Explicating the Dispositional Basis of the OCRDs: a Hierarchical Perspective

We examined the dispositional component of the obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCRDs) in a large adult sample. Our battery included two hierarchical measures of personality, which allowed us to examine relations with both higher-order domains and lower-order facets of the five-factor model. In addition, our study included multiple indicators of each OCRD, which enabled us to model them as latent factors. Principal factor analyses of these indicators revealed six dimensions: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Hoarding, Excoriation, Body Dissatisfaction, Trichotillomania, and Body Preoccupation. Body Dissatisfaction, OCD, and Hoarding showed the strongest links to personality, with the other symptoms displaying more moderate associations. Neuroticism was the strongest and broadest predictor of the OCRDs at the domain level, exhibiting significant positive relations with every symptom dimension except Body Preoccupation in both bivariate and multivariate analyses. Conscientiousness showed negative associations with Body Dissatisfaction and Hoarding, and was positively related to Body Preoccupation. Finally, openness was negatively linked to OCD at both the bivariate and multivariate level. In comparison to domain-level analyses, the lower-order facets jointly contributed an additional 11.8% (Excoriation) to 17.6% (OCD) of the criterion variance, with a mean increment of 14.2%. Three neuroticism facets—anger, self-consciousness, and impulsiveness—displayed robust positive associations with two or more OCRD symptom factors, but no lower-order trait contributed significantly in every analysis. Overall, our results indicate that—similar to most other forms of psychopathology—OCRD symptoms have a common component of elevated neuroticism.     

Valuing Happiness is Not a Good Way of Pursuing Happiness,but Prioritizing Positivity is: A Replication Study

Numerous studies confirm the merits of positive psychology. However, an emerging literature brings nuances, with one particular question concerning the impact of pursuing happiness: is this always positive? Some data suggest that an excessive level of valuing happiness may partly diminish the happiness felt, but that prioritizing positivity may increase subjective well-being. The aim of the present study was to replicate these findings. Participants (N = 683, 75% female) completed the prioritizing positivity scale (PPS) and the valuing happiness scale (VHS), as well as four well-being scales: the subjective happiness scale (SHS), the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS), the psychological well-being scales (PWB) and the center for epidemiological studies – depression (CES-D). Regression analyses showed that prioritizing positivity was positively associated with subjective happiness, life satisfaction and psychological well-being, but that it was negatively linked to depression. Opposite results partly emerged for valuing happiness. This cross-sectional study confirms that the way people pursue happiness, by prioritizing positivity or valuing it, may promote or partly hinder well-being.     

Personality,Positivity and Happiness: A Mediation Analysis Using a Bifactor Model

Recent studies suggested an important role of neuroticism and extraversion facets as incremental predictors of subjective well-being outcomes. Research has shown that positive cognitions mediated the relation between personality traits and well-being. The present study examined the relationship between neuroticism and extraversion, measured as general and group factors, and subjective happiness through a general positivity factor. 770 community participants (69.4 % females; M = 55.34; SD = 16.01) completed personality, satisfaction with life, optimism, self-esteem, and subjective happiness scales. A bifactor model was used to parse general and specific variance components for multifaceted constructs. The general positivity factor completely mediated neuroticism-subjective happiness relationships and overlapped with general neuroticism, whilst it partially mediated extraversion-subjective happiness ones. Other paths to happiness involved cheerfulness and enthusiasm. Assertiveness, activity level and excitement-seeking had a weak relationship with subjective happiness and only through positivity. Gregariousness and friendliness had neither direct nor indirect effects on subjective happiness. Life satisfaction had a twofold role as a component of positivity as well as providing an independent contribution to variance in subjective happiness. In keeping with previous research, neuroticism acted as a sort of general negativity factor. Cheerfulness and extraversion made an incremental contribution to variance in subjective happiness. Our findings support the utility of a multifaceted approach to study pathways from personality to well-being. Theoretical and practical implications for promoting well-being were discussed.     

Positivity and the Construction of Life Satisfaction Judgments: Global Happiness is not the Sum of its Parts

The present study investigated how reports of satisfaction with specific versus global domains can be used to assess a disposition towards positivity in subjective well-being reports. College students from 41 societies (N = 7167) completed measures of life satisfaction and ratings of global and specific aspects of their lives. For example, participants rated satisfaction with their education (global) and satisfaction with their professors, textbooks, and lectures (specific). It was hypothesized that global measures would more strongly reflect individual differences in dispositional positivity, that is, a propensity to evaluate aspects of life in general as good. At both the individual and national levels, positivity predicted life satisfaction beyond objective measures. Also, positivity was associated with norms about ideal life satisfaction such that countries and individuals who highly valued positive emotions were more likely to display positivity. The difference between more global versus more concrete measures of satisfaction can be used as an indirect and subtle measure of positivity.     

The Dispositional Nature of Phenomenal Properties

Topoi - According to non-reductive physicalism, mental properties of the phenomenal sort are essentially different from physical properties, and cannot be reduced to them. This being a quarrel...     

The Dispositional Sources of Job Satisfaction: A Comparative Test

This study related three personality taxonomies—positive affectivity and negative affectivity (PA and NA), the five-factor model (the "Big Five"), and core self-evaluations—to job satisfaction in an integrative test. In a longitudinal design with multi-source data, results indicated that the traits from all three taxonomies generally were significantly related to job satisfaction, even when the traits and job satisfaction were measured with independent sources. However, when all three typologies were examined concurrently, the core self-evaluations typology was the only typology that was significantly related to job satisfaction. The study extends research on the validation of these frameworks by assessing convergent and discriminant validity issues, and shows that core self-evaluations adds to our understanding of the dispositional source of job satisfaction.     

Dispositional mindfulness and perceived stress: The role of emotional intelligence

The present study examined the relationships between dispositional mindfulness, emotional intelligence and perceived stress using self-report measures. We administered the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), the Wong Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS), and the Perceive Stress Scale (PPS) to a non-clinical sample of Chinese adults (n = 380). The results showed that mindfulness was positively associated with four components of WLEIS, and negatively associated with perceived stress. Mediation analysis indicated that only the regulation and use of emotion components of WLEIS acted as mediators of the association between mindfulness and perceived stress. Effect contrasts showed no significant difference between the specific indirect effects through these two mediators. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

The Rationality of Happiness

Abstract

In his recent book, Happiness: personhood, community, purpose, Pedro Tabensky answers the question of what happiness is. He develops an Aristotelian account of happiness that, he claims, is everyone’s maximally rational ideal. Much of the support for this claim rests on what Tabensky calls the method of critical introspection. This method involves introspecting on the kind of beings that we are and the kind of lives we can thus lead. If properly carried out, Tabensky claims, critical introspection will reveal to any individual that the active life of virtue is in fact the maximally rational ideal. I argue that two features of Tabensky’s account undermine this claim. The first is his account of the method of critical introspection itself. The second is his account of the nature and acquisition of virtue developed in his analogy between living and painting, and in his discussion of the eudaimon community. Tabensky’s account of critical introspection carried out at the general level of persons shows only that it works negatively to identify the kind of lives we could not lead as persons. It does not function positively to reveal that the maximally rational life for any person is the active exercise of virtue. Tabensky does suggest that the method carried out by particular individuals will reveal the kind of life they should be leading. However, it follows from Tabensky’s account of the nature and acquisition of virtue, I argue, that critical introspection can only reveal the active life of virtue to be the maximally rational ideal for those individuals who have had the right sort of upbringing in the right sort of community.     

The Loreley of Happiness

Sara Ahmed has written a highly original book on happiness by not focusing on the content, but on the context in which the word happiness is used. Her chapters are titled Feminist Killjoys, Unhappy Queers, Melancholic Mirgants and Happy Futures. Ahmed convincingly shows that the pursuit of happiness may have unintended side-effects in different social contexts, and she has collected al lot of stories and ideas that provide a backbone for the book. The ideological critique provided by Ahmed would have been a lot stronger if she would have used data from empirical studies to judge her own ideas.     

The Heritability of Characteristics Associated with Dispositional Empathy

ABSTRACT This investigation used data from Loehlin and Nichols's (1976) study of over 800 sets of twins to examine evidence for the heritability of three facets of empathy: empathic concern, personal distress, and perspective taking. Expert judges first identified sets of adjectives, included within Loehlin and Nichols's original data, which reflected each empathy construct; these items were then validated in an independent sample. Comparisons of the responses given to these items by identical and fraternal twins in the Loehlin and Nichols investigation revealed evidence of significant heritability for characteristics associated with the two affective facets of empathy—empathic concern and personal distress—but not for the nonaffective construct of perspective taking. This pattern is consistent with the view that temperamental emotionality may underlie the heritability of affective empathy.     

When Goals Conflict But People Prosper: The Case of Dispositional Optimism

Optimistic persistence in pursuing goals may have beneficial consequences such as protection against negative affect and greater likelihood of goal attainment, but persistence can also result in greater likelihood of goal conflict, which can have negative consequences. Two studies, one cross-sectional (N = 100) and one longitudinal (N = 77), found that optimism associated with higher goal conflict. However, objectively rated goal conflict did not significantly undermine adjustment, and when balance among goal value, expectancy, and conflict was considered, optimism associated with better balance. In turn, balance accounted for part of optimists' better goal progress over the course of a semester. Although goal conflict may have costs, these costs appear to be offset by accompanying benefits, particularly for optimists.