User:Yoonooyul/sandbox

Masking (Personality Theory) is a process in which an individual changes or "masks" his or her natural personality to conform to social pressures, abuse, and or harassment. Some examples of masking are a single overly dominant temperament, or humor, two incongruent temperaments, or displaying three of the four main temperaments within the same individual. Masking can be strongly influenced by environmental factors such as authoritarian parents, rejection, and emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. An individual may not even know he or she is wearing a mask because it is a behavior that can take many forms.

Masking shouldn't be confused with masking behaviour which is to mentally block feelings of suffering as a survival mechanism.

Category:Personality



History
The term masking was first used to describe the act of concealing disgust by Ekman (1972) and Friesen (1969). It was also thought of as a learned behavior. Developmental studies have shown that this ability has begun as early as preschool and improves with age. During one's childhood, an individual learns to behave a certain way when he or she receives approval from those around them and thus develops a mask. In recent developmental studies, masking has evolved and is now defined as concealing one's emotion by portraying another emotion. It is mostly used to conceal a negative emotion (usually sadness, frustration, and anger) with a positive emotion.

Causes
Contextual factors including relationships with one's conversation partner, status differences, location, and social setting are all reasons as to why an individual would express, suppress, or mask an emotion. It is a facade to behave in certain ways that would help one hide their emotions. Masking represses emotions that are not approved by those around them. A person wants to receive acceptance from the public. It helps disguise characteristics like anger, jealousy or self-confidence.

Situations

 * Personal Distance: Varies with individuals could be masking emotions to those close to them or strangers.
 * Setting

Gender Differences
Masking negative emotions differ for each gender. Females tend to have an easier time hiding their negative emotions towards something they dislike than males do. One of the disputable reasons as to why girls are able to mask their negative emotions better is society's pressure that a girl must act nice.

Ethnicity
Masking also differs between cultures. Some studies state that certain cultures tend to moderate their expressions of emotion while others show a greater amount of positive emotions and expressions.

Signs and Symptoms
Each person masks their emotions differently. The individual is "not conscious of the role they’ve adopted and is projecting outwards to people they meet." In some cases where the individual is highly conscious, he or she may not know that they are wearing a mask. Wearing a mask, "takes energy away from our consciousness or awareness and over time will drain and sap our energy." The mask is noticeable when one is sick or weak as he or she no longer has the power to keep the mask on.

Consequences
Little is known about how masking one's negative emotions affects him or her. In the workplace, masking leads to feeling of dissonance, insincerity, job dissatisfaction, emotional and physical exhaustion, self - reported health problems. In other cases, there have been those who experienced somatic symptoms and deleterious physiological and cognitive effects.

List of Emotions
Emotions that are usually concealed.
 * Anger
 * Anxious
 * Disgust
 * Embarrass
 * Fear
 * Frustration
 * Sadness

Emotions that are expressed in replace of the concealed emotions.
 * Amusement
 * Boredom
 * Contempt
 * Frustration
 * Happiness
 * Interest
 * Sadness