Effects of Attitudes and Interests on Personality Change Induced by Psychological Self-Help Books

Abstract

The failure of self-help psychology books to influence measures of personality in previous research may have been due to subjects having low interest in the book they read or having negative attitudes towards self-help books. In Study 1, 151 women served in a 2 × 3 Solomon pre-post design that varied the presence or absence of a pretest on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire in Session 1 and the interest value (high or low interest book, or no book) of the book subjects read between Sessions 1 and 2. A multivariate analysis of Session 2 personality scores indicated no effect for any of the variables. In Study 2, 211 women served in a 2 × 4 Solomon pre-post design that varied presence or absence of a pretest on the Eysenck questionnaire in Session 1 and information about self-help books (positive, negative, neutral, or none). Subjects then read a self-help book during the two weeks between Sessions 1 and 2. A multivariate analysis of the personality scores from Session 2 showed an effect of information on the Psychoticism scale. However, neither interest value nor attitude towards self-help books had significant effects on the self-report measure of personality.