Psychology and the resurgent space program.

Reviews some of the psychological aspects of the space missions that began with the launching of the space shuttle Columbia in 1981. Among the salient issues discussed are those involving biobehavioral response, human factors, communications, and personal and social adjustment in space. It is argued that psychologists should be concerned with the human aspects of spaceflight. Weightlessness, confinement, high risk, and other spaceflight conditions provide special opportunities for testing theories from virtually all areas of psychology including physiological, perception, cognitive, learning, personality, social, and organizational psychology. It is concluded that as the profession of psychology gains greater understanding of the psychological issues of adaptation to outer space and builds credibility with mission personnel, psychologists will discover new research challenges and will play an increasingly important role in mission planning and in flight operations. (69 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality in the life course.

Using elements borrowed from psychology, sociology, and history, this article outlines a conceptual framework for the analysis of personality in the life course. It is proposed that the interactional framework toward which personality psychology aspires may be conceived of as a sequence of interactions of personality with age-graded roles and social transitions in historically changing environments. To the extent that one can (a) identify the age-graded role paths in the social structure, (b) select the age-relevant situations in which these roles are enacted, and (c) identify measures relevant to the culture pattern across these age-relevant situations, it should be possible to uncover the coherence of personality—ways of approaching and responding to the world—across time and in diverse situations. Each of these steps is delineated and then illustrated with a longitudinal study of explosive, undercontrolled children. This is not an effort to articulate a theory of personality development but to outline the parameters of social life—temporal and situational—to which personality research should attend. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sexism in the theory and practice of clinical psychology.

Examines the major schools of clinical psychology with regard to implications for the psychology of women. Theoretical orientations are compared in terms of the emphasis placed on biographical vs social determinants of personality development and psychopathology. It is concluded that a purely psychological approach is indadequate and that a model integrating sociological and psychological factors is necessary for understanding and treating mental health problems in women. The attitudes and values of individual professionals will be a major influence in maintaining or eliminating sexism in clinical psychology. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology.

Reviews the book, The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology edited by Philip J. Corr and Gerald Matthews (see record 2010-05179-000). A comprehensive review of personality psychology, this book covers a range of topics, including those that are standard in personality texts (conceptualisation, biological and cultural perspectives) as well as more unique additions (social pain and hurt feelings, animal models, and politics). Although the introductions are lengthy (approximately 33 pages), these chapters do provide a useful guide to the book and key issues addressed in remaining chapters. The chapters are generally written in a manner appropriate for graduate students, professionals, or academics. Given the broad scope and careful attention to the defining of key constructs and methods, this book will appeal to an audience with varying familiarity with personality psychology. Overall, I would highly recommend this book as a comprehensive source on the broad field of personality psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Finding "Meaning" in Psychology: A Lay Theories Approach to Self-Regulation, Social Perception, and Social Development.

Much of psychology focuses on universal principles of thought and action. Although an extremely productive pursuit, this approach, by describing only the "average person," risks describing no one in particular. This article discusses an alternate approach that complements interests in universal principles with analyses of the unique psychological meaning that individuals find in their experiences and interactions. Rooted in research on social cognition, this approach examines how people's lay theories about the stability or malleability of human attributes alter the meaning they give to basic psychological processes such as self-regulation and social perception. Following a review of research on this lay theories perspective in the field of social psychology, the implications of analyzing psychological meaning for other fields such as developmental, cultural, and personality psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can psychology be made wholly objective?

Announces that a small but growing group of American psychologists is currently interested in constructing, from the ground up, a complete psychology based exclusively on actually observed behavior. A complete, multivolume, integrated psychology with possibly 50 contributors is being planned. It will be organized on the basis of observed independent and dependent variables, and will incorporate and integrate within this framework the mass of published experimental data. It will have plenty of theories, but no hypothetical constructs--all its theories being generalizations from one or more observed instances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Profiting from controversy: Lessons from the person-situation debate.

For the past 2 decades the person–situation debate has dominated personality psychology and had repercussions in clinical, social, and organizational psychology. This controversy puts on trial the central assumption that internal dispositions have an important influence on behavior. According to emerging views of scientific progress, controversy serves the function of narrowing the field of competing hypotheses. We examine 7 hypotheses that arose during the course of the person–situation debate, ranging from most to least pessimistic about the existence of consensual, discriminative personality traits. The evidence fails to support the hypotheses that personality traits are (a) in the eye of the beholder, (b) semantic illusions, (c) artifacts of base-rate accuracy, (d) artifacts of shared stereotypes, (e) due to discussion between observers (who ignore behavior in favor of verbal self-presentation or reputation), or (f) by-products of situational consistencies. Evidence also fails to support the hypothesis (g) that although traits are related to behavior, the relationship is too small to be important. Research generated by these hypotheses has allowed us to better specify the circumstances under which personality assessments will be valid. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The two disciplines of scientific psychology.

"No man can be acquainted with all of psychology today." The past and future place within psychology of 2 historic streams of method, thought, and affiliation—experimental psychology and correlational psychology—is discussed in this address of the President at the 65th annual convention of the APA. "The well-known virtue of the experimental method is that it brings situational variables under tight control… . The correlation method, for its part, can study what man has not learned to control or can never hope to control… . A true federation of the disciplines is required. Kept independent, they can give only wrong answers or no answers at all regarding certain important problems… . Correlational psychology studies only variance among organisms; experimental psychology studies only variance among treatments. A united discipline will study both of these, but it will also be concerned with the otherwise neglected interactions between organismic and treatment variables. Our job is to invent constructs and to form a network of laws which permits prediction." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applying psychology in outer space: Unfilled promises revisited.

Argues that numerous issues directly relevant to the field of personality and social psychology are present and may become increasingly important in the US space program. It is suggested that data from personality and social psychology have been underused resources in the US space program. The responsibility for this outcome is seen as resting both with investigators and in structural aspects of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The contrasting centrality of psychology in the Russian space program is noted. Suggestions for increasing the role of personality and social psychology in the US space program are offered. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Steps toward an evolutionary personality psychology: Individual differences in the social rank domain.

A comprehensive evolutionary personality psychology can be developed by identifying individual differences within each of the evolved systems that regulate social behaviour. We developed a questionnaire measure of social rank style, defined as individual differences in preferred strategies for pursuing, defending, and, when necessary, relinquishing social rank. The 17-item Rank Style with Peers Questionnaire (RSPQ) comprises three nearly independent scales: dominant leadership, coalition-building, and ruthless self-advancement. A series of studies demonstrated that: (a) the RSPQ’s, factor structure is robust; (b) the three rank style variables are not redundant with the five-factor traits or adult attachment styles; (c) they are related in theoretically expected ways to adjustment outcomes, to agentic and communal interpersonal behaviours, and to social reputations; (d) they predict group and individual performance outcomes relevant to organisational psychology; and (e) they are related in theoretically expected ways to psychopathology, including social anxiety disorder and depressive symptoms. Future directions for research on social rank styles and prospects for an evolutionary personality psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The "same person" heuristic: An attributional procedure based on an assumption about person similarity.

A personal anecdote, attribution theory, and evidence from personality and social psychology suggested that attributors would be more convinced by within-person evidence than by statistically equivalent between-persons evidence. Exp I, with 16 undergraduates, supported this prediction and suggested that attributors may rely on a cognitive heuristic—be more convinced of the effectiveness of a stimulus when a change in stimuli changes the behavior of the same rather than different persons. This study also suggested that this problem-solving shortcut may be based on the assumption that the same person is more likely to behave similarly from one situation to the next than are different persons (i.e., persons are more similar to themselves behaviorally than they are to each other). In Exps II and III, with 42 undergraduates, between-persons evidence was more convincing when it concerned similar persons, and within-person evidence was more convincing when it concerned consistent persons, even when the persons were similar or consistent on dimensions seemingly irrelevant to the evidence in question. Results suggest that the greater convincingness of within-person relative to between-persons evidence may rely on a problem-solving shortcut that is based on an assumption about person similarity. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology on a large scale: The study of consumption.

Suggests that because consumer psychologists customarily deal with large-scale survey data, they are in a position to test hypotheses at a much higher statistical significance and on more representative populations than is common in the small-scale studies which characterize most of the literature in experimental social psychology. Data on personality characteristics now being collected in many large national surveys represent a valuable resource for secondary analysis and a unique opportunity to control for social class and other demographic variables which may be independently related to personality traits. The popularity of personality measures in consumer research has also led to misapplications. Distrust of consumer psychology by many academic psychologists develops because they do not realize its potentially important function in redirecting consumption from individual gratification to the fulfillment of social needs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The place of personality and social structure research in social psychology.

In this article, I examine the relevance of the personality and social structure perspective for social psychology. A brief historical review summarizes earlier studies in this tradition and examines the limitations of these previous works, particularly the failure to explicate the linkages between individuals and their social worlds. At the same time, significant strengths of the personality and social structure perspective are emphasized, especially the concern with how normative culture influences people's values, beliefs, and behaviors, areas traditionally neglected in mainstream social psychology. Thus, the objective of the article is to describe the ways in which the personality and social structure perspective both contributes to and benefits from greater discourse with traditional domains of social psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Psychology of Worldviews.

A worldview (or "world view") is a set of assumptions about physical and social reality that may have powerful effects on cognition and behavior. Lacking a comprehensive model or formal theory up to now, the construct has been underused. This article advances theory by addressing these gaps. Worldview is defined. Major approaches to worldview are critically reviewed. Lines of evidence are described regarding worldview as a justifiable construct in psychology. Worldviews are distinguished from schemas. A collated model of a worldview's component dimensions is described. An integrated theory of worldview function is outlined, relating worldview to personality traits, motivation, affect, cognition, behavior, and culture. A worldview research agenda is outlined for personality and social psychology (including positive and peace psychology). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Helen Peak (1900–1985).

Presents an obituary for Helen Peak. Peak was a brilliant scholar, an innovative researcher, and one of the few generalists left in an age of specialization. She helped to build social psychology as a research discipline by bringing the methodologies of the laboratory and of measurement to the study of personality and interpersonal relations. Her scientific contributions began in the 1930s with experiments that were solid contributions to the foundation of behavioral psychology. Her interest in methodology led to her classic chapter, "Problems of Objective Observation" (1953), an account of methods of data collection and analysis. It showed the fundamental assumptions and limitations of scaling procedures and interitem correlations, and considered problems of functional unity. It became a standard source for research workers both in the US and abroad. The major research that occupied Helen Peak in the postwar years was concerned with attitudinal structure and change. Her experiments showed how attitudes could be successfully changed. From this work she developed a general activation theory of both motivational processes and the properties of structure. Peak, in the spirit of Kurt Lewin, helped reunite social psychology with individual psychology in her research and theories on attitudes and motivation—central problems of both disciplines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asian American psychology meets the twenty-first century.

Reviews the book, Asian American psychology: Current perspectives edited by Nita Tewari and Alvin Alvarez (2007). Drs. Nita Tewari and Alvin Alvarez have compiled and edited a well-organized, comprehensive, user-friendly textbook on Asian American psychology. The 58 contributing authors represent the breadth and diversity of this growing field of study. The reader who is looking for simple answers about Asian America will be frustrated by the book, as the complex texture and nuance within “Asian America” is well represented. The 650-page volume is divided into six sections: Foundations and Roots, Balancing Multiple Worlds, Gender and Intimate Relationships, Next Generation, Social and Life Issues, and Health and Well-Being. The book is oriented toward the subfields of personality, counseling, and clinical psychology. Readers will have to look beyond this text to learn about the contributions of our colleagues in social psychology. This text is suitable for undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It contains a goldmine of information that faculty can use very flexibly. Faculty and instructors teaching classes such as Asian American Psychology, Cross-Cultural Psychology, or Asian American Families will be able to use this book as a primary text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A new vision of personality...and of personality theory: Reply.

Replies to comments by Maddi (see record 2006-05893-007) on "A Tale of Two Visions: Can a New View of Personality Help Integrate Psychology?" (see record 2005-05480-001). In the original article, the current author proposed a new fieldwide framework for the discipline of personality psychology; in essence, it is a new outline to organize contemporary theory and research in the field. Maddi raised two interrelated objections to that proposed framework. First, he believes that there is a better way to organize the discipline of personality psychology than the one the current author proposed. His method involves comparing and analyzing the grand theories of personality and using the results of his analyses to guide research in the discipline. Maddi's (1968) meta-theory usefully organizes the statements of the grand theories of the early-to-mid-20th century, but the current author is not sure it is sufficient to organize the field. Second, he was concerned that the current author wants to de-emphasize the grand theories of the field. Maddi (2006) believes that disagreements among the grand theories are a fruitful source of research ideas. Although that may be true, there is more to personality psychology than the grand theories alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why not measure that trait? Alternative criteria for identifying important dispositions.

Reviews previous attempts to establish the relative importance of dispositional constructs in personality psychology, which have been anchored in 1 of 3 rationales or some combination of them: theoretical derivation, statistical analysis, or lexical analysis. An alternative set of criteria based on the act frequency approach to personality is suggested. These alternative criteria include reference to the domains of acts encompassed by dispositional constructs, the uniqueness or nonredundancy of those domains, agreement about act–disposition linkages, agreement about within-category prototypicality status, degree of temporal stability, and magnitude of manifested performance base rate. It is argued that previous, more stringent, exclusion criteria have tended to remove from consideration important classes of acts about which the field is centrally concerned. Five previous empirical studies by the authors published between 1980 and 1984 illustrate the application of these new criteria to a previously neglected dispositional construct: calculating. Discussion focuses on the implications of a more expansive view of the taxonomic task that faces personality psychology. (47 ref) (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)