Patterns of Change in Fairness Perceptions During the Hiring Process

The justice literature, to date, shows that changes in fairness perceptions over time are consequential for job attitudes. However, few studies have been directed at explicating how fairness perceptions change over time or individual differences in patterns of change. The present research attempts to fill this gap by exploring patterns of temporal changes in fairness perceptions toward the selection process during a hiring process and potential determinants for such change. In a 3‐wave longitudinal study of the entire hiring process (pre‐, in‐, and post‐process) using a latent growth mixture modeling approach, different patterns of change in perceived fairness were modeled. In addition, the role of Big Five personality factors to predict classes of temporal patterns was examined. Results suggest that, on average, fairness perceptions declined in a non‐linear way over time, with high initial levels of fairness perception corresponding to a lower rate of decline, and vice versa. Four unique classes of applicants exhibiting different initial scores and growth of fairness perceptions were identified, which were predicted by the personality factors of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for fairness theory and future research.     

Personality or Role? Comparisons of Turkish Leaders Across Different Institutional Positions

Personality approaches to politics are often criticized for not examining the effect that institutional role constraints have on individual beliefs and preferences. When leaders appear to change their stance when they change roles, it is assumed that roles have a determining influence. Modern personality theory and contemporary sociological role theory, however, view the effects of roles as interacting with agents’ personalities. In this article, we investigate this question by comparing personality profiles of three Turkish leaders (Özal, Demirel, and Gül) during their tenure as prime minister and during their subsequent time as president. For Gül, we perform an additional comparison during his time as foreign minister. The personality profiles are in the form of quantitative scores generated from machine‐coded content analysis of leaders’ words using the Leadership Trait Analysis method. We hypothesize that different leaders will be more susceptible to changing role contexts, depending on core personality traits, and that different traits are more likely to change with new roles. Overall, our results suggest that leaders’ traits are fairly resistant to changes across roles and that task orientation is the most likely trait to change as leaders adapt to different role demands and expectations. This study makes a contribution to our understanding of the interaction between personality and political contexts by offering specific theoretically derived hypotheses and by empirically and statistically examining a preliminary set of expectations that could be applied more broadly to other leaders.     

Relationships matter in personality development: evidence from an 8-year longitudinal study across young adulthood

Personality-relationship transactions were investigated in a general population sample of young German adults with three assessments over 8 years. Four general findings were obtained. First, personality development was characterized by substantive individual differences in change. Second, bivariate latent growth models indicated that individual differences in personality change were substantially associated with change in peer and family relationships. Third, forming a partner relationship for the first time moderated the maturation of personality. This finding was replicated over two subsequent time intervals with independent subgroups. Fourth, higher neuroticism and higher sociability predicted which of the singles began a partner relationship during the next 8 years. The results confirm that individual differences in personality development predict and result from life transitions and relationship experiences.     

Experience Sampling Methods: A Modern Idiographic Approach to Personality Research

Experience sampling methods are essential tools for building a modern idiographic approach to understanding personality. These methods yield multiple snapshots of people's experiences over time in daily life and allow researchers to identify patterns of behavior within a given individual, rather than strictly identify patterns of behavior across individuals, as with standard nomothetic approaches. In this article, we discuss the origin and evolution of idiographic methods in the field of personality and explain how experience sampling methods function as modern day idiographic methods in this field. We then review four primary ways in which experience sampling methods have been used to foster idiographic approaches in personality research. Specifically, we highlight approaches that examine individual differences in temporal and behavioral distributions, situation–behavior contingencies, daily processes, and the structure of daily experience. Following a brief methodology primer, we end by discussing future directions for idiographic experience sampling approaches in personality psychology and beyond.     

A dual-process approach to health risk decision making: The prototype willingness model

Although dual-process models in cognitive, personality, and social psychology have stimulated a large body of research about analytic and heuristic modes of decision making, these models have seldom been applied to the study of adolescent risk behaviors. In addition, the developmental course of these two kinds of information processing, and their relation to the development of self-regulation are not well understood at this time. The current paper reviews what leading dual-process models have to say about the development of analytic and heuristic decision making, and their implications for adolescent risk behavior. In addition, it reviews research on the prototype willingness model of adolescent decision making—a dual-process model designed specifically to address non-intentional, but volitional adolescent risk behavior. It also discusses the implications of dual-process models for intervention research.     

Goal and personality trait development in emerging adulthood

The present research examined continuity and change in the importance of major life goals and the relation between change in goals and change in personality traits over the course of college (N = 298). Participants rated the importance of their life goals 6 times over a 4-year period and completed a measure of the Big Five personality traits at the beginning and end of college. Like personality traits, life goals demonstrated high levels of rank-order stability. Unlike personality traits assessed during the same period and in the same sample, the mean importance of most life goals decreased over time. Moreover, each goal domain was marked by significant individual differences in change, and these individual differences were related to changes in personality traits. These findings provide insights into the relatively unstudied question of how life goals change during emerging adulthood.     

Introduction to the Special Section on Mixture Modeling in Personality Assessment

Latent variable models offer a conceptual and statistical framework for evaluating the underlying structure of psychological constructs, including personality and psychopathology. Complex structures that combine or compare categorical and dimensional latent variables can be accommodated using mixture modeling approaches, which provide a powerful framework for testing nuanced theories about psychological structure. This special series includes introductory primers on cross-sectional and longitudinal mixture modeling, in addition to empirical examples applying these techniques to real-world data collected in clinical settings. This group of articles is designed to introduce personality assessment scientists and practitioners to a general latent variable framework that we hope will stimulate new research and application of mixture models to the assessment of personality and its pathology.     

Examining Spirituality Over Time: Latent Growth Curve and Individual Growth Curve Analyses

SUMMARY

Research on spirituality and religiousness has gained growing attention in recent years; however, most studies have used cross-sectional designs. As research on this topic evolves, there has been increasing recognition of the need to examine these constructs and their effects through the use of longitudinal designs. Beyond repeated-measures ANOVA and OLS regression models, what tools are available to examine these constructs over time? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of two cutting-edge statistical techniques that will facilitate longitudinal investigations of spirituality and religiousness: latent growth curve analysis using structural equation modeling (SEM) and individual growth curve models. The SEM growth curve approach examines change at the group level, with change over time expressed as a single latent growth factor. In contrast, individual growth curve models consider longitudinal change at the level of the person. While similar results may be obtained using either method, researchers may opt for one over the other due to the strengths and weaknesses associated with these methods. Examples of applications of both approaches to longitudinal studies of spirituality and religiousness are presented and discussed, along with design and data considerations when employing these modeling techniques.     

Factor analytic approaches to personality item-level data

Factor analysis models have played a central role in formulating conceptual models in personality and personality assessment, as well as in empirical examinations of personality measurement instruments. Yet, the use of item-level data presents special problems for factor analysis, applications. In this article, we review recent developments in factor analysis that are appropriate for the type of item-level data often collected in personality. Included in this review are discussions of how these developments have been addressed in the context of two different (but formally related) statistical models item response theory (IRT: Hambleton, Swaminathan, & Rogers, 1991) and structural, equation modeling (Bollen 1989) for item-level data. We also discuss the relevance of item scaling in the context of these models. Using the restandardization data for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Scale (cf. Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989), we show brief examples of the utility of these approaches to address basic questions about responses to personality scale items regarding: (a) scale, dimensionality and general item properties, (b) the "appropriateness" of the observed responses, and (c) differential item functioning across subsamples. implications for analyses of personality item-level data in the IRT and factor analytic traditions are discussed.     

Reminiscence functions over time: consistency of self functions and variation of prosocial functions

The current study examines the temporal stability of the tripartite model of reminiscence functions in which eight separate reminiscence functions map onto three second-order factors which contribute significantly to measurement of an overarching reminiscence latent construct. We collected online responses from 411 adults 50+ years of age. Confirmatory factor analytic models were computed at three points of data collection over 16 months. Invariance analyses were next undertaken to simultaneously compare the measurement properties to assess within-person stability of reminiscence functions over time. The tripartite structure of reminiscence functions was replicated at each point of data collection. As hypothesised, self-positive and self-negative functions are consistent across points of data collection, whereas prosocial functions vary over time. The temporal stability of the self functions may be attributed to enduring characteristics of the individual such as personality traits and life attitudes, as well as their solitary nature. Previous research indicates that consistency of self-positive reminiscence functions has ensuing benefits for physical health and psychological well-being; the opposite is true for self-negative functions. The temporal variation of prosocial functions may be due to the varying availability of others to share memories and their responsiveness to the emotional context.     

Self creation and the limitless void of dissociation: the 'as if' personality

The concept of the 'as if' personality has been used variously in analytic literature without having formed part of a clinically based theoretical development over time. The author discusses the bases of her notion of the 'as if' personality, as observed across a number of patients and supervised patients in intensive, long term analytic treatment. In this composite clinical picture, a grouping of elements that form a particular kind of defence of the self is identified in certain patients with an exceptional capacity for creative engagement in the world, surpassing expectations given their background. The picture includes the presence of physical breakdown and illness, as psychic suffering arising from early narcissistic wounding and from a physical, emotional and/or sexual abusive familial environment, was held for too long in bodily memory but not in mind. A distinction is made between the 'as if' personality, the persona and the false self. The 'as if' personality concerns the action of defensive dissociation deriving from very early experiences of internalizing the presence of an absent object, creating the sense of an internal void at the core of the self. At the same time, the self is capable of acts of self creation through a succession of identifications and internalizations with other sources of environmental nourishment, which substitute for, and are constructed around, the original sense of internal emptiness. Thus are restored, but only up to a point, the resources of the originally diminished self. Until these resources have been used up, the self is often able to excel in activities to an exceptional degree. The countertransference is shown to be the means of both useful but often perilously obtained clinical experience and information, supporting the work along the hazardous analytic journey.     

Individual difference predictors of change in career adaptability over time

Career adaptability is a psychosocial construct that reflects individuals' resources for managing career tasks and challenges. This study investigated the effects of demographic characteristics and three sets of individual difference variables (Big Five personality traits, core self-evaluations, and temporal focus) on changes over time in career adaptability and its dimensions (concern, control, curiosity, and confidence). Data came from 659 full-time employees in Australia who participated in two measurement waves six months apart. Results showed that age and future temporal focus predicted change in overall career adaptability. In addition, age, education, extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, core self-evaluations, and future temporal focus differentially predicted change over time in one or more of the four career adaptability dimensions. While the lagged effects found in this study were generally small, the findings suggest that certain individual difference characteristics predispose employees to experience change in career adaptability over time.     

Self-report methodology is insufficient for improving the assessment and classification of Axis II personality disorders

Current approaches to the assessment and classification of personality disorders (PDs) rely almost exclusively on self-report methodology. In this paper, we document the many difficulties with self-reports, including limitations in their accuracy, the confounding effect of mood state, and problems with the selection and retention of factors in factor analytic approaches to self-report questionnaires. We also discuss the role of implicit processes in self-reports, with special attention directed to the phenomenon of priming and its effect on outcome. To rectify these issues, we suggest a transtheoretical, multimethod, multimodal approach to personality pathology assessment and diagnosis, which utilizes the richness of prototypes and empirical findings on PD categories and pathologies.     

Reassessing the Assessment of Change in At-Risk Youth: Conflict and Coherence in Overall Versus Contextual Assessments of Behavior

This research examined how a contextual approach to personality assessment can reveal change processes that are obscured by measures of overall behavior frequencies. Using field observations of 336 children from three summers at a program for at-risk youth, we illustrate how children’s social experiences change over time, how their reactions to these experiences change, and how both processes contribute to changes in the overall frequencies of their prosocial, aggressive, and withdrawn behavior. Children showing opposite patterns of change in their environments and their reactions to them were nevertheless similar in their overall amount of change. The results clarify how changes in reactions and social experiences can be disentangled and reintegrated in order to deepen our understanding of personality change processes. Implications for change assessments that rely on overall behavior summaries are highlighted for program, individual, and intra-individual levels of analysis.     

Collegiate heavy drinking prospectively predicts change in sensation seeking and impulsivity

Recent models of alcohol use in youth and young adulthood have incorporated personality change and maturation as causal factors underlying variability in developmental changes in heavy drinking. Whereas these models assume that personality affects alcohol use, the current prospective study tested the converse relation. That is, we tested whether, after accounting for the effect of traits on drinking, collegiate heavy drinking in turn predicted individual differences in change in alcohol-related aspects of personality. We also examined whether affiliation with heavy-drinking peers better accounted for this relation. Following a cohort of recent high school graduates (N=1,434) through the college years, we found evidence for transactional relations between heavy drinking and changes in impulsivity and sensation seeking. Both traits predicted increases in heavy drinking, but more important, heavy drinking predicted increases in sensation seeking and impulsivity. In final models, social influences did not underlie the effect of heavy drinking on increases in sensation seeking and impulsivity. The results of this investigation suggest that collegiate heavy drinking may negatively and pervasively impact a wide range of behaviors because of its effect on personality change.     

Personality Development in Emerging and Young Adulthood: A Study of Age Differences

Early adulthood is a time of substantial personality change characterized by large inter‐individual diversity. To investigate the role of age in this diversity, the present study examined whether emerging adults differ from an older group of young adults in their Big Five personality development. By means of multi‐group latent change modelling, two groups of 16‐ to 19‐year‐olds (n = 3555) and 26‐ to 29‐year‐olds (n = 2621) were tracked over the course of four years and compared regarding four aspects of personality change: mean‐level change, rank‐order change, inter‐individual differences in change, and profile change. In addition, age‐differential socialization effects associated with six first‐time life events were investigated. Analyses revealed substantial age differences in all four aspects of change. As expected, emerging adults showed greater change and diversity in change than young adults. However, the six life events had no age‐differential impact on change in single traits and Big Five profiles. Overall, the results indicate that age differences should be considered even in specific life stages to advance the understanding of personality development. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Situation-Behavior Profiles as a Locus of Consistency in Personality

Traditional approaches have long considered situations as "noise" or "error" that obscures the consistency of personality and its invariance. Therefore, it has been customary to average the individual's behavior on any given dimension (e.g., conscientiousness) across different situations. Contradicting this assumption and practice, recent studies have demonstrated that by incorporating the situation into the search for consistency, a new locus of stability is found. Namely, people are characterized not only by stable individual differences in their overall levels of behavior, but also by distinctive and stable patterns of situation-behavior relations (e.g., she does X when A but Y when B ). These if . . . then . . . profiles constitute behavioral "signatures" that provide potential windows into the individual's underlying dynamics. Processing models that can account for such signatures provide a new route for studying personality types in terms of their shared dynamics and characteristic defining profiles.     

内隐人格理论对他人印象加工策略的影响

从表征状态与他人知觉信息加工方式两个角度探讨了内隐人格理论对他人印象加工策略的影响。首先采用自编的童话情境测验对120名被试的内隐人格理论进行维度分析, 甄选出持不同内隐人格理论的被试(实体论42人、渐变论48人)。随后使用错觉关联效应的实验范式, 要求两类被试(持不同内隐人格理论及其指向性情境)对他人行为信息进行判断, 记录自由回忆和频率估计的差异值。结果发现：持不同内隐人格理论的个体在知觉他人时采用不同的信息加工方式。实体论者通常采用启发式加工, 渐变论者通常采用分析式加工。实体论者在进行启发式加工时, 通过对他人行为信息的即时性判断形成他人印象; 渐变论者在进行分析式加工时, 对他人行为信息进行记忆性判断, 最终依赖情境信息形成他人印象。