social and personality psychologists have recently begun examining patterns of natural language use in relation to psychological phenomena. One domain of interest has been the relationships between individual differences in personality and the types of words that people use. The current study extends this research by examining the association betwe...

Territoriality cannot be properly understood without careful re-conceptualization of the nature of emotional regulation among individual human beings. This reconceptualization must include careful consideration of man as a truly social animal whose physical existence and whose psychological stability is dependent on maintenance of a predictable soc...

Delay discounting describes the extent to which the value of a reward decreases as the delay to obtaining that reward increases. Lower discounting rates predict better outcomes in social, academic, and health domains. The current study investigates how personality and cognitive ability interact to predict individual differences in delay discounting...

Self-report measures of personality appear susceptible to biased responding, especially when administered in competitive environments. Respondents can selectively enhance their positive traits while downplaying negative ones. Consequently, it can be difficult to achieve an accurate representation of personality when there is motivation for favourab...

The comorbidity of various externalizing behaviors stems from a broad predisposition that is strongly genetically determined (R. F. Krueger, B. M. Hicks, C. J. Patrick, S. R. Carlson, W. G. Iacono, & M. McGue, 2002). This finding raises the question of how externalizing behavior is related to broad personality traits that have been identified in no...

This study investigated individual differences in cognitive abilities that contribute to solving insight problems. A model is proposed describing three types of cognitive ability that contribute independently to insight: convergent thinking, divergent thinking, and breaking frame. The model was tested in a large sample (N=108) by regressing insight...

Human beings are territorial, like all social animals, although human territoriality extends uniquely to abstract conceptualization. Our physical security and emotional well-being and stability depend on the maintenance of familiar social and physical surroundings. Such familiarity is due in large part to the shared framework of abstract conception...

A personality model based on the Big Five and their higher-order factors or metatraits was used to examine associations between personality and individual differences in circadian rhythm, as assessed by the Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ). Based on previous research with Eysenck’s personality model and a neurobiological model implicatin...

Individuals operating within the scientific paradigm presume that the world is made of matter. Although the perspective engendered by this presupposition is very powerful, it excludes value and subjective experience from its fundamental ontology. In addition, it provides very little guidance with regards to the fundamentals of ethical action. Indiv...

Depressive disorders may be characterised by hyperattention toward negative information, hypoattention toward positive information, or a combination of both processing biases. In two studies, a dot-probe task was utilised to better ascertain the specific direction and time-course of these biases. In both studies, the dysphoric group showed signific...

An experiment examined the impact of indirect social monitoring on memory distortions found in 'ego-istic self-enhancers', that is, individuals prone to self-reporting enhanced traits related to social status and dominance (Paulhus & John, 1998). One-hundred-and-sixty-six students from a large urban university (117 women and 49 men, mean age = 23.0...

Factor analyses of 75 facet scales from 2 major Big Five inventories, in the Eugene-Springfield community sample (N=481), produced a 2-factor solution for the 15 facets in each domain. These findings indicate the existence of 2 distinct (but correlated) aspects within each of the Big Five, representing an intermediate level of personality structure...

Studies 1 and 2 assessed performance on a battery of dorsolateral prefrontal cognitive ability (D-PFCA) tests, personality, psychometric intelligence, and academic performance (AP) in 2 undergraduate samples. In Studies 1 and 2, AP was correlated with D-PFCA (r=.37, p<.01, and r=.33, p<.01, respectively), IQ (r=.24, p<.05, and r=.38, p<.01, respect...

It is commonly held that the idea of natural rights originated with the ancient Greeks, and was given full form by more modern philosophers such as John Locke, who believed that natural rights were apprehensible primarily to reason. The problem with this broad position is three-fold: first, it is predicated on the presumption that the idea of right...

In this exploratory archival study, the motivation of writers of fiction and physicists was examined by studying word usage as a clue to unconscious motivators of their work. The hypothesis was that artists make art to deal with issues in their own lives, thus relying on emotions, particularly negative emotions (markers of presence of issues), to g...

Dopaminergic neurotransmission is implicated in externalizing behavior problems, such as aggression and hyperactivity. Externalizing behavior is known to be negatively associated with cognitive ability. Activation of dopamine D4 receptors appears to inhibit the functioning of the prefrontal cortex, a brain region implicated in cognitive ability. Th...

Alcohol may have psychomotor stimulant properties during the rising limb of the blood alcohol curve at commonly self-administered doses. Increased heart rate (HR) immediately after alcohol consumption may serve as an indicator or marker of such properties, which appear to be potentially opiate-mediated and dopamine-dependent. Naltrexone, an opiate...

The similarities between measures of self-evaluation and self-deception are reviewed, and a method for discriminating between them is proposed, using personality profiles and relations to ability and achievement. Across two samples, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and Tafarodi's measures of self-evaluation were used to demonstrate that the R...

While frequent readers are often stereotyped as socially awkward, this may only be true of non-fiction readers and not readers of fiction. Comprehending characters in a narrative fiction appears to parallel the comprehension of peers in the actual world, while the comprehension of expository non-fiction shares no such parallels. Frequent fiction re...

The authors examined heart-rate responses to alcohol consumption and video lottery terminal (VLT) play. Regular VLT players (30 probable pathological gamblers [PPGs]; 30 nonpathological gamblers [NPGs]) were randomized to an alcohol (mean postdrinking blood alcohol concentration = 0.056%) or placebo condition. Heart rate was recorded at pre- and po...

Previously, we introduced a new computational tool for nonlinear curve fitting and data set exploration: the Naturalistic University of Alberta Nonlinear Correlation Explorer (NUANCE) (Hollis & Westbury, 2006). We demonstrated that NUANCE was capable of providing useful descriptions of data for two toy problems. Since then, we have extended the fun...

30 drinkers (oversampled for heavier drinking, from within an undergraduate sample of 60) were assessed with the NEO-FFI, queried regarding weekly self-reported habitual drinking behavior, and subjected to an alcoholic beverage sham taste-test, in a randomly-paired dyad. Extraverted, emotionally stable individuals reported more habitual drinking oc...

The Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ) is a new self-report measure of creative achievement that assesses achievement across 10 domains of creativity. It was designed to be objective, empirically valid, and easy to administer and score. Study 1 established test-retest reliability (r = .81, p < .0001) and internal consistency reliability (α =...

Libet concluded that, given the constraints caused by the timing of consciousness, all action is generated unconsciously. The power of consciousness, according to Libet, is in selection, in having the ability to veto each action before it is run to completion. In this paper we challenge the veto, by proposing that the role of consciousness exists p...

We characterize Openness/Intellect as motivated cognitive flexibility, or cognitive exploration, and develop a neuropsychological model relating it to dopaminergic function and to the functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Evidence is reviewed for sources of Openness/Intellect shared with Extraversion and sources unique to Openness/Intellect. Th...

Dyads composed of unacquainted females watched a video while snacking on pizza. Their extraversion and self-monitoring scores were used to predict the extent to which individuals within dyads matched each other's food intake. Matching of intake was high irrespective of the personality composition of the dyad. We consider elements of the situation t...

One hundred and fifteen undergraduate students (88 women and 27 men, mean age ¼ 19.9 years) from a large urban university participated in this study for course credit. Individuals with moralistic and egoistic biases in self-perception (Paulhus & John, 1998) were tested for attentional biases and memory distortions following bogus personality feedba...

Facts are facts. Opinions about the facts differ. It is therefore the job of the peacemaker to bridge the gap between opinions, and in that manner, bring about reconciliation. This much seems obvious. But what if the facts themselves differ? What if the basis for the disagreement is so profound that the world arrays itself differently for each anta...

Is the human being a noble savage, corrupted by the stresses of civilized social being, or a beast of prey, selfish and cruel? To answer this question, it is necessary to consider evidence derived from a diverse sampling of the behavioral sciences, and to reframe the argument: what tendencies to aggression, if any, characterize the human species, a...