The influence of personality and situational cautiousness on conceptual behavior.

An assessment of the degree to which cautiousness ("the tendency to behave in a manner designed to avoid potential failure or disapproval experiences… often at the expense of other satisfactions") affected responsiveness to TAT cards and MAPS. Degree of cautiousness was assessed by performance on the Rotter Level of Aspiration Board (see 19: 2261). Ss were then administered a test of social acceptability of attitudes and were either told that they scored low (failure experience), scored high (success experience), or were given no feedback (neutral). Comparisons of cautious (C) and noncautious (NC) Ss revealed that degree of cautiousness distinguished C and NC Ss in the neutral situation only. The finding supported the assumption that cautiousness, as a personality trait, could also be used to describe conceptual behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of dispositional and situational factors in cognitive interference

Two studies investigated the cross-temporal stability and cross-situational consistency of cognitive interference. In Study 1, 70 college students reported on the intrusive thoughts they experienced during 2 course examinations and a self-reflective task. In Study 2, 55 college athletes reported on intrusive thoughts following 2 course examinations and 2 regular season football games. Major findings were (a) cognitive interference showed both cross-temporal stability and cross-situational consistency, (b) it was predicted by a measure of dispositional intrusive thinking, (c) the link between cognitive interference and dispositional intrusive thinking was not accounted for by indices of depressive symptomatology and trait anxiety, and (d) the degree of cross-situational consistency of cognitive interference and the content of these intrusive thoughts were influenced by situational factors.     

Hierarchical organization of personality and prediction of behavior.

Two studies evaluated personality trait measures and Big Five factor measures for their accuracy in predicting important behavior criteria. The results of both studies showed that the narrower traits and the broader factors, thought to define 2 levels of a hierarchy of personality variables, separately predicted most criterion variables. However, the incremental validity of the personality trait measures (the degree to which the traits increased the criterion prediction achieved by the factors) was generally much larger than the incremental validity of the Big Five factor measures. It was concluded that aggregating personality traits into their underlying personality factors could result in decreased predictive accuracy due to the loss of trait-specific but criterion-valid variance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of situational role demands on measurement of attitudes about mental illness.

4 groups of 100 female nursing students completed a questionnaire about mental illness under 4 testing conditions-formal humanist, radical liberation, custodial, and control. Results show that the manipulation of role demands clearly affected Ss' responses and support the view that test scores represent trait-method-role units. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of personality, expectancy, and situational variables to self-disclosing behavior.

Studied self-disclosure of female undergraduates after they performed a Gestalt awareness task either in the absence of E and one peer (personal situation) or in the presence of these people (interpersonal situation). Results suggest that knowledge of subjective expectancies, as well as situational contexts, is an effective predictor of what a person feels like inside (e.g., discomfort) and of how she responds to awareness-disclosure questions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of homework in cognitive behavior therapy of depression.

Homework is particularly important in the cognitive-behavioral treatment of depression because the pervasive nature of the characteristic cognitive, affective, and motivational disturbances undercut the impact of didactic and supportive verbal interventions. Despite the importance of homework, a relatively small number of studies have quantified the causal relationship between homework completion and symptomatic outcome. Most of these studies have limited power to detect small-to-moderate effect sizes and rely on retrospective or incomplete measurements of homework that do not distinguish between the quantity and quality of the assigned tasks. Nevertheless, there is relatively consistent evidence from correlational studies to conclude that homework adherence is associated with significantly better outcomes. These findings point to new questions for research (i.e., does ongoing use of homework decrease the likelihood of relapse following termination of time-limited therapy?) and have implications for clinical practice. Examples of homework assignments are provided and strategies to improve homework adherence are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Response to cognitive therapy in depression: The role of maladaptive beliefs and personality disorders.

This study examined whether personality disorder status and beliefs that characterize personality disorders affect response to cognitive therapy. In a naturalistic study, 162 depressed outpatients with and without a personality disorder were followed over the course of cognitive therapy. As would be hypothesized by cognitive theory (A. T. Beck & A. Freeman, 1990), it was not personality disorder status but rather maladaptive avoidant and paranoid beliefs that predicted variance in outcome. However, pre- to posttherapy comparisons suggested that although patients with or without comorbidity respond comparably to "real-world" cognitive therapy, they report more severe depressive symptomatology at intake and more residual symptoms at termination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol and fear-potentiated startle: The role of competing cognitive demands in the stress-reducing effects of intoxication.

Effects of alcohol and cognitive demands on reactions to threat were examined using startle response potentiation to index negative emotion. Men and women received nonalcoholic or alcoholic beverages prior to a series of trial blocks, signaled by light cues indicating that shocks might be delivered ("threat" blocks) or that none would occur ("safe" blocks). Within half of the blocks, participants intermittently viewed pleasant photographic slides. Alcohol attenuated overall startle reactivity, but robust fear potentiation (larger startle magnitudes and shorter latencies during threat versus safe blocks) did not differ by beverage condition. Decomposition of the Beverage?× &Threat?×?Slide interaction revealed significant fear potentiation in all conditions, except the one in which alcohol was combined with slides. Thus, dampening of stress response by alcohol may depend on diminished ability to process competing cognitive demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of dispositional and situational antecedents in prosocial organizational behavior: An examination of the intended beneficiaries of prosocial behavior.

Research has not adequately separated the factors responsible for prosocial behaviors intended to benefit specific individuals from those intended to benefit an organization. Antecedents of the behavior of 100 secretaries were examined as a function of the beneficiary of the behavior. The value of concern for others and empathy explained significant variance in prosocial behaviors directed only at specific individuals (prosocial individual behavior). Perceptions of reward equity and recognition explained significant variance in behaviors directed only at the organization (prosocial organizational behavior). With these effects removed, the relationship between job satisfaction and prosocial organizational behavior was no longer significant, whereas the relationship between job satisfaction and prosocial individual behavior remained significant. Results suggest that the psychological processes that underlie prosocial behavior are different depending on the beneficiary of the behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Minimizing strain and maximizing learning: The role of job demands, job control, and proactive personality.

Using a sample of 268 production employees, this study extended research on R. Karasek's (1979) demands-control model of stress in 2 ways. First, results show that Karasek's proposed interaction between demands and control when predicting strain occurred only for more proactive employees. This 3-way interaction helps reconcile previous inconsistent findings about the interaction between demands and control when predicting strain. Second, the study extends research by investigating the demands-control interaction and the moderating influence of proactive personality in relation to learning-oriented outcomes (perceived mastery, role breadth self-efficacy, and production ownership). There were no 3-way interactions among the variables when predicting these learning-oriented outcomes, but all were important predictors. These results show (1) that demands and control can influence learning as proposed in the dynamic version of the demands-control model and (2) that proactive personality plays an important moderating role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of role demands and test-cue properties on personality test performance: Replication and extension.

Replicated earlier findings by R. O. Kroger (see record 1967-10466-001), to test the hypothesis that the situation affects test performance by generating a set of role demands. 2 randomly constituted groups (N = 22 each) of community-college students described themselves on the SVIB, MA scale, and Welsh Figure Preference Test after being exposed to implicit social cues intended to induce differential role taking. Highly reliable, role-specific response differences were obtained on the 3 tests which increased when controls for accuracy of role perception and for test-cue properties were introduced. The previous results were successfully replicated over different Ss, different Es, and an additional test under conditions of improved control over extraneous variables. Findings are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis and as extending its generality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cardiac response and personality organization.

Level and variability of cardiac response during complex problem-solving and interposed rest periods had different relationships to estimates of personality integration on the Rorschach. Ss were 26 1st and 2nd yr male graduate students. Cardiac variability during problem solving had significant and positive correlations with Holt's defense effectiveness and adaptive regression measures and the amount of Human Movement responses on the Rorschach. Cardiac variability during rests, on the other hand, correlated significantly with only the amount of color responses on the Rorschach. Level of cardiac response both during problems and rests, however, did not correlate significantly with any Rorschach variable. The findings suggest that cardiac variability may be a more differentiated measure than level of cardiac response. Cardiac variability during rest may be an undirected expression of affect while variable cardiac response during a demanding and complex task can serve a signal function, and it is this latter type of cardiac response that is significantly related to higher level personality organization. (11/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prediction of small group role behavior from personality variables.

"A sample of 819 Air Force officers was administered a test battery designed to predict the individual's role in small group situations. This battery was factor analyzed, yielding four factors: Assertiveness, Power Orientation, Rigidity, and Aggressive Nonconformity." Assertiveness correlated best with the predicted small group behavior. 24 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality and situational determinants of leader behavior.

Tested hypotheses derived from F. Fiedler's (see record 1973-20908-001) motivational hierarchy interpretation of least preferred co-worker (LPC) by observing the behavior of high- and low-LPC leaders of 32 3-man laboratory groups. High-LPC leaders showed greater variability in their behavior as a function of situational differences than did low-LPC leaders. Leader behavior differed as a function of leader attributes (LPC), situational factors (leader-member relations and task structure), and LPC * Task Structure interactions. Results do not clearly support motivational hierarchy predictions. U. Foa, T. Mitchell, and F. Fiedler's (1971) cognitive analysis of the LPC, suggesting that the greater flexibility in behavior of high-LPC leaders is a consequent of a more complex cognitive structure, appeared more capable of accounting for these data. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of theories in conceptual coherence.

In order to answer the question of what makes a concept coherent (what makes its members form a comprehensible class), accounts based on similarity, features correlations, and various theories of categorization are reviewed. In general, the similarity-based approach is seen to require a minimum of conceptual organization and relations, whereas the theory-based approach emphasizes both. It is concluded that each theory provides an inadequate account of conceptual coherence (or no account at all), because none provides enough constraints on possible concepts. The authors propose that concepts are coherent to the extent that they fit people's background knowledge or naive theories about the world. These theories help to relate the concepts in a domain and to structure the attributes that are internal to a concept. Evidence of the influence of theories on various conceptual tasks is presented, and the possible importance of theories in cognitive development is discussed. (109 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of situational contingencies on female retaliative behavior.

Most studies that have found sex differences in aggression have reported that males are more aggressive than females. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the expectation of female nonaggressiveness may be unwarranted. The present study attempted to reconcile these differences by considering the contingencies of female aggression. 30 undergraduate females competed in a task designed to measure aggression (a) alone, (b) in the presence of a silent observer, or (c) in the presence of a supportive observer. Results indicated that as provocation increased, Ss in the private condition responded more aggressively than did Ss in the public condition. Also, Ss who responded in the presence of an audience were more aggressive when the observer was supportive than when she was silent. It is concluded that the usual findings of female nonaggressiveness may be attributable to women's expectations of disapproval for aggressive behavior. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschool behavior and first-grade school achievement: The mediational role of cognitive self-control.

The purpose of this study was to test a model of school achievement that included children's intellectual abilities, preschool behavior, and cognitive self-control. It suggested that teacher-rated preschool behavior such as aggressive, anxious-withdrawn, and prosocial behaviors influence cognitive self-control, which in turn positively determines school achievement at the end of first grade (when controlling for intellectual abilities). Participants were 291 kindergarten children. Results from structural equation modeling demonstrated that all hypothesized path models were significant, except the one between anxious-withdrawn behavior and cognitive self-control. A second model was thus specified in which a path between anxious-withdrawn behavior and school achievement was estimated. The second model offered a better representation of the sample data (comparative fit index?=?.99, nonnormed fit index?=?.98), χ2(19, N?=?286)?=?29.43, p?>?.05, and the path between anxious-withdrawn behavior and school achievement was found significant. The role of preschool behavior and cognitive self-control in first-grade school achievement is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do situational expectations produce situational inferences? The role of future expectations in directing inferential goals.

Little is known about the conditions that lead observers to adopt different inferential goals in the context of their everyday lives. Four studies examined whether future expectations created situational inferential goals. In 2 quasiexperimental studies, students made more situational inferences for targets in their expected future careers. In 2 experiments, situational expectations were manipulated, and participants made more situational inferences when they expected to be in the same situation as the target. This tendency was stronger when observers devoted minimal cognitive effort to their inferences, suggesting that when observers have situational expectations, making situational inferences is less effortful than making dispositional inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)