Attachment style and individual differences in leadership perceptions and emergence

The authors examined whether individuals' approaches to relationships, expressed in terms of attachment styles, was related to how they viewed ideal leadership and to their degree of tendency to emerge as team leaders. Specifically, the authors hypothesized that attachment styles, or cognitive representations of orientation to others, would explain individual differences in leadership perceptions and emergence. Participants were 127 American students in college teams. The authors found that securely attached individuals (n = 81) perceived themselves as more effective team members than did insecurely attached individuals (n = 46) and that fellow team members saw securely attached team members as emerging team leaders significantly more often than they did insecurely attached team members.     

Changing emotion dynamics: individual differences in the effect of anticipatory social stress on emotional inertia

Emotional inertia-the degree to which people's feelings carry over from one moment to the next-is an important property of the temporal dynamics of emotions. Thus far, emotional inertia has only been examined as a stable, trait-like characteristic. However, internal or external events (e.g., stress) may trigger changes in people's emotion dynamics, particularly among individuals with heightened sensitivity to such events. The current study investigated how emotional inertia is influenced by the anticipation of social stress, and how this effect is moderated by individual differences in depression, self-esteem, and fear of negative evaluation. We measured participants' (n = 71) emotional inertia in daily life using experience sampling before and after experimentally manipulating anticipatory social stress. Consistent with previous research, psychological maladjustment was associated with higher emotional inertia during "normal" daily life. However, when anticipating a socially stressful event, levels of emotional inertia dropped, particularly among participants scoring high on depression and fear of negative evaluation and low on self-esteem. These results demonstrate that emotion dynamics can vary as a function of contextual factors and identify moderators of such variation.     

Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use

Studies of transmission biases in social learning have greatly informed our understanding of how behaviour patterns may diffuse through animal populations, yet within-species inter-individual variation in social information use has received little attention and remains poorly understood. We have addressed this question by examining individual performances across multiple experiments with the same population of primates. We compiled a dataset spanning 16 social learning studies (26 experimental conditions) carried out at the same study site over a 12-year period, incorporating a total of 167 chimpanzees. We applied a binary scoring system to code each participant’s performance in each study according to whether they demonstrated evidence of using social information from conspecifics to solve the experimental task or not (Social Information Score—‘SIS’). Bayesian binomial mixed effects models were then used to estimate the extent to which individual differences influenced SIS, together with any effects of sex, rearing history, age, prior involvement in research and task type on SIS. An estimate of repeatability found that approximately half of the variance in SIS was accounted for by individual identity, indicating that individual differences play a critical role in the social learning behaviour of chimpanzees. According to the model that best fit the data, females were, depending on their rearing history, 15–24% more likely to use social information to solve experimental tasks than males. However, there was no strong evidence of an effect of age or research experience, and pedigree records indicated that SIS was not a strongly heritable trait. Our study offers a novel, transferable method for the study of individual differences in social learning.     

Mood regulation and emotional intelligence: individual differences

In 3 studies (Ns = 250, 83, 236), an examination of differences in how individuals experience their emotions (meta-emotion traits of clarity, attention, and intensity) led to the identification of 4 distinct types (overwhelmed, hot, cerebral, and cool). When mood was manipulated, the types differed in how they initially reacted to the emotional situation, how they regulated their mood, and how they made judgments. In particular, one type of individual (the hot type) was more reactive to emotional situations than the others. Another type of individual (the overwhelmed type) regulated mood differently than the others, which led these individuals to make judgments that were also different. Overwhelmed individuals appeared unable or unwilling to avail themselves of critical affective information.     

Self-monitoring: individual differences in orientations to the social world

In their articles in this special section of the Journal of Personality, the authors have focused their attention on the role of individual differences in self-monitoring for a variety of interpersonal phenomena. In so doing, the authors have provided an overview of the theoretical and empirical contributions of the psychology of self-monitoring to the domains of interest: close relationships, consumer behavior, behavior in the workplace, and social interaction. As each of the contributing authors to this special section suggests, much more theoretical and empirical work is in order if the impact of individual differences in self-monitoring for the phenomena reviewed here is to be fully appreciated. Moreover, the four domains of interest represented in this special section by no means exhaust the areas to which theorists and researchers have applied or can apply the psychology of individual differences in self-monitoring. Given the large nomological network that currently exists involving the self-monitoring construct, it is anticipated that the breadth and depth of applications of the psychology of self-monitoring will only continue to expand as it has in the last 30 years since the appearance of the construct in the literature.     

The role of individual differences in emotion regulation efficacy

Emotion regulation (ER) helps to maintain mental health and achieve optimal functioning. Whether people benefit from various ER strategies may depend on individual difference variables. A sample of undergraduates (N = 378, M_age = 18.6) underwent a negative emotion induction and then were assigned to learn about and perform an ER strategy (cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, or distraction). We tested whether individual differences (cognitive restructuring skills, need for cognition, mindfulness, and experiential avoidance) moderated the efficacy of ER (i.e., decreased negative emotion from before to after applying the strategy). Experientially avoidant individuals had less efficacy in applying the acceptance strategy, compared to the cognitive reappraisal and distraction strategies. Motivation and perceived ability to use each strategy were examined as mediators.     

Success and failure in social skills training: individual differences

Four psychiatric out-patients with social dificulties were treated by social skills training and related treatments in a series of controlled within-subject designs. In all cases treatment produced predicted changes in social skills but these changes were not always sufficient to produce more general clinical change, which sometimes seemed to be more closely related to extra-therapeutic environmental changes. Several different treatment strategies were necessary in addition to social skills training including relaxation training, videotaped feedback and directive advice, and this emphasized important differences between patients which affected the choice of therapy. Three out of four cases improved; one reacted adversely to treatment and dropped out. Reasons for this failure are discussed. The study as a whole indicates the need to look more closely at individual patients, both in planning individual treatment and carrying out evaluative research.     

A five-dimensional model of individual differences in social exchange styles

An evolutionary psychology framework was used to develop a five-factor model of individual differences in the domain of social exchange that built on a prior two-factor model (Leybman, Zuroff, Fournier, Kelly, & Martin, 2011). Two studies examined the factor structure of the revised Social Exchange Styles Questionnaire (SESQ-II), the reliability and validity of its five scales, and the relationship between social exchange styles (SESs) and social support. Principal components and principal factor analyses of the SESQ-II in 226 undergraduates found five social exchange dimensions: Tracking, Fairness, Individualism, Benefit-Seeking, and Overinvestment. These scales showed good internal consistency and retest reliability. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that SESs, while distinct from other personality variables, had expected relationships with several variables and predicted social support patterns.     

Gender differences in the relationship between young children's peer-related social competence and individual differences in theory of mind

In this study, the author examined the relationship between theory-of-mind understanding and preschool-aged children's peer-related social competence. One hundred eleven 3- to 5-year-old children (48 boys, 63 girls) participated in 2 theory-of-mind tasks designed to assess their understanding of false belief. Teachers rated children's peer-related social behavior in terms of prosocial behavior, aggressive or disruptive behavior, and shy or withdrawn behavior. Results indicated that, after controlling for age, theory-of-mind understanding significantly predicted aggressive or disruptive behavior for boys and prosocial behavior for girls. Theory-of-mind understanding also was related to lower scores of shy or withdrawn behavior for boys. Results are discussed in terms of the gender differences in the factors contributing to early peer competence.     

Social roles and social perception: individual differences in attribution and error

In a replication of the social roles experiment by Ross, Amabile, and Steinmetz (1977), 103 male and female 14-year-olds viewed a brief videotape that showed a randomly assigned "questioner" asking general knowledge questions of a "contestant," who answered most of them incorrectly. Subjects subsequently manifested the role-based attribution error of attributing significantly more knowledge and ability to the arbitrarily designated questioner than to the arbitrarily designated contestant, and this effect was stronger among girls than boys. Personality data were available on the subjects for when they were in nursery school and again at age 14 in the form of independent Q-sort ratings. Personality correlates of the role effect were stronger among boys but manifested a basically similar pattern among girls and suggested that those most prone to make this attribution error, far from being disadvantaged in social judgment, tended to be more socially engaged and competent as well as emotionally well adjusted. The role effect was also positively associated with self-esteem. Personality correlates of attributional generosity and the tendency to attribute high ability to stimulus persons were associated with generally positive interpersonal qualities and attitudes. Results were interpreted in terms of usually appropriate heuristic social competencies that, in special circumstances, may sometimes underlie attribution errors. The general usefulness of examining individual differences in research on social cognition was noted.     

Parsing the relations between SES and stress reactivity: examining individual differences in neonatal stress response

In an effort to further delineate the reported relations between socioeconomic status (SES) and stress reactivity in children, associations between three domains of perinatal risk: socio-demographic, obstetrical complications, and maternal psychological factors during the perinatal period, and cortisol and behavioral reactivity were examined in 100 healthy African American neonates whose families resided in low-income environments. Behavioral and cortisol response to a heel stick and the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) was measured within the first 2 days of life. Significant associations were found between socio-demographic risk, obstetrical complications, and maternal psychological factors and neonatal behavior and cortisol in the context of the NBAS; few significant associations were found in the context of the heel stick. Greater magnitude of perinatal risk was associated with both higher and lower than average neonatal stress reactivity. The results provide preliminary data on the types of perinatal experiences that may have significant effects on stress reactivity in humans, especially in the context of families living in poverty. Application of these data to the hypothesis that prenatal stress results in programming of the fetal/neonatal stress response system is discussed.     

The stress response systems: Universality and adaptive individual differences

Biological reactivity to psychological stressors comprises a complex, integrated system of central neural and peripheral neuroendocrine responses designed to prepare the organism for challenge or threat. Developmental experience plays a role, along with heritable variation, in calibrating the response dynamics of this system. This calibration occurs through setting of response thresholds in the regulatory mechanisms that coordinate the expression and use of trait-specific gene products and environmental elements that build alternative phenotypes. Whereas natural selection tends to favor developmental plasticity when the fitness of alternative phenotypes can be predicted from observable cues, genetic polymorphisms are most likely to be maintained when the advantages of niche specialization are high and organisms can evaluate and select their niches. Well-developed theories of both adaptive phenotypic plasticity and adaptive genetic variation in the stress-response systems have been advanced in the literature. Taken together, these theories strongly suggest that variation in stress-response phenotypes has been shaped by natural selection, is an adaptation to multiniche environments, and involves an integration of genetic influences and condition-sensitivity.     

Neighborhood crime as a predictor of individual differences in emotional processing and regulation

Emerging research suggests that early exposure to environmental adversity has important implications for the development of brain regions associated with emotion regulation, yet little is known about how such adversity translates into observable differences in children's emotion‐related behavior. The present study examines the relationship between geocoded neighborhood crime and urban pre‐adolescents' emotional attention, appraisal, and response. Results indicate that living in a high‐crime neighborhood is associated with greater selective attention toward negatively valenced emotional stimuli on a dot probe task, less biased appraisal of fear on a facial identification task, and lower rates of teacher‐reported internalizing behaviors in the classroom. These findings suggest that children facing particularly high levels of environmental threat may develop different regulatory processes (e.g. greater use of emotional suppression) than their peers from low‐crime neighborhoods in order to manage the unique stressors and social demands of their communities.     

Mood specific media use and emotion regulation: Patterns and individual differences

The present study examines moods in which individuals are most likely to utilize various forms of entertainment media and the emotion regulation tendencies that are associated with such preferences. Results of a questionnaire study (n = 229) show that mood specific media use may be captured by three factors: turning to media in a positive mood, in a negative mood or in a bored mood. Findings also show that various forms of difficulty regulating emotion (e.g., feeling out of control when upset) predict media use in negative or bored moods only. More specific analyses show that music use in negative moods is predicted by both positive indices (e.g., reflection tendencies) and negative indices of emotion regulation (e.g., rumination tendencies), while television use in negative moods is only predicted by negative indices of emotion regulation. Results are discussed in light of the psychological needs that selective media use may serve.     

The genetic relationship between individual differences in social and nonsocial behaviours characteristic of autism

Two types of behaviours shown in children - those reflecting social impairment and nonsocial obsessive repetitive behaviours - are central to defining and diagnosing autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Parent and teacher data on social and nonsocial behaviours were obtained from a community sample of >3000 7-year-old twin pairs. Social and nonsocial behaviours were only modestly correlated, and it was found that some individuals had extreme scores on either social or nonsocial scales but not both. Genetic model-fitting showed that social and nonsocial behaviours are both highly heritable, but their genetic overlap is modest, with most of the genetic influence being specific to either social or nonsocial behaviours. Considering these behaviours separately might help clarify gene-brain-behaviour pathways in future research.     

Testing problem-solving capacities: differences between individual testing and social group setting

Testing animals individually in problem-solving tasks limits distractions of the subjects during the test, so that they can fully concentrate on the problem. However, such individual performance may not indicate the problem-solving capacity that is commonly employed in the wild when individuals are faced with a novel problem in their social groups, where the presence of a conspecific influences an individual’s behaviour. To assess the validity of data gathered from parrots when tested individually, we compared the performance on patterned-string tasks among parrots tested singly and parrots tested in social context. We tested two captive groups of orange-winged amazons (Amazona amazonica) with several patterned-string tasks. Despite the differences in the testing environment (singly vs. social context), parrots from both groups performed similarly. However, we found that the willingness to participate in the tasks was significantly higher for the individuals tested in social context. The study provides further evidence for the crucial influence of social context on individual’s response to a challenging situation such as a problem-solving test.     

Aberrant asociality: how individual differences in social anhedonia illuminate the need to belong

The need to belong, a fundamental concept in psychology, organizes a wide range of findings in the study of interpersonal relationships. We suggest that human belongingness needs can be illuminated by examining when they go awry. We review research on social anhedonia, a trait that involves a marked disinterest in interpersonal contact. Social anhedonia has a long history in clinical psychology, particularly in the study of schizotypy and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, but it is just starting to get attention from social and personality psychologists. Three lines of research-cross-sectional studies of individual differences, longitudinal studies of risk for psychopathology, and experience-sampling studies of interpersonal behavior-suggest that (1) social anhedonia represents genuine social disinterest, not merely shyness, introversion, or social anxiety, and (2) people high in social anhedonia have consistently poorer functioning, including a higher risk for developing schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Just as satisfied relatedness needs promote flourishing, dysfunctional social needs promote psychopathology.     

Selective residential mobility and social influence in the emergence of neighborhood personality differences: Longitudinal data from Australia

This study examined the role of selective residential mobility and differential personality development in the emergence of associations between personality and two neighborhood characteristics: urban–rural residence and neighborhood affluence. Participants were 19,665 individuals from the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) study with personality traits assessed in 2005, 2009, and 2013. Urban and more affluent neighborhoods were both characterized by higher openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Overall, selective residential mobility was more important for urban–rural differences whereas both selective residential mobility and social influence contributed to correlations with neighborhood affluence. Simulated data based on the regression models produced correlations that were very close to the empirical correlations, suggesting that the empirical correlations could feasibly emerge within a 30-year period.     

Cultural differences in the impact of social support on psychological and biological stress responses

Social support is believed to be a universally valuable resource for combating stress, yet Asians and Asian Americans report that social support is not helpful to them, resist seeking it, and are underrepresented among recipients of supportive services. We distinguish between explicit social support (seeking and using advice and emotional solace) and implicit social support (focusing on valued social groups) and show that Asians and Asian Americans are psychologically and biologically benefited more by implicit social support than by explicit social support; the reverse is true for European Americans. Our discussion focuses on cultural differences in the construal of relationships and their implications for social support and delivery of support services.