Using Dynamic Panel Models to Study Age‐related Differences and Time‐related Changes in Personality

Along with an increasing interest in the plasticity and role of personality across the adult lifespan comes the need for a diverse set of innovative statistical approaches to study it. With this paper, we set out to illustrate some of the possibilities and challenges in modelling age‐related differences and time‐related changes in personality psychology by means of dynamic panel models. To this end, we first distinguish between the study of age‐related differences and time‐related changes and demonstrate how the treatment of age and time as either discrete or continuous variables implies important modelling choices. Second, we present a selection of four example cases that address the topic of age moderation in diverse matters and with different objectives. Based on our cross‐tabulation of age and time as discrete and continuous variables, the first two example cases represent fairly well‐established models (cases A and B), whereas the remaining cases are used to illustrate current developments in the field (cases C and D). We close the paper with some final remarks on current limitation and future research directions. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Age‐related Changes in Creative Thinking

Age‐related differences in cognitive processes were used to understand age‐related declines in creativity. According to the Geneplore model (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992), there are two phases of creativity — generating an idea and exploring the implications of the idea — each with different underlying cognitive processes. These two phases are measured in the Creative Invention Task (CIT; Finke, 1990). Younger adults (n = 41) and older adults (n = 41) completed the CIT, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), and a measure of working memory capacity (Paper Folding test). In addition, the CIT was scored by both younger and older adults. There were age‐related declines on both phases of the CIT, but not on the TTCT. These declines were noted by both the younger and older raters. After adjusting for working memory capacity, however, age‐related differences on the CIT were nonsignificant.     

The impact of perspective in visualizing health‐related behaviors: first‐person perspective increases motivation to adopt health‐related behaviors

Two experiments investigated the effects of perspective and visualization on motivation to engage in health‐related behaviors. Participants visualized themselves donating blood (Experiment 1) or quitting smoking (Experiment 2) from either the first‐person (own) or third‐person (observer's) perspective. Subsequently, motivation to engage in the visualized behavior was assessed. Contrary to previous findings showing the benefits of taking a third‐person perspective on behaviors not related to health, visualizing using the first‐person perspective had greater effects on motivation than visualizing using the third‐person perspective. Indeed, visualizing using the third‐person perspective was no more effective than not visualizing anything (Experiment 2). The theoretical implications and potential applications of these findings are discussed.     

Professional Disclosure Statements and Formal Plans for Supervision: Two Strategies for Minimizing the Risk of Ethical Conflicts in Post‐Master's Supervision

Ethical conflicts related to the issues of informed consent, due process, competence, confidentiality, and dual relationships in supervision are discussed. Two strategies are proposed as ways to minimize the potential for ethical conflict in post‐master's supervision: the use of professional disclosure statements by supervisors and the development of formal plans for supervision.     

Nostalgia in response to group‐based exclusion: The role of attachment‐related avoidance

We proposed that nostalgia, by virtue of its sociality, can be an indirect strategy to counteract relational deficiencies stemming from group‐based exclusion. We instructed Greek participants to recall an event in which they experienced exclusion on the basis of their nationality versus a control event. We anticipated that participants would react to group‐based exclusion with increased nostalgia. Specifically, because low attachment‐related avoidance facilitates proximity‐seeking in response to distress, we hypothesized that group‐based exclusion would increase nostalgia (a form of proximity‐seeking) more strongly when avoidance is low. Results supported this moderation hypothesis. In turn, increased nostalgia in response to group‐based exclusion predicted stronger ingroup identification. For low‐avoidants, then, group‐based exclusion fortified ingroup identification via increased nostalgia (moderated mediation).     

Couple Relationship Education at the Transition to Parenthood: A Window of Opportunity to Reach High‐Risk Couples

This study evaluated if the transition to parenthood is a window of opportunity to provide couple relationship education (CRE) to new parents at high risk for future relationship problems. Fifty‐three percent of eligible couples approached agreed to participate in CRE and of these 80% had not previously accessed CRE. Couples were a broad representative of Australian couples having their first child, but minority couples were underrepresented. A third of couples had three or more risk factors for future relationship distress (e.g., cohabiting, interpartner violence, elevated psychological distress, unplanned pregnancy). Low education was the only risk factor that predicted drop out. The transition to parenthood is a window of opportunity to recruit certain types of high‐risk couples to CRE.     

Adolescents' Reward‐related Neural Activation: Links to Thoughts of Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury

Adolescence is a critical developmental period marked by an increase in risk behaviors, including nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI). Heightened reward‐related brain activation and relatively limited recruitment of prefrontal regions contribute to the initiation of risky behaviors in adolescence. However, neural reward processing has not been examined among adolescents who are at risk for future engagement for NSSI specifically, but who have yet to actually engage in this behavior. In the current fMRI study (N = 71), we hypothesized that altered reward processing would be associated with adolescents' thoughts of NSSI. Results showed that NSSI youth exhibited heightened activation in the bilateral putamen in response to a monetary reward. This pattern of findings suggests that heightened neural sensitivity to reward is associated with thoughts of NSSI in early adolescence. Implications for prevention are discussed.     

Predictors and processes related to employees’ change‐related compliance and championing

This field study of a merger examines the antecedent factors and processes that explain two different forms of employee support for change—compliance and championing. Our overarching goal is to understand why some employees comply and others champion change efforts. We examine the combined effects of context and person factors on both positive and negative employee reactions to change, and then investigate the differential effects of these reactions on employee support for change. Results support our hypotheses and show that change management support (context factor) negatively predicts threat appraisals and positively predicts challenge appraisals. Both compliance and championing are positively predicted by challenge appraisals, and threat appraisals are negatively related to championing. Analyses also reveal that the positive relationship between change management support and challenge appraisal is stronger when dispositional resistance to change (person factor) is high. Moderated‐mediation analyses suggest employees’ compliance and championing for change are differentially affected by management actions, their own dispositional resistance, and that these effects are mediated through positive and negative appraisals.     

Hostility‐ and gender‐related differences in oscillatory responses to emotional facial expressions

Hostility is associated with biases in the perception of emotional facial expressions, such that ambiguous or neutral expressions tend to be perceived as threatening or angry. In this study, the effects of hostility and gender on the perception of angry, neutral, and happy faces and on the oscillatory dynamics of cortical responses elicited by these presentations were investigated using time–frequency decomposition by means of wavelet transforms. Feelings of hostility predisposed subjects to perceive happy and neutral faces as less friendly. This effect was more pronounced in women. In hostile subjects, presentation of emotional facial expressions also evoked stronger posterior synchronization in the theta and diminished desynchronization in the alpha band. This may signify a prevalence of emotional responding over cognitive processing. These effects were also more pronounced in females. Hostile females, but not hostile males, additionally showed a widespread synchronization in the alpha band. This synchronization is tentatively explained as a manifestation of inhibitory control which is present in aggressive females, but not in aggressive males. Aggr. Behav. 35:502–513, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

One Family at a Time: A Prevention Program for At‐Risk Parents

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a psychoeducational parenting program with at‐risk parents of young children. At‐risk was defined as excessive parental use of verbal and corporal punishment combined with low‐income status. All families were seen for 10 weeks, either individually or in very small groups. Results showed that compared with the control group, parents participating in the program significantly decreased their levels of verbal and corporal punishment, anger, stress, and reported child behavior problems; results were maintained at follow‐up. Implications for counselors are provided.     

Age‐related changes in the dynamics of fear‐related regulation in early childhood

Self‐regulation is a dynamic process wherein executive processes (EP) delay, minimize or desist prepotent responses (PR) that arise in situations that threaten well‐being. It is generally assumed that, over the course of early childhood, children expand and more effectively deploy their repertoire of EP‐related strategies to regulate PR. However, longitudinal tests of these assumptions are scarce in part because self‐regulation has been mostly studied as a static construct. This study engages dynamic systems modeling to examine developmental changes in self‐regulation between ages 2 and 5 years. Second‐by‐second time‐series data derived from behavioral observations of 112 children (63 boys) faced with novel laboratory‐based situations designed to elicit wariness, hesitation, and fear were modeled using differential equation models designed to capture age‐related changes in the intrinsic dynamics and bidirectional coupling of PR (fear/wariness) and EP (strategy use). Results revealed that dynamic models allow for the conceptualization and measurement of fear regulation as intrinsic processes as well as direct and indirect coupling between PR and EP. Several patterns of age‐related changes were in line with developmental theory suggesting that PR weakened and was regulated more quickly and efficiently by EP at age 5 than at age 2. However, most findings were in the intrinsic dynamics and moderating influences between PR and EP rather than direct influences. The findings illustrate the precision with which specific aspects of self‐regulation can be articulated using dynamic systems models, and how such models can be used to describe the development of self‐regulation in nuanced and theoretically meaningful ways.     

On Wittgenstein's Notion of Meaning‐Blindness: Its Subjective,Objective and Aesthetic Aspects

相似文献   

Individual Differences in Emotion Regulation,Emotional Experiences at Work,and Work‐related Outcomes: A Two‐Study Investigation

The relationships among individual differences in emotion regulation (i.e., habitual tendencies to use reappraisal vs. suppression), employee emotions at work, and job performance and satisfaction were examined with 2 samples. Results indicated that reappraisal was positively associated with positive emotions and negatively associated with negative emotions. However, different from prior research, no emotional correlates were found for suppression. Further, it was found that job satisfaction was positively associated with positive emotions and negatively associated with negative emotions. Self‐rating of job performance was positively related to positive emotions, but was not significantly related to negative emotions.     

Source monitoring and suggestibility to misinformation: adult age‐related differences

We compared young and older adults' source monitoring performance on an explicit source identification test using the misinformation paradigm. Several age‐related differences in source memory were demonstrated: (a) older adults were more likely than were young adults to say that they saw information that was actually only suggested to them; (b) older adults were more confident in their false memories than were young adults; (c) older adults were less confident in their accurate memory for the source of information than were young adults. Together, the data suggest that older adults either lacked or failed to use helpful diagnostic source information (e.g. perceptual details or temporal information), and that their confidence in their false memories reflected an over‐weighting of semantic information. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Internet versus paper‐and‐pencil survey methods in psychological experiments: Equivalence testing of participant responses to health‐related messages

Despite experiments being increasingly conducted over the Internet, few studies have tested whether such experiments yield data equivalent to traditional methods' data. In the current study, data obtained via a traditional sampling method of undergraduate psychology students completing a paper‐and‐pencil survey (N = 107) were compared with data obtained from an Internet‐administered survey to a sample of self‐selected Internet‐users (N = 94). The data examined were from a previous study that had examined the persuasiveness of health‐related messages. To the extent that Internet data would be based on a sample at least as representative as data derived from a traditional student sample, it was expected that the two methodologies would yield equivalent data. Using formal tests of equivalence on persuasion outcomes, hypotheses of equivalence were generally supported. Additionally, the Internet sample was more diverse demographically than the student sample, identifying Internet samples as a valid alternative for future experimental research.     

Food‐related risk‐reduction strategies: purchasing and consumption processes

Confronted with an alarming social discourse favouring the perception of food risk, modern consumers find themselves in a situation of psychological discomfort caused by consumption of foodstuffs coming from the agricultural and foodstuff industry. To eliminate this discomfort the consumer may change their purchasing and consumption habits (constraining hypothesis) or introduce some measures for the reduction of risk. The aim of this paper is to present a new classification of risk reducers taking into account the diversity of buying and consumption practices. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications.