Personality and career success: Concurrent and longitudinal relations

The present research addresses the dynamic transaction between extrinsic (occupational prestige, income) and intrinsic (job satisfaction) career success and the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) of personality. Participants (N = 731) completed a comprehensive measure of personality and reported their job title, annual income and job satisfaction; a subset of these participants (n = 302) provided the same information approximately 10 years later. Measured concurrently, emotionally stable and conscientious participants reported higher incomes and job satisfaction. Longitudinal analyses revealed that, among younger participants, higher income at baseline predicted decreases in Neuroticism and baseline Extraversion predicted increases in income across the 10 years. Results suggest that the mutual influence of career success and personality is limited to income and occurs early in the career. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measuring the phenomenology of autobiographical memory: A short form of the Memory Experiences Questionnaire

The Memory Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) is a theoretically driven and empirically validated 63-item self-report scale designed to measure 10 phenomenological qualities of autobiographical memories: Vividness, Coherence, Accessibility, Time Perspective, Sensory Details, Visual Perspective, Emotional Intensity, Sharing, Distancing and Valence. To develop a short form of the MEQ to use when time is limited, participants from two samples (N = 719; N = 352) retrieved autobiographical memories, rated the phenomenological experience of each memory and completed several scales measuring psychological distress. For each MEQ dimension, the number of items was reduced by one-half based on item content and item-total correlations. Each short-form scale had acceptable internal consistency (median alpha = .79), and, similar to the long-form version of the scales, the new short scales correlated with psychological distress in theoretically meaningful ways. The new short form of the MEQ has similar psychometric proprieties as the original long form and can be used when time is limited.     

Food hoarding behaviour in the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus): Effects of body weight loss and hoard-size discrimination

Two experiments investigated some of the factors that influence food hoarding behaviour in the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus). In Experiment 1, hamsters given limited access to food failed to increase the amount of food they consumed at each meal. Instead, they exhibited a significant increase in the amount of food taken to hoard during the limited access period, and this permitted hamsters who were allowed to retain their hoard to maintain body weight at levels comparable to free-feeding controls. Hamsters that were not allowed to retain hoarded food rapidly lost body weight. There was also an inverse correlation between body weight and amount of food taken to hoard in all hamsters given limited access to food, suggesting that body weight loss was one factor directly related to increased hoarding during periods of limited food accessibility. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of hoard-size discrimination on food hoarding in hamsters by artificially manipulating hoard size. The results suggested that hoarding behaviour could be influenced by artificially depleting and repleting the hoard, and this factor appears to influence hoarding in the absence of any significant changes in body weight. These results are discussed in relation to the kinds of adaptive feeding strategies that hamsters may utilize in their natural environment.     

Quantitative evidence for distinct cognitive impairment in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa

It is generally agreed that at least some aspects of abnormal eating behaviour is indeed due in part to disordered cognition. The accumulated literature illustrates cognitive impairment in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). Yet beyond being inconsistent, these independent studies also do not reveal the magnitude of impairment within and across studies and fail to give due consideration to the magnitude of impairment so as to understand the severity and breadth of impairment and/or differences in cognitive profiles between patients with AN and BN. Hence, the present review on the subject sought to articulate the magnitude of cognitive impairment in patients with AN and BN by quantitatively synthesizing the existing literature using meta-analytic methodology. The results demonstrate modest evidence of cognitive impairment specific to AN and BN that is related to body mass index in AN in terms of its severity, and is differentially impaired between disorders. Together, these results suggest that disturbed cognition is figural in the presentation of eating disorders and may serve to play an integral role in its cause and maintenance. Implications of these findings with respects to future research are discussed.