On grandiosity in personality psychology.

Responds to the comments by A. Wood and S. Joseph (see record 2006-23492-015); S. R. Maddi (see record 2006-23492-016); and S. Epstein (see record 2006-23492-017) on the current author's original article (see record 2006-03947-002) "A New Big Five: Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality" (McAdams & Pals, April 2006). Here, McAdams responds to the objections raised in the three commentaries to his and Pals' characterization of the grand theories of personality provided by Freud, Jung, Rogers, and other luminaries from the first half of the 20th century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Genetics of personality disorders: Perspectives from personality and psychopathology research.

Although the field is young, studies pertinent to genetic hypotheses have accumulated for several personality disorders. Genetic links to personality disorders from the domains of normal personality and Axis I disorders are reviewed. Evidence of a link to schizophrenia is clearest for schizotypal and less conclusive for paranoid and schizoid personality disorders. A genetic association between borderline personality disorder and affective disorders has not been clearly supported, but there may be a subtype genetically linked to affective disorders. Evidence of genetic influence is mixed for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. In general, greater attention to dimensional phenotypic measures and multivariate designs can yield more definitive answers regarding the correct subtyping and probable etiology of personality disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The inadvertent emergence of a phenomenological perspective in the philosophy of cognitive psychology and psychoanalytic developmental psychology.

The phenomenological perspective described by M. Merleau-Ponty seems to be emerging in the context of contemporary developmental research, theories of communication, metaphor theory, and cognitive neuroscience. This emergence is not always accompanied by reference to Merleau-Ponty, however, or appropriate interpretation. On some cases, the emergence of the perspective seems rather inadvertent. The purpose of this essay is to ferret out some of the points which contemporary thinking has in common with Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Though it may appear that the examples chosen for this essay might be scrutinized separately, the thread that ties them together is Merleau-Ponty's work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social psychology and personality: Toward a convergence.

Argues that social and personality psychology are becoming increasingly characterized by greater receptiveness to the other's theoretical assumptions, concern with similar problems and the development of similar solutions to those problems, and the tendency of members of one specialty to adopt the methodologies typically identified with the other. Three recent developments are reviewed to substantiate this claim. Several cases are presented that demonstrate the increasing willingness of social psychologists to treat situational and personality perspectives as equally valid approaches to understanding social behavior. Several social-psychological constructs are described, each of which had been first operationalized via experimental manipulations and then later reconceptualized as an individual-difference variable. Interactionism is seen as a logical bridge between the differing orientations of personality and social psychology, and the current enthusiasm over this approach is one that is shared by many in both disciplines. A 3rd area of convergence becomes evident from an examination of the close parallels in the recent histories of attitudes and traits—dispositional concepts that play a central role in social and personality psychology, respectively. Especially notable is the fact that some of the recent strategies for improving trait–behavior consistencies are techniques that have been shown to strengthen attitude–behavior links as well. (4 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cyclical processes in personality and psychopathology.

Both the understanding of psychopathology and the ability to intervene therapeutically are enhanced by an appreciation of the central role of vicious circles in the development and maintenance of psychological disorder. It is usually possible to discern a structure to people's difficulties in which internal states and external events continually recreate the conditions for the reoccurrence of each other in an all too real psychological version of the mythical perpetual motion machine. This article illustrates how such circular processes work in a number of representative types of psychological difficulty and discusses the implications of this conception for understanding psychopathology and for therapeutic intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

School consultation: Some considerations from a cognitive psychology perspective.

The cognitive psychology literature examining expert vs novice problem-solving approaches contributes to the conceptualization of school consultation as a problem-solving activity. As an initial step in pursuing those ideas systematically, think-aloud protocols were collected from 11 school psychology students and 21 school psychologists responding to an actual taped consultation case. Preliminary data analyses identified 3 levels of problem finding during the entry state of consultation. Results suggest that the identified levels were not necessarily related to experience or training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mathematics learning disabilities: a view from developmental psychology

U.S. education suffers from shortcomings that put even children possessing adequate intellectual abilities at risk for low mathematics achievements. Consequently, identifying and understanding children whose academic failure is influenced by a genuine learning disability requires a complex "developmental" research agenda. This perspective suggests the use of sensitive research methods--clinical interviews, ethnographies--to examine the development of children's construction of knowledge in the context of schooling. Researchers should consider such factors as the adequacy of classroom instruction, the availability in children of informal knowledge, the role of motivation, the effects of specific interventions, the role and operation of different cognitive processes in constructing mathematical understanding, children's difficulties across different areas of mathematics, and the development of children's thinking throughout the school years.     

Confidence in protection: A developmental psychopathology perspective.

S. Goldberg, J. Grusec, and J. M. Jenkins (see record 1999-15264-001) provided a thorough review of J. Bowlby's (1982) work and offered a persuasive argument to consider confidence in protection as the roots of the parent-child attachment system. In an attempt to explore implications of their work, confidence in protection is examined from a developmental psychopathology perspective, with issues highlighted specifically about the role of family functioning, as well as the notion of risk and protection mechanisms. Questions are raised in the spirit of responding to and extending S. Goldberg et al.'s (1999) thought-provoking analysis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illicit LSD users: Their personality characteristics and psychopathology.

100 LSD users and 46 nonuser controls were administered the MMPI and participated in a structured interview concerning contact with mental health agencies and social and demographic characteristics and drug use. There was a much higher incidence of psychopathology among LSD users than nonusers, with "conduct disorder" and psychosis being the most frequent profile diagnoses. Special MMPI scales provided a picture of alienation and emotional disturbances for users. Interview data suggest that these disturbances might have predated LSD use. A desire for self-change and rejection of present social values are suggested as possible explanations for the use of hallucinogens. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomy

A dual taxonomy is presented to reconcile 2 incongruous facts about antisocial behavior: (a) It shows impressive continuity over age, but (b) its prevalence changes dramatically over age, increasing almost 10-fold temporarily during adolescence. This article suggests that delinquency conceals 2 distinct categories of individuals, each with a unique natural history and etiology: A small group engages in antisocial behavior of 1 sort or another at every life stage, whereas a larger group is antisocial only during adolescence. According to the theory of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, children's neuropsychological problems interact cumulatively with their criminogenic environments across development, culminating in a pathological personality. According to the theory of adolescence-limited antisocial behavior, a contemporary maturity gap encourages teens to mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and adjustive.     

Darwin and developmental psychology: Past and present.

Addresses the historical question of what influence Darwin has had on the emergence of developmental psychology as a scientific discipline. Suggestions for possible synergistic connections between modern evolutionary theory and developmental psychology are offered. Darwin's distinctive contributions to evolutionary theory appear to have had less influence on developmental psychology than traditionally believed. Possible reasons for this include developmentalists' commitment to meliorism, conceptual issues characterizing differences between ontogenetic and phylogenetic change, and methodological differences in studying proximate and ultimate factors. It is suggested that developmentalists use evolutionary theory as a heuristic for structuring new research into human development. In return, evolutionary biologists can have hypotheses concerning the impact of phylogeny on human ontogeny tested by those best qualified to test them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a synergism of developmental and community psychology.

Suggests that the emphasis on competence and competence enhancement in real-life settings both in applied developmental and in community psychology provides the basis for an interdependence between these 2 subdisciplines. Applied developmental psychology and an ecology of human development can provide a knowledge base for the advocacy of "developmental rights" in community settings. Conversely, through dialog with community psychologists, developmentalists can be made aware of the kinds of ecologically relevant hypotheses that need to be posed and can be sensitized to the complexities of the interplay between natural settings and the developing individual. It is suggested that an ecology of human development and a community psychology could cross-fertilize to form a corpus of knowledge and action designed to create developmentally responsive environments. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical assessment can benefit from recent advances in personality psychology.

Suggests that routine psychological assessments should include information on the individual's standing on each of the 5 factors of personality (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) proposed by E. C. Tupes and R. E. Christal (1961) and W. T. Norman (see record 1964-00986-001). (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preventive health psychology from a developmental perspective: An extension of protection motivation theory.

Theories of health psychology developed to explain adults' rational decision making were applied to 10-year-old children (n?=?112), who had not reached the stage of formal operational thought; 15-year-olds (n?=?67); and 20-year-olds (n?=?93), extending the protection motivation theory developed by R. W. Rogers (1983). Among the adolescents and young adults, the threat appeals worked only if people believed they could cope effectively with the danger; if they believed they could not cope, higher levels of the threat resulted in decreased intentions to refrain from tobacco use. Although children elaborated and integrated the information about threat severity, personal vulnerability, and response efficacy, the fragility and malleability of the children's beliefs in self-efficacy demonstrated the importance of adding a developmental perspective to theories of preventive health psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fantasy proneness: Hypnosis, developmental antecedents, and psychopathology.

In 7 studies, 6,000 college students were screened to obtain 5 samples of 156 fantasy-prone Ss. Fantasy-prone Ss were selected from the upper 2–4% on a measure of imaginative involvement and were contrasted with nonfantasizers (lower 2–4%) and medium fantasy-prone Ss. Wilson and Barber's construct of fantasy proneness was supported. Fantasizers differed from nonfantasizers on measures of hypnotizability, imagination, waking suggestibility, hallucinatory ability, creativity, psychopathology, and childhood experiences. Differences in hypnotizability were most reliable when Ss participated in a multisession study and were screened not only with the screening inventory, but also with an interview that substantiated their fantasy-prone status. However, our findings indicated that less correspondence between fantasy proneness and hypnotizability exist than Wilson and Barber suggested. Hypnotic responsiveness is possible even in the absence of well-developed imaginative abilities, and not all fantasizers were highly hypnotizable. Fantasizers recollected being physically abused and punished to a greater degree than other Ss did and reported experiencing greater loneliness and isolation as children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Examines how and why memory can get us into trouble. It is suggested that memory's misdeeds can be classified into 7 basic sins: transience, absentmindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The first 3 sins involve different types of forgetting, the next 3 refer to different types of distortions, and the final sin concerns intrusive recollections that are difficult to forget. Evidence is reviewed concerning each of the 7 sins from relevant sectors of psychology (cognitive, social, and clinical) and from cognitive neuroscience studies that include patients with focal brain damage or make use of recently developed neuroimaging techniques. Although the 7 sins may appear to reflect flaws in system design, it is argued instead that they are by-products of otherwise adaptive features of memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline.

Life-span developmental psychology involves the study of constancy and change in behavior throughout the life course. One aspect of life-span research has been the advancement of a more general, metatheoretical view on the nature of development that includes the recognition of multidirectionality in ontogenetic change, consideration of both age-connected and disconnected developmental factors, focus on the dynamic and continuous interplay between growth (gain) and decline (loss), emphasis on historical embeddedness and other structural contextual factors, and study of the range of plasticity in development. Application of the family of perspectives associated with life-span developmental psychology is illustrated for the domain of intellectual development. Two recently emerging perspectives of the family of beliefs are given particular attention: The 1st suggests that plasticity can best be studied with a research strategy called testing-the-limits. The 2nd proffers that any developmental change includes the joint occurrence of gain (growth) and loss (decline) in adaptive capacity. To assess the pattern of positive (gains) and negative (losses) consequences resulting from development, it is necessary to know the criterion demands posed by the individual and the environment during the lifelong process of adaptation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguished teaching in developmental psychology: Eileen Mavis Hetherington.

Provides a citation for Eileen Mavis Hetherington for the distinguished teaching in developmental psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role stress, personality, and psychopathology in a group of immigrant adolescents.

Applied a role stress-personality framework to the analysis of psychopathological symptoms in a nonclincal sample of 155 Cuban refugees in Miami, Florida. Measures included the Eysenck Personality Inventory, Cantril's self-anchoring striving scale, and Zuckerman and Lubin's depression and anxiety adjective checklist. Ambiguity regarding evaluations of performance in the dating role was more consistently related to symptoms of psychopathology than were either role conflict or ambiguity regarding role expectations. Extraversion-introversion and relative discontent were also associated with psychopathological symptoms, with some sex differences. Results suggest that high rates of mental illness among immigrant groups may be partially a function of evaluation ambiguity and the resultant problems of identity formation amid conflicting cultural patterns. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)