Personality prior to disability determines adaptation: agreeable individuals recover lost life satisfaction faster and more completely

Personality traits prior to the onset of illness or disability may influence how well an individual psychologically adjusts after the illness or disability has occurred. Previous research has shown that after the onset of a disability, people initially experience sharp drops in life satisfaction, and the ability to regain lost life satisfaction is at best partial. However, such research has not investigated the role of individual differences in adaptation to disability. We suggest that predisability personality determines the speed and extent of adaptation. We analyzed measures of personality traits in a sample of 11,680 individuals, 307 of whom became disabled over a 4-year period. We show that although becoming disabled has a severe impact on life satisfaction, this effect is significantly moderated by predisability personality. After 4 years of disability, moderately agreeable individuals had levels of life satisfaction 0.32 standard deviations higher than those of moderately disagreeable individuals. Agreeable individuals adapt more quickly and fully to disability; disagreeable individuals may need additional support to adapt.     

Trait reappraisal amplifies subjective defeat, sadness, and negative affect in response to failure versus success in nonclinical and psychosis populations

Perceptions of defeat have been linked to a range of clinical disorders including psychosis. Perceived defeat sometimes increases in response to failure, but the strength of this association varies between individuals. The present research investigated whether trait reappraisal, a thought-focused coping style, amplified response to stressful events. Two studies (Study 1, n = 120 nonclinical participants; Study 2, n = 77 participants with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders) investigated whether trait reappraisal amplified feelings of defeat following an experience of failure versus success. Frequent reappraisers showed the largest increases in subjective defeat after failure versus success in both studies, with nonclinical participants with greater habitual reappraisal also showing larger increases in sadness and general negative affect. Frequent use of reappraisal may confer vulnerability to subjective defeat in response to stressful life events among nonclinical and clinical populations and could be an area for relapse prevention interventions to target.     

Families created through surrogacy: mother-child relationships and children's psychological adjustment at age 7

Each year, an increasing number of children are born through surrogacy and thus lack a genetic and/or gestational link with their mother. This study examined the impact of surrogacy on mother-child relationships and children's psychological adjustment. Assessments of maternal positivity, maternal negativity, mother-child interaction, and child adjustment were administered to 32 surrogacy, 32 egg donation, and 54 natural conception families with a 7-year-old child. No differences were found for maternal negativity, maternal positivity, or child adjustment, although the surrogacy and egg donation families showed less positive mother-child interaction than the natural conception families. The findings suggest that both surrogacy and egg donation families function well in the early school years.     

Preventing children's aggression: Outcomes of an early intervention

Mothers of medically at-risk infants were randomly assigned to a Healthy Start intervention (HV) or a cognitive reframing intervention (HV+). Outcome measures were taken at the conclusion of the intervention (1 year) and at the 3-year follow-up visit. At age 3, children in the HV+ condition (in comparison with those in the HV condition) showed fewer aggression problems (as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist). Maternal emotional unavailability (as measured by combined scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and avoidance items on the Conflict Tactics Scale) at the 1-year visit mediated the effects of the intervention on children's aggression at age 3. Findings suggest that an early, cognitively based intervention may lead to reduced child aggression as a result of increased maternal social-emotional availability within the caregiving relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Feeling good and feeling truth: The interactive effects of mood and processing fluency on truth judgments

Can mood states influence the perceived truth of ambiguous or novel information? This study predicted and found that mood can significantly influence people’s reliance on processing fluency when making truth judgments. Fluent information was more likely to be judged as true (the truth effect), and consistent with Bless and Fiedler's (2006) assimilative vs. accommodative processing model, negative mood eliminated, and positive mood maintained people's reliance on processing fluency as an indication of truth. Post hoc analyses confirmed the predicted mood-induced differences in processing style, as judges in a negative mood adopted more accommodative processing and paid greater attention to external stimulus information. The relevance of these results to contemporary affect-cognition theories is discussed, and the real-life implications of mood effects on truth judgments in applied areas are considered.     

How Are Personality Judgments Made? A Cognitive Model of Reference Group Effects,Personality Scale Responses,and Behavioral Reactions

This article suggests that personality judgments are wholly relative, being the outcome of a comparison of a given individual to a reference group of others. The underlying comparison processes are the same as those used to judge psychophysical stimuli (as outlined by range frequency theory and decision by sampling accounts). Five experimental studies show that the same person's personality is rated differently depending on how his or her behavior (a) ranks within a reference group and (b) falls within the overall range of behavior shown by other reference group members. Results were invariant across stimulus type and response options (7-point Likert scale, 990-point allocation task, or dichotomous choice). Simulated occupational scenarios led participants to give different-sized bonuses and employ different people as a function of context. Future research should note that personality judgments (as in self-report personality scales) only represent perceived standing relative to others or alternatively should measure personality through behavior or biological reactivity. Personality judgments cannot be used to compare different populations when the population participants have different reference groups (as in cross-cultural research).     

Causes of causes

When is a cause of a cause of an effect also a cause of that effect? The right answer is either ??Sometimes?? or ??Always??. In favour of ??Always??, transitivity is considered by some to be necessary for distinguishing causes from redundant non-causal events. Moreover transitivity may be motivated by an interest in an unselective notion of causation, untroubled by principles of invidious discrimination. And causal relations appear to ??add up?? like transitive relations, so that the obtaining of the overarching relation is not independent of the obtaining of the intermediaries. On the other hand, in favour of ??Sometimes??, often we seem not to treat events that are very spatiotemporally remote from an effect as its causes, even when connected to the effect in question by a chain of counterfactual or chance-raising dependence. Moreover cases of double prevention provide counterexamples to causal transitivity even over short chains. According to the argument of this paper, causation is non-transitive. Transitizing causation provides no viable account of causal redundancy. An unselective approach to causation may motivate resisting the ??distance?? counterexamples to transitivity, but it does not help with double prevention, and even makes it more intractable. The strongest point in favour of transitivity is the adding up of causal relations, and this is the point that extant non-transitizing analyses have not adequately addressed. I propose a necessary condition on causation that explains the adding up phenomenon. In doing so it also provides a unifying explanation of distance and double prevention counterexamples to transitivity.     

Shaping reality vs. hiding from reality: Reconsidering the effects of trait need for closure on information search

For tentative and final decisions on real and artificial issues, three studies revealed a positive relation between trait need for closure and selective approach to supportive (vs. unsupportive) information. Specifically, individuals with high (vs. low) trait need for closure selected more decision-supportive information and less decision-challenging information for viewing. Furthermore, Study 1 showed that the effect of trait need for closure functioned independently of authoritarianism and dogmatism, and Study 3 showed that the effect of trait need for closure on selective approach to decision-supportive information was mediated by a current concern to get closure on the experimental issue. These findings provide a new understanding of how trait need for closure shapes post-decisional information search and decision making.     

Lab support for strong reciprocity is weak: punishing for reputation rather than cooperation

Strong reciprocity is not the only account that can explain costly punishment in the lab; it can also be explained by reputation-based accounts. We discuss these two accounts and suggest what kinds of evidence would support the two different alternatives. We conclude that the current evidence favors a reputation-based account of costly punishment.     

Feminine charm: an experimental analysis of its costs and benefits in negotiations

The authors examined feminine charm, an impression management technique available to women that combines friendliness with flirtation. They asked whether feminine charm resolves the impression management dilemma facing women who simultaneously pursue task (i.e., economic) and social goals in negotiations. They compared women's social and economic consequences after using feminine charm versus a neutral interaction style. They hypothesized that feminine charm would create positive impressions of its users, thus partially mitigating the social penalties women negotiators often incur. They also expected that the degree to which females were perceived as flirtatious (signaling a concern for self), rather than merely friendly (signaling a concern for other), would predict better economic deals for females. Hypotheses were supported across a correlational study and three experiments. Feminine charm has costs and benefits spanning economic and social measures. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.