Explorations in Type-T: Mindset, Flourishing, Psychological Entitlement, Creativity, and Stress

Abstract

Type-T behavior is a term coined by F. Farley (see McGraw-Hill, Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine, 2002) to reflect individual differences in risk-taking and thrill-seeking (T) behavior. This study was designed to explore and expand the understanding of Type-T behavior in relation to other individual differences of current psychological and educational interest, namely flourishing, mindset, psychological entitlement, creativity/innovation, and stress. The study used both a college student sample and a non-college adult sample to investigate whether the type of sample makes a difference in research of this type. The inclusion of the latter sample was prompted by the need to identify and examine psychological processes beyond the college undergraduate, given the over-representation of the latter participants in psychological research. Four hundred seventy- two participants including two hundred forty-eight students and two hundred twenty-four non-college adults completed an online survey designed to measure the aforementioned personality and psychological variables. Results of multiple regressions with pairwise deletion of missing data showed that college students and non-college adults with high risk-taking/thrill-seeking behaviors (Big T) reported higher levels of flourishing. Big Ts were also more self-entitled. Younger participants reported higher levels of Type-T than older participants. Additionally, males reported higher levels of Type-T behaviors than did females. The results of the Pearson correlations in non-college samples showed significant positive correlations of Type-T scores with malleable mindset, flourishing, and age; Type-T was found to be negatively correlated with fixed mindset, while the correlation for the college sample was non-significant. Those who reported higher levels of risk-taking/thrill-seeking behaviors were more likely to report a malleable mindset rather than a fixed mindset. The results of Pearson correlations among the scales in the college sample were somewhat different from the non-college sample. Type-T was significantly associated with entitlement, malleable mindset, flourishing, creativity, and gender. For the total sample, respondents with higher Type-T scored higher on entitlement, had a lower level of fixed mindset but a higher level of malleable mindset, a higher level of flourishing, more creativity, were younger, and were more frequently males. This study has expanded our understanding of Type-T behavior, enriching its description, bringing important new constructs into the discussion (e.g. mindset, self-entitlement, flourishing), and discerning provocative new relationships among some of the studied non-T variables themselves. If risk-taking and the responsiveness to change are signal qualities in human innovation and progress, then a focus on the personal representation of these features as in Type-T may be one key to personal and societal success in a rapidly evolving world.