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Flexibility (personality)

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Flexibility is a personality trait that describes the extent to which a person can cope with changes in circumstances and think about problems and tasks in novel, creative ways.[1] This trait comes into play when stressors or unexpected events occur, requiring that a person change their stance, outlook, or commitment.

Flexibility, or psychological flexibility, as it is sometimes called, is the ability to adapt to situational demands, balance life demands, and commit to behaviors.

Flexible personality should not be confused with cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to switch between two concepts, and to simultaneously think about multiple concepts. Researchers of cognitive flexibility describe it as the ability to switch one's thinking and attention between tasks.[2]

Measures/assessments

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Due to the different facets of the definition of psychological flexibility, it is difficult to measure. There are multiple questionnaires that attempt to do so.

Acceptance and Action Questionnaire

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The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ) was designed to measure experiential avoidance. This test found that higher levels of avoidance are linked to higher levels of general psychopathology, depression, anxiety, fears, and a lower quality of life. AAQ also measures avoidant coping and self-deceptive positivity.[3] It was later decided that the AAQ actually measured psychological flexibility, not experiential avoidance.[4] It was used until the AAQ-II was created.

Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II

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The AAQ-II was developed in order to improve upon the faults of the AAQ, which included scale brevity, item wording, and item selection procedures that caused insufficient alpha levels to be obtained in measurements.[4] AAQ-II scores predict many outcomes, including mental health and work absence rates. AAQ-II also was more psychometrically consistent than the original AAQ.[5]

Laboratory measures of flexibility are consistent with how flexible people are in their actual lives.[6] The validity of the AAQ has again been brought into question, primarily by inconsistent results. Studies have shown that both versions of the AAQ appear to measure the same thing, which is neuroticism/negative affect rather than experiential avoidance.[7]

Impacts on life

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Parent–child relationships

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Research shows that parenting psychological flexibility may influence the relationship between parent distress and child distress.[8] When parents are psychologically inflexible they cause more stress in their families.

A similar study looked at the longitudinal relationship between perceived parenting style and psychological flexibility among students over six years (7th–12th grade). Psychological flexibility decreased with age: as children grow older they become more set in their thoughts and habits, being less likely to change them due to circumstances. Results also indicated that authoritarian parenting styles predicted low psychological flexibility in children. Parents who over-control their children tend to restrict how well their children cope with stressors. Also, children with more psychological flexibility in 9th grade were more likely to have decreases in authoritarian and increases in authoritative parenting style later on.[9]

Authoritative parenting styles seem to be associated with psychological flexibility in children. Authoritative parents tend to be more warm, fair, and encouraging than those with other parenting styles, which may be why children raised by this style have more psychological flexibility. Such children are encouraged to be independent and are supported, so they are able to adjust to situations that do not go as predicted.

Work environment

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Psychological flexibility improves mental health and absence rates[clarification needed].[10] A mediating variable is job control, which suggests that people have more psychological flexibility when they have more control over their jobs.[11] This is likely due to workers feeling less restricted in what they can do and more empowered to solve problems.[11] A longitudinal study on psychological flexibility and job control showed that these variables predicted workers' mental health, job performance, and even their ability to learn new software.[10] The study demonstrates the power of psychological flexibility in the workplace: psychologically flexible workers have better mental health and job performance.[10] Allowing workers more job control could increase work productivity by increasing the workers' psychological flexibility.[10] In leadership studies, flexibility, defined as "the ability to get along with different groups and adapt to the demands of many organizations," is one aspect of portability, or the ability to acquire skills and move from one company to the next.[12]

Health

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The ability to cope and be flexible is positively associated with psychological health. Flexibility reduces depression, anxiety, and stress.[13] An experiment analyzed the relationship between difficulty identifying and describing feelings (DIDF) and psychological flexibility in men undergoing cancer screenings. Results showed that DIDF and psychological flexibility were reliable predictors of mental health. However, psychological flexibility only predicted mental health when DIDF was involved[clarification needed]. Psychological flexibility allowed participants to have a better understanding of the subtleties of pleasant and unpleasant emotions. This understanding allowed participants to identify and describe their feelings better, thus enhancing their mental health.[14]

A two-year longitudinal study found that psychological flexibility helps with long-term emotional adjustment. People who are better able to enhance and suppress their expression of emotions are less likely to be stressed over time.[15] People with more psychological flexibility also have greater endurance, higher pain tolerance, and a quicker recovery rate to baseline levels when experiencing physical pain.[16]

How to improve

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People can improve their psychological flexibility by training, such as by engaging in various forms of psychotherapy.[17]

Acceptance and commitment therapy

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Main article: Acceptance and commitment therapy

The main goal of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is to increase psychological flexibility. It helps people accept unavoidable events, identify actions that will lead to goals, and acknowledge thoughts rather than accepting or disregarding them.[18] When psychological flexibility was targeted[clarification needed] in one study of ACT, there was a stronger reduction in psychological distress.[19] There are six core processes in ACT interventions: acceptance, cognitive defusion, self as context, being present, values, and committed action.[20]

Acceptance
teaches people to embrace their emotions, rather than trying to get rid of them.[20] An example of acceptance would be when people feel angry and then choose to focus on the anger and accept that they are angry, rather than trying to unleash their anger to get rid of it.
Cognitive defusion
teaches people to not take their thoughts as literally true in order to decrease the believability of negative thoughts and increase flexibility to behave as they want.[20] An example of cognitive defusion would be when someone thinks "I am the worst," and then notices the thought for what it is—mere words—perhaps by saying to themselves "I am having the thought that I am the worst". This is in contrast to a cognitive therapy approach where the person might challenge the thought by thinking of things in which he or she excels.
Self-as-context
attempts to have people become aware of their own experiences without being attached to them.[20] This process helps people let go of specific content and experience themselves[clarification needed].[20]
Being present
teaches people to directly experience the world by paying attention to the moment and being aware.[20] An example of being present would be meditation and mindfulness.[20]
Values
teaches people to take actions in deliberate furtherance of qualities they choose.[20] An example is somebody who chooses to continue to improve on being a father (chosen quality) by reliving painful childhood memories about how his own father parented him (action). The purpose is not to encourage pain, but rather to allow people to deal with pain for a valued choice, such as being a good father.[20]
Committed action
teaches people to make changes in behavior in deliberate furtherance of qualities they choose.[20] Committed action involves identifying psychological barriers that will interfere with short, medium, and longer-term goals and then working through those barriers in order to reach the goals.[20]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Thurston, Becky J.; Runco, Mark A. (August 1999), "Flexibility", Encyclopedia of creativity, vol. 1, Academic Press, pp. 729–732, ISBN 9780122270758
  2. ^ Miyake, A; Friedman, N.P.; Emerson, M.J.; Witzki, A.H.; Howerter, A.; Wagner, T. (2000). "The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "frontal lobe" tasks: A latent variable analysis". Cognitive Psychology. 41 (1): 49–100. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.485.1953. doi:10.1006/cogp.1999.0734. PMID 10945922. S2CID 10096387.
  3. ^ Hayes, Steven; Strosahl, Kirk; Wilson, Kelly; Bissett, Richard; Pistorello, Jacqueline; Toarmino, Dosheen; Polusny, Melissa; Dykstra, Thane; Batten, Sonja; Bergan, John; Stewart, Sherry; Zvolensky, Michael; Eifert, Georg; Bond, Frank; Forsyth, John; Karekla, Maria; McCurry, Susan (2004). "Measuring Experiential Avoidance: A Preliminary Test of a Working Model". The Psychological Record. 54 (4): 553–578. doi:10.1007/BF03395492. S2CID 53326452.
  4. ^ a b Hayes, Steven. "Acceptance & Action Questionnaire (AAQ) and AAQ-II". Association for Contextual Behavioral Science.
  5. ^ Bond, F.W.; Hayes, S.C.; Baer, R.A.; Carpenter, K.M.; Guenole, N.; Orcutt, H.K.; Waltz, T.; Zettle, R.D. (2011). "Preliminary psychometric properties of the acceptance and action questionnaire-ii: A revised measure of psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance" (PDF). Behavior Therapy. 42 (4): 676–688. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2011.03.007. PMID 22035996.
  6. ^ Cheng, C. (2001). "Assessing Coping Flexibility in Real-life and Laboratory Settings: A Multimethod Approach". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 80 (5): 814–833. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.5.814. PMID 11374752.
  7. ^ Rochefort, Catherine; Baldwin, Austin S.; Chmielewski, Michael (2017). "Experiential Avoidance: An Examination of the Construct Validity of the AAQ-II and MEAQ". Behavior Therapy. 49 (3): 435–449. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2017.08.008. PMID 29704971.
  8. ^ Moyer, D.N.; Sandoz, E.K. (2014). "The role of psychological flexibility in the relationship between parent and adolescent distress". Journal of Child and Family Studies. 24 (5): 1406–1418. doi:10.1007/s10826-014-9947-y. S2CID 254603939.
  9. ^ Williams, K.E.; Ciarrochi, J.; Heaven, P.C. (2012). "Inflexible Parents, Inflexible Kids: a 6-year Longitudinal Study of Parenting Style and the Development of Psychological Flexibility in Adolescents". Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 41 (8): 1053–1066. doi:10.1007/s10964-012-9744-0. PMID 22311519. S2CID 254739471.
  10. ^ a b c d Bond, F.W.; Flaxman, P.E. (2006). "The Ability of Psychological Flexibility and Job Control to Predict Learning, Job Performance, and Mental Health". Journal of Organizational Behavior Management. 26 (1–2): 113–130. doi:10.1300/J075v26n01_05. S2CID 145803470.
  11. ^ a b Bond, F.W.; Flaxman, P.E.; Bunce, D. (2008). "The Influence of Psychological Flexibility on Work Redesign: Mediated Moderation of a Work Reorganization Intervention" (PDF). Journal of Applied Psychology. 93 (3): 645–654. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.93.3.645. PMID 18457492.
  12. ^ Petriglieri, Gianpiero (August 10, 2017). "The Portable Leader Is the New "Organization Man"". Harvard Business Review. Retrieved August 19, 2017.
  13. ^ Kato, T. (2012). "Development of the Coping Flexibility Scale: Evidence for the Coping Flexibility Hypothesis". Journal of Counseling Psychology. 59 (2): 262–273. doi:10.1037/a0027770. PMID 22506909.
  14. ^ Landstra, J.B.; Ciarrochi, J.; Deane, F.P.; Hillman, R.J. (2013). "Identifying and Describing Feelings and Psychological Flexibility Predict Mental Health in Men with HIV". British Journal of Health Psychology. 18 (4): 844–857. doi:10.1111/bjhp.12026. PMID 23368629.
  15. ^ Bonanno, G.A.; Papa, A.; Lalande, K.; Westphal, M.; Coifman, K. (2004). "The Importance of Being Flexible: The Ability to Both Enhance and Suppress Emotional Expression Predicts Long-term Adjustment". Psychological Science. 15 (7): 482–487. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00705.x. PMID 15200633. S2CID 15289041.
  16. ^ Feldner, M.T.; Hekmat, H.; Zvolensky, M.J.; Vowles, K.E.; Secrist, Z.; Leen-Feldner, E.W. (2006). "The Role of Experiential Avoidance in Acute Pain Tolerance: A Laboratory Test". Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. 37 (2): 146–158. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2005.03.002. PMID 15882839.
  17. ^
    • Greenberg, Leslie S.; Rice, Laura North; Elliott, Robert (1993). Facilitating emotional change: the moment-by-moment process. New York: Guilford Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0898629941. OCLC 27897484. Once we attend to our emotional feedback, our survival/growth tendency ensures that we are constantly attempting to make the decision most advantageous to our well-being in terms of how we currently perceive ourselves and the situation. Thus the growth tendency is constantly pushing the organism toward adaptive flexibility and need satisfaction in a specific context. As will be noted later, therapy is a process of helping the client access and strengthen this tendency.
    • Kashdan, Todd B.; Rottenberg, Jonathan (November 2010). "Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health". Clinical Psychology Review. 30 (7): 865–878. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.001. PMC 2998793. PMID 21151705. We have mentioned empirically based interventions that describe the cultivation of flexibility as a therapeutic aim... However even when psychological interventions do not explicitly discuss flexibility as an aim of treatment (e.g., behavioral activation, cognitive therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy), flexibility is such an integral part of psychological functioning that it is almost inevitable that it will in some way be impacted.
    • Fox, Kieran C.R.; Kang, Yoona; Lifshitz, Michael; Christoff, Kalina (2016). "Increasing cognitive-emotional flexibility with meditation and hypnosis: the cognitive neuroscience of de-automatization". In Raz, Amir; Lifshitz, Michael (eds.). Hypnosis and meditation: towards an integrative science of conscious planes. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 191–220. ISBN 9780198759102. OCLC 948262934. Are there ways in which we can increase the flexibility and diversity of the cognitive and emotional aspects of our spontaneous thought? Practices geared toward changing both the content and process of spontaneous thought are as ancient as their scientific study is new—such techniques have existed for millennia and continue to be developed in modern clinical contexts.
    • Hinton, Devon E.; Kirmayer, Laurence J. (March 2017). "The flexibility hypothesis of healing". Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. 41 (1): 3–34. doi:10.1007/s11013-016-9493-8. PMID 27142641. S2CID 254793002. In this paper, we argue that many forms of healing and psychotherapy may work by inducing positive psychological states marked by flexibility or an enhanced ability to shift cognitive sets.
  18. ^ Bach, P.; Hayes, S.C. (2002). "The Use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Prevent the Rehospitalization of Psychotic Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 70 (5): 1129–1139. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.529.9140. doi:10.1037/0022-006x.70.5.1129. PMID 12362963.
  19. ^ Fledderus, M.; Bohlmeijer, E.T.; Fox, J.; Schreurs, K.M.G.; Spinhoven, P. (2013). "The Role of Psychological Flexibility in a Self-help Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Intervention for Psychological Distress in a Randomized Controlled Trial" (PDF). Behaviour Research and Therapy. 51 (3): 142–151. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2012.11.007. PMID 23337183.
  20. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Boulanger, Jennifer L.; Hayes, Steven C.; Lillis, Jason (2009). "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy". In Fisher, Gary L.; Roget, Nancy A. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, & Recovery. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications. pp. 4–7. ISBN 9781412950848.
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