Self- and other-reports of traits from the five-factor model: relations to personality disorder

The current study used a psychiatric sample (N = 69) to examine: (1) the correspondence between self- and other-reports of general personality, as measured by the Five-Factor Model (FFM; Costa & McCrae, 1990), and personality disorder (PD) traits, as measured by a structured interview, (2) the relations between these two sets of ratings (FFM and PD traits) and consensus ratings of PD and impairment, and (3) the incremental validity of other-rated personality scores. Agreement between raters for the five domains of the FFM ranged from .23 (agreeableness) to .71 (openness); for the PD traits agreement ranged from .37 (avoidant) to .69 (antisocial). At both the domain and facet level, the personality profiles reflected in the correlations between the FFM scores and PD criteria were consistent across raters with the exception of narcissistic PD. Substantial evidence was found for the incremental validity of other-rated personality scores, with these ratings accounting for an additional 8 to 20% of the overall variance in PD features. The other-rated FFM scores also accounted for more variance in consensus ratings of impairment in the domains of romance, work, and social relations.     

Self- and peer perspectives on pathological personality traits and interpersonal problems

This study compares the relationship between personality disorders and interpersonal problems as obtained by self-report and peer-report measures. Participants (N = 393) were administered self- and peer-report versions of the Peer Inventory for Personality Disorder and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-64. Canonical analyses demonstrated similar relationships between personality disorder features and interpersonal problems as measured by either self or peer. Analyses between self and peer found little shared variance across sources, indicating a large method variance. Results indicate that although similar constructs are identified by self and peers in their understanding of personality pathology and associated interpersonal problems, self-report information overlaps very little with information obtained from peers, underscoring the importance of obtaining multiple sources of information.     

Do lonely days invade the nights? Potential social modulation of sleep efficiency

Loneliness predicts morbidity and mortality from broad-based causes, but the reasons for this effect remain unclear. Few differences in traditional health behaviors (e.g., smoking, exercise, nutrition) have been found to differentiate lonely and nonlonely individuals. We present evidence that a prototypic restorative behavior—sleep—does make such a differentiation, not through differences in time in bed or in sleep duration, but through differences in efficacy: In the study we report here, lonely individuals evinced poorer sleep efficiency and more time awake after sleep onset than nonlonely individuals. These results, which were observed in controlled laboratory conditions and were found to generalize to the home, suggest that lonely individuals may be less resilient than nonlonely individuals in part because they sleep more poorly. These results also raise the possibility that social factors such as loneliness not only may influence the selection of health behaviors but also may modulate the salubrity of restorative behaviors.     

Search performance with discrete-cell stimulus arrays: filtered naturalistic images and probabilistic markers

In order to partially fill the gap between search studies with artificial and naturalistic stimuli, experiments with segmented and spatially filtered images of real stimuli in the discrete cells of search arrays were conducted. RT × set size functions obtained with the spatially filtered arrays were compared with those obtained with geometric and other types of arrays. With the aid of Fourier analysis, components of target certainty/uncertainty, target-distractor similarity/dissimilarity, and distractor homogeneity/heterogeneity were evaluated for their effects on search performance and efficiency. The comparative effects of valid/invalid and ambiguous/unambiguous markers of search items were included in the experiments to probe the potential contributions of top-down and bottom-up control to search with naturalistic stimuli. Visual coding in the form of spatial frequency passbands and top-down preferences for distractor search were used to explain the results.     

Toward an Analytical Model of Ethical Decision Making in Plagiarism

Plagiarism by students is a common and worldwide phenomenon with a significant impact on our society. Numerous studies on the pervasive nature of plagiarism among students have focused on the behavioral aspects of plagiarism and how to prevent it. Based on an empirical study of a sample of 463 eighth graders in Hong Kong, this article offers an analytical model to understand the ethical decision-making process in plagiarism among students. Using this model, students' plagiaristic behavior can be analyzed in terms of their moral judgment, moral intensity, and perceived risks.     

Measuring consciousness in dreams: The lucidity and consciousness in dreams scale

In this article, we present results from an interdisciplinary research project aimed at assessing consciousness in dreams. For this purpose, we compared lucid dreams with normal non-lucid dreams from REM sleep. Both lucid and non-lucid dreams are an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness, giving valuable insights into the structure of conscious experience and its neural correlates during sleep. However, the precise differences between lucid and non-lucid dreams remain poorly understood. The construction of the Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams scale (LuCiD) was based on theoretical considerations and empirical observations. Exploratory factor analysis of the data from the first survey identified eight factors that were validated in a second survey using confirmatory factor analysis: INSIGHT, CONTROL, THOUGHT, REALISM, MEMORY, DISSOCIATION, NEGATIVE EMOTION, and POSITIVE EMOTION. While all factors are involved in dream consciousness, realism and negative emotion do not differentiate between lucid and non-lucid dreams, suggesting that lucid insight is separable from both bizarreness in dreams and a change in the subjectively experienced realism of the dream.     

Belief bias during reasoning among religious believers and skeptics

We provide evidence that religious skeptics, as compared to believers, are both more reflective and effective in logical reasoning tasks. While recent studies have reported a negative association between an analytic cognitive style and religiosity, they focused exclusively on accuracy, making it difficult to specify potential underlying cognitive mechanisms. The present study extends the previous research by assessing both performance and response times on quintessential logical reasoning problems (syllogisms). Those reporting more religious skepticism made fewer reasoning errors than did believers. This finding remained significant after controlling for general cognitive ability, time spent on the problems, and various demographic variables. Crucial for the purpose of exploring underlying mechanisms, response times indicated that skeptics also spent more time reasoning than did believers. This novel finding suggests a possible role of response slowing during analytic problem solving as a component of cognitive style that promotes overriding intuitive first impressions. Implications for using additional processing measures, such as response time, to investigate individual differences in cognitive style are discussed.     

A methodological note on evaluating performance in a sustained-attention-to-response task

We evaluated the influence of speed–accuracy trade-offs on performance in the sustained attention to response task (SART), a task often used to evaluate the effectiveness of techniques designed to improve sustained attention. In the present study, we experimentally manipulated response delay in a variation of the SART and found that commission errors, which are commonly used as an index of lapses in sustained attention, were a systematic function of manipulated differences in response delay. Delaying responses to roughly 800 ms after stimulus onset reduced commission errors substantially. We suggest the possibility that any technique that affects response speed will indirectly alter error rates independently of improvements in sustained attention. Investigators therefore need to carefully explore, report, and correct for changes in response speed that accompany improvements in performance or, alternatively, to employ tasks that control for response speed.