It takes two to tango: How parents’ and adolescents’ personalities link to the quality of their mutual relationship.

According to J. Belsky’s (1984) process model of parenting, both adolescents’ and parents’ personality should exert a significant impact on the quality of their mutual relationship. Using multi-informant, symmetric data on the Big Five personality traits and the relationship quality of mothers, fathers, and two adolescent children, the current study set out to test this prediction. Adolescents’ agreeableness and parents’ extraversion emerged as predictors of relationship warmth, whereas parents’ openness emerged as a predictor of low restrictive control. In addition, some gender-specific effects emerged. Overall, parents’ and adolescents’ traits equally predicted the amount of relationship warmth, whereas adolescents’ unique personality more strongly predicted the amount of restrictive control. The predictive power of adolescents’ personality increased with age. Personality characteristics that affected relationship quality were partly shared between parents and their adolescent children. Findings support Belsky’s (1984) notion that both parents’ and children’s personality predict the quality of their mutual relationship, though the relative predictive power of children and parents depends on the type of outcome variable and the age of the children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self–other agreement in personality and affectivity: The role of acquaintanceship, trait visibility, and assumed similarity.

Self- and other-ratings on the Big Five and a comprehensive inventory of trait affect were obtained from 74 married couples, 136 dating couples, and 279 friendship dyads. With the exception of Surprise, all scales showed significant self–other agreement in all 3 samples, thereby establishing their convergent validity. Consistent with the trait visibility effect, however, the Big Five consistently yielded higher agreement correlations than did the affectivity scales. Conversely, the affective traits consistently showed stronger evidence of assumed similarity (i.e., the tendency for judges to rate others as similar to themselves) than did the Big Five. Cross-sample comparisons indicated that agreement was significantly higher in the married sample than in the other 2 groups; however, analyses of 3 potential moderators in the dating and friendship samples failed to identify the source of this acquaintanceship effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the effects of classroom discussion on students’ comprehension of text: A meta-analysis.

The role of classroom discussions in comprehension and learning has been the focus of investigations since the early 1960s. Despite this long history, no syntheses have quantitatively reviewed the vast body of literature on classroom discussions for their effects on students’ comprehension and learning. This comprehensive meta-analysis of empirical studies was conducted to examine evidence of the effects of classroom discussion on measures of teacher and student talk and on individual student comprehension and critical-thinking and reasoning outcomes. Results revealed that several discussion approaches produced strong increases in the amount of student talk and concomitant reductions in teacher talk, as well as substantial improvements in text comprehension. Few approaches to discussion were effective at increasing students’ literal or inferential comprehension and critical thinking and reasoning. Effects were moderated by study design, the nature of the outcome measure, and student academic ability. While the range of ages of participants in the reviewed studies was large, a majority of studies were conducted with students in 4th through 6th grades. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are cultural characteristics associated with the relationship between self and others’ ratings of leadership?

This study examined the relationship between self and subordinate ratings of leadership and the relationship between self and peer ratings of leadership for 964 managers from 21 countries. Using multilevel modeling, the authors found that cultural characteristics moderated the relationship between self and others’ ratings of leadership. Specifically, the relationship between self and subordinate ratings, as well as between self and peer ratings, was more positive in countries that are characterized by high assertiveness. The relationship between self and subordinate ratings, as well as between self and peer ratings, was also more positive in countries characterized by high power distance. The authors also found a leniency bias in individualistic cultures for self, peer, and subordinate ratings. In sum, cultural characteristics should be considered in attempts to understand relationships between self and other ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is body focus restricted to self-evaluation? Body focus in the evaluation of self and others

Aspects of the local immune response to nematode challenge were investigated in vivo in isolated loops of the upper small intestine of mature sheep that were immunised by repeated infections with Trichostrongylus colubriformis infective larvae (L3). Groups of 3 sheep were challenged either through the loop (Group 1) or orally (Group 2) with T. colubriformis L3, the third group served as unchallenged controls (Group 3). Nematode specific antibody levels, mast cell proteinase levels (SMCP) and larval migration inhibition (LMI) activity were determined in loop secretions for 4 weeks after challenge. The intestinal loops remained functional throughout the experiment. Groups 1 and 2 were re-challenged 2 weeks after the first challenge, and all 3 Groups were slaughtered 2 weeks later. Histopathological examination showed elevated numbers of globule leukocytes (GL) in both the nematode-challenged loop and unchallenged small intestine of Group 1 and small intestine of Group 2 indicating that nematode infections induce the local appearance of large numbers of GL. Oral, but not loop challenge caused increased antibody levels in loop secretions when compared to unchallenged controls. Only loop-challenged sheep showed a peak in loop fluid SMCP levels 10-13 days after the first challenge which coincided with a peak in numbers of mucosal GL. The isolated loops of all 3 groups showed highly elevated numbers of eosinophils when compared to the intact small intestine. Loop fluid of all 3 groups showed a high level of LMI activity reflecting the high level of nematode-resistance induced by the immunisation procedures. Sheep in Groups 1 and 2 were both able to expel challenge infections, and when compared to Group 3, showed higher blastogenic activity of unstimulated cells derived from a mesenteric lymph node in the region of the challenged part of the intestine. The present experiment showed that surgically constructed intestinal loops provided a model system by which the substantial changes associated with the local intestinal immune response to challenge with T. colubriformis could be investigated.     

Homicide–suicide and other forms of co-occurring aggression against self and against others.

Assessing the risk of harm to self and the risk of harm to others usually are distinct clinical processes. Yet these forms of aggression frequently coexist, occasionally with lethal outcomes. The author summarizes the literature on co-occurring aggression against self and others. Studies of homicide-suicide are reviewed first. Studies investigating the risk of co-occurring aggression against self and against others are reviewed next. The studies show a strong link between the 2 forms of aggression, etiologically implicating depression and other factors. Both types of risk assessment should occur jointly. Guidelines for combined risk assessment, prevention, and treatment are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The development, evolution, and status of Holland’s theory of vocational personalities: Reflections and future directions for counseling psychology.

This article celebrates the 50th anniversary of the introduction of John L. Holland’s (1959) theory of vocational personalities and work environments by describing the theory’s development and evolution, its instrumentation, and its current status. Hallmarks of Holland’s theory are its empirical testability and its user-friendliness. By constructing measures for operationalizing the theory’s constructs, Holland and his colleagues helped ensure that the theory could be implemented in practice on a widespread basis. Empirical data offer considerable support for the existence of Holland’s RIASEC types and their ordering among persons and environments. Although Holland’s congruence hypotheses have received empirical support, congruence appears to have modest predictive power. Mixed support exists for Holland’s hypotheses involving the secondary constructs of differentiation, consistency, and vocational identity. Evidence of the continued impact of Holland’s theory on the field of counseling psychology, particularly in the area of interest assessment, can be seen from its frequent implementation in practice and its use by scholars. Ideas for future research and practice using Holland’s theory are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children’s attention to interactions directed to others: Guatemalan mayan and european american patterns.

This study investigated differences in attention and learning among Guatemalan Mayan and European American children, ages 5–11 years, who were present but not addressed while their sibling was shown how to construct a novel toy. Each child waited with a distracter toy for her or his turn to make a different toy. Nonaddressed children from Mayan traditional families (with little maternal involvement in Western schooling; n = 40) showed more sustained attention and learning than their counterparts from Mayan families with extensive involvement in Western schooling (n = 40) or European American children (with extensive family involvement in schooling; n = 40). The nonaddressed Mayan children from highly schooled families in turn attended more than the European American children. These findings are consistent with research showing that traditional indigenous ways of organizing learning emphasize observation of ongoing interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of attachment to family, school, and peers in adolescents’ use of alcohol: A longitudinal study of within-person and between-persons effects.

A great deal of time and money has been spent to understand why adolescents abuse alcohol. Some of the most fruitful work considers the social context navigated by adolescents, including family, school, and peer contexts. However, most of this work focuses on differences between adolescents in these contexts. The present study adds to the literature by considering within-person changes in these contexts and examines the extent to which these changes are related to alcohol use. Significant changes in all 3 contexts were observed, and these changes were significantly related to alcohol use. The significant influence of intrapersonal variability highlights the importance of attending not only to chronic, between-individual issues facing at-risk youths but emergent and transient issues that may temporarily heighten alcohol use risk. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Something’s got to give: The effects of dual-goal difficulty, goal progress, and expectancies on resource allocation.

The current study developed and tested a model of the interplay among goal difficulty, goal progress, and expectancy over time in influencing resource allocation toward competing demands. The results provided broad support for the theoretical model. As predicted, dual-goal expectancy—the perceived likelihood of meeting both goals in competition—played a central role, moderating the relationship between relative goal progress and resource allocation. Dual-goal difficulty was also found to exert an important influence on multiple-goal self-regulation. Although it did not influence total productivity across both tasks combined, it did combine with other model components to influence the relative emphasis of one task over another. These results suggest that the cumulative demands placed by multiple difficult goals may exceed individuals’ perceived capabilities and may lead to partial or total abandonment of 1 goal to ensure attainment of the other. The model helps shed light on some of the conflicting theoretical propositions and empirical results obtained in prior work. Implications for theory and research regarding multiple-goal self-regulation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why we respond faster to the self than to others? An implicit positive association theory of self-advantage during implicit face recognition.

Human adults usually respond faster to their own faces rather than to those of others. We tested the hypothesis that an implicit positive association (IPA) with self mediates self-advantage in face recognition through 4 experiments. Using a self-concept threat (SCT) priming that associated the self with negative personal traits and led to a weakened IPA with self, we found that self-face advantage in an implicit face-recognition task that required identification of face orientation was eliminated by the SCT priming. Moreover, the SCT effect on self-face recognition was evident only with the left-hand responses. Furthermore, the SCT effect on self-face recognition was observed in both Chinese and American participants. Our findings support the IPA hypothesis that defines a social cognitive mechanism of self-advantage in face recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of family and community violence on children’s depression trajectories: Examining the interactions of violence exposure, family social support, and gender.

This longitudinal study used multilevel modeling to examine the relationships between witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV), community and school violence exposure (CSVE), family social support, gender, and depression over 2 years within a sample of 100 school-aged children. We found significant between-child differences in both the initial levels of depression and the trajectories of depression; depression over time was positively associated with change in witnessing IPV and CSVE and negatively associated with change in support. Two significant 3-way interactions were found: Gender and initial support, as well as gender and initial witnessing IPV, both significantly moderated the effect of change in witnessing IPV on the children’s depression over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family stress and parental responses to children’s negative emotions: Tests of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses.

The relations between 4 sources of family stress (marital dissatisfaction, home chaos, parental depressive symptoms, and job role dissatisfaction) and the emotion socialization practice of mothers’ and fathers’ responses to children’s negative emotions were examined. Participants included 101 couples with 7-year-old children. Dyadic analyses were conducted using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model and relations were tested in terms of the spillover, crossover, and compensatory hypotheses. Results suggest that measures of family stress relate to supportive and nonsupportive parental responses, though many of these relations differ by parent gender. The results are discussed in terms of the 3 theoretical hypotheses, all of which are supported to some degree depending on the family stressor examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the job search–turnover relationship: The role of embeddedness, job satisfaction, and available alternatives.

This study examined factors that may help explain under what conditions employee job search effort may most strongly (or weakly) predict subsequent turnover. As predicted, the job search–turnover relationship was stronger when employees had lower levels of job embeddedness and job satisfaction and higher levels of available alternatives. These findings suggest that there may be a number of factors interacting to influence employees' turnover decisions, indicating greater complexity to the process than described in prominent sequential turnover models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's inclusion of the group in the self: Evidence from a self–ingroup confusion paradigm.

Three studies are reported that assess 5-, 7- and 10-year-old children's cognitive inclusion of the ingroup in the self. Each study investigated a different ingroup: gender, family, and age group. Children were shown sets of cards identifying particular trait adjectives and were asked to rate the extent to which the traits applied to the self, the ingroup, and the outgroup. After a distraction task, they were asked to remember for whom (self, ingroup, or outgroup) each trait had been rated. In all studies and for all age groups, the authors found that traits rated for the self were confused more frequently with traits rated for the ingroup than with traits rated for the outgroup. It is concluded that, at least from the age of 5 years, psychologically relevant ingroups have become integral parts of the self-system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illusory conjunctions are an illusion: The effects of target–nontarget similarity on conjunction and feature errors.

The results of previous studies on visual perception suggest that conjunction errors partly derive from imperfect binding of correctly perceived features. However, the paradigms used in these studies do not generally allow one to discriminate between errors of feature binding and errors of target-nontarget confusion. In Experiments 1–4, an altered paradigm was used enabling discrimination between errors of feature binding and errors of target-nontarget confusion. The results showed that conjunction errors between color and identity do not derive from imperfect binding. In Experiments 5 and 6, a typical mainstream paradigm was used. The results indicated that, in such a paradigm, data patterns suggesting the existence of illusory conjunctions are likely to be due to errors of target-nontarget confusion instead of imperfect feature binding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the impact of Culture’s Consequences: A three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytic review of Hofstede’s cultural value dimensions: Correction to Taras, Kirkman, and Steel (2010).

Reports an error in Examining the impact of Culture's consequences: A three-decade, multilevel, meta-analytic review of Hofstede's cultural value dimensions by Vas Taras, Bradley L. Kirkman and Piers Steel (Journal of Applied Psychology, 2010[May], Vol 95[3], 405-439). Tables 1 and 2 were printed incorrectly due to errors in the production process. In Table 1 (p. 414), row 2 (vote count, data point count) the table incorrectly lists 0s for categories in which data points were not available; therefore the data cells should in fact be empty. In Table 2 (pp. 416–423), due to formatting errors some of the columns were incorrectly shifted either one or two columns to the right (i.e., in row 1, the “4” should be aligned under the “k,” not the “r”). The formatting errors in Tables 1 and 2, however, do not affect the values in the tables. Corrected versions of both Table 1 and Table 2 can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0020939 .supp. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2010-09357-001.) Using data from 598 studies representing over 200,000 individuals, we meta-analyzed the relationship between G. Hofstede's (1980a) original 4 cultural value dimensions and a variety of organizationally relevant outcomes. First, values predict outcomes with similar strength (with an overall absolute weighted effect size of ρ = 0.18) at the individual level of analysis. Second, the predictive power of the cultural values was significantly lower than that of personality traits and demographics for certain outcomes (e.g., job performance, absenteeism, turnover) but was significantly higher for others (e.g., organizational commitment, identification, citizenship behavior, team-related attitudes, feedback seeking). Third, cultural values were most strongly related to emotions, followed by attitudes, then behaviors, and finally job performance. Fourth, cultural values were more strongly related to outcomes for managers (rather than students) and for older, male, and more educated respondents. Fifth, findings were stronger for primary, rather than secondary, data. Finally, we provide support for M. Gelfand, L. H. Nishii, and J. L. Raver's (2006) conceptualization of societal tightness–looseness, finding significantly stronger effects in culturally tighter, rather than looser, countries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spurious? Name similarity effects (implicit egotism) in marriage, job, and moving decisions.

Three articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Examining the relationship between multiple internalized oppressions and African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning persons’ self-esteem and psychological distress”: Correction.

Reports an error in "Examining the relationship between multiple internalized oppressions and African American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning persons' self-esteem and psychological distress" by Dawn M. Szymanski and Arpana Gupta (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2009[Jan], Vol 56[1], 110-118). The DOI was incorrect. The correct DOI is 10.1037/a0013317. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2009-00624-002.) Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) persons come from diverse cultural groups with diverse racial and ethnic identities. However, most research on LGBQ persons has used primarily White samples, and most research on African Americans has used largely heterosexual samples. Thus, research has largely failed to attend to and investigate the complexity of African American LGBQ persons' experiences. This study examined the relations between multiple internalized oppressions and African American sexual minority persons' self-esteem and psychological distress. Results indicated that when examined together, internalized racism and internalized heterosexism (also known as internalized homophobia) were both significant negative predictors of self-esteem, but only internalized heterosexism was a unique positive predictor of psychological distress. The interaction of internalized racism and internalized heterosexism was not a significant predictor of self-esteem or psychological distress. Finally, the authors' findings indicate that self-esteem partially mediates the relationship between internalized heterosexism and psychological distress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)