The Emotional Intelligence of Managers: Assessing the Construct Validity of a Nonverbal Measure of “People Skills”

Researchers have long been interested in managerial socio-emotional competency —people skills. One problem has been that many such competencies are properly categorized as nonverbal in nature, yet researchers typically utilize paper and pencil, verbal, measures to assess these. The present research draws upon emerging literature on emotional intelligence, as well as upon psychological research on cross-cultural universals in the display and recognition of facial expressions of emotion, combining these streams of research to develop a nonverbal measure of skill at nonverbal communication—particularly, of the ability to recognize emotional expressions displayed by others. Applications to leadership, human relations skills, and communication in organizations are discussed.     

The Dispositional Flow Scale–2 as a Measure of Autotelic Personality: An Examination of Criterion-Related Validity

The Dispositional Flow Scale–2 (DFS–2; Jackson & Eklund, 2002) may be one of the most promising measures for assessing Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) construct of “autotelic personality.” Despite strong internal validity, external validity of the DFS–2 remains open. We used 2 methods to provide evidence for external validity: (1) multiple-time assessments of experience sampling (1,856 entries generated over 7 days) to derive aggregate indices of criterion validity; and (2) single-time assessments of flow and personality for additional criterion-related validity. For single-time assessments of flow, we used a modified version of the Flow Questionnaire (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984). To assess personality, we included a measure of the Five-factor traits using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). A path model of NEO domains, DFS–2 global scores, and experience sampling aggregates fit the data well.     

Understanding the “Why” as Well as the “How”: Service Performance is a Function of Prosocial Motives and Emotional Labor

Which employees tend to better perform with customers? We suggest a combination of individual differences; specifically, we consider both why employees are working (prosocial motivation) and how (emotional labor). Deep acting should enhance the positive relationship between prosocial motivation and performance, while surface acting should dampen this relationship. Using a field sample of 214 grocery clerks and supervisor ratings of interpersonal performance with customers, we did not find the amplifying effect of deep acting. We do find the dampening effect for surface acting, such that surface acting buffers those with low prosocial motives, presumably by allowing them to “act” like they want to help others. This helps to explain the weak relationship of prosocial motives with performance and suggests implications for research and practice.     

The Boundaries of Woman’s Spirituality in the Beliefs–Spirituality–Religiousness (B–S–R) Model: A Third Perspective—Beliefs as a Cognitive Basis

The real nature of the phenomenon of woman’s Spirituality is the main contemporary challenge for empirical research. The literature needs many more examples of the cognitive genesis of worldviews, Spirituality and Religiousness. The first aim of this article is to present the central tenet of the Threefold Nature of Spirituality model which theoretically explains the nature of Spirituality and the theoretical relationship between beliefs (worldviews), Spirituality and Religiousness (B–S–R model). The second aim is the empirical verification of this relationship through the application of an analysis of mediation. The 308 participants were women aged 18–50 years (M = 25.25, SD = 9.42). The results obtained indicate that is a good mediator between an individual’s worldview and Religiousness. Presented analysis of mediation allows us to describe the basic functioning mechanism of the spiritual sphere and the relationship between the three elements: worldview, Spirituality and Religiousness.     

Examining the Construct Validity of the MMPI–2–RF Interpersonal Functioning Scales Using the Computerized Adaptive Test of Personality Disorder as a Comparative Framework

This study aimed to examine the construct validity of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 Restructured Form (MMPI–2–RF) interpersonal functioning scales (Ben-Porath &; Tellegen, 2008/2011 Ben-Porath, Y. S., &; Tellegen, A. (2011). MMPI–2–RF (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 Restructured Form) manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 2008) [Google Scholar]) using as a criterion measure the Computerized Adaptive Test of Personality Disorder–Static Form (CAT–PD–SF; Simms et al., 2011 Simms, L. J., Goldberg, L. R., Roberts, J. E., Watson, D., Welte, J., &; Rotterman, J. H. (2011). Computerized adaptive assessment of personality disorder: Introducing the CAT–PD project. Journal of Personality Assessment, 93, 380–389.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Participants were college students (n = 98) recruited through the university subject pool. A series of a priori hypotheses were developed for each of the 6 interpersonal functioning scales of the MMPI–2–RF, expressed as predicted correlations with construct-relevant CAT–PD–SF scales. Of the 27 specific predictions, 21 were supported by substantial (≥ |.30|) correlations. The MMPI–2–RF Family Problems scale (FML) demonstrated the strongest correlations with CAT–PD–SF scales Anhedonia and Mistrust; Cynicism (RC3) was most highly correlated with Mistrust and Norm Violation; Interpersonal Passivity (IPP) was most highly correlated with Domineering and Rudeness; Social Avoidance (SAV) was most highly correlated with Social Withdrawal and Anhedonia; Shyness (SHY) was most highly correlated with Social Withdrawal and Anxioiusness; and Disaffiliativeness (DSF) was most highly correlated with Emotional Detachment and Mistrust. Results are largely consistent with hypotheses suggesting support for both models of constructs relevant to interpersonal functioning. Future research designed to more precisely differentiate Social Avoidance (SAV) and Shyness (SHY) is suggested.     

The Construct Validity of the Bioenergetic–Analytic Character Typology: A Multi-Method Investigation of a Humanistic Approach to Personality

The construct validity of the five bioenergetic–analytic character types was explored through a multitrait multi-method approach. Twenty-five college students had full-body photographs and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) data rated using this typology, and these were compared to psychometric data, including from the Adjective Check List (ACL). The photographic ratings by two bioenergetic experts correlated significantly across all 5 types, evidencing satisfactory inter-rater reliability, but ratings on the TAT and ACL did not show adequate reliability and a comparison of the photographic ratings with the psychometrics did not evidence validity for the typology. The importance of developing multi-method approaches for holistic research across different domains within humanistic psychology, such as mind (psychological self-report) and body (photographic ratings) based methods, is emphasized.     

The Desire for God: An Assessment of Seminarians' Spirituality Through the Lens of the “Big Five”

The purpose of the study was to investigate a personological profile of Roman Catholic seminarians characterized by a high and a low level of prayerful desire for God. One hundred twenty-one Roman Catholic seminarians were administered the Polish Adjective List (PAL; Szarota, 1995) to appraise the normal personality characteristics measured by the factors of Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A), and Conscientiousness (C), along with a measure of desire for closeness with God. Results suggest that the seminarians with a high level of desire for God, in terms of personality characteristics, tend to be more tender, self-sacrificing, magnanimous and good-natured (A) as well more conscientious, dutiful, prudent, and reliable (C) than their counterparts. The findings of the regression analysis suggested that the five personality domains explained the 11% variance of the seminarians desire to abide with God.     

“Broken Together”: Spirituality and Religion as Coping Strategies for Couples Dealing with the Death of a Child: A Literature Review with Clinical Implications

The death of a child is an event that can fall into the category of uncontrollable life events, testing the limits of the ability to control of bereaved parents. The literature reviewed showed that religious/spiritual coping is a unique way of coping and may be particularly important for couples who have lost a child. When assessing the couples’ coping strategies, marital therapists would be wise to look for religious/spiritual mechanisms that can be employed in the therapeutic process. Furthermore, the reviewers propose Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (Johnson, 2004, The practice of emotionally focused couple therapy: Creating connection, Routledge, New York) as well suited for helping couples grieving the death of their child.     

Evaluating the Face Validity of the ICECAP-O Capabilities Measure: A “Think Aloud” Study with Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Patients

The ICECAP-O index of capabilities measure for older people is intended to be used in the evaluation of health and social care interventions. Focusing on quality of life, rather than health or other influences on quality of life. This study evaluated the face validity of the self-administered ICECAP-O capabilities measure for older people by investigating how participants interpret and respond to questions using the cognitive interviewing technique. Twenty patients with osteoarthritis of the knee or hip participated in a cognitive interview whilst completing the ICECAP-O capabilities measure. Cognitive interviews were conducted using the concurrent ‘think aloud’ design. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim and analysed (i) using a standardised classification scheme to identify response problems and (ii) qualitatively thematically analysed to explore the nature of the problems that the participants experienced when completing the measure. Problems were identified in 7 % of participants’ responses. The majority of problems identified were comprehension problems. Thematic analysis highlighted the extent to which participants’ distinguished between functioning and capability. Cognitive interviewing was a valuable technique for pre-testing the face validity, acceptability and content validity of the ICECAP-O capabilities measure. Participants had minimal difficulties completing the ICECAP-O capabilities measure. Those difficulties identified have prompted suggestions for improving the measure.     

Reliability and Validity of the Thai “Global Person Generated Index”, an Individualised Measure of Quality of Life

The “Global Person Generated Index” (GPGI) is an individualised measure of global quality of life (QoL). Individualised measures have been used within a health context, however until recently have been rarely used to explore global QoL. This paper establishes the GPGI’s validity and reliability in Thailand. Data were collected from participants in two sites in Northeast Thailand. Participants completed the Thai GPGI, the “Satisfaction with Life Scale”(SWLS), a modified “Positive and Negative Affect Scale” (PANAS) and provided demographic data. 81 participants provided data at T1. 70 participants completed data for test-retest (two week interval) reliability comparisons. Test-retest reliability correlation was 0.678 (p < 0.001) for participants reporting no change in QoL. GPGI correlated moderately with SWLS (0.381, p < 0.01) and PANAS scales (0.291 and −0.378, both p < 0.01), indicating validity. GPGI scores were related to health and correlated to a moderate degree with income (0.379, p < 0.05). GPGI scores did not show the expected differences in scores based on gender, although this may be owing to cultural issues. Areas nominated as important to QoL included family, money, house, health and employment, which mirrors items on other QoL scales and previous work with individualised measures. The Thai GPGI is reliable for group comparisons and valid. The difficulties of designing cross-cultural construct validity hypotheses are acknowledged. Areas nominated as important to QoL were diverse and largely asset based. The GPGI is recommended for use to explore global QoL and potentially useful for needs assessment and exploration of response shift.     

Threat is a Multidimensional Construct: Exploring the Role of Children’s Threat Appraisals in the Relationship Between Interparental Conflict and Child Adjustment

Past research has emphasised the importance of children’s appraisals of the threat posed by parent conflict for understanding links between interparental conflict and child outcomes. However, little is known about what it is that children actually find threatening about parent conflict. Children (n = 236) aged 10–16 years were recruited to examine the relative contribution of four specific threat subtypes—fear of parent conflict escalating, fear of being drawn into parent conflict, fear of parent conflict resulting in family breakdown, and fear of parent conflict disrupting parent/child attachment relationships—in explaining links between interparental conflict and child internalising adjustment. Results showed that children’s worries about being drawn into parent conflict mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalising adjustment. Fear of interparental conflict disrupting parent/child attachment bonds mediated the relationship between interparental conflict and child internalising problems for girls, but not boys. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of considering multiple dimensions of threat for advancing understanding of the processes underlying the interparental conflict/child adjustment relationship.

“None of the above” as a correct and incorrect alternative on a multiple-choice test: Implications for the testing effect

Both positive and negative testing effects have been demonstrated with a variety of materials and paradigms (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b). The present series of experiments replicate and extend the research of Roediger and Marsh (2005) with the addition of a “none-of-the-above” response option. Participants (n=32 in both experiments) read a set of passages, took an initial multiple-choice test, completed a filler task, and then completed a final cued-recall test (Experiment 1) or multiple-choice test (Experiment 2). Questions were manipulated on the initial multiple-choice test by adding a “none-of-the-above” response alternative (choice “E”) that was incorrect (“E” Incorrect) or correct (“E” Correct). The results from both experiments demonstrated that the positive testing effect was negated when the “none-of-the-above” alternative was the correct response on the initial multiple-choice test, but was still present when the “none-of-the-above” alternative was an incorrect response.     

Exploring the “New” Frontier of Spirituality in Health Care: Identifying the Dangers

Enthusiasm is growing in nursing and medicine for addressing spirituality and religious needs in patient care. We urge caution and stress the need for greater awareness of the dangers involved. The first danger is the lack of any attention given to how informed consent might be relevant to the topic of patient autonomy in spiritual health care decisions. The second danger is that the major health care providers, nursing and medicine, are not adequately educated to provide such care. The third danger is that we have not yet sufficiently clarified the roles of the various providers and as a consequence coordination of quality spiritual care is in jeopardy.     

Empirical tests of a fast-and-frugal heuristic: Not everyone “takes-the-best”

The fast-and-frugal heuristics approach to decision making under uncertainty advocated by Gigerenzer and colleagues (e.g., Gigerenzer & Goldstein, 1996) has achieved great popularity despite a relative lack of empirical validation. We report two experiments that examine the use of one particular heuristic—“take-the-best” (TTB). In both experiments the majority of participants adopted frugal strategies, but only one-third (33%) behaved in a manner completely consistent with TTB’s search, stopping and decision rules. Furthermore, a significant proportion of participants in both experiments adopted a non-frugal strategy in which they accumulated more information than was predicted by TTB’s stopping rule. The results provide an insight into the conditions under which different heuristics are used, and question the predictive power of the fast-and-frugal approach.     

The Development of the Inventory of Problems–29: A Brief Self-Administered Measure for Discriminating Bona Fide From Feigned Psychiatric and Cognitive Complaints

This article describes the development of the Inventory of Problems–29 (IOP–29), a new, short, paper-and-pencil, self-administered measure of feigned mental and cognitive disorders. Four clinical comparison simulation studies were conducted. Study 1 (n = 451) selected the items and produced an index of potential feigning. Study 2 (n = 331) scaled this index to produce a probability score, and examined its psychometric properties. Study 3 tested the generalizability of Study 2's findings with 2 additional samples (ns = 128 and 90). Results supported the utility of the IOP–29 for discriminating bona fide from feigned psychiatric and cognitive complaints. Validity was demonstrated in feigning mild traumatic brain injury, psychosis, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression. Within the independent samples of Studies 2 and 3, the brief IOP–29 performed similarly to the MMPI–2 and Personality Assessment Inventory, and perhaps better than the Test of Memory Malingering. Classifications within these samples with base rates of .5 produced sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive power, and negative predictive power statistics of about .80. Further research is needed testing the IOP–29 in ecologically valid field studies.     

Construing a “Perfect Knight”: A Personal Construct Investigation of Mass Murder

We report three studies in which we examined the structure of interpersonal construct systems. We attempted to identify (a) the degree to which individuals' differentiation in the constructs they used to construe themselves paralleled the differentiation in the constructs they used to construe other and (b) the differences and similarities in the content of constructs used by subjects to construe themselves, liked peers, and disliked peers. In addition, we compared the content of the liked- and disliked-peer constructs with those used by employees construing co-workers in a previous study. Findings indicated that Ziller, Martell, and Morrison's (1977) checklist measure of self differentiation was weakly correlated in the first sample and uncorrelated in the second sample with Crockett's (1965) Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ), a measure of other differentiation. Differentiation scores from the other and self versions of the RCQ were moderately correlated. Content analyses revealed that self constructs were drawn largely from the same pool as those used in describing liked and disliked peers; they were more similar to the liked-peer constructs than the disliked-peer ones, but also drew heavily on the disliked-peer construct pool. Constructs used to describe liked and disliked peers were very similar to those used to describe co-workers but were clearly influenced by context. To account for the findings, we suggest that constructs become meaningful and thus prominent in a particular domain because of their usefulness for the particular construal tasks encountered in that domain.     

The boundaries of minimization as a technique for improving affect: good for the goose but not for the gander?

Research on minimization as a coping strategy suggests that it alleviates negative affect following threats. In contrast, research on minimization as a support‐giving strategy suggests that it does more harm than good. Does this mean that minimization works when it is self‐generated, but does not when it is offered by others? The present study examined the effect of self‐ and externally‐ generated minimizations on people with high and low self‐esteem following a self‐threat. Results suggest that externally‐generated minimizations do not alleviate negative affect when they occur before the recipient has had time to cope. Discussion centers around the implications of these findings for past research, as well as distinctions between how people with low versus high self‐esteem cope with negative events.     

A Review of: “Potency: Masculine Aggression as a Path to the Soul”

The wisdom of children's literature

The psychological symbiosis of child and adult merged together in a good story is the prima materia moment of the object relations theorist.

The root metaphor is one of finding a path whereby we can establish an ego in the world without developing violent body armor.

New fall releases

Omnibus review

Pushing at the boundaries of reality: the child and the dream

New books and magazines

M.a. and ph.d. programs with degree specialization in depth psychology

The secret world of drawings: healing through art. by gregg furth. boston: sigo press, 1988.

The chiron clinical series dreams in analysis

Spring 49-1989 a journal of archetype and culture

Jungian child psychotherapy: in-dividuation in childhood. edited by mara sidoli and miranda davies. London: karnac, 1988.

Children of psychiatrists and other psychotherapists. by thomas maeder. New york: harper &; row, 1989.

Analytical psychology notes of the seminar given in 1925

C. g. jung and the humanities toward a hermeneutics of culture

The father: mythology and changing roles. by arthur coleman and libby coleman. Wilmette, illinois: chiron publications, 1988.

When you're ready: a woman's healing from childhood physical and sexual abuse by her mother. by kathy evert. Walnut creek, ca: launch press, 1987.

Emotional child abuse: the family curse. by joel covitz. Boston: sigo press, 1986.

Inscapes of the child's world: jungian counseling hi schools and clinics. by john allan. Spring publications, 1988.

The plural psyche. by andrew samuels. London: routledge, 1989.