Being Inconsistent About Consistency: When Coefficient Alpha Does and Doesn't Matter

One of the central tenets of classical test theory is that scales should have a high degree of internal consistency, as evidenced by Cronbach's α, the mean interitem correlation, and a strong first component. However, there are many instances in which this rule does not apply. Following Bollen and Lennox (1991), I differentiate between questionnaires such as anxiety or depression inventories, which are composed of items that are manifestations of an underlying hypothetical construct (i.e., where the items are called effect indicators) and those such as Scale 6 of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) and ones used to tap quality of life or activities of daily living in which the items or subscales themselves define the construct (these items are called causal indicators). Questionnaires of the first sort, which are referred to as scales in this article, meet the criteria of classical test theory, whereas the second type, which are called indexes here, do not. I discuss the implications of this difference for how items are selected, the relationship among the items, and the statistics that should and should not be used in establishing the reliability of the scale or index.     

大学生创造性内隐观的调查研究——关于高创造性者的特征

本研究采用社会效度的方法,对大学生的创造性内隐观进行了调查研究,结果发现：1．大学生的创造性内隐观所涉及的范围广泛,涵盖了认知、人格的许多方面;2．经因素分析把大学生的创造性内隐观可以概括为十二个因素,分别是：道德品质、才情、异常人格、独创力、探究、自主敢为性、思维发散性、知识经验、勤勉、问题发现、智力、自强,其中道德品质和勤勉为中国大学生所特有。3．不同专业和性别的大学生在上述诸因素上内隐观总体差异显著,并且二者交互作用总体显著,在各具体因素上内隐观有些也存在不一致。     

The Effects of Implicit Theories on Exercise Motivation

This study investigated whether type of implicit theory about athletic coordination would influence motivation to persist at a novel exercise task in the face of difficulty. Fifty college students were told that we were testing a new type of exercise and were given one of two theories about the nature of athletic coordination. Some participants were told that athletic coordination was mostly learned (incremental condition), while others were told that athletic coordination was genetically determined (entity condition). Participants initially experienced success and then difficulty while following videos containing the new exercise. Consistent with predictions, results showed that participants given an incremental theory of athletic coordination reported greater motivation and self-efficacy and less negative affect in the face of difficulty than those given an entity theory. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Implicit Nature of Intrinsic Religious Pursuit

Listening to religious music is often an important part of religious life. Yet there has been little empirical research on it. The purpose of this study is to test a conceptual model that specifies one way in which religious music may be associated with change in health over time. This model contains the following core relationships: (a) People who attend worship services more often will have stronger emotional reactions to religious music, (b) individuals who are more emotionally involved in religious music will be more likely to feel a close sense of connectedness with other people, (c) people who feel more closely connected with others will be more hopeful about the future, and (d) individuals who feel more hopeful will be more likely to rate their health favorably over time. The data provide support for each of these relationships. Significant variations by race were also observed in the findings.     

内隐知识表征的性质与研究

内隐学习是当分认知和学习领域经内隐记忆之后又一重要的研究课题。其中,关于内隐学习所获知识的性质问题是最具争议的问题之一,本文介绍了在这个问题上的三种主要观点：抽象观、分布的例子基础观、片断观,并对各种观点的实验性证据进行了总结和分析。     

Implicit Leadership Theories: Prototypes for New Leaders

Followers' implicit leadership theories for new group leaders, including their prototypes of new-leader behavior, consist of organized expectations. If met, these expectations may afford a leader greater influence. Subjects' prototypes for new leaders were assessed by subjecting an 87 x 87 co-occurrence matrix of leader behaviors, based on subjects' similarity classifications, to hierarchical cluster analysis. At the proposed basic level of hierarchy (Rosch, 1978) were 16 categories of expectations for leader behavior, including giving ideas to the group, being responsible, and accepting others, which formed four abstract superordinate categories: learning the group's goals, taking charge, being a nice person, and being nervous. The results are discussed with relation to (a) the synthesis of the universal-trait and situation-contingent-behavior approaches for predicting leadership effectiveness, (b) cross-situational and cross-cultural comparisons of leader categorizations, (c) expectations for established leaders, and (d) leader selection and training.     

Implicit energy loss: Embodied dryness cues influence vitality and depletion

Consumers have long recognized that thirst motivates beverage consumption, however little is known of the consequences of dryness-related cues and experienced energy. Based on the embodied cognition view (Landau et al., 2010; Meier et al., 2012) and motivational perspective for energy (Clarkson, 2010; Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012), four studies examined the idea that activation of different levels of the dryness–thirst metaphor (e.g., semantic primes, visual images, or physical thirst) will influence perceived energy. In Study 1, participants primed with dryness-related concepts reported greater physical thirst and tiredness and lower subjective vitality. In Study 2, participants who were physically thirsty were less persistent in investing effort in an unsolvable anagram task. In Study 3, images of arid land influenced time preference regarding when to begin preparation to make a monetary investment. Finally, in Studies 4a and 4b, exposure to the names of dryness-related products influenced impressions of the vitality of a target person. Overall, the findings suggest that physical or conceptual dryness-related cues influence perceived energy and may have consequences on consumer behavior.     

The Language of Thought and The Embodied Nature of Language Use

Philosophical Studies -     

Embodied numerosity: Implicit hand-based representations influence symbolic number processing across cultures

In recent years, a strong functional relationship between finger counting and number processing has been suggested. Developmental studies have shown specific effects of the structure of the individual finger counting system on arithmetic abilities. Moreover, the orientation of the mental quantity representation (“number line”) seems to be influenced by finger counting habits. However, it is unclear whether the structure of finger counting systems still influences symbolic number processing in educated adults.In the present transcultural study, we pursued this question by examining finger-based sub-base-five effects in an Arabic number comparison task with three different groups of participants (German deaf signers, German and Chinese hearing adults). We observed sub-base-five effects in all groups, but particularly so for both German groups who use an explicit sub-base-five system in their finger counting habits. It is concluded that bodily experiences – namely finger counting – influence the structure of the abstract mental number representations even in adults. Thus, the present findings support the general idea that even seemingly abstract cognition may at least partially be rooted in our bodily experiences.     

学科能力内隐观的普遍性及其年龄差异

数学、中文等学科能力,是先天固有不可改变的？,还是后天环境培养塑造,可以改变的？学生心目中对这类问题的主观想法,会直接影响学生的学习行为。其影响的范围,将取决于这类主观想法是否具有普遍性。比如,有些学生认为数学得父母遗传的,很难改变这些学生会不同同样认为中文、外语能力等,也是父母遗传的,变难改变？本研究了解是否有一主导思想,影响学生对不同学科能力的整体看法,同时也分析学生这类主观想法的年龄差异,。     

Implicit Theories of Personality: Further Evidence of Extreme Response Style

Five groups of 19 subjects made ratings on 11 personality trait scales of overlapping subsets of 59 artificial stimulus persons who were described by one to five personality trait adjectives. The data were analyzed per group of subjects (blockwise) and per type of stimulus person (questionnaire-wise) by means of three-mode principal component analyses. This yielded highly similar structures for the scales, and in the blockwise analyses, for the stimulus persons. This similarity was substantiated by external three-mode analyses, which showed that all stimulus persons can be mapped into one overall configuration. In all analyses it was found that differences between subjects consisted of differences in extremity of judgment, which suggests the operation of response style.     

教师的创造力内隐理论

创造力内隐理论是指一般公众（专家和外行人）在日常生活和工作背景下所形成的,且以某种形式存在于个体头脑中的关于创造力概念、结构及其发展的看法。教师的创造力内隐理论对学生创造力的培养和发展起着至关重要的作用。本文从教师对创造力的理解、创造性学生的态度和创造力培养观三个方面对该领域的研究进行综述,以期为我国开展此领域的研究提供一些借鉴。     

“家”的结构分析：当代青年人“家”的内隐观研究

本文对当代青年人心目中家的概念表征进行了研究.依据激活扩散模型,采用字词联想法来收集数据.以家一词为刺激,让317名被试进行自由联想,选出前80个联想频率在4.3%以上的高频概念词语作为分析单位,做成卡片另请80名被试进行分类,然后根据它们之同的关系亲疏程度实施系统聚类分析,结果发现,家概念在青年人的心目中是从以下5个方面来表征的:(1)家的情感意义;(2)家人与安全感;(3)家的物质基础;(4)责任与义务;(5)琐碎与冲突.     

内隐领导理论启动效应的实验研究

该研究通过实验检测了内隐领导理论与几种领导类型之间的启动效应。结果显示,绩效线索影响优秀领导者与一般领导者和较差领导者之间的特质评价,并且主要表现在对正性特质的评价方面,在一般领导者和较差领导者之间启动效应不显著。"潜伏期"测量显示了对理想领导者正性原型特质比负性原型特质启动效应更加显著。     

Walking the Walk While Thinking About the Talk: Embodied Interpretation of Metaphorical Narratives

Two sets of experiments examined people’s embodied understanding of metaphorical narratives. Participants heard one of two stories about a romantic relationship; either one that was successful or one that was not, that initially described it in metaphorical terms as “Your relationship was moving along in a good direction” or nonmetaphorical terms as “Your relationship was very important to you.” Participants were then blindfolded and attempted to accurately walk, or imagine walking, to a marker 40 feet away while they thought about the story they just heard. People who heard about the successful metaphorical story walked longer and further than those presented with the unsuccessful relationship story. But these walking and imagining differences disappeared when the critical metaphorical statement “moving along in a good direction” was replaced by a nonmetaphorical expression. These findings, and those from another set of experiments, suggest that people’s understanding of metaphorical narratives is partly based on their embodied simulations of the metaphorical actions referred to in these stories.     

The Historical Character of Human Nature in Freud's Theories

In Freud’ theories of human development, human nature is described and analyzed as essentially historical. At the core of human history is the restructuring of the sexual instinct and the death instinct (or its unique form as destructive impulses). The conscious, asked-for shaping of these two instincts, under the rule of the “reality principle”, forms the basis of human society at all stages. This conscious restructuring has also unintended, unasked-for results, which are part of the historically developing human nature. The historical choice has been the building of human society as a social complex based on the de-eroticization of both the individual and society. Freud suggested that the historical process of changing human nature and maintaining the achieved new structure has mainly been an enterprise of enlightened political elite, which has imposed (in all societies) the various elements of the new nature upon the ordinary people. Human history is essentially a deed of the political sphere. In viewing human nature as consisting of both asked-for and unasked-for results of human conscious purposeful activity Freud belongs to the same historical school as Marx.     

Construing the Meaning of Authenticity in University Teaching: Comparing Explicit to Implicit Theories

Although recent literature on university teaching highlights “authenticity” as an important concept, the meaning of this complex notion remains elusive. Sternberg (1990 Sternberg, R. 1990. “Wisdom and its relations to intelligence and creativity”. In Wisdom, its nature, origins, and development, Edited by: Sternberg, R. J. 142–159. Cambridge, , UK: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar]) proposed that we gain deeper insight into phenomena that are assumed to be of profound meaning but remain insufficiently understood if, alongside explicit theories of experts, we also consider the implicit theories of nonspecialists. This repertory grid study explored with a sample of lecturers their personal conceptions of authenticity in teaching and how these compare to explicit theories developed by educationalists and philosophers. Implications for theory and professional development, as well as future directions for research, are offered.     

Parents' and Teachers' Implicit Theories of Children's Creativity: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

ABSTRACT: A social validation methodology was applied across two cultures to examine the implicit theories of parents and teachers. Adults (N = 150) from the United States and India were rated on 68 adjectives for creativity and desirability. The results indicated that all groups distinguished between indicative and contraindicative aspects of creativity and, for the most part, viewed creative traits desirably. These results were qualified by the adjectives that received high ratings for creativity but significantly lower ratings for desirability. These provided evidence that creativity and desirability are related yet separate constructs and that parents and teachers recognize that some traits associated with creativity may be undesirable. Multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed significant differences between the United States and India for intellectual and attitudinal clusters of adjectives, p < .001; however, parent and teacher differences were not found, p > .05. These findings support the notion that implicit theories are influenced by cultural traditions and expectations.     

Leadership and Perceiver Cognition: Examining the Role of Self-Identity in Implicit Leadership Theories

We investigated whether priming individuals' self-identities to be interdependent or independent influences their ratings of leadership prototypicality. Specifically, we predicted that participants receiving an interdependent prime would rate items associated with transformational leadership as being more prototypical of effective leadership than would participants receiving no prime. We also predicted that participants receiving an independent prime would rate transactional leadership items as being more prototypical of effective leadership. Undergraduate psychology students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (interdependent prime, independent prime, and control). Results support the idea that self-identity can be primed to influence ratings of leadership prototypicality. We discuss implications and suggest directions for future research.