The K-factor: Individual differences in life history strategy

Until recently, variations in life history strategy were studied exclusively at the species level. Although this domain of study has been extended to examine systematic differences in life history strategy among various human ethnic groupings, more recent evolutionary theories of human development and related behavioral genetic work imply substantial within-group individual variation in life history strategy. We constructed a latent variable model identifying a single common factor, denoted as K, which underlies a variety of otherwise disparate life history parameters. This “K-Factor” loaded 0.36 on childhood attachment to the biological father, −0.36 on childhood attachment to any non-biological father figure, 0.38 on adult romantic partner attachment, −0.51 on mating effort, −0.58 on Machiavellianism, and −0.41 on risk propensity. The bivariate correlations of the K-factor with higher-order personality factors were statistically significant, −0.24 with “Big Neuroticism” and −0.67 with “Big Psychoticism”, and approached significance, correlating 0.12, with “Big Extraversion”. The K-factor appears to be an underappreciated individual difference variable of major importance to human development.     

Tomboyism or Lesbianism? Beyond Sex/Gender/Sexual Conflation

To illuminate questions of sex/gender/sexual conflation the researcher focused on the relationship between reported tomboyism and lesbianism. Narratives of childhood and adolescence were collected from 32 women who were grouped into four gender/sexual status combinations: “lesbian/bisexual butch,” “straight butch,” “lesbian/bisexual femme,” and “straight femme.” The effects of participants’ sexual and gendered statuses on their retrospective accounts of two aspects of tomboyism—“choosing masculinity” and “rejecting femininity”—were examined. Chi square and qualitative analyses suggest that stage in the life cycle, gender, and sexual status influence distinct mergings and separations of sex, gender, and sexuality in women’s retrospective reports. The researcher concludes that attention to sex, gender, and sexuality as both distinct and connected clarifies the relationship between tomboyism and lesbianism.Part of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, Georgia in 2003. Interview data for this study were originally collected for an unpublished dissertation (Carr, 2002).     

The Use of Homework in Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Working with Complex Anxiety and Insomnia

Homework, or self-help, is an essential and required part of cognitive behavioral treatment. It offers several opportunities for the therapist to extend and increase therapy contact by having the patient “live” the therapy outside of the consulting room. It can also serve as a measure of the patient’s motivation for therapy or for change. Homework offers the patient an opportunity to practice what has been developed and discussed in the therapy session. By trying out new behaviors, new ideas, or new emotional responses, the patient can make “real” what has been an abstraction in the therapeutic dialogue. The homework becomes an opportunity for gathering data. Inasmuch as the homework grows “organically” from the session content, it is relevant and timely. Homework provides continuity between sessions. Rather than sessions being discrete moments in time, they are chained together by the homework from the previous session being included in the agenda for the subsequent session. The homework can be structured to involve significant others. This is essential in many therapeutic situations, and having the significant others involved can substantially aid in relapse prevention. Finally, effective homework helps to build therapeutic collaboration and afford the patient the opportunity for building self-efficacy. Using several case examples, this paper describes the functions and impediments to using homework in CBT.     

“Consistency” and “contradiction” in the development of gender role characteristics

There is currently an increasing amount of theoretical and empirical work arguing that stereotyped sex role behavior is maladaptive in our culture and that “androgyny” or “sex role transcendence” is a preferred mode of being. The latter, however, seems to require individual inconsistency and self-contradiction in behaviors and attitudes (since the individual is both active and passive, both independent and dependent, etc.). Theories of cognitive consistency maintain that individuals avoid self-contradiction and inconsistency, and therefore that androgyny runs counter to important motivational principles. This article examines this issue in some detail, and concludes that theories of cognitive dissonance and consistency reflect particular socio-cultural conditions rather than universal motivation principles. There is nothing inherently uncomfortable or “inconsistent” about androgyny and sex role transcendence.     

Random Yoking: An Alternative to Feedback Procedures for Preventing Superstition in the Human “Learned Helplessness” Paradigm

The “learned helplessness” model of human depression requires that humans demonstrate deficits similar to animals following exposure to noncontingent events. However, the feedback procedure usually employed in the triadic instrumental induction phase represents a confound in studies of the interference effect in humans. Matute (1994) concluded that the feedback procedure is necessary for the interference effect, which is thus due to feedback induced failure rather than learned helplessness. As an alternative, we hypothesize that feedback alerts participants to noncontingency, such that subsequent interference is not inconsistent with learned helplessness theory. The present study evaluates these competing claims by incorporating a novel manipulation designed to promote the perception of noncontingency in Matute's (1994) triadic no-feedback-procedure induction. A second noncontingent yoked group received the same tones as the usual direct yoked group, but in random order so as to disrupt the “late trials” distribution of short-latency tones which promotes superstitious responding. As predicted, the random-yoking procedure inhibited superstition. The interference effect was observed in the random-yoked but not the direct-yoked triad. Thus random-yoked participants may have developed the expectation of noncontingency which is critical to learned helplessness. It is concluded that the confounded feedback procedure is not necessary for the interference effect and should be avoided in future research.     

An assessment of the potential utility of “scientific jury selection”: A “thought experiment” approach

The efficacy of “scientific jury selection” (the use of social science methodology to aid the jury selection process) has been a subject of considerable contention. Unfortunately, such issues are difficult to address empirically, especially at the level of jury rather than juror decisions. One means of addressing some of these questions is through the use of “thought experiments” or computer simulations that are based not on intuition or conventional wisdom alone but guided by relevant empirical data. This paper reports the outcomes of simulations that explore jury verdict consequences from the use of scientific jury selection to (a) obtain changes in venue, (b) select jurors, and (c) accomplish both of the preceding. The results indicated that the potential effects of scientific jury selection are strongest when the techniques are successful in bringing about changes of venue or more representative jury panels. Somewhat weaker, albeit still consequential, effects were observed in those instances where scientific jury selection techniques are used to select particular jurors. The psychological and legal implications of these results, and the thought experiment approach in general, are discussed.     

Heart rate variability and respiratory concomitants of visual and nonvisual “imagery” and cognitive style

Attention to visual and nonvisual imagery, elicited by an imagery questionnaire, was studied using both within and between subjects analyses of cardiac and respiratory parameters. Visual imagery was accompanied by more regular interbeat heart rate (HR) and shorter, more stable respiratory cycles than nonvisual imagery. “Visually-oriented” thinkers (visualizers), identified by a word association test, manifested less overall variability in HR than “verbally-oriented” thinkers (verbalizers), as well as less variable HR and respiratory period during visual imagery. Visual and nonvisual imagery differed in HR variability for verbalizers and in respiration period for visualizers. The results are discussed in terms of the concepts of attention deployment, “mental load”, cerebral asymmetry, and stylistic personality differences in cognitive functioning.     

A thematic coding system for the intimacy motive

A new thematic (TAT) measure of intimacy motivation was developed and cross-validated in four separate arousal studies using three different college populations. A brief sketch of the derived thematic scoring system for intimacy motivation was presented. The goal state of the intimacy motive was defined as experiencing a warm, close, and communicative exchange with another person. In a college sample, subjects scoring high on the intimacy motive were rated by friends and acquaintances as significantly more “warm,” “natural,” “sincere,” “loving,” and “appreciative” and less “dominant,” “outspoken,” and “self-centered” than subjects scoring lower. The results were discussed in terms of the theories of Sullivan on the need for interpersonal intimacy, Maslow on growth motivation and “B-love,” Bakan on communion, and Buber on the I-Thou relation. Differences between the new coding system and the need for Affiliation (n Aff) system for scoring imaginative productions were also suggested.     

Change and continuity in early spatial development: claiming the “radical middle”

Debate over change and continuity in cognitive development has revolved around questions of qualitative transitions versus quantitative and incremental improvement. Piaget’s stage theory is the best-known example of a change/qualitative transition approach, while both nativism and empiricism have, for very different reasons, taken a continuity/quantitative increment stance. Recent proposals have, however, attempted to transcend this stark dichotomy, in a move that can be termed claiming the “radical middle.” This paper presents two examples of developmental analyses in spatial development. These two transitions are characterizable as either qualitative or quantitative, but are best thought of as both. A position of this kind allows for much more precise answers to practical questions about issues such as sensitive periods than would otherwise be possible.     

Certainty and Uncertainty: The Two Faces of the Hindsight Bias

“Hindsight Bias” is a person's tendency, after learning about the actual outcome of a situation or the correct answer to a question, to distort a previous judgment in the direction of this new information. In the literature, hindsight bias has been mostly discussed as an inevitable result of a “judgment under uncertainty.” We think that the hindsight bias is due to memorial as well as inferential processes: Whereas certainty about the recollection is memorial and concerns the recollective experience, certainty at the time of the judgment is inferential and concerns the individual's metaknowledge (“I know that I knew that”). In two experiments participants' feelings of certainty were measured indirectly (Koriat & Goldsmith, 1996) by giving participants the option of leaving those questions unanswered about which they felt uncertain. This free-report option was offered to half of the participants in the first estimate phase (concerning time of judgment) and to the second half in the memory phase (concerning the recollective experience). At the end of the session, participants were presented again with the questions they had skipped and were now required to answer them. This procedure allowed us to compare the amount of hindsight bias for the skipped, uncertain items to the spontaneously answered, certain ones. Both experiments demonstrated that the hindsight bias is a result of the interaction of both uncertainty and certainty.     

Part of speech and phonological form implied in written-word comprehension: Evidence from homograph disambiguation by normal and aphasic subjects

A sentence construction experiment examining the effect of part of speech and phonological form in written-word comprehension is reported. Normal and aphasic subjects had to write sentences incorporating a given word pair, one word was a homograph (e.g., “bank”) whose meaning was context-biased by the other (e.g., “money”/“river”). The effect of three psycholinguistic factors on subjects' performance was questioned: (i) The relative frequency of one meaning of the homograph as compared to the other meaning; (ii) The lexical/syntactic ambiguity (“ball”/“can”); (iii) The same/different phonological forms of the two meanings (“fair”/“bass”). The results are discussed in the framework of a model in which multiple special-purpose procedures are involved in normal processing, some of them being differentially impaired by brain disease in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics.     

Cognitive and projective measures of differentiation and their relationship to empathy

The present investigation compared cognitive and projective methods of assessing “differentiation,” Witkin's Embedded Figures Test (EFT) and Blatt's Concept of the Object Scale (COS), and reexamined expectations concerning the relationship between level of differentiation and capacity for empathy. Whether lesser or greater differentiation would promote empathy was of specific interest. Two forms of empathy were investigated, an “affective” form assessed by the Mehrabian Empathy Scale and a “cognitive” form assessed by the Hogan Empathy Scale. Expected sex differences in differentiation and empathy were also investigated. Results demonstrated consonance between COS and EFT measures of differentiation within the male sample only (p < .05). Individuals classified by EFT as relatively less differentiated (“field dependent”) produced more part object responses (p < .02) and those classified as more differentiated (“field independent”) showed a trend toward more whole object responses (p < .10) on the COS. Associations between measures of differentiation and empathy reached significance or showed trends in the male group only. Men with relatively lesser differentiation on the EFT (“field dependent”) showed greater “affective empathy” (p < .10) and men with greater differentiation on the COS showed greater “cognitive” empathy (p < .05). Women demonstrated higher levels of “affective” empathy than men (p < .001).     

A reexamination of body build stereotypes

Using semantic differential and discriminant analysis techniques, the study sought to determine (a) the existence of body build stereotypes, (b) the extent of identification with these stereotypes, and (c) the effect of identification upon the child's self-evaluation. The subjects were 406 children in Grades four to eight from a midwestern community. All subjects were white and had predominantly middle-class backgrounds. Subjects completed the Piers-Harris Children's Self Concept Scale, semantic differential ratings of the Global self-concept, and the body build concepts of “SKINNY GIRL,” “FAT GIRL,” “SKINNY BOY,” and “FAT BOY,” and the situationally specific self-concepts of “MYSELF IN THE CLASSROOM,” “MYSELF AT LUNCH/RECESS,” and “MYSELF WHEN LOOKING IN A MIRROR,” Measures of weight and height were obtained using a standard weighing scale and wall chart. Fat child and skinny child stereotypes were found to be invariant across age and sex groups and did not appear to be gender specific. Actual fatness was found to be generally related to identification with the body build stereotypes, but not strongly so. Low self-esteem was a concomitant of identification with the fat child stereotype. The majority of children identified with the average child in all settings.     

Perceived Sources of Happiness: A Network Analysis

This study investigated the perceived sources of happiness among young men and women. Rank scores of the perceived reasons for happiness were compared between the two groups and seven significant differences were discerned. Men ranked “sexual activity”, “sports”, being “liked” and having a “good social life” significantly higher than women. Women ranked “helping others”, having a “close family” and being “loved by loved ones” significantly higher than men. A modified form of network analysis was also conducted. Both networks demonstrated similar core representations of happiness with a focus on self-confidence, being free of stress, occupational and social factors, family support and personal relationships. However, the networks show an association between sexual activity and male personal relationships, whereas emotional factors are associated with female personal relationships. The male network also demonstrates the importance of sports and physical activity in male happiness. Despite some gender differences, it is suggested that the similarities within the mean rank scores and networks form the core elements of a shared social representation of happiness.     

Personality, anxiety and functional dysphonia

Psychological factors are considered for the predisposition and perpetuation of functional dysphonia. In the present study 61 patients with functional dysphonia were compared with 61 healthy controls, matched by age, sex, and occupation with respect to Cloninger’s personality model, mood, and anxiety.The patients with functional dysphonia presented significantly higher scores than the healthy controls with respect to “harm avoidance” (HA); depressive symptoms; symptoms of unspecific and general anxiety; symptoms of specific anxiety concerning “health”, “illness”, and “extraversion versus introversion”. No significant differences were found in “novelty seeking” (NS), “reward dependence” (RD), “persistence” (PE), or in state-anxiety and anxiety of social situations. These results were found considering univariate and multivariate analyses and confirm the relationship of psychological factors such as personality traits, mood, and anxiety on one hand and conversion disorder in general and functional dysphonia in particular on the other hand. This important relationship should be considered in the diagnostic and therapeutic interventions of functional dysphonia.     

Identifying components of type-A behaviour: “toxic” and “non-toxic” achieving

Measures of the Type-A behaviour pattern (TABP) have generally failed to distinguish between different components of the construct, some of which may not constitute risk factors at all. Based on the responses of a total of 632 subjects, the present paper reports on the development of student and working adult questionnaires which comprise discrete and unambiguous indices of “toxic” and “non-toxic” behaviour. Both components reflect high achievement motivation, but in the toxic scale this is compounded by hostile competitiveness and impatience. The scales were related in predictable ways to other relevant indices of personality, and while the toxic factor was significantly associated with deterioration in health status during adaptation, the non-toxic factor conferred a protective effect.     

Voice onset time production and perception in apraxic subjects

This study explored the relationship between the perception and production of voice onset time (VOT) in apraxic subjects. Spectrograms of the words, “bees” and “peas” spoken by apraxic subjects were acoustically analyzed to obtain a measure of VOT. The subjects also identified the initial cognate (“b” or “p”) from synthetically generated speech spanning a voiced to voiceless time continuum. The results suggest that apraxic subjects have production as well as perceptual errors in the voicing feature but no significant relationship was found between the two measures.     

The Inwald Personality Inventory (IPI) and Hilson Research inventories: Development and rationale

This article provides a “behind-the-scenes” account of how and why the Inwald/ Hilson tests were developed. Since the 1970s, personality testing has been adapted and customized for use in selecting applicants for different occupations, including police, public safety, fire and emergency services personnel. The author developed the Inwald Personality Inventory (IPI) in 1979 as the first comprehensive behaviorally-based personality measure designed and validated specifically for use in high risk occupations, such as law enforcement. Over time, studies consistently demonstrated that the IPI was a better predictor of poor job performance than were traditional tests of psychopathology. While antisocial behavior patterns and characteristics measured by the IPI predicted poor job performance, there also developed a need for measures that would predict above-average/excellent performance in the workplace. In 1988, the author designed and validated the first comprehensive test of “positive” work-related characteristics or “emotional IQ,” the Hilson Personnel Profile/Success Quotient (HPP/SQ). Other instruments followed, including the Inwald Survey 5 — Revised (IS5-R) with questions added on domestic violence. This article describes the theoretical rationale, development and validation of several instruments developed by the author and now widely used for high risk occupations and for screening corporate managers and key personnel in occupational settings.     

Stimulus Characteristics Determine Processing Approach on Random Array Letter-Cancellation Tasks

Target-to-distractor ratio strongly influences performance on typical random array letter cancellation tasks, suggesting that a “controlled” processing approach is used. This study was designed to determine whether “automatic” processing could be also demonstrated in the random array cancellation paradigm by changing the perceptual characteristics of the stimuli. Thirty-two healthy subjects sequentially performed four random array cancellation tasks with 50 and 100 stimuli. The letters “I” or “O' were targets and “L” served as the distractor. Performance was measured by the number of correctly canceled targets divided by the time to completion, corrected for accuracy. There was a strong effect of the number of stimuli on forms using I targets (p< .00001), but not for O's (p= .15) Performance scores were lower for I target forms than for O targets. These findings demonstrate that performance approximating “automatic” processing can also be elicited on clinically useful, office-based, or bedside tests such as random array cancellation.