Approach, Avoidance, and the Self-Regulation of Affect and Action

Several literatures converge on the idea that approach and avoidance/withdrawal behaviors are managed by two partially distinct self-regulatory system. The functions of these systems also appear to be embodied in discrepancy-reducing and -enlarging feedback loops, respectively. This article describes how the feedback construct has been used to address these two classes of action and the affective experiences that relate to them. Further discussion centers on the development of measures of individual differences in approach and avoidance tendencies, and how these measures can be (and have been) used as research tools, to investigate whether other phenomena have their roots in approach or avoidance.     

ASSESSING THE CANDIDATE AS A WHOLE: A HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT FOR PERSONNEL DECISION MAKING

Although individual assessment is a thriving area of professional practice in industry, it receives little, if any, attention from textbooks on industrial psychology or personnel management. This article is an attempt to establish individual assessment's place in the history of personnel selection, and to examine why the practice has survived despite receiving little attention in research and graduate training. It is argued that the clinical, holistic approach that has characterized individual-assessment practice has survived primarily because the "elementalistic" testing approach, focusing on traits and abilities, has often been dismissed as inadequate for addressing the complexities of the executive profile. Moreover, public displeasure with standard paper-and-pencil testing in the 1960s and 1970s made the holistic approach to assessment an attractive, alternative. The article contrasts individual assessment practice with the current state of knowledge on psychological assessment and personnel decision making. Like psychotherapy in the 1950s, individual psychological assessment appears to have achieved the status of functional autonomy within psychology.     

Functional brain mapping of extraversion and neuroticism: learning from individual differences in emotion processing

This review outlines how functional brain imaging, using an individual-differences approach in the processing of emotional stimuli, has begun to reveal the neural basis of extraversion (E) and neuroticism (N), two traits that are linked to both emotion and health. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging have shown that individual differences in participants' E and N scores are correlated with individual differences in brain activation in specific brain regions that are engaged during cognitive-affective tasks. Imaging studies using genotyped participants have begun to address the molecular mechanisms that may underlie these individual differences. The multidisciplinary integration of brain imaging and molecular genetic methods offers an exciting and novel approach for investigators who seek to uncover the biological mechanisms by which personality and health are interrelated.     

Person‐specific versus multilevel autoregressive models: Accuracy in parameter estimates at the population and individual levels

This paper compares the multilevel modelling (MLM) approach and the person‐specific (PS) modelling approach in examining autoregressive (AR) relations with intensive longitudinal data. Two simulation studies are conducted to examine the influences of sample heterogeneity, time series length, sample size, and distribution of individual level AR coefficients on the accuracy of AR estimates, both at the population level and at the individual level. It is found that MLM generally outperforms the PS approach under two conditions: when the sample has a homogeneous AR pattern, namely, when all individuals in the sample are characterized by AR processes with the same order; and when the sample has heterogeneous AR patterns, but a multilevel model with a sufficiently high order (i.e., an order equal to or higher than the maximum order of individual AR patterns in the sample) is fitted and successfully converges. If a lower‐order multilevel model is chosen for heterogeneous samples, the higher‐order lagged effects are misrepresented, resulting in bias at the population level and larger prediction errors at the individual level. In these cases, the PS approach is preferable, given sufficient measurement occasions (T ≥ 50). In addition, sample size and distribution of individual level AR coefficients do not have a large impact on the results. Implications of these findings on model selection and research design are discussed.     

Women Athletes' Personal Responses to Sexual Harassment in Sport

The examination of sexual harassment in sport has become an active research field within the past two decades. It is especially important for sport psychology consultants to understand this issue because they have professional opportunities to influence both individual and organizational responses to it. This article uses interview data from an investigation of sexual harassment in sport to examine the personal responses of 25 elite female athletes to their experiences of sexual harassment. The athletes reacted with disgust, fear, irritation, and anger when the sexually harassing incidents occurred. They also demonstrated individual, internally focused responses to the harassment rather than collective, externally focused ones. This suggests that sport organizations have much work to do on both education and organizational change if sexual harassment is to be challenged and eradicated. The findings also indicate that sport psychology consultants have a role to play in equipping athletes with the necessary skills to avert or confront sexual harassment in sport.     

Individual Style of Activity and Adaptation to Standard Performance Requirements

This article introduces American psychologists to some approaches from the former Soviet Union to dealing with training and performance problems derived from indi- vidual differences in personality features. Our work considers some aspects of these problems based on Russian psychologists' study of personality within the framework of the theory of activity. The approach is known as "individual style of activity" and is fundamental to the analysis of practical achievement in Russian psychology. Sev- eral areas of applied research are presented to illustrate the approach. These studies examine the process of adaptation to objective requirements by participants with distinct individual features. This research does not emphasize the classification of individuals into particular groups for the purpose of selection; rather it emphasizes how to facilitate the adaptation of people with diverse personal features through the development of individualized methods of performance, teaching, and training. The findings have many important applications in education, sports, work, and other performance settings.     

Individual and Environmental Influences on Chinese Student Creativity

Primarily using self-report questionnaires and psychometric tests in a sample of 357 Chinese high school students, this study examines how both individual and environmental factors can independently predict student creativity as measured by three different methods, including two product-orientated measures (story completion and collage making), two divergent thinking measures (circle task and picture completion), and one self-report inventory on divergent thinking attitudes. Two different types of theoretical models — the cognitive approach and confluence approach — are compared and contrasted. Based on previous research, this study uses the confluence approach to investigate the influences of individual (i.e. intelligence, personality, motivation, thinking styles, and knowledge) and environmental (i.e., school and family environment) factors on creativity. The results have confirmed the major hypothesis that both individual and environmental factors play decisive roles in Chinese student creativity. Implications of these findings are discussed. This paper also calls for a serious consideration of research on environmental influence on creativity and various mechanisms of this influence.     

Self-reported Deviant Computer Behavior: A Big-5, Moral Choice,and Manipulative Exploitive Behavior Analysis

Many criminological theories about individual violation can be broadly classified into two groups: (1) those that attempt to explain the violation of personally held conventional norms and values (normative violations) and (2) those that attempt to explain the following of deviant norms and values (cultural deviance). We argue that each set of theories focuses on a unique dependent variable, but that social learning is one example of a theory that explicitly integrates these dependent variables under one explanatory heading. This important difference in what theories are trying to explain has been downplayed in criminology, with potentially serious consequences. The failure to provide accurate, focused measures of the correct dependent variables may have produced empirical findings that are weaker than expected. This article takes a step toward rectifying this important problem. It presents a discussion of the different sets of theories and of the attempt by social learning theory to explain both of behavior; in addition, it spells out the implications for research of this difference.     

Searching for the variables that control human rule‐governed “insensitivity”

Verbal rules or instructions often exert obvious and meaningful control over human behavior. Sometimes instructions benefit the individual by enabling faster acquisition of a skill or by obviating an aversive consequence. However, research has also suggested a clear disadvantage: “insensitivity” to changing underlying contingencies. The two experiments described here investigated the variables that control initial rule‐following behavior and rule‐following insensitivity. When the initial rule was inaccurate, behavior was consistent with the rule for approximately half of participants and all participants' behavior was mostly insensitive to changing contingencies. When the initial rule was accurate, behavior of all participants was consistent with it and behavior for nearly all participants was insensitive to changes in underlying contingencies. These findings have implications for how best to establish and maintain rule‐following behavior in applied settings when deviant behavior would be more reinforcing to the individual.     

Being well at work: the impact of organizational climate and social identity on employee stress and self-esteem over time

In organizational psychology, staff perceptions of organizational climate have been found to be an important predictor of employee outcomes, such as employee stress. However, only a small pool of research has investigated the psychological mechanism that underpins the relationship, and no past literature has explored how the relationship persists over time. This paper uses the social identity approach to investigate whether social identification predicts and mediates the relationship between staff perceptions of organizational climate and their levels of stress and self-esteem over time. Employing a sample of public school teachers, the study was conducted over two years (N = 281, 65 schools). The results indicated that social identification fully mediated the relationship between organizational climate and self-esteem longitudinally but showed no significant relationship with stress. The implications of these findings are discussed, with recommendations for future research.     

Information Processing Strategies in Riskless Preference Reversals: The Prominence Effect

A preference reversal occurs whenever an individual prefers one alternative to another in one response mode (e.g., choice) but shows the opposite preference order in another response mode (e.g., attractiveness ratings, matching). In previous studies of riskless multiattribute preferences the most common reversal pattern involves a prominence effect: The more important attribute has a greater influence in choices than in matching judgments. Previous research has suggested that the prominence effect can be accounted for by the strategy compatibility principle, which states that response tasks can evoke different decision strategies and these strategies determine the relative impact of the various attributes. This article attempts to establish the mediating role of decision processes in determining the occurrence and pattern of riskless preference reversals. In a process tracing experiment we replicate previous findings of a prominence effect in riskless two-attribute preferences. In addition, there are clear differences in process between response modes, and these differences are consistent with previous explanations of riskless preference reversals. Finally, we are able to predict subject level differences in choice preferences and choice versus matching reversals using measures of information search.     

Confidence of social judgments is not just error: Individual differences in the structure,stability, and social functions of perceptual confidence

The present research uses a Social Relations Model approach to focus on individual differences in perceptual confidence – a person’s confidence in her or his impressions of others. Across two samples of group interactions, we found that the majority of variance in perceptual confidence was explained by individual differences in how people tended to perceive others (i.e., perceiver effects). A smaller percentage of variance was explained by differences in how people tended to be perceived by others (i.e., target effects). Both these individual differences were stable over time, were related to relevant personality measures, and group outcomes. Together, these results demonstrate that although perceptual confidence may not be substantially related to accuracy, it exists as a stable individual difference dimension that has important consequences for social interactions.     

Multifarious person perception: How social perceivers manage the complexity of intersectional targets

Stereotyping plays an important role in how we perceive the members of social groups. Yet stereotyping is complicated by the fact that every individual simultaneously belongs to multiple social groups. For example, the stereotypes that are called to mind about a Black individual can vary depending on that person's age, gender, and sexual orientation. This phenomenon—termed intersectional stereotyping—has recently inspired a variety of intriguing research findings. But these research findings pose challenges for prevalent theories of stereotyping. These prevalent theories tend to argue either that (a) perceivers inevitably attend to certain social identities (e.g., gender) when stereotyping intersectional targets, or that (b) perceivers inevitably attend to all detectable social identities at once. In contrast to these perspectives, we argue that perceivers generally attend to just one social identity (or one intersection of identities) at a time when stereotyping intersectional targets, as a function of the social context. For example, gay Black men can be alternately stereotyped as gay people, as Black people, as men, or as gay Black men specifically. The approach described here can account for a diverse array of findings emerging from research on intersectional stereotyping. Moreover, by specifying the factors that render particular identities salient in the minds of social perceivers, this approach offers clear and falsifiable predictions regarding the situated stereotyping of multifaceted individuals.     

The importance of leisure as a means of coping with work related stress: An exploratory study

Work stress researchers have long recognized the importance of coping in the work stress relationship and there is now a growing body of literature exploring the measurement and classification of coping strategies. While a range of coping activities have been explored one area that has received a less than complete treatment is the importance individuals give to leisure as a means of coping with work related stress. This research set out to explore the important reasons individual attach to leisure as a means of coping with work stress. The sample was made up of 695 principals and deputy principals from secondary schools throughout New Zealand. Analysis revealed that there were two reasons why leisure is important as a means of coping; one because of its active/challenging nature and the other because of its more passive/recuperative nature. The items that made up these two broad categories were then further explored in relation to a number of measures of well-being. This involved the use of sequential tree analysis and the sequential unfolding of the different reasons. The pattern to emerge suggested that 'being totally focused' was an important reason for engaging in active/challenging leisure whereas a more complex profile emerged for using passive/recuperative leisure activities. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of intervention strategies and the role of leisure within work stress research.     

How young children judge whether a word is one they know: a dual criterion account

Word familiarity judgment may be important for word learning, yet little is known about how children make this judgment. We hypothesized that preschool-age children differ in the judgment criteria that they use and that this difference derives from individual differences in basic memory processes. Those who have superior phonological working memory, but who retrieve less semantic information than their peers, base the judgment on whether they recognize a word’s sound form. Those who show the opposite memory profile base the judgment on whether they retrieve a word’s meaning. The results of two studies of 3- and 4-year-olds were consistent with these claims. Among those performing poorly on one memory measure, judgment accuracy was directly related to performance on the other memory measure. These memory-judgment relations were also found to be highly specific. This is the first investigation to demonstrate the usefulness of an individual differences approach for identifying relations between linguistic judgment processes and basic memory processes during early childhood.     

Integrating Covariates into Social Relations Models: A Plausible Values Approach for Handling Measurement Error in Perceiver and Target Effects

The Social Relations Model (SRM) is a conceptual and analytical approach to examining dyadic behaviors and interpersonal perceptions within groups. In an SRM, the perceiver effect describes a person's tendency to perceive other group members in a certain way, whereas the target effect measures the tendency to be perceived by others in certain ways. In SRM research, it is often of interest to relate these individual SRM effects to covariates. However, the estimated individual SRM effects might not provide a very reliable measure of the true, unobserved SRM effects, resulting in distorted estimates of associations with other variables. This article introduces a plausible values approach that allows users to correct for measurement error when assessing the association of individual SRM effects with other individual difference variables. In the plausible values approach, the latent, true individual SRM effects are treated as missing values and are imputed from an imputation model by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. In a simulation study, the statistical properties of the plausible values approach are compared with two approaches that have been used in previous research. A data example from educational psychology is presented to illustrate how the plausible values approach can be implemented with the software WinBUGS.     

SELF-PERCEPTION IN WRITING: THE EFFECTS OF WRITING WORKSHOP AND TRADITIONAL INSTRUCTION ON INTERMEDIATE GRADE STUDENTS

This study compared the self-perception - specifically in terms of writing - of fourth- and fifth-grade students whose teachers used a writingworkshop approach with those whose teachers used a traditional approach. The measure used was the Writer Self-Perception Scale (Bottomley, Henk, & Melnick, 1997/1998). No significant differences were found between the scores of students who had been taught by the two teaching approaches. The findings of this study suggest that individual teachers are more important than strategies or approaches in affecting the writer self-perception of intermediate-grade children.     

Frustrated,but not flustered: The benefits of hierarchical approach motivation to weathering daily frustrations

Variations in the organization of personal goals are thought to be important to self-regulation, yet relevant measures and evidence is largely lacking. In two studies (total N = 217), participants were prompted to self-generate personal goals at three levels of a goal hierarchy (low, mid, and high), following which they rated all of these goals along an approach-avoidance dimension. A hierarchical approach measure was created from these ratings and this novel individual difference measure was hypothesized to predict the better self-regulation of goal frustrations in daily life. Such predictions were confirmed. For example, daily frustrations precipitated anger among those low but not high, in hierarchical approach (Study 2). The findings are important theoretically as well as from a measurement perspective.     

Variability in fundamental frequency during speech in prodromal and incipient Parkinson's disease: a longitudinal case study

Nearly two centuries ago, first observed that a particular pattern of speech changes occur in patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). Numerous studies have documented these changes using a wide variety of acoustic measures, and yet few studies have attempted to quantify any such changes longitudinally, through the early course of the disease. Moreover, no attempt has been made to determine if speech changes are evident during the prodromal period, prior to the onset of clinically noticeable symptoms. This case-control pilot study is a first attempt to determine if changes in fundamental frequency variability during speech, an acoustic measure known to be affected later in the course of the disease, are evident during the prodromal period. A retrospective analysis of videotape footage recorded and made available by a leading national television news service. Videotape samples were obtained for a single individual (and a well-matched control subject) over an 11-year period of this individual's life (7 years prior to diagnosis of PD, and 3 years post-diagnosis). Results suggest that changes in F0 variability can be detected as early as 5 years prior to diagnosis (consistent with findings from other laboratories that have relied on cross-sectional study approaches). This pilot study supports the utility of such a design approach, and these results warrant continued effort to better understand the onset of PD and sensitivity of measurement of voice acoustical changes during the prodromal period.