Personality and Spirituality: Christian Prayer and Eastern Meditation Are Not the Same

A random sample of 1,033 adults in an Australian community survey completed a form containing the abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with questions about the practice of prayer and Eastern meditation. While prayer was associated with low psychoticism scores, Eastern meditation was associated with high psychoticism scores.     

The Factor Structure of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory

Seventy-seven female and 86 male psychologist practitioners filled out the Bem Sex Rote Inventory to describe either a healthy adult male, healthy adult female, or healthy adult, sex unspecified. Analyzing the data according to Bem's classification of masculinity, femininity, and androgyny produced a significant Scale X Condition interaction with male and female practitioners ascribing significantly more masculine than feminine traits to healthy adult men, yet displaying no comparable differences when rating healthy adult women. Analyzing the data according to Spence's classification of masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated produced a Group X Condition interaction with practitioners ascribing significantly more masculine traits to healthy adult men and significantly more feminine traits to healthy adult women. Reanalyses omitting "masculine" and "feminine" from Bem's fist of sex-typed traits produced nonsignificant results. The relationship of this to recent criticisms of the construct validity of the BSRI and to the validity of earlier results of therapist sex-role bias was discussed.     

Not as Different as We Want to Be: Attitudinally Consistent Trait Desirability Leads to Exaggerated Associations Between Personality and Sociopolitical Attitudes

Research connecting sociopolitical attitudes to personality typically relies exclusively on self‐report measures of personality. A recently discovered mechanism of bias in self‐reports highlights a particular challenge for this approach. Specifically, individuals tend to report exaggerated levels of a trait to the extent that they view that trait as desirable. In a community sample of 443 participants, differences in sociopolitical attitudes were associated with differences in the extent to which individuals provided biased self‐reports for a given trait (relative to trait levels indicated by peer‐report or an objective measure) as well as differences in views of the desirability of that trait. Further, the tendency to misrepresent traits in a manner consistent with one's sociopolitical attitudes was mediated by differences in views of trait desirability. Thus, although meaningful personality differences exist among those with differing sociopolitical attitudes, those differences may not be as large as people with opposing sociopolitical attitudes might like them to be.     

Item Factor Structure of the Personality Adjective Check List

This study reports on a principal-components analysis of the Personality Adjective Check List (PACL) at the item level. Data came from a national sample of normal adults and included the responses-of 1,058 men and 1,194 women (N = 2,252). Analyses were conducted separately for men and women, and for the sexes combined. The scree test was applied to decide on the number of factors to extract. Retained factors were rotated by varimax and direct oblimin procedures. Results were very similar for each analysis, with coefficients of congruence for the five orthogonal factors obtained from men and women separately being .95, .92, .94, .94, and .92. The five unipolar personality dimensions isolated were interpreted as Aggressive/Dominant, Neurotic, Conscientious, Detached/Introverted, and Surgent/Extraverted. These were compared to item factors of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-I), MCMI-II, Adjective Check List (ACL), and to Norman's Big Five dimensions.     

古代中国人人格结构的因素探析

以古代典籍《史记》为材料,按词汇法构建了具有相当信度和效度的古代中国人人格描述词单,施测于118名专家及研究生,令他们对《史记》中记载的102名古代中国人作评定,经由因素分析获取了以仁为核心,由仁、智、勇、隐4个因素组成的古代中国人人格维度。进而用内容分析的方法验证了该维度的稳定性,并结合中国传统哲学思想,对仁、智、勇、隐4个因素的内涵作了深入的剖析和阐释。     

The Factor Structure of the Personality Research Form: A Cross-National Evaluation

ABSTRACT The present research examined the generalizability of the factor structure of the Personality Research Form (PRF) across various populations. A common methodology was used for factoring 18 data bases from largely differing samples (including data from one Asian and two European countries). In accordance with previous research results, five factors were rotated in every case and compared with two target factor solutions. A mean congruence coefficient of .93 as well as similar proportions of variance explained by the factors in the various populations indicated a large amount of generalizability for that structure. An alternative but similar structure, which had been interpreted in terms of the so-called "Big Five" factors of personality, proved to be only slightly less generalizable. It was concluded that the fairly abstract constructs of both PRF factor structures are useful for describing personality in the cultures under study, leaving room for the possibility of more subtle or specific differences between the populations.     

Contemporary Directions in Theories and Psychotherapeutic Strategies in Treatment of Personality Disorders: Relation to Level of Personality Functioning

In this commentary on treatment strategies for personality disorders, we analyze each of the cases and the problem of low motivation in terms of how they fit with the Level of Personality Functioning scale. We then show how patients vary in terms of both level and breadth of pathology. Three of the articles describe patients who are severely impaired and strategies suggested are understood in terms of working with differentiation. The additional three articles present cases where patients have a higher level of personality functioning, and strategies are seen as interventions aimed at integration and improved adaptation. Based on this finding, we argue that the Level of Personality Functioning could be a useful assessment method for improving treatment selection. Finally, we raise questions and offer considerations regarding the understanding of empathy, low motivation and autobiographical memory in the cases presented.     

We Are the World—and They Are Not: Prototypicality for the World Community,Legitimacy, and Responses to Global Inequality

The relation between developed and developing countries is characterized by inequalities that sometimes hinder actions against worldwide problems. The current research presents an intergroup approach, based on the ingroup projection model, towards an analysis of psychological processes that perpetuate global inequality on a social group level. Precisely, we argue that people from developed countries perceive their group as more prototypical for the world population than they perceive people from developing countries. These perceptions of ingroup prototypicality should in turn relate to legitimacy beliefs and predict unfavorable behavioral intentions towards developing countries. We present two studies that corroborate our hypotheses: In Study 1, participants from a developed country perceived their ingroup as more prototypical for the superordinate group (i.e., world population) than the outgroup (i.e., developing countries), which in turn was related to beliefs that global inequality is legitimate. This finding was replicated in Study 2, and the predicted effect of ingroup prototypicality on behavioral intentions was mediated by legitimacy beliefs. These findings demonstrate that intergroup processes can contribute to perpetuating global inequality.     

Factor Structure of the MCMI Basic Personality Scales and Common-Item Artifact

The eight basic personality scales of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial inventory (MCMI) were derived from Millon's theory of personality, but the adequacy of the MCMI for measuring Millon's personality constructs has never been assessed. One major problem with using factor analysis to illuminate the structure of the MCMI personality scales is that artifactual structure may result from item overlap among the scales. To analyze this, item-overlap coefficients were factored and compared to the factor structures of five subject samples. For the eight basic personality scales, three factors emerged for the overlap matrix and each of the five sample matrices: Aloof-Social, Aggressive-Submissive, and Lability-Restraint. It was concluded that these three factors are inconsistent with Millon's theory and that they will be found artifactually across a wide variety of populations due to overlapping items.     

The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology (Book)

The growth of religious psychology with specific reference to the Malay people as the majority culture is discussed. This article describes attitudes of the Malays toward religion, and reviews related programs and developments in Malaysian universities and institutes. It covers contents of major seminars and conferences held in recent years; the application of religious psychology in the general Malay population and an analysis of some problems and prospects relevant to the general psychology of religion area. The article concludes that, although psychology of religion does not exist here in the Western sense, immense opportunities exist for psychological research on religion. Suggestions for improving the psychology-religion interface are given.     

The General Factor of Personality (GFP) and Vocational Interests: a Test of Social Effectiveness at the Behavioral and Genetic Level

Journal of Business and Psychology - Previous studies have examined how personality models (e.g., Big Five, HEXACO) relate to vocational interests. We adopt a novel approach by testing the...     

不能以"复杂"与"简单"界定中西医学方法--与朱清时院士商榷

对朱清时院士以"复杂性"与"简单性"界定中西医学方法提出质疑,认为简单与复杂是中西医学共同面对的基本矛盾,近年盛行的中西医学"相反"论不利于中西医结合.     

The HEXACO Model of Personality Structure and the Importance of the H Factor

We give a brief summary of recent research on the structure of personality characteristics, describing the six‐dimensional ‘HEXACO’ model that has emerged as the most accurate representation of that structure. We then discuss the importance of personality as a predictor of socially important criteria, describing a variety of examples involving the Honesty–Humility (H) factor. The H dimension, alone or in combination with other factors of the HEXACO model, is related inversely to a wide array of criteria, including criminal activity and other unethical behaviors as well as materialistic and power‐seeking tendencies.     

Name Letter Preferences Are Not Merely Mere Exposure: Implicit Egotism as Self-Regulation

People prefer the letters in their own names to letters that are not in their own names. Furthermore, people prefer the numbers in their own birthdays to numbers not in their own birthdays. In this article we argue that these examples of implicit egotism are best conceptualized as the product of unconscious self-regulation processes rather than a result of mere exposure. In support of this hypothesis, a study of name-letter preferences showed that people preferred their own name letters even when these letters were relatively rare. Furthermore, the name-letter and birthday-number preferences of high and low self-esteem participants diverged in response to an experimentally manipulated self-concept threat. We conclude that implicit egotism, specifically name-letter and birthday-number preferences, represent a form of unconscious self-regulation. Implications of these results for the mere exposure explanation of name-letter preferences and for theory and research in implicit egotism are discussed.     

Impoverished Self-Narrative and Impaired Self-Reflection as Targets for the Psychotherapy of Personality Disorders

Recent years have seen theory and research in psychiatry and psychotherapy identifying which facets of the psychopathology of personality disorders (PD) should be treatment targets. This paper focuses on four elements: a) impoverished autobiographical narrative/use of generalized memory; b) lack of conscious sense of agency; c) poor awareness of emotions and their triggers; d) loss of fantasy/reality distinction. These all impact PD sufferers’ well-being and social functioning. I first describe the four elements and provide some empirical evidence for them and then propose technical processes for tackling the dysfunctions both directly and through therapy relationship work. I will provide examples of the pathology and treatment from the cases of two patients suffering from wide-ranging and severe PD.     

Why We Are Still Not Cognitive Psychologists: A Review of Why I Am Not A Cognitive Psychologist: A Tribute to B. F. Skinner

Any instructor of behavior analysis is no doubt aware that neuroscience, characterized by a cognitive–mentalistic approach, has substantial influence in behavioral science. As a counterpoint, behavior analysis can raise timely questions and promote critical thinking, as did Skinner (1977) in his critical analysis of cognitive psychology. Keenan and Dillenburger (2004) have produced a CD-ROM with effective audio-visual presentations to aid in the teaching of behavior analysis and in critiquing reductionistic mentalism.