Identifying Causes of Disagreement Between Self-Reports and Spouse Ratings of Personality

Self-reports and spouse ratings of personality traits typically show less-than-perfect agreement, but powerful moderators of agreement have not yet been identified. In Study 1, 47 married couples completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory to describe themselves and their spouses. Extent of agreement was not consistently moderated by response sets; the age, intelligence, or education of the respondent; or the length or quality of the relationship. In Study 2 these couples were interviewed about reasons for substantial disagreements, and an audiotape was content-analyzed. Sixteen reasons were reliably coded, including idiosyncratic understanding of items, reference to different time frames or roles, and unavailability of covert experience to the spouse. Faking good, assumed similarity, and other variables prominent in the psychometric literature were relatively unimportant. Findings (1) suggest that attempts to improve the validity of self-reports and ratings may need to be refocused and (2) underscore the desirability of routinely obtaining multiple sources of information on personality.     

The indirect McCollough effect: An examination of an associative account

It has been found that viewing, for example, a red-and-black vertical grating alternating with a green homogeneous field produces a color aftereffect—a McCollough effect—on a black-and-white vertical grating (i.e., green). Viewing such colored patterns also produces an aftereffect on a noninduced horizontal grating (i.e., pink)—the indirect McCollough effect. Humphrey, Dodwell, and Emerson (1989) argued that the indirect McCollough effect is caused by opponent properties of the visual system that organize the processing of contour and color along contrasting, probably orthogonal, dimensions. Recently, however, their interpretation of the indirect McCollough effect has been challenged by some findings of Eissenberg, Allan, Siegel, and Petrov (1995). These researchers have proposed that the indirect McCollough effect, like the McCollough effect, can be explained by associative principles. The results reported here question crucial aspects of the hypothesis of Eissenberg et al.     

Coping strategies and psychological distress in cancer patients before autologous bone marrow transplant

The increased use of bone marrow transplantation (BMT) to treat a variety of cancers has led researchers to study psychological functioning of BMT patients. The majority of studies conducted, however, has focused on adjustment after transplantation. Cancer patients' use of coping strategies before undergoing this procedure may also relate to levels of psychological distress. Our aims were (1) to provide normative coping data, controlling for situation-specific variables with a homogeneous sample, targeted stressor, and fixed time point, using the Ways of Coping Questionnaire; and (2) to identify coping strategies associated with distress before high-dose chemotherapy. Subjects were 49 patients scheduled to receive high-dose chemotherapy and an autologous bone marrow transplant. Consistent with previous coping research, we found that escape-avoidance was related to psychological distress on several measures. Item endorsement analyses of the escape-avoidance subscale suggest that patients may have used more passive than active avoidance strategies. Subsequent participation in a longitudinal study was not affected by initial levels of avoidant coping.     

THE EFFECTS OF MEAL SCHEDULE AND QUANTITY ON PROBLEMATIC BEHAVIOR

We present 2 case examples that illustrate the effects of meal schedule and quantity on displays of problematic behavior. In the first example, self-injury displayed by a toddler with severe developmental delays was maintained by parent attention, but only when he was satiated for food. When he was food deprived, self-injury decreased but did not appear to be differentiated across low or high social conditions. In the second example, crying and self-injury displayed by an elementary-aged girl with severe disabilities were correlated: Both behaviors were associated with food quantity, and neither behavior was responsive to social stimuli. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that meal schedule or food quantity can affect problematic behavior. In the present studies, brief functional analyses of aberrant behavior provided useful information for interpreting distinct patterns of behavior displayed by each child. We discuss these results in terms of the concept of establishing operations.     

Hermeneutic listening: An approach to understanding in multicultural conversations

Listening is crucial to reaching multicultural understanding. Borrowing from the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer we develop a hermeneutics of listening. To listen we must risk our prejudices, but these prejudices constitute our very identity. In this paper we attempt to answer the question, “Why Listen?” if listening is such a potentially dangerous activity.     

Preschoolers' responses to ongoing interadult conflict: The role of prior exposure to resolved versus unresolved arguments

Children's past experiences with interadult conflict are likely to influence their responses to ongoing arguments. Preschoolers' (4- to 5-year-olds) responses to interadult conflict were examined as a function of experimentally manipulated histories of exposure to resolved and unresolved arguments. Children were presented with two live arguments that were either resolved or unresolved, then they were presented with a third argument that was interrupted in progress (i.e., unresolved), and they were interviewed next. Children's overt-behavioral responses were videotaped and coded for distress level. The results support the notion that past experiences with conflict resolution ameliorate children's distress responses to ongoing arguments. In comparison to children previously exposed to unresolvedconflict, those exposed to a history of resolveddisputes were morelikely to (a) exhibit lowered behavioral distress, (b) predict a lower likelihood of a conflictual outcome for the couple's argument, (c) report less negative perceptions of the arguing adults, and were lesslikely to (d) endorse intervention in conflict through attempts to stop the disputes; (c) and (d) pertained only to girls. This research was supported in part by a Research Grant-in-Aid Award from Auburn University to the first author. We wish to thank the families for contributing their time and effort to this project and Jennifer Gibson and Linda Nicolotti for coding the overt-behavioral data.     

ACCURACY AND DISTORTION IN MEMORY FOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADES

Abstract— The relation between accuracy and distortion of autobiographical memory content was examined by verifying 3,220 high school grades recalled by 99 college students. Accuracy of recall declined monotonically with letter grade, from 89% for grades of A to 29% for grades of D. The positive correlation between achievement and accuracy of recall is attributed to more frequent rehearsals of affectively positive content and to greater accuracy of reconstructive inferences based on homogeneous, generic memories. Most errors inflated the verified grade, and the degree of asymmetry of the error distribution is used as an index of the degree of distortion. Distortions are attributed to reconstructions in a positive, emotionally gratifying direction. Contrary to expectation, the percentage of accurate recall and the degree of asymmetry of the error distribution were uncorrelated. This finding indicates that the process of distortion does not cause forgetting of the veridical content Rather, distortion reflects bias in reconstructive inferences that occur after the veridical content has been forgotten for other reasons     

Spatial ability and handedness

The relationship between preferred handedness and spatial visualization was examined for 124 female and 229 male undergraduate students. Handedness and spatial ability were used in the design as continuous variables. Other variables examined were sex of subject and family history of sinistrality. Spatial ability was found to be systematically related to measured handedness, familial left-handedness, and sex of subject. Males outperformed females at all levels of handedness. The lowest performance was obtained by subjects who were either extremely left-handed or extremely right-handed. The highest scores were obtained by individuals with left-handed relatives and whose handedness scores were in the range considered mixed or slightly right-handed. The results suggest that decreased hemispheric specialization is associated with increased spatial ability.