Incorporating If...Then...Personality Signatures in Person Perception: Beyond the Person-Situation Dichotomy.

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Laser-induced phosphorescence for the in situ detection of glyoxal at part per trillion mixing ratios

Glyoxal is a molecule of emerging importance to the atmospheric chemistry community because of its role in aerosol formation and utility as an indicator for oxidative chemistry. We describe the Madison laser-induced phosphorescence (LIP) instrument, an instrument based on LIP for direct, in situ measurement of gas-phase glyoxal with a S/N = 3 limit of detection (LOD) of 18 ppt(v)/min, with planned upgrades to reduce the LOD to 5 ppt(v)/min. By employing this technique, we have built an instrument with exceptional in situ limits of detection, tremendous selectivity, and the considerable advantage of direct, fast measurements that requires neither derivatization nor ex situ analysis. The instrument is equally well-suited for laboratory and field measurements. It was deployed for the first time to the BEARPEX 2007 field campaign in Georgetown, CA, producing nearly one month of continuous data with mixing ratios ranging from 20 to 250 ppt(v) glyoxal. To the authors' knowledge, this represents the first use of LIP for a field measurement.     

What we think we do (to each other): How personality can bias behavior schemas through the projection of if–then profiles.

People's knowledge about others includes not only person schemas about the typical traits of others but also behavior schemas about the likely interpersonal consequences of different behaviors. In this article, it is argued that perceiver effects can be interactive at the level of behavior schemas. A person's own personality configuration of if–then responses in social interactions (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) may contribute to that person's beliefs about the meaning and impact of relational behaviors more generally. In consequence, people who experience strong (or weak) responses to behaviors that vary along a particular trait dimension, such as warmth–coldness, may expect others to experience similarly strong (or weak) responses to those same kinds of behaviors. In 3 studies, people who were high in trait communion expected others to respond more strongly to behaviors that varied in warmth–coldness than did people who were low in trait communion, and people who were low in trait agency expected others to respond more strongly to behaviors that varied in assertiveness–unassertiveness than did people who were high in trait agency. Studies 2 and 3 provided evidence that participants' behavior schemas were based on assumptions derived from their own if–then personality profiles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Only because I love you: Why people make and why they break promises in romantic relationships.

People make and break promises frequently in interpersonal relationships. In this article, we investigate the processes leading up to making promises and the processes involved in keeping them. Across 4 studies, we demonstrate that people who had the most positive relationship feelings and who were most motivated to be responsive to the partner's needs made bigger promises than did other people but were not any better at keeping them. Instead, promisers' self-regulation skills, such as trait conscientiousness, predicted the extent to which promises were kept or broken. In a causal test of our hypotheses, participants who were focused on their feelings for their partner promised more, whereas participants who generated a plan of self-regulation followed through more on their promises. Thus, people were making promises for very different reasons (positive relationship feelings, responsiveness motivation) than what made them keep these promises (self-regulation skills). Ironically, then, those who are most motivated to be responsive may be most likely to break their romantic promises, as they are making ambitious commitments they will later be unable to keep. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)