Personality,Self-Concept,Interests, and Intelligence: Which Construct Doesn't Fit?

ABSTRACT Evaluation of overlap among correlational construct families provides a basis for cross-fertilization in each of the four separate individual-differences domains. This article provides some new insights on Thorndike's claim that superiority in one trait implies superiority in other traits. Definitions and methodological differences among correlational domains of inquiry are reviewed from modern investigations of personality, self-concept, interests, and intelligence. Sources of overlap between personality and other trait families are discussed and four trait complexes are reviewed: social, clerical/ conventional, science/math, and intellectual/cultural. Implications of the trait-complex approach and challenges to integrative research approaches to applied problems are presented.     

Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When,Where, and Why?

How big are gender differences in personality and interests, and how stable are these differences across cultures and over time? To answer these questions, I summarize data from two meta-analyses and three cross-cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men). In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people-oriented and less thing-oriented than men. Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender-egalitarian societies than in gender-inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences.     

Can Infants Have Interests in Continued Life?

The philosophers Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan hold variations of the view that infant interests in continued life are suspect because infants lack the cognitive complexity to anticipate the future. Since infants cannot see themselves as having a future, Singer argues that the future cannot have value for them, and McMahan argues that the future can only have minimal value for an infant. This paper critically analyzes these arguments and defends the view that infants can have interests in continuing to live. Even though infants themselves lack a strong psychological connection to the future, others who are involved in an infant’s life can anticipate, on an infant’s behalf, the kind of future that awaits the infant, and on the basis of this insight judge that continuing to live would be in the infant’s interests. After defending this position, I argue that this position on the interests of infants in continued life does not commit one to opposing abortion, and it does not commit one to the view that our ethical obligations to protect the lives of sentient animals are the same as our ethical obligations to protect infant lives.     

Interests without history? Some difficulties for a negative Aristotelianism

This paper focuses on 3 features of Freyenhagen's Aristotelian version of Adorno. (a) It challenges the strict negativism Freyenhagen finds in Adorno. If we have morally relevant interests in ourselves, it is implicit that we have a standard by which to understand what is both good and bad for us (our interests). Because strict negativism operates without reference to what is good, it seems to be detached from real interests too. Torture, it is argued, is, among other things, a violation of those interests. (b) Freyenhagen identifies the “impulse” in Adorno as an untutored yet moral reaction to morally demanding situations. The plausibility of this primitivism and its compatibility with Adorno's general worries about immediacy are considered. (c) The disruptive character of Adorno's version of the categorical imperative, its willingness to complicate action through wholesale reflection on the norms of what we are committing ourselves to, is set in contrast with Freyenhagen's Aristotelian claim that certain notions, such as “humanity,” cannot be intelligibly questioned.     

Who Likes Competent Women? Competence,Sex-Role Congruence of Interests,and Subjects' Attitudes Toward Women as Determinants of Interpersonal Attraction1

Men (N= 264) and women (N= 343) students were shown one of 4 videotape versions of a female stimulus person (SP) being interviewed. The SP portrayed a Competent or Incompetent individual who was Feminine or Masculine in her interests. The S s, who had previously been given an Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS, Spence & Helmreich, 1972) rated the SP on several characteristics, including likability. A 2 × 2 ANOVA indicated that women S s significantly preferred the Competent and the Masculine SPs. For men, the variables interacted significantly, the Masculine-Competent SP being liked most, the Masculine-Incompetent least, and the two Feminine SP s being intermediate and similar to each other. When S s' AWS scores (high, medium, or low) were included, complex interactions were found between AWS and experimental condition, especially in the male groups.     

Multipotential Abilities and Vocational Interests in Gifted Adolescents: Fact or Fiction?

The widely held view that highly intellectually gifted adolescents are multipotential in their abilities and career interests was investigated in two samples (N = 322 and N = 217) of gifted high school seniors. Three measures of intellectual abilities—verbal, mathematical, and mechanical—and a measure of vocational interest based upon nonacademic talented activities and accomplishments that yielded scores for vocational interest in three areas—Science, Social, and Artistic—were administered. Contrary to the widely held view, a very large proportion of intellectually gifted adolescents reported a differentiated pattern of both abilities and interests, and a very small proportion reported the expected high-flat ability and interest profiles. The findings suggest that the working assumptions of career education and counselling of intellectually gifted adolescents should perhaps be reconsidered.     

Indeterminate Interests: Comments on Justin Remhof’s Nietzsche’s Constructivism

Philosophia - In his book Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects Justin Remhof defends, using resources from Nietzsche’s thought, the constructivist view that all...     

Are Gender Differences in Vocational Interests Universal?: Moderating Effects of Cultural Dimensions

Are men and women more similar or different in their interests in careers? This question has propelled decades of research into the association between gender and vocational interests. However, our understanding of this question in an international context remains limited. In this study, we examined gender differences in vocational interests across national and cultural contexts by exploring whether national cultural dimensions would be associated with gender differences in the structure and mean levels of vocational interests in people/things, ideas/data, and prestige. Our findings support similarity in the structure of vocational interests for men and women across 42 countries based on two major models on interests. General trends of gender differences in interests emerge such that in comparison to men, women tend to report a large preference for working with people (versus things; d = 1.04), and smaller preferences for working with ideas (versus data; d = 0.29) and with prestige (d = 0.18). National cultural dimensions appear to moderate gender differences in interests beyond the influences of national gender inequality. Specifically, gender differences in interests in people (versus things) tend to be larger in countries of higher uncertainty avoidance and higher indulgence whereas gender differences in ideas (versus data) tend to be larger in countries of higher indulgence, uncertainty avoidance, and lower power distance. This study highlights how a better conceptualization of the influences of culture can inform vocational psychologists, gender studies researchers, and career counselors’ work with men and women in understanding their vocational interests.

     

Attitudes about Affirmative Action for Women: The Role of Children in Shaping Parents’ Interests

This paper uses pooled cross-sectional data from the 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006 General Social Surveys (GSS), a nationally representative sample of the U.S. adult population, to assess how employed parents’ attitudes about affirmative action for women are influenced by their children’s gender. The analytic sample includes 1,695 employed respondents. Findings based on logistic regression indicate that having daughters (and no sons) magnifies employed mothers’ support for affirmative action for women and minimizes employed fathers’ support. Conversely, having sons (and no daughters) does not suppress mothers’ support for affirmative action for women, nor does it differentiate men’s attitudes about affirmative action. We speculate about how these patterns in parents’ attitudes relate to self interest and group interest (i.e., their children’s future work experiences).     

Of Men and Money: Characteristics of Occupations that Affect the Gender Differentiation of Children’s Occupational Interests

Occupational interests become gender differentiated during childhood and remain so among adults. Two characteristics of occupations may contribute to this differentiation: the gender of individuals who typically perform the occupation (workers’ gender) and the particular goals that the occupation allows one to fulfill, such as the opportunity to help others or acquire power (value affordances). Two studies tested hypotheses about whether U.S. 6- to 11-year-olds show gender differences in their interest in novel jobs that were depicted as (a) being performed by men versus women and (b) affording money, power, family, or helping values. In Study 1, 98 children rank-ordered their preferences for experimentally-manipulated novel jobs, and they answered questions about their occupational values and the value affordances of jobs in which men and women typically work. In Study 2, a second sample of 65 children was used to test the replicability of findings from Study 1. As hypothesized, children were more interested in jobs depicted with same- than other-gender workers in both studies. Boys showed greater interest than did girls in novel jobs depicted as affording money in Study 1, but not Study 2. Explicit knowledge that men and women typically work in jobs that afford differing values increased with participants’ age.     

The Development of “Vocational Interests”: I. The Organization of Likes and Dislikes in Ten-Year-Old Children

Seventy-two black, white, and Mexican-American boys and girls enrolled in the Lansing, Michigan, Head Start program were administered the Purdue Self-Concept Scale for Preschool Children (PSCS), and their teachers rated their self-esteem on Coopersmith's Behavior Rating Form (BRF). A low positive correlation was obtained between the scores on these two techniques. Analysis of variance showed no significant differences by ethnicity or sex on self-esteem measured by either the PSCS or the BRF. Although the literature on ethnic and sex differences in self-esteem is contradictory, these findings suggest that group differences may be minimal.     

Ideas and Interests Embedded in the Making of Ontario’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act, 2006</Emphasis>

This paper examines the ideas-interests nexus in the making of Ontario’s Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act, 2006, designed to level the playing field for internationally trained professionals. It conceives of the legislation as the outcome of a discursive contestation between two interest-based alignments. The access coalition led by organized immigrant professionals and settlement service providers communicated a discourse around the non-recognition of foreign credentials, questioning it on moral and economic grounds. Alternatively, regulatory bodies built their discourse around the skills and experience requirements of professions, emphasizing public protection, and, as a condition of that, professional autonomy. However, despite its weaker economic base, the access coalition carried the day with the passing of the fair access legislation because it framed its ideas more effectively and thus struck a better chord with the general and policy public.     

Subdomains of Gender‐Related Occupational Interests: Do They Form a Cohesive Bipolar M‐F Dimension?

In four studies, with a total of 1780 male and 2969 female participants, subdomains of masculine and feminine occupations were identified from sets of occupational preference items. Identified masculine subdomains included "blue-collar realistic" (e.g., carpenter), "educated realistic" (electrical engineer), and "flashy, risk-taking" (jet pilot). Feminine subdomains included "fashion-related" (fashion model), "artistic" (author), "helping" (social worker), and "children-related" (manager of childcare center). In all studies, principal components analyses of subdomain preference scales showed that masculine subdomains were bipolar opposites of feminine subdomains. This bipolar structure emerged in analyses conducted on combined-sex groups, high-school boys, high-school girls, men, women, heterosexual men, gay men, heterosexual women, and lesbian women. The results suggest that, although there are distinct masculine and feminine occupational subdomains, gender-related occupational preferences, nonetheless, form a replicable, cohesive, bipolar individual difference dimension, which is not an artifact of studying mixed-sex or mixed-sexual-orientation groups.     

Engendering Culture: The Relationship of Gender Identity and Pressure for Gender Conformity with Adolescents’ Interests in the Arts and Literature

Research indicates that women are more interested in highbrow culture (i.e., the arts—art, music, and theatre—and literature) than men are. Current explanations for women’s higher involvement in highbrow cultural activities primarily focus on adults; overemphasize class-, work- and cultural capital-related explanations; and do not uncover the identity-related and interactional mechanisms behind the gendering of taste during socialization. In the present paper we use gender identity theory and a “doing gender” perspective to understand cultural taste differences between male and female adolescents. Using multilevel analyses on a random sample of 5227 Flemish 7th graders (M _age = 12.18) who completed a survey in their classrooms, we find that higher gender typicality (i.e., identification as a typical male or female) and higher pressure to conform to gender stereotypes are associated with slightly higher interests in arts-, theatre-, and literature-related activities for young women, but with much lower highbrow interests for young men. This difference indicates that identity-related processes and interactional conformity pressures are important mechanisms reinforcing the gendering of cultural tastes. Implications for research on gender, class, and cultural capital, as well as potential ways to make schools safe environments for the expression of gender non-stereotypical cultural tastes, are discussed.     

The Emergence and Evolution of the Expression “Conflict of Interests” in <Emphasis Type="Italic">Science</Emphasis>: A Historical Overview, 1880–2006

The tendency is strong to take the notion of "conflict of interests" for granted as if it had an invariant meaning and an ethical content independent of the historical context. It is doubtful however, from an historical and sociological point of view, that many of the cases now considered as instances of "conflicts of interests" would also have been conceived and perceived as such in, say, the 1930s. The idea of a "conflict of interests" presupposes that there are indeed interests in conflict. Conversely, as long as there is a consensus among the different groups involved, they will not conceive and even less denounce a given practice as being an instance of a "conflict of interests". In this article we will show that the content of the discussions over conflicts of interests has changed over time in close relation with the transformations of the research system. In other words: there are social conditions for the emergence of "conflicts of interests". The changing meaning of the notion is assessed by analyzing the presence of the expression "conflicts of interests" in the magazine Science over the past century. Three different meanings emerge and their content has evolved in close link with the changing structure of the relations between the scientific community first with the State and then with industry. It moved from a situation external to the scientific community to a debate going on inside the scientific community generated by the growing relations between university and industries.     

Who,What, When,Where, How,and Mostly Why?

SUMMARY

The death of a client by suicide was very emotionally destabilizing to this therapist. She worked hard to distance herself personally from the pain at first and at the same time she found herself overfocused on the “psychological autopsy.” She had difficulty accepting new clients and wanted to withdraw from a meaningful appointment to a state advisory committee. Only when she was able to identify with the client's pain and realize how that pain touched her own history of loss was she able to grieve productively. She realized that gender was relevant in her identification with the victim and in sorting out each of their histories of loss.