A periodic table of personality elements? The "Big Five" and trait "psychology" in critical perspective.

Within contemporary personality psychology there is widespread consensus that, at long last, the basic elements of "the" human personality have been empirically discovered, and that the systematic search for the underlying causes and consequences of personality differences can be pursued on this basis. The putatively basic trait dimensions are neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and are referred to collectively as "the Big Five." In the present article, this perspective on the psychology of personality is examined critically and found wanting. It is argued that neither the "Big Five" framework in particular nor trait "psychology" more generally is adequate as the basis for a scientific psychology of the human person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prevalence, morphology and biology of renal cell carcinoma in von Hippel-Lindau disease compared to sporadic renal cell carcinoma

PURPOSE: Renal cell carcinoma occurs as a sporadic tumor but may be part of the autosomal dominant von Hippel-Lindau disease, characterized by retinal and central nervous system hemangioblastoma, pheochromocytoma, pancreatic cysts and renal cell carcinoma. We determine the prevalence of von Hippel-Lindau disease in a series of unselected renal cell carcinoma cases by molecular genetic analysis, and compare sporadic to von Hippel-Lindau renal cell carcinoma with respect to morphology and biology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We established registers comprising 63 subjects with von Hippel-Lindau renal cell carcinoma, belonging to 30 distinct families (register A), and 460 unselected patients operated on for renal cell carcinoma in an 11-year period (register B). Molecular genetic analysis of the von Hippel-Lindau gene was performed for living patients of register A, representing 80% of von Hippel-Lindau families, and register B, 62% living patients, to identify von Hippel-Lindau germline mutations. In addition, register B was evaluated by a questionnaire (95% response) for familial occurrence of von Hippel-Lindau disease. RESULTS: The prevalence of von Hippel-Lindau renal cell carcinoma was 1.6% in 189 consenting unselected renal cell carcinoma patients. Risk factors for occult germline von Hippel-Lindau gene mutations in register B included familial renal cell carcinoma in 3 of 3 patients (100%), multifocal or bilateral renal cell carcinoma in 1 of 10 (10%) and age younger than 50 years at diagnosis in 1 of 33 (3%). Compared to sporadic von Hippel-Lindau renal cell carcinoma was characterized by an occurrence 25 years earlier, association with renal cysts, multifocal and bilateral tumors, cystic organization and low grade histology, and a better 10-year survival (p < 0.001 each). In von Hippel-Lindau disease metastases occurred only in tumors larger than 7 cm. CONCLUSIONS: von Hippel-Lindau differs from sporadic renal cell carcinoma in morphology and biology. Our data provide arguments for planning surgery for von Hippel-Lindau renal cell carcinoma and should stimulate future investigations.     

What is nomothetic about “nomothetic” personality research?

Were it one's purpose to set rolling in scornful impatience the eyes of those who currently animate the discipline of personality psychology, one could scarcely do better than to initiate some discussion of the so-called "nomothetic vs. idiographic" controversy, a dispute that has nagged the field for at least the past 50 years. The author has been persuaded that the need for such an analysis will prevail for just so long as it takes the legion but, alas, ersatz "nomotheticists' of personality psychology to finally get it right: The knowledge yielded by conventional' 'nomothetic' personality research has never been, is not now, and will never be nomothetic in any sense of the term to which a personality theorist would be compelled to bow. When all is said and done, it is only this dogma, as fallacious as it is resilient, that has nourished some six decades of "nomothetic" hegemony and, in the process, served repeatedly as the grounds for summarily banishing to their collective corner dispirited critics such as Allport (cf. Allport, 1966). But while the intimidating hubris of psychometric sophisticates may heretofore have muted many who, in their alleged "romanticism" (Holt, 1962) dared to challenge conventional "nomothetic" wisdom, such browbeating does not dispel ghosts—Teutonic or otherwise. There are certain essentially epistemological problems with which apologists for traditional "nomotheticism" simply must come to grips, and if prior critics of the dominant paradigm failed to articulate those problems adequately (and I believe that this is the case, cf. Lamiell, 1985), then the struggle must be joined anew, because the problems are genuine and they are not just going to evaporate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences.

Reviews the book, What’s behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences by Brent D. Slife and Richard N. Williams (1995). As the book's subtitle indicates, the authors' purpose is to assist the reader in Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences, a worthy objective not likely to be realized simply through a love affair with "information" and its packaging. Slife and Williams state their mission clearly: "Presenting (behavioral sciences') hidden assumptions, along with their costs and consequences, is our task in this book. Whether you are a student of the behavioral sciences, therapist, educator, businessperson, or simply a consumer of behavioral science information, you will need to know the implicit ideas in that information. What are the main interpretations of the data by scientists? What alternative methods are available for gathering knowledge? What ideas are embedded in the usual approaches to abnormality and treatment? Are there other ideas available for generating solutions to human problems? Do conventional approaches to business or education include assumptions about the world or human nature that are questionable or unacceptable to the people who use them? We attempt to answer these and many other questions." In most respects, Slife and Williams do a splendid job at this. Many of the central conceptual issues Slife and Williams have raised have been treated before (by, among others, the mentor of both authors and the scholar to whom they have dedicated their work, Joseph Rychlak, but I know of no work the equal of this one in presenting the material in a way so accessible to previously uninitiated students and the intelligent and interested lay public. Surely this book will be welcomed by those scholars and educators who would wish to move psychology and the other behavioral sciences into the 21st century shorne of their positivistic leanings and empiricist pretensions, and re-oriented toward a more apposite science of human nature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)