Aging and Family Personality: A Developmental View

The dramatic numerical and proportional increase in the elderly population has important implications for family dynamics and the family life cycle. This paper considers some of the issues of aging, death, loss, and separation, as they relate to individual and family development and to shifting roles and responsibilities of family members.     

创造力与人格关系的研究评述

创造力与人格是心理学领域内的两个重要概念,它们之间的关系也是心理学研究中备受关注的问题。该研究采用文献分析法对加利福尼亚心理量表、人格三因素模型、五因素模型、多种人格测验及其与创造力的关系进行了回顾。已有的研究的确已经取得了很大进展,但研究内容还有待丰富、研究方法还有待完善、研究对象还有待拓展,这也预示着未来研究的发展方向     

Cluster A Personality Disorders: Schizotypal,Schizoid and Paranoid Personality Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence

Cluster A personality disorders (PD), including schizotypal personality disorder (SPD), paranoid personality disorder (PPD), and schizoid PD, are marked by odd and eccentric behaviors, and are grouped together because of common patterns in symptomatology as well as shared genetic and environmental risk factors. The DSM-IV-TR describes personality disorders as representing stable and enduring patterns of maladaptive traits, and much of what is understood about Cluster A personality disorders in particular stems from research with adult populations. Less in known about these disorders in children and adolescents, and controversy remains regarding diagnosis of personality disorders in general in youth. The current paper reviews the available research on Cluster A personality disorders in childhood and adolescence; specifically, we discuss differentiating between the three disorders and distinguishing them from other syndromes, measuring Cluster A disorders in youth, and the nature and course of these disorders throughout childhood and adolescence. We also present recent longitudinal data from a sample of adolescents diagnosed with Cluster A personality disorders from our research laboratory, and suggest directions for future research in this important but understudied area.     

Taking a Systems View of Creativity: On the Right Path Toward Understanding

In our 2010 Annual Review paper, Teresa Amabile and I argued that a virtual explosion of topics, viewpoints, and methodologies had muddied the investigative waters. Few, if any, “big” questions were being pursued by a critical mass of creativity researchers. Instead, investigators in one subfield seemed entirely unaware of advances in another. We saw a crucial need for a systems view of creativity and we encouraged investigators to recognize that creativity arises from a complex web of interrelated forces operating at multiple levels. Seven years have passed since the publication of that paper, and an examination of the most current research suggests that a growing number of publications are now reflecting a systems approach as well as a multidisciplinary perspective.     

人格理论的系统发展观初探

文章以遗传论、精神动力论、学习论、特质论、社会文化及认知一情感系统理论为基础。利用系统科学中的系统论观点,对人格理论进行系统发展观分析。该观点将人格看作一个复杂的“大”系统,它包括外部系统和内部系统两部分。外部系统即外环境系统,内部系统则分为个体心理系统和个体行为系统,其核心是个体心理系统,它由认识系统、情意系统、自我系统及需要系统构成。人格的形成是内外两个系统相互作用、循环运动的结果。     

Toward an Integrative Model of Creativity and Personality: Theoretical Suggestions and Preliminary Empirical Testing

The present work proposes an integrative model of creativity that includes personality traits and cognitive processes. This model hypothesizes that three high‐order personality factors predict two main process factors, which in turn predict intensity and achievement of creative activities. The personality factors are: Plasticity (high openness, extraversion, energy, and inspiration), Divergence (low agreeableness and conscientiousness, high non‐conformity and impulsivity), and Convergence (high ambition, precision, persistence, and critical sense). The process factors are Generation (idea production and originality) and Selection (idea evaluation and formalization). We hypothesized and found that: (a) Plasticity and Divergence predict positively Generation, (b) Convergence predicts positively Selection, (c) Generation, Selection, and their interaction predict positively both intensity and achievement of everyday creative activities.     

Creativity in Perspective: A Sociocultural and Critical Account

This article starts from the premise that creativity is a social construction and focuses on historical and scientific accounts of this phenomenon. Using a perspectival model in a pragmatist key, it outlines three historical perspectives on creativity—the He-, I-, and We-paradigms—differentiated internally by two positions—artist and engineer. It then argues that, instead of dialogues between perspectives, fruitful for creativity research, we are often facing monological relations. In the end, possibilities for “thirdness” are explored, including the position of the craftsman, in developing a sociocultural as well as critical account of what it means to create.     

Personality and Depression: A Validation Study of the Depressive Experience Questionnaire

This study investigated the validity of Blatt's model of depression as indicated by his operational measure of its constructs via the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976). Hypothesized relations between the two relevant scales of the DEQ and Tellegen's (1982) Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, (MPQ) were examined, Participants consisted of 195 women, including 67 hospitalized unipolar depressives, 77 never-hospitalized unipolar depressives, and 51 nonpsychiatric controls. Overall, the results partially supported the validity of the DEQ even though all participants were women and prior studies have indicated the DEQ's greater discriminative validity for men than for women. However, several of the most strongly predicted relations, such as between DEQ Self-Criticism and MPQ Achievement were not confirmed. Coherent, significant relations between scales of the two measures remained after partialling out the effects of severity of depression.     

Personality and depression: a validation study of the Depressive Experience Questionnaire

This study investigated the validity of Blatt's model of depression as indicated by his operational measure of its constructs via the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, D'Afflitti, & Quinlan, 1976). Hypothesized relations between the two relevant scales of the DEQ and Tellegen's (1982) Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire, (MPQ) were examined, Participants consisted of 195 women, including 67 hospitalized unipolar depressives, 77 never-hospitalized unipolar depressives, and 51 nonpsychiatric controls. Overall, the results partially supported the validity of the DEQ even though all participants were women and prior studies have indicated the DEQ's greater discriminative validity for men than for women. However, several of the most strongly predicted relations, such as between DEQ Self-Criticism and MPQ Achievement were not confirmed. Coherent, significant relations between scales of the two measures remained after partialling out the effects of severity of depression.     

In Search of Temperament and Personality Predictors of Creativity: A Test of a Mediation Model

Temperament and personality traits constitute inherent and learned personal characteristics that are crucial for creative behaviors among high ability students. This study investigated the relationships of temperament dimensions and the Big Five personality traits to creativity among 406 honors college students. First, the associations of creativity with temperament and personality were investigated separately. Second, it was sought to document if the selected measures of personality and temperament are distinguishable despite their interdependence. Finally, a mediational role for personality traits in channeling the effect of temperament on creativity was hypothesized. In the mediation model, all four temperament dimensions (orienting sensitivity, effortful control, extraversion/surgency, negative affect) had direct or indirect relationships with creativity. Two personality traits (openness, neuroticism) were found to be significant mediators in these relationships. The findings were discussed in terms of their relevance to the high-ability college students and to the temperament, personality, and creativity literature in general.     

Qualitative Changes in Creativity in the Second Half of life: A Life-Span Developmental Perspective

ABSTRACT Research on the relationship between creativity and age has been based on two seemingly incompatible sets of assumptions. The deficit approach maintains and has demonstrated that creative productivity and age have a linear relationship—that is, creativity declines over the life-span. The alternate approach, upon which the present paper is founded, maintains that creative productivity and creative ability are not identical. Further, this life-span developmental approach posits that supposed declines in creativity actually may reflect qualitative changes in the underlying creative process. Thus, different stages of the life-span are characterized by different kinds of creativity. Empirical and theoretical literature on wisdom and mature forms of thinking will be used to further answer the central questions of this paper: what might creativity in the second half of life look like?     

A Szondi Study of Developmental and Cultural Factors in Personality: The Seven-Year-Old

Children's concepts of various social roles were examined in a task that required the child to indicate the similarity of two occupants of common social roles. Each occupant in the pair was described differently in terms of behaviors appropriate for a particular role. Children in the first, third, and sixth grades were studied. Findings indicated that children in the youngest group held role concepts based primarily on concrete actions, while role concepts of the older two groups were based on more abstract, general role functions. In addition, there is some suggestion that the level of role conceptualization is related to the relevance of the particular role.     

Probing the Big Five in Adolescence: Personality and Adjustment during a Developmental Transition

The present study probed the links among Big Five personality differences, self-reported personality differences, and adjustment to school among young adolescents. We used a multimethod converging analysis, with three sources of data: (a) adolescent self-report on standardized personality inventories; (b) classroom teacher trait ratings and evaluations of adjustment; and (c) school guidance counselor evaluations of adjustment. Evaluations of adolescent adjustment were systematically related to Big Five personality differences, as assessed by both classroom teachers' and school counselors' ratings. For classroom teachers, adjustment was closely related to evaluations on the Big Five dimension of Conscientiousness. Adolescent self-report on several standardized measures was not related to adult evaluation of school adjustment. We suggest that the five-factor model may be a useful tool for probing adjustment during the transition to adolescence.     

Creativity,Society, and the Hidden Subtext of Gender: Toward a New Contextualized Approach

Conventional categories of creativity are being deconstructed after the so-called postmodern debate. This article takes this process deeper, to what we will show is the hidden subtext of gender underlying how creativity has been socially constructed. It also proposes a more contextualized approach to creativity that takes into account both its individual and social dimensions and how this relates to what Eisler (1987) has called a partnership rather than dominator model of society.     

Toward an Anatomy of Mourning: Discipline,Devotion and Liberation in a Freudian-Buddhist Framework

In this essay I first articulate what I take to be an influential and for the most part persuasive model in the western psychoanalytic tradition that is a response to tragic loss, namely, the one that we find in Freud’s little essay entitled ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917). I then use a well-known Buddhist folk tale about the plight of a young woman named Kisagotami to underscore central elements from Buddhist psychology on the subject of suffering that is a consequence of the loss of a young mother’s only child. Fortified by both traditions, I gather together the ingredients for a cross-cultural mental model that serves to explain and to justify as healthy a specific kind of response to a specific form of suffering, namely, the loss of ones’ loved one. I arrive at this model by asking a number of specific questions of both traditions. For instance, what constitutes a non-pathological response to this kind of suffering? What state of mind represents the cessation of such suffering? Is preoccupation with the dead beloved a way of escaping the fact that the person is dead? Is this a form of ignorance that needs to be removed? Is it a form of moral deficiency? Might certain forms and contexts of ignorance, in effect, put one on a path to enlightenment?     

Creativity and Certain Personality Traits: Understanding the Mediating Effect of Intrinsic Motivation

Two brief, 15-minute measures of creative ability have become available quite recently. The Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) objectively measures creative ability in terms of the creativity of answers over 3 tasks. The Abedi Test of Creativity (ATC) subjectively measures creative ability by means of a self-rating questionnaire. Our first study examined the predictive validity of both methods by correlating prospective marketing employees' ATTA and ATC scores with the expert-judged creativity of a marketing campaign that they were asked to design. The objective ATTA test scores correlated substantially with creative performance, unlike the subjective ATC self-rating method that was much less predictively valid. A second study with current employees of a marketing agency demonstrated discriminant validity for the ATTA by revealing that ATTA scores and supervisor ratings of creative ability correlated highly for longer-term employees, but poorly for new recruits. Based on the results of these 2 studies, we propose an even shorter-scored version of the ATTA for use in business settings.     

Toward a Developmental Understanding of the Counseling Specialty: Lessons From our Students

Trends in professional practice and training have led to a debate concerning the need for an increasing remedial emphasis within the counseling field. Proposals for an integration of the counseling and clinical specialties have been opposed by those arguing that a specialty differentiation captures meaningful differences. This article hypothesizes that the counseling specialty is distinguished by its reliance on a developmental metatheory, which makes unique assumptions regarding distress, change, and the helping process. This metatheory is rooted in a rich theoretical and empirical tradition and has generated innovations in practice that transcend usual remedial forms of helping. It is proposed that the value of developmentalism and the counseling specialty are most evident in the developmental interventions of college counseling.