Cross-cultural replication of the five-factor model and comparison of the NEO-PI-R and MMPI-2 PSY-5 scales in a Dutch psychiatric sample

The authors investigated cross-cultural replicability of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality as represented by the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) in a sample of 423 Dutch psychiatric patients. Also, NEO-PI-R domain scales were compared with the Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5; A. R. Harkness & J. L. McNulty, 1994) scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 2002). Principal-components analysis with procrustean rotation confirmed the hypothesized structural similarity of the present sample with the U.S. normative factor scores. All of the hypothesized relations between NEO-PI-R and PSY-5 scales were confirmed. The results provide evidence for cross-cultural replicability of the FFM and for validity of the NEO-PI-R and PSY-5 constructs in the psychological assessment of psychiatric patients.     

Environmental problems and the use of information: The importance of the policy context

Factual information plays a vital role in public awareness of environmental problems, and in governmental interventions that this awareness provokes. There is a growing need for new information to define and explore these problems, and to allow consequent political decision-making. This article examines the policy process, making a distinction between knowing and deciding. It will become clear that information and policy, both of which arise when a minimal level of problem-consciousness is reached, are the two important prime movers toward a better understanding and acceptance of environmental problems. Attention is given to information management as a prerequisite of communication management to influence attitudes and behavior, and to the role of communication in a total intervention-mix.     

Equivocations on knowledge systems theory: An actor-oriented critique

Knowledge systems theory, in our view, tends to obscure rather than illuminate an understanding of the fundamentals of knowledge processes in society. This tendency occurs primarily because both the theory, and the methodologies that are derived from it, fail to recognize that knowledge processes are social processes, and thereby that knowledge itself has to be envisaged as a social construction. As a result of this omission, knowledge systems theory and methodology can only deal poorly with issues of power and social conflict, and, at the same time, tend to make use of several inappropriate teleological and reifying notions. According to our view, the understanding of knowledge processes will benefit greatly from a more actor-oriented perspective. In such an approach, emphasis is accorded to human agency and the concept of multiple knowledge networks. Central purposes of actor-oriented methodologies then, are to clarify how actors attempt to create space for their own ‘projects’ and to determine which elements contribute to or impede the successful creation of such space for maneuver. Norman Long is a member of the Department of Rural Sociology of the Tropics and Subtropics at Wageningen Agricultural University, P.O. Box 8130, 6700 EW, Wageningen, The Netherlands. He is known for his work in the sociology of rural development. Magdalena Villarreal recently acquired her M.S. in “Management of Agricultural Knowledge Systems” at Wageningen Agricultural University. She is presently working on a Ph.D. proposal on issues of power, gender, and intervention.     

Perceptual-learning systems as conservative structures: Is economy an attractor?

Summary It is discussed whether information-processing or connectionist models might explain the law ofPrägnanz under constraints resulting from a physical interpretation of these models. An information-processing approach is contrasted with thermodynamics and, finally, an alternative approach more directly inspired by Gestalt is discussed. It is argued that this model could be physically realized with relatively moderate requirements on the substrate in terms of information-processing resources.     

The Structural Memory: A network model for human perception of serial objects

Summary The Structural Memory, a network model for human perception of serial objects, such as series, is presented. Our theoretical assumptions originate from the Structural Information (Theory (SIT) (Buffart & Leeuwenberg, 1983; Leeuwenberg, 1969), a theory concerning the perceptible structures in an object and the human preference for one of these structures. A symbolic notation of such a perceptible structure in an object is called a representation. For a given maximum number of symbols we can generate all representations automatically. From this procedure we define G(eneration)-relations between the representations. We also define S(tructure)-relations based upon the structures described by the representations. The representations and relations can be seen as respectively the nodes and links in a network. This network is the basis for the Structural Memory. We therefore assign an activation value to each representation in the network, expressing the strength of the preference for the described structure at a certain moment. By means of a process model we are able to make predictions for the strength of the preference for a perceptible structure in an object. The process is only based upon the network structure, because of a relation found between the preference measure, used in SIT, for a perceptible structure in an object and the number of G- and S-relations of the corresponding representation in the network. It is shown that with two of these process models some experiments by Van Leeuwen and Buffart can be simulated.     

The structure of social attitudes in three countries: Tests of a criterial referent theory(1)

A criterial referents theory of attitudes was tested cross-culturally by administering a social attitude referents (single words and short phrases) summated-rating scale, suitably “transformed”, to 500 graduate students of education in the United States, 470 mature students of psychology in Spain, and 270 students of the social sciences and a stratified random sample of 685 persons in the Netherlands. The theory claims a dualistic (two second-order factors) structure of social attitudes, thus challenging the common assumption of attitude bipolarity, which arises from the notion that differing attitude orientations oppose each other, e. g., conservatism versus liberalism. First-order factor analysis of the correlations among the items and second-order factor analysis of the correlations among the first-order obliquely rotated factors supported the theoretical predictions with certain exceptions. In general, the first-order factors of the referents scales contained only conservatism or only liberalism items; negative loading were mostly low in magnitude. Four similar conservative factors and four similar liberalism factors appeared in the three countries, with one, two, or three unique factors in each sample. The second-order factor analyses yielded two main orthogonal factors, one identifiable as conservatism, the other as liberalism; a third factor was complementary to one of the two main factors. Bipolarity was a relatively minor phenomenon. Thus the results indicated the empirical cross-cultural validity of the theory, but also the need for its further specification.     

Context influence on the perception of figures as conditional upon perceptual organization strategies

Two experiments tested the effect of context on figure perception. Subjects were shown rapid sequences of three figures: a prime, a whole, and a part. They were asked to decide if the third figure was a part of the second (Experiment 1) or if the second and third figures were the same or different with respect to a particular angle (Experiment 2). The prime served to establish a context for stimuli that followed to be compared. Priming had influence on the part—whole comparison in Experiment 1, but not on the local comparison in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 1 were interpreted as evidence for a role of prior information in perceptual organization. Experiment 2 showed that the task must require an integrative perceptual organization strategy for the priming effects to occur.     

What has happened to Prägnanz? Coding,stability, or resonance

Three theoretical measures of Prägnanz were compared with four data sets. The theoretical measures were a stimulus-coding one (structural information load, SIL), a measure related to within memory processes (stability), and one based on the interaction of perception and memory (resonance). The four data sets were obtained in two experiments and involved goodness rating, grouping, and immediate and delayed recall. A complete set of seven-element binary serial patterns was used in each experiment. Both SIL and resonance were shown to correlate reliably with the data sets across tasks. The resonance measure, however, performed best. Prägnanz thus appears to be explained better by resonance than by stimulus coding or memory storage. Resonance explained all systematic variance in the recall tasks, but not in the other tasks. Regarding these, partial-correlation analyses showed that the effect of stability could be fully reduced to resonance. SIL could not be similarly reduced. Therefore, additional perceptual constraints, other than resonance, would be needed for a complete account of goodness in the judging or grouping tasks.     

Evidence for a Data-Based Environmental Policy: Induction of a Behavior-Based Decision Support System

To advise policy‐makers about possible courses of action in the environmental domain, psychological science should employ a support system that allows for evidence‐based decisions with respect to the three generic policy questions: what, where, and how. The key to such a system is a measurement instrument in which environmental motivation becomes tangible in individual actions. In this article, we provide empirical examples of such a decision support system in the environmental domain. It consists of (a) evidence about environmental motivation of persons, (b) evidence about motivation's spatial distribution, (c) knowledge about the socio‐cultural conditions that affect individuals when they translate motivation into action (i.e. structural information), and (d) a forecast of the environmental impact—the concrete conservation potential of various behaviors. Pour conseiller les décideurs à propos de lignes de conduite possibles dans le domaine de l’environnement, la science psychologique devrait utiliser un système qui tienne compte des décisions provenant des trois questions génériques suivantes: quoi, ou et comment? La clé d’un tel système consiste en un instrument de mesure dans lequel la motivation environnementale devient tangible dans les actions individuelles. Dans cet article, nous prenons des exemples empiriques de telles aides à la décision dans le domaine de l’environnement. Peut être ainsi montré a) la motivation environnementale des personnes, b) la distribution spatiale de la motivation, c) l’influence de la connaissance des conditions socioculturelles des individus quand ils transforment motivation en action (i.e. information structurale) et (d) la prévision de l’impact environnemental sur le maintien potentiel de divers comportements.