Personality Traits

      Two people could experience identical violations, have identical environments, and yet one becomes disrupted and the other does not. A list of every personality trait that will play a role in predicting disruption is beyond the scope of this website; however, GDT posits that specific personality traits will play a larger role in allowing a person to retain psychological equilibrium when a goal expectancy violation occurs. If a person tends to have an optimistic outlook (Carver, Lehman, & Antoni, 2003)—whether it tends to be realistic optimism or unrealistic optimism (Schneider, 2001)—and tends not to be bothered by uncertainty (Chen & Hong, 2010; Dugas et al., 2005), a goal expectancy violation will be less likely to cause a disruption or the disruption will be less intense. A person will also be less likely to enter a state of disruption if the person has a low need for structure (Landau, Greenberg, & Sullivan, 2009; Routledge & Juhl, 2012; Thompson, Naccarato, & Parker, 1989), has a an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1954), has a low need for closure, and is not typically hypersensitive to threatening stimuli (McLaughlin & Hatzenbuehler, 2009). Speaking to the interdependence of different categories that predict intensity, some of these traits will predispose a person to see the violation as more severe, the imprint as more expansive, and all else equal, that the violation is more critical to the related goal, that the goal is more important to survival, and that other options will reveal themselves all as a result of the personality traits described.