Determinants of task performance and invested effort: a need for closure by relative cognitive capacity interaction analysis

This study examines the simultaneous effects of need for closure (NFC) and relative cognitive capacity on invested effort and task performance within the integrative analysis framework using behavioral data. Two main results were obtained. First, the authors revealed a significant interaction effect between relative cognitive capacity (manipulated through task difficulty) and NFC (manipulated through time pressure, noise, and fear of invalidity as well as assessed by an individual differences measure) on effort investment. Second, contrary to dispositional NFC, manipulations yielded a "dual effect" because they negatively affected task performance as well as invested effort. The latter result was interpreted as an indication that noise and time pressure manipulations also tax cognitive resources. The two main findings are discussed and the authors go further into the divergences between dispositional and manipulated NFC.     

A comparison of various authoritarianism scales in Belgian Flanders

The present study compared in a Flemish adult sample (N = 480) four recently developed authoritarianism scales as well as the widely used Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. Results revealed that all these measures were strongly related and that they showed relationships of comparable magnitude with various indicators of right‐wing ideology such as conservatism and racism, as well as with political party preferences. Analyses confirmed the superior fit of a multidimensional model for the scales that are assumed to have an explicit underlying multidimensional structure, but it was also revealed that there was little consensus on what these dimensions exactly mean. Finally, the results indicated serious problems of overlap between cultural conservatism and authoritarianism for some of the scales. Having relied exclusively on an empirical method for comparing the utility of these scales, the use of other criteria for a final assessment of the authoritarianism scales is elaborated upon. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Big Five personality development in adolescence and adulthood

The present article examines Big Five personality development across adolescence and middle adulthood. Two adolescents and their fathers and mothers from 285 Dutch families rated their own and their family members' personality. Using accelerated longitudinal growth curve analyses, mean level change in Big Five factors was estimated. For boys, Extraversion and Openness decreased and for girls, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness increased. Whereas mothers' Emotional Stability and Conscientiousness increased, fathers' Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability decreased. Differences in self‐ and other‐reported personality change were found, as well as interindividual differences in personality change. Results confirm that personality change is possible across the life course but these changes are not similar for all individuals and depend on the type of observer. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Extreme‐Right Voting in Western Europe: The Role of Social‐Cultural and Antiegalitarian Attitudes

The joint impact of antiegalitarian attitudes and social‐cultural attitudes on citizens’ tendency to vote for extreme right‐wing political parties was investigated. In the first study, we explored these attitudes in representative samples of seven Western European countries. In a follow‐up study, we predicted respondents’ likelihood of voting for a Dutch right‐wing party on the basis of the measures of social‐dominance orientation (as an indicator of antiegalitarian attitudes) and right‐wing authoritarianism (as an indicator of social‐cultural attitudes). Our findings demonstrated that voting for extreme right‐wing parties was associated more consistently with antiegalitarian attitudes than with social‐cultural attitudes. Moreover, the effect of antiegalitarian attitudes was partly mediated by migration attitudes (Study 1) and ethnic prejudice (Study 2). We discuss the finding that antiegalitarian attitudes are more strongly related to extreme right‐wing voting than social‐cultural attitudes.     

Age Differences in Conservatism: Evidence on the Mediating Effects of Personality and Cognitive Style

ABSTRACT The present study investigates the commonly found age–conservatism relationship by combining insights from studies on the development of personality and motivated social cognition with findings on the relationships between these factors and conservative beliefs. Based on data collected in Belgium ( N =2,373) and Poland ( N =939), we found the expected linear effect of age on indicators of social-cultural conservatism in Belgium and Poland and the absence of such effects for indicators of economic-hierarchical conservatism. We further demonstrated that these effects of age on indicators of cultural conservatism in both countries were (in part) mediated through the personality factor Openness to Experience and the motivated cognition variable Need for Closure. The consistency of these findings in two countries with a very dissimilar sociopolitical history attests to the importance of the developmental perspective for the study of the relationship between age and conservatism.     

Reliability and validity of the borderline personality disorder severity index

The psychometric properties and validity of the Borderline Personality Disorder Severity Index (BPDSI), a semistructured interview assessing the frequency and severity of manifestations of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) during a circumscribed period, were investigated in two studies. In study 1, patients with BPD (n = 15), with other personality disorders (PD; n = 18), and without Axis II disorders (but with Axis I disorders; n = 10) assessed with the SCID were interviewed with the BPDSI (1-yr. version). Patients also filled out a number of questionnaires. A second rater judged taped BPDSI interviews. The BPDSI appeared to yield highly reliable (ICC = .93) and internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha = .85) scores. The BPDSI strongly discriminated BPD patients from other patients, and was not related to other Axis II pathology. Concurrent and construct validity was excellent. In study 2, a version of the BPDSI suitable for use in treatment outcome research was investigated (3-month version) in a sample of 64 BPD patients, 23 Cluster C PD patients, and 20 nonpsychiatric controls. Again, reliability coefficients were excellent (ICC = 0.97; Cronbach's alpha = 0.93), and validity indices were good. Clinical norms were also derived. In a sample of 28 BPD patients, the instrument detected improvement during 6 months of psychotherapy.     

Psychometrics and Validity of the Dutch Experiences in Close Relationships–Revised (ECR–r) in an Outpatient Mental Health Sample

The Experiences in Close Relationships–Revised (ECR–r) is a self-report instrument to assess adult attachment style that seems to have appropriate psychometric qualities. The ECR–r has been most widely studied in student and community samples. In this study we report factor structure, reliability, and construct validity of the Dutch translation of the ECR–r in an outpatient mental health sample (N = 262). The original factor structure could satisfactorily be replicated, the reliability of the ECR–r was also stable over time, and there was good evidence for its construct validity.     

Openness as a Predictor of Political Orientation and Conventional and Unconventional Political Activism in Western and Eastern Europe

This study provides a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between Openness and political orientation and activism in Europe. Analyses were conducted on the 4 waves of the European Social Survey, including large representative samples in up to 26 European countries (total N > 175,000). In line with previous studies, a robust, positive relationship between Openness and left-wing political orientation was obtained in Western Europe. However, in Eastern Europe, the relationship between Openness and political orientation was weaker, and reversed in 3 out of 4 waves. Moreover, Openness yielded significant positive relationships with unconventional activism and to a lesser degree with conventional activism. The magnitude of the relationship between Openness and activism was dependent on political orientation and region. Stronger associations between Openness and activism were found for those having a left-wing orientation in Western Europe, whereas in Eastern Europe, Openness was somewhat stronger related to activism for those having a right-wing orientation. In the discussion we elaborate on the role of the geopolitical context in the relationship between Openness and political variables.     

A common first-order time-to-contact based control of hand-closure initiation in catching and grasping

To catch or grasp an object, the initiation of hand closure has to be coordinated with the relative movement between hand and object. In search of a common control of the initiation of hand closure for both tasks (van de Kamp, Bongers, & Zaal, 2010), the authors studied two tasks, catching while keeping the hand stationary and prehension. They showed that the initiation of hand closure could well be based on first-order time-to-contact in the prehension task but not in the catching task studied. The current study tested if the fact that the hand-object gap was closed at a linear rate made that the initiation of hand closure could not be explained on the basis of that same first-order time-to-contact in the catching task. In Experiment 1, the participants had to catch targets that approached at nonlinear rates while keeping the hand stationary. In Experiment 2, the participants were free to move their hand in catching the approaching objects, allowing the closure of the hand-object gap to occur at a nonlinear rate as it would in natural movements. The results showed that the first-order time-to-contact based control of the initiation of hand closure did apply in Experiment 2, whereas it did not in Experiment 1. It was concluded that constraining the catching task such that it became unfamiliar led to a hampered timing, thus obstructing the finding of the common control in the previous study, and in Experiment 1 of the current study.