Personality Pathways to Unsafe Sex: Personality,Condom Use,and HIV Risk Behaviors

Few studies have considered the importance of enduring personality characteristics in influencing health and HIV/AIDS risk behaviors. The current study examined relations between a comprehensive measure of personality, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, and condom use and other HIV risk behaviors. The study sample consisted of 201 disadvantaged, primarily African American participants of an HIV risk reduction program in the Arkansas delta region. The sample was stratified into three risk groups. The low-risk group (n = 43) had 0% engaging in various risky sexual and substance use practices. Between 3% and 52% of the high-risk group (n = 62) engaged in these practices (e.g., shared needles, sex with partner who shoots drugs, received anal sex). The medium-risk group (n = 96) was intermediate. Results indicated that high Neuroticism, low Conscientiousness, and low Agreeableness are associated with HIV risk behaviors. Thus, high-risk behavior is associated with emotional distress, poor self-control, and hostile and antagonistic attitudes and behaviors. The high-risk group differed from the medium- and low-risk groups on the Neuroticism facet of Impulsiveness, indicating an inability to resist cravings and urges. The high-risk group also scored lower in Competence (i.e., feelings of self-efficacy), Self-Discipline (i.e., motivation to carry tasks through to completion), and Achievement Striving (i.e., aspiration levels). The current study, by identifying several personality traits that contribute to sexual risk behavior, raises important public health implications. Successful intervention in these AIDS-related behaviors may require interventions tailored to these basic tendencies. Such an approach may be a crucial element in attempts to lower HIV risk behavior.     

Type A Personality,Self-Control,and Vulnerability to Stress

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A; Butcher et al., 1992) was released in 1992 and has rapidly become the most widely used objective personality assessment instrument with adolescents. Although the MMPI-A reduced or eliminated several problems associated with the use of the original MMPI (Hathaway &; McKinley, 1943) with adolescents, the MMPI-A does produce a high frequency of within normal limits basic scale profiles for individuals with substantial psychopathology including adolescents in inpatient psychiatric settings. To better understand the reasons for this phenomenon, we compared the item endorsement frequencies for the MMPI-A normative sample with results from two adolescent clinical samples, and these results were contrasted to the item endorsement frequencies for the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, &; Kaemmer, 1989) normative sample and a clinical sample of adult psychiatric inpatients. Results showed that the MMPI-A contains a substantial number of items that do not show a significant difference in item endorsement frequency between normative and clinical samples. Furthermore, MMPI-A basic and content scales generally show a much lower percentage of effective items than do the corresponding scales for the MMPI-2. We discuss the findings in relation to the frequent occurrence of low range MMPI-A profiles in clinical samples and the potential usefulness of these results in future efforts to develop viable short forms for the MMPI-A.     

Self-Control,Opportunity, and Substance Use

We examine the effect of self-control and opportunity on adolescent substance use. When theorizing about the role of opportunity, we believe the “sanction potential” of a given situation should be considered. Our results suggest the effect of self-control on substance use does not depend on the availability of substances in the home (high sanction potential), but friends’ substance use (low sanction potential) conditions the effect of self-control on adolescents’ smoking, drinking, and marijuana use. Therefore, adolescents with low self-control are more likely to use substances only when they are presented with attractive opportunities that are unlikely to lead to sanctions.     

Self-Regulation and Personality Science: Reply to the Commentaries

The authors reply to commentaries on their target article "Self-Regulation: Reminders and Suggestions from Personality Science". Substantial consensus is evident across the target article and multiple commentaries. The message conveyed is that personality science and the study of self-regulation are mutually complementary and that applied efforts to enhance people's self-regulatory capacities can be enhanced via study of the intra-individual architecture of social-cognitive and affective personality systems.     

Parental Personality,Relationship Stress,and Child Development: A Stress Generation Perspective

This study aimed to investigate associations among the parental personality dimensions of self‐criticism and dependency, parental relationship stress, and child development from a stress generation perspective. Data from 79 first‐time parents and their children aged 8–13 months, who were followed up in a two‐wave, 1‐year longitudinal study, were analysed within a multilevel structural equation modelling framework in order to account for within‐couple interdependence. Results revealed that, as hypothesised, both parental self‐criticism and dependency were associated with increased levels of relationship stress, which in turn were negatively related to child development. Hence, parental personality features in combination with relationship stress may be an important target in couple and family‐based interventions. Implications for further research on family dynamics and interventions are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personality Science, Self-Regulation, and Health Behavior

In their paper, Cervone, Shadel, Smith, and Fiori (2006 ) present a thorough analysis of self-regulatory behavior, understood as the most genuine expression of the agentic and purposive nature of human beings. Therefore, we can expect that research on personality could shed light on our understanding of self-regulatory processes and behavioral expressions. With this aim, Cervone et al. have carried out an updated analysis of personality psychology theory and research, resuming the debate between variable and person-centered approaches, and commenting on the contributions the Knowledge-and-Appraisal Personality Architecture (KAPA) can make to the design of idiosyncratic tools and strategies for personality assessment and to the understanding of the role of the personality system in different contexts of applied psychology, such as health, clinical and industrial/organisational psychology. Here, I would like to examine two topics, to which Cervone et al. pay substantial attention in their paper: self-regulation and personality dynamics, and the role of personality science in addressing central questions in health psychology.     

Knowledge Justice: An Opportunity for Counter-expertise in Security vs. Science Debates

ABSTRACT

Knowledge justice provides a conceptual framework to apply principles of social justice in environments of competing interests regarding science. Both knowledge and its making can be seen as a good to be distributed, including all voices for whom the science will matter. In this framework, knowledge production is shared among a broader constituency of knowers representing both local and cosmopolitan voices. The problem of knowledge injustice can be seen in the U.S. government’s recent attempt to secure scientific knowledge about H5N1 or avian bird flu virus. The censorship produced a global debate between scientists and policy-makers over how to balance the nation-state’s desire for security with the life science’s tradition of open and shared research. This conundrum, known as the dual-use dilemma, obscures larger questions that lie outside of expert-centered domains—namely the concerns of many communities in the Global South struggling with the impact of the virus in their daily lives. An example of such counter-expertise is that of the backyard poultry farmer whose ways of knowing are foreign to science and policy experts who frame the ways in which knowledge about H5N1 should be developed, controlled, and used. While the H5N1 debate illuminated competing positions regarding knowledge production between powerful elites, it ignored the social justice inequities produced by the dual-use dilemma. The concept of knowledge justice provides a way of thinking about science that can include locally situated counter-expertise, disrupting the dual-use dilemma produced by competing dominant priorities of security and public health.     

D型人格：心血管疾病的重要心理危险因素

D型人格（又称忧伤人格）是指经历消极情感与社会压抑的混合倾向。对于心血管疾病患者来说,这种心理危险因素与其生活质量下降、梗死复发甚至死亡等有着密切联系。作者总结了D型人格与心血管疾病关系的研究现状,阐述了D型人格对于识别早期高危患者的临床价值,探讨了神经内分泌学、免疫学及心理学等方面的机制,并评价了对D型人格进行心理干预的可行性。     

Self-Regulation: Reminders and Suggestions from Personality Science

La littérature sur l’autorégulation est couramment accusée de faiblesse théorique. Il est possible que les avancées dans les recherches sur la personnalité puissent ouvrir des horizons dans ce secteur. Notre objectif est double. Nous rappelons d’abord des distinctions conceptuelles qui, bien que parfois négligées, sont essentielles dans les études contemporaines sur la personnalité et incontournables pour accéder au niveau théorique dans la littérature sur l’autorégulation. Nous disons ensuite que ceux qui font des études fondamentales et appliquées sur l’autorégulation auraient intérêt à assimiler les progrès récents concernant la dynamique et la structure de la personnalité intra‐individuelle. Nous passons en revue la théorie de base et les recherches sur l’architecture des systèmes de la personnalité intra‐individuelle, ainsi que les retombées de ce travail dans trois domaines d’application: la psychologie du travail/industrielle/organisationnelle, la psychologie clinique et la santé. The self‐regulation literature commonly is said to lack theoretical order. This paper explores the possibility that advances in personality science may foster clarity in this literature. Our goals are two‐fold. We remind readers of conceptual distinctions that are central to contemporary personality science, that are necessary to the attainment of theoretical order in the self‐regulation literature, yet that sometimes are overlooked. Secondly, we suggest that basic and applied students of self‐regulation would profit by capitalising on recent advances in personality science that explore intra‐individual personality structure and dynamics. We review theory and research on the architecture of intra‐individual personality systems and applications of this work to three domains: health, clinical, and work/industrial/organisation psychology.     

Personality,Problem Solving,and Adolescent Substance Use

The major aim of this study was to examine the role of social problem solving in the relationship between personality and substance use in adolescents. Although a number of studies have identified a relationship between personality and substance use, the precise mechanism by which this occurs is not clear. We hypothesized that problem-solving skills could be one such mechanism. More specifically, we sought to determine whether problem solving mediates, moderates, or both mediates and moderates the relationship between different personality traits and substance use. Three hundred and seven adolescents were administered the Substance Use Profile Scale, the Social Problem-Solving Inventory–Revised, and the Personality Experiences Inventory to assess personality, social problem-solving ability, and substance use, respectively. Results showed that the dimension of rational problem solving (i.e., effective problem-solving skills) significantly mediated the relationship between hopelessness and lifetime alcohol and marijuana use. The theoretical and clinical implications of these results were discussed.     

Patterns of Natural Language Use: Disclosure, Personality, and Social Integration

When people write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about an emotionally significant event, numerous benefits in many domains (e.g., health, achievement, and well-being) result. As one step in understanding how writing achieves these effects, we have developed a computer program that provides a "fingerprint" of the words people use in writing or in natural settings. Analyses of text samples indicate that particular patterns of word use predict health and also reflect personality styles. We have also discovered that language use in the laboratory writing paradigm is associated with changes in social interactions and language use in the real world. The implications for using computer-based text analysis programs in the development of psychological theory are discussed.