Answer to Question 1
ANSWER:
Openness to experience involves fantasy, feelings, actions, ideas, values, and aesthetics (an appreciation for the arts). People who score high on openness are curious, unconventional, and imaginative. They are more likely to be interested in exploring aspects of life that are different from their own, whether this means trying new foods, traveling to exotic locations, or studying other religions. People who score low on openness are more likely to be practical, traditional, and conforming. They prefer the familiar over the new, choosing a chain restaurant in a new city rather than experimenting with the local cuisine.
Answers will vary as to possible reasons why structural correlates in the brain related to openness have not yet been identified. One response might point out the difficulties in testing the somewhat unquantifiable factors of openness.
Answer to Question 2
ANSWER:
Many psychologists believe that the process of developing self-esteem begins very early in childhood. Long before the child has a working model of the self, he or she is experiencing the emotional consequences of acceptance and rejection. Children form a variety of attachments with their primary caregivers. A childs pattern of attachment in infancy predicts his or her self-esteem at the age of 6. Self-esteem does not appear to change much over the life span. Early differences in self-esteem seem to be magnified and reinforced over time, as having high or low self-esteem influences both the selection of activities and the reactions of others to the self.
Self-esteem contributes to belongingness, or the maintenance of good social relationships. Because social rejection could have such devastating effects on survival in our evolutionary past, self-esteem may have emerged as a way of estimating the likelihood of rejection. Following the experience of social exclusion, self-esteem drops. A drop in self-esteem serves as an early warning signal that rejection by the group is imminent and that behavior designed to regain the favor of the group should be initiated.
Student examples may exhibit very different responses to a situation relative to whether the individual has high self-esteem or low self-esteem. One example is that people with high and low self-esteem respond quite differently to failure. The person with low self-esteem tends to overgeneralize from failure. In other words, people with low self-esteem who fail one exam might assume that they are going to fail all their classes. This tendency to overgeneralize may explain why people with low self-esteem are more prone to depression. In contrast, people with high self-esteem respond to failure in one domain by exaggerating their abilities in other domains. If a person with high self-esteem fails an exam, she is more likely to remind others about how great she is in sports, appearance, or dating.
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