Openness to experience, plasticity, and creativity: Exploring lower-order, high-order, and interactive effects

What are creative people like? Openness to experience is important to creativity, but little is known about plasticity, the higher-order factor that subsumes openness. College students (n = 189) completed measures of the Big Five and measures of creative cognition (fluency and quality of divergent thinking), everyday creative behaviors, creative achievement, and self-rated creativity. Latent variable models found broad effects of openness to experience and few effects of the other four domains. At the higher-order level, plasticity predicted higher scores on nearly all of the facets of creativity, and stability had several significant effects. For some creativity measures, plasticity and stability had opposing effects. Tests of latent interactions found no significant effects: plasticity and stability predict creatively independently, not jointly.     

Psychological career resources identity and life orientation among young emerging adults in a Nigerian setting

This study explored whether young emerging adults’ psychological career resources identity predicted their orientation to life. The participants were a random sample of 400 predominantly full-time undergraduate students from four tertiary institutions in Nigeria (47% = female; age range 18 to 30 years). They completed psychological career resources and life orientation measures. The data were analysed by performing multiple regression analysis to explore whether psychological career resources accounted for the variance in life orientation. Overall, the results showed that those participants with well-differentiated career preferences and strong career drivers (sense of career calling, career goals and career intentionality) were likely to have a stronger sense of coherence. Developing a strong psychological career resources identity may potentially assist the young adult in developing a positive orientation to their life-career in developing country employment settings.     

Differential social support and life change as contributors to the social class-distress relationship in older adults

Four hypotheses previously put forth to explain the strong association between social class and mental health in the general population were examined in 1,326 older adults (55 years and older). Respondents were interviewed 3 times at 6-month intervals. Lower class was associated with more past life changes (occurring before Wave 1) and more subsequent life events (occurring between Waves 1 and 3); these changes were predictive of distress, supporting the differential exposure hypothesis. Lower class was associated with weaker social support (embeddedness), which was related to distress, supporting the resource deterrent hypothesis. There was little evidence that people of the lower classes were more vulnerable to stress or that their status was due to their weaker social support; thus, the differential vulnerability and applied buffering hypotheses were not consistently supported. Social support does appear to be a versatile resource for older adults. A significant portion of the class-distress relationship was not accounted for by life change, social support, or the interaction between these factors.     

Openness to attitude change as a function of temporal perspective

Three studies investigated the impact of temporal perspective on people's dominant social goals and explored the implications of these goals for openness to attitude change. Participants who perceived time as limited expressed social preferences in accordance with emotion-regulation goals (Study 1), were more prone to modify their attitude to bring it into line with the attitude of an anticipated social partner (Study 2), and were more likely to go along with peer consensus opinion on a campus issue (Study 3) than were participants who perceived time as expansive. These studies demonstrate that perception of time plays a vital role in motivating social goals within the persuasion context.     

Seeing it both ways: Openness to experience and binocular rivalry suppression

Openness to experience is characterised by flexible and inclusive cognition. Here we investigated whether this extends to basic visual perception, such that open people combine information more flexibly, even at low-levels of perceptual processing. We used binocular rivalry, where the brain alternates between perceptual solutions and times where neither solution is fully suppressed, mixed percept. Study 1 showed that openness is positively associated with duration of mixed percept and ruled out the possibility of response bias. Study 2 showed that mixed percept increased following a positive mood induction particularly for open people. Overall, the results showed that openness is linked to differences in low-level visual perceptual experience. Further studies should investigate whether this may be driven by common neural processes.     

A narrative approach to ethnic identity in emerging adulthood: bringing life to the identity status model

This study used a narrative approach to understand how emerging adults experience ethnicity in their everyday lives and to link ethnic identity processes with the content of how ethnic identity is experienced. Participants were 191 ethnically diverse emerging adults who completed the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) and provided a written narrative about a time at which they became aware of their ethnicity. Participants' narratives differed significantly by ethnic group and by ethnic identity status membership, as indexed by the MEIM. The results underscore the value of adopting a narrative approach to understanding the content of ethnic identity and the links between content and ethnic identity development processes.     

Openness to Experience,Intellect, and Cognitive Ability

An instrument designed to separate 2 midlevel traits within each of the Big Five (the Big Five Aspect Scales [BFAS]) was used to clarify the relation of personality to cognitive ability. The BFAS measures Openness to Experience and Intellect as separate (although related) traits, and refers to the broader Big Five trait as Openness/Intellect. In 2 samples (N = 125 and 189), Intellect was independently associated with general intelligence (g) and with verbal and nonverbal intelligence about equally. Openness was independently associated only with verbal intelligence. Implications of these findings are discussed for the empirical and conceptual relations of intelligence to personality and for the mechanisms potentially underlying both Openness/Intellect and cognitive ability.     

Openness to experience and boundaries in the mind: relationships with cultural and economic conservative beliefs

The present research investigates whether Openness to Experience and Boundaries in the mind are related to conservatism. In the first study, significant relationships between several scales of the Boundaries in the mind questionnaire and indicators of conservative beliefs were obtained in an adult sample (N=78) as well as in a sample of political party activists (N=44). In the second study, these negative relationships between conservatism and thin boundaries were replicated in an adult sample (N=225). Moreover, two dimensions representing Boundaries in the mind were identified, one positively related to Openness to Experience and negatively to conservatism and the second showing high positive correlations with Neuroticism. The exceptionally strong correlations between conservatism and the Boundaries in the mind facet scales Opinions about organizations, Opinions about beauty, truth, Edges, lines, clothing and Opinions about peoples, nations, groups are discussed, as well as the weak relationships between economic conservatism and Openness to Experience.     

Predictors of semantic categorical flexibility in older adults

This study investigated the processes involved in the aging of semantic categorical flexibility. A previous study revealed the effects of aging on the flexible use of taxonomic relations. We aimed to explain our previous results regarding the performance of older adults; we carried out investigations into the respective roles of executive and conceptual factors in semantic categorical flexibility. Fifty older adults carried out a semantic categorical flexibility task alongside conceptual and executive measures. The results replicate our previous findings and indicate that the predictors of the maintenance of the use of taxonomic relations are conceptual and the predictors of the switching from thematic to taxonomic relations are executive.     

Interculturalism: A new diversity ideology with interrelated components of dialogue,unity, and identity flexibility

Increased cultural diversity has led to considerable debate on how to best promote intergroup harmony within pluralistic nations. In the current research, we consider the nature of interculturalism, a new diversity ideology extensively discussed by political philosophers and policy-makers in Europe and beyond. Interculturalism consists of three interrelated components of dialogue, unity, and identity flexibility. Using data (N = 2,364) from three national surveys in two ethnically diverse nations (Netherlands and USA), we test a new measure of interculturalism and establish its independence from multiculturalism and assimilation. We then demonstrate that interculturalism predicts positive intergroup outcomes, over and above multiculturalism, and is in a theoretically meaningful way related to various criterion measures. Collectively, these studies establish the uniqueness of interculturalism from multiculturalism and demonstrate its promise for improving intergroup relations in culturally diverse nations.     

Personality trait change and life satisfaction in adults: The roles of age and hedonic balance

This paper examines whether changes in personality traits influenced life satisfaction (LS). This involved investigating whether these associations were moderated by age and mediated by hedonic balance (i.e., positive and negative affect). Participants included 11,104 Australian adults aged 18–79 years, with data available from two time points (baseline and 4-year follow up). Latent difference score modeling indicated that increased neuroticism was associated with lower LS, whereas increased extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness were associated with higher LS. These relationships were moderated by age, and were less evident in older adults. Hedonic balance partially mediated the relationships between change in neuroticism and extraversion with LS. These findings provide important insights into longitudinal associations between personality change and LS.     

Chance and choice, change and continuity--that's life

Responding to this invitation to write an autobiography, I have tried to put in some order, the jumble of memories that come to mind. There are markers of the journey--the major decisions and changes in direction, many influenced by external events. Despite turns and detours, there is also continuity of interests and behavioral style. My beginnings on a Nebraska farm were a considerable distance in place and character from my current retirement in Oregon. The trail of events was especially marked by the death of my father, early choice of psychology, military service in Germany, marriage in Paris, establishing the university clinic and clinical program at the University of Oregon, starting a school of Community Service and Public Affairs, working with Leona Tyler on books and an extensive research project, and a year going around the world with my family including a long period in India. My principal contributions to personality assessment include cross-cultural studies, development of a boredom scale, community psychology connections, many reviews, books in clinical psychology and assessment, and work with students and others who continue this important branch of psychology.