The act frequency analysis of interpersonal dispositions: Aloofness,gregariousness, dominance and submissiveness1

A series of studies explores the act frequency analysis of personal dispositions, which entails the identification of categories of prototypical acts, delineation of internal structuring within act categories (from central to peripheral), and the assessment of individuals' dispositions in terms of the relative frequency of performing prototypical acts over a period of observation. These studies were designed to replicate the research of Buss and Craik (1980) on dominance. Through nomination procedures, 100 acts were assembled for each of three dispositions: aloofness, gregariousness, and submissiveness. The internal structure of these categories was examined through judgments of the degree to which each act is a prototypical member of the category. Prototypicality judgments for each act category by three independent panels display a substantial degree of composite reliability. Multiple-act criteria based on highly prototypical acts are predicted with significantly greater success by relevant personality scales than are multiple-act criteria based on more peripheral acts within each category. This finding holds for dominance, replicating the Buss and Craik study, and for aloofness and gregariousness. The multiple-act criteria for submissiveness, however, are not well predicted by matching personality scales. This anomaly is discussed in terms of the bipolarity of behavioral domains, the selection of matching personality scales for specific act categories, and the appropriate conceptualization of submissiveness.     

Prototypical Behaviour Patterns of Social Intelligence: An Intercultural Comparison between Chinese and German Subjects

By using the Act Frequency Approach (Buss & Craik, 1980), Chinese subjects (N = 31) generated a list of acts (specific behaviours) considered to represent social intelligence. These acts were rated by Chinese subjects (N = 39) and German subjects (N = 29) for prototypicality. A comparison of results showed that the construct of social intelligence is culture dependent. For the Chinese, social intelligent behaviours seem to reflect the classical traditions and ideals of Confucianism. Acts that received the highest scores were those that described conforming to and fulfilling expected roles, and acts in which the wellbeing of the entire society was described as being more important that the desires of an individual. This was especially true for older subjects and for women. Items controlling for socially desirable behaviour and social engagement showed clear differences between the two cultures; as expected, the German subjects rated these items lower, whereas the Chinese subjects found both items to be high prototypical of social intelligence.     

The effect of individual differences in act prototypicality judgments on trait-behaviour correlations and cross-situational consistency

Individuals differ in their perceptions of actprototypicality. This study examined whether incorporating such individual differences enhances trait-behaviour correlations and provides stronger evidence for cross-situational consistency. Three hundred and fifty-three subjects rated the dominance prototypicality of 100 acts, indicated how often they performed each of these acts, and provided trait ratings of how dominant they were in general. There were substantial and reliable individual differences in prototypicality judgements over a 4–5 month period. A variety of weighting schemes were used to incorporate these individual differences, but none dramatically increased the trait-behaviour correlation. Similarly, incorporating individual differences did not increase the magnitude of cross-situational consistency correlations. However, incorporating individual differences did enhance the pattern of trait-behaviour and consistency correlations from less prototypical to highly prototypical acts. Differences in perceptions of act prototypicality thus do not affect the magnitude of the correlations that can be obtained, but they are useful in revealing theoretically meaningful patterns of relationships.     

A cross-cultural comparison using the act frequency approach (AFA) in West Germany and the United States

Two studies were conducted in West Germany and the United States to investigate cultural similarities and differences on features of personality assessed through act frequency methods. The first study analysed the acts considered to be central and peripheral to each of six dispositional categories: dominance, quarrelsomeness, gregariousness, submissiveness, agreeableness, and aloofness. The results indicated moderate to strong similarity between the cultures in the prototypicality structure for all categories except agreeableness, which showed little concordance. The second study examined the manifested structure of act performance as assessed through retrospective act reports. The results indicated greater similarity of act endorsements between the two sexes within each culture than between cultures within each sex. Generally, the Americans showed higher base rates than the Germans. Furthermore, over all samples, females showed lower base rates than males. The correlations between relative base rates within each of the six different categories were moderately strong between the cultures (0.56, p < 0.001). Analyses of the relations between the prototypicality structure and the manifested structure yielded a complex picture that was highly dependent on dispositional category. For quarrelsome acts, for example, the more central acts were reported to be performed less frequently in both cultures, while other categories showed positive correlations between base rates and prototypicality. The limitations of these studies are described, and future research directions regarding expanding the range of act frequency methods and the number of nations in the search for personality functioning across cultures are suggested.     

Processing Illness Information: The Role of Disease Prototypes

Recently Bishop and Converse (1986) proposed that information about physical symptoms is interpreted by relating those symptoms to preexisting disease prototypes. The two present studies further examined this formulation by testing hypotheses concerning the speed of processing symptom information as well as associations made to sets of physical symptoms as a function of prototypicality. As predicted, Experiment 1 showed that response time to highly prototypical symptom sets was significantly shorter than that for symptom sets containing irrelevant symptoms. Also as predicted, the results of Experiment 2 showed significant differences in the associations made by experiment participants to symptom sets as a function of the prototypicality of the symptoms in those sets. Participants made more category-based associations to highly prototypical symptom sets than to those lower in prototypicality but made more associations to individual symptoms for symptom sets low in prototypicality. Implications for the prototype hypothesis and for understanding the processing of illness information are discussed.     

Children's identification of actors and patients in prototypical and nonprototypical sentence types

This research examined if children organize language categories around a prototype. Based on previous research with adults, the hypothesis held that the prototypical transitive sentence contains an animate actor and patient and a highly prototypical verb. The question of interest was if factors that contribute to adult judgments of sentence prototypicality (such as actor-patient animacy and verb prototypicality) affect young childrens' accuracy in correctly identifying sentence actors and patients. That is, are children more likely to make correct identifications in prototypical sentences? Sixty-four 2- and 4-year-old children were trained to to ntify sentence actors and patients in prototypical or nonprototypical sentences and then tested for generalization to sentences of other types. Two factors, verb prototypicality and animacy of sentence participants, combined to influence children's accuracy in actor/patient identification. Regardless of training condition, children produced more correct responses to sentences with animate actors than to sentences with inanimate actors. There was an interaction with verb prototypicality such that it was more typical for inanimate actors to act upon animate patients with what are otherwise low prototype verbs (e.g., low in action, low in intentionality). The results of the study are consistent with the view that similar cognitive mechanisms operate in language and in other nonlinguistic cognitive domains.     

Prototypes are attractive because they are easy on the mind

People tend to prefer highly prototypical stimuli--a phenomenon referred to as the beauty-in-averageness effect. A common explanation of this effect proposes that prototypicality signals mate value. Here we present three experiments testing whether prototypicality preference results from more general mechanisms-fluent processing of prototypes and preference for fluently processed stimuli. In two experiments, participants categorized and rated the attractiveness of random-dot patterns (Experiment 1) or common geometric patterns (Experiment 2) that varied in levels of prototypicality. In both experiments, prototypicality was a predictor of both fluency (categorization speed) and attractiveness. Critically, fluency mediated the effect of prototypicality on attractiveness, although some effect of prototypicality remained when fluency was controlled. The findings were the same whether or not participants explicitly considered the pattern's categorical membership, and whether or not categorization fluency was salient when they rated attractiveness. Experiment 3, using the psychophysiological technique of facial electromyography, confirmed that viewing abstract prototypes elicits quick positive affective reactions.     

An Application of the Prototype Scale Construction Strategy to the Assessment of Student Motivation

ABSTRACT In this study, the prototype strategy was used to develop scales for the assessment of student motivation In a prestudy, teachers generated student behaviors for each pole of the motivation dimension The prototypicality of the motivated and unmotivated behaviors for the respective poles of the dimension was rated by panels of junior high school students On the basis of these ratings, scales were constructed which differed in the mean-rated prototypicality of their items In the main study the validities of these scales were investigated using peer ratings and a psychometric test as criterion measures Using confirmatory factor analysis, it was demonstrated that, as predicted, the scales with the more prototypical items had higher validity coefficients More generally, these scales possessed satisfactory psychometric properties Finally, the merits of the prototype strategy were discussed with respect to its contributions to the substantive and structural component of construct validity     

Uncertainty reduction, self-enhancement, and ingroup identification

Two experiments tested the prediction that uncertainty reduction and self-enhancement motivations have an interactive effect on ingroup identification. In Experiment 1 (N = 64), uncertainty and group status were manipulated, and the effect on ingroup identification was measured. As predicted, low-uncertainty participants identified more strongly with a high- than low-status group, whereas high-uncertainty participants showed no preference; and low-status group members identified more strongly under high than low uncertainty, whereas high-status group members showed no preference. Experiment 2 (N = 210) replicated Experiment 1, but with a third independent variable that manipulated how prototypical participants were of their group. As predicted, the effects obtained in Experiment 1 only emerged where participants were highly prototypical. Low prototypicality depressed identification with a low-status group under high uncertainty. The implications of these results for intergroup relations and the role of prototypicality in social identity processes are discussed.     

Seeing the world with the eyes of the outgroup — The impact of perspective taking on the prototypicality of the ingroup relative to the outgroup

The positive effect of perspective taking on favorable attitudes towards stigmatized individuals and outgroups is well established (Batson et al., 1997). We draw on the ingroup projection model (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999) to better understand the processes underlying this effect. Based on their egocentric perspective, ingroup and outgroup members have different representations of the superordinate group (perspective divergence) so that the ingroup is perceived as more relatively prototypical of the superordinate group, leading to negative outgroup evaluation. We hypothesize that the positive effect of perspective taking on outgroup attitudes is due to a reduction of relative ingroup prototypicality. Across three studies with different manipulations of perspective taking, we found that participants who were taking the perspective of an outgroup member evaluated the outgroup more positively and were less inclined to perceive their ingroup as more relatively prototypical. The effect of perspective taking on outgroup attitudes was mediated by relative ingroup prototypicality.     

‘Of the group’ and ‘for the group’: How followership is shaped by leaders' prototypicality and group identification

Previous research has focused on the importance of leaders being seen to be of the group (i.e. to be prototypical of a group) but less on the impact of leaders' own degree of identification with the group. Also, little is known about the combined impact of leader prototypicality and leader identification on followers' responses. This paper reports two studies that address these lacunae. Study 1 shows experimentally that perceived leader identification and prototypicality interact to determine followers' personal identification with leaders and their perceptions of leader charisma. Findings indicate that high identification can compensate for low prototypicality such that high‐identified leaders are able to inspire followership when leaders are low prototypical. Study 2 replicates these findings in the field by examining followers' responses to workgroup leaders. In addition, results demonstrate that the aforementioned responses are more pronounced for highly identified followers. The present research extends social identity theorizing by demonstrating that leaders' inability to inspire followership derives as much from their failure to project a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ as part of their self‐concept as from a failure to exemplify group‐typical attributes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conversation as a resource for influence: evidence for prototypical arguments and social identification processes

Members of eight single‐sex groups each consisting of three pro‐ and three anti‐capital punishment adherents discussed their views for 30 minutes, and afterwards individually rated ingroup and outgroup members on social influence ranking, prototypicality, and social attractiveness. From the intragroup hypothesis that speaking turns are a resource for influence (Ng & Bradac, 1993), we predicted and found that turns were correlated strongly with influence in the intergroup context. Further, using self‐categorization theory (SCT; Turner, 1985), we hypothesized that social identity processes would interact with turns, especially with turns obtained through interruptions. Interruptions encoded in prototypical utterances were more strongly correlated with social influence and prototypicality, but not social attraction, than interruptions encoded in non‐prototypical utterances. Further, interruption attempts enacted in prototypical utterances were found to be more likely to be successful than unsuccessful in obtaining turns, while those enacted in non‐prototypical utterances were more likely to be unsuccessful than successful. Additionally, interruption turns were longer when enacted in prototypical over non‐prototypical utterances. Overall, the findings suggest that the power/influence of language is interactively organized and constructed around salient self‐categorizations. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leader self-sacrifice and leadership effectiveness: the moderating role of leader prototypicality

Self-sacrificing behavior of the leader and the extent to which the leader is representative of the group (i.e., group prototypical) are proposed to interact to influence leadership effectiveness. The authors expected self-sacrificing leaders to be considered more effective and to be able to push subordinates to a higher performance level than non-self-sacrificing leaders, and these effects were expected to be more pronounced for less prototypical leaders than for more prototypical leaders. The results of a laboratory experiment showed that, as expected, productivity levels, effectiveness ratings, and perceived leader group-orientedness and charisma were positively affected by leader self-sacrifice, especially when leader prototypicality was low. The main results were replicated in a scenario experiment and 2 surveys.     

Leader performance and prototypicality: Their inter‐relationship and impact on leaders' identity entrepreneurship

Research has demonstrated that leader performance and leader prototypicality are both predictors of leader endorsement. While performance and prototypicality have generally been considered to be independent, this paper suggests that performance and prototypicality are interdependent and have a bi‐directional impact both on each other and on leaders' capacity to engage in identity entrepreneurship (i.e., to define shared group norms and ideals). Two experimental studies indicate that followers infer leaders' prototypicality from their performance and that a leader's prototypicality determines perceptions of performance (indicating reversed causality). Moreover, there is evidence that both performance and prototypicality enhance leaders' capacity to act as identity entrepreneurs. These findings extend our understanding of the mutually dependent causal relationship between followers' perceptions that a leader is ‘one of us’ and that he or she is ‘doing it well’. They also provide the first experimental evidence that these factors are joint determinants of leaders' identity entrepreneurship. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When different means bad or merely worse. How minimal and maximal goals affect ingroup projection and outgroup attitudes

Group members tend to perceive their ingroup relative to an outgroup as more prototypical for a common superordinate group because they project features of their ingroup onto the superordinate group. As a consequence, the ingroup is perceived as more positive than the outgroup (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). We extend the ingroup projection model by examining different types of ingroup goals: minimal and maximal goals as well as actual and ideal goals. Minimal goals should engender either‐or thinking and lead to more ingroup projection compared with maximal goals that should involve more nuanced thinking. Ingroup prototypicality in terms of ideal goals (e.g., what we ideally should strive for) was expected to show a stronger relation to outgroup attitudes than ingroup prototypicality in terms of actual goals (e.g., what we are actually striving for). We manipulated minimal and maximal goal orientation and assessed actual and ideal goals. Across two studies, relative ingroup prototypicality was higher in the minimal compared with the maximal goal condition. Moreover, ingroup prototypicality referring to ideal goals showed a stronger relation to outgroup evaluation than ingroup prototypicality referring to actual goals. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

At the core of cyberaggression: A group-based explanation

In this study, prototypicality of the aggressor was tested as a group-level factor predicting social media users’ active participation in cyberaggression. Participants were exposed to a fictitious conversation, in which either a prototypical versus non-prototypical user posted an aggressive comment as a reply to a provocative comment. In line with self-categorization theory, we hypothesized that bystander participants would post an aggressive comment and rate the aggression as acceptable to a greater extent in the prototypical than in the non-prototypical condition. Furthermore, we predicted that perceived normativity of aggression would mediate the effect of prototypicality. Results supported these predictions and showed that prototypical members affect the extent to which collective aggressive behaviors in online interactions are approved and enacted. These findings highlight the importance of group-level factors in the study of cyberaggression and provide important information for understanding the psychological underpinnings of collective forms of online aggression.     

Prototypicality and personality: Effects on free recall and personality impressions

An experiment was performed to test the hypothesis that it is easier to process information about characters who fit well with and are, therefore, “prototypical” of shared beliefs about various personality types. Character prototypicality was manipulated in a free recall and personality impression paradigm through variations in the consistency of a character's identification with preexisting beliefs about two personality-type categories—extraversion and introversion. Subjects also were given information about each character that varied in degree of abstraction from traits to concrete behavior. As predicted, both the amount and nature of the information correctly recalled were significantly affected by the consistency of the character's identification with extraversion or with introversion. Character consistency also significantly affected the amount of material written in the personality impressions and the tendency to qualify the generality of the impressions. The results support a model in which incoming data about personality are coded, structured, elaborated, and remembered according to the quality of their match with preexisting beliefs about various personality types.