Personality and mood: State-trait relationships

The scores of 33 subjects of the neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire correlated more highly with mood levels averaged over the 12 occasions studied than, on average, with mood scores on single occasions, and more highly with mood described in global terms than with scores on each of the original 18 mood scales. Subjects with high neuroticism scores had poorer mood on average and showed greater variation in mood pattern from one occasion to another than did more stable subjects. It is suggested that forms of relatively poor mood may be more varied than forms of good mood, and that, although neuroticism makes a poor mood more likely, the precise composition of this mood on any occasion may be determined by the combination of situation characteristics and person variables. Psychoticism scores correlated significantly, though weakly, with the average scores for some mood scales independently of neuroticism.     

Long-term retention of a theatrical script by repertory actors: the role of context.

Four actors were requested to perform Sartre's No Exit after a retention interval of more than 5 months. Their recall of the play was studied either with the spatial and visual contextual cues normally available during a performance or without such cues. Total recall was still considerable, equalling 85%. The number of paraphrases of, and inferences on, the original text was however quite large (32%), suggesting that the actors had learned their lines according to their meaning rather than as a result of rote memorisation. The context manipulation showed that actors' recall is facilitated by the availability of spatial-visual information, but only to a limited extent. The relative importance of textual and contextual cues in the long-term retention of a play is discussed.     

Self-monitoring personality at work: a meta-analytic investigation of construct validity

The validity of self-monitoring personality in organizational settings was examined. Meta-analyses were conducted (136 samples; total N = 23,191) investigating the relationship between self-monitoring personality and work-related variables, as well as the reliability of various self-monitoring measures. Results suggest that self-monitoring has relevance for understanding many organizational concerns, including job performance and leadership emergence. Sample-weighted mean differences favoring male respondents were also noted, suggesting that the sex-related effects for self-monitoring may partially explain noted disparities between men and women at higher organizational levels (i.e., the glass ceiling). Theory building and additional research are needed to better understand the construct-related inferences about self-monitoring personality, especially in terms of the performance, leadership, and attitudes of those at top organizational levels.     

Do boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have positive illusory self-concepts?

One hundred ninety-five boys with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were compared with 73 comparison boys (M = 9.83 years, SD = 1.30) on self-perceptions relative to a teacher-rated criterion. Emphasis was placed on ADHD subgroup comparisons according to level of aggression, academic achievement, and depression compared with control boys. Consistent with the authors' prediction, ADHD boys overestimated relative to teacher report, more than did controls, in the scholastic competence, social acceptance, and behavioral conduct domains. Examination of discrepancy scores (child rating - teacher rating) by comorbidity subgroups suggested that aggressive and low-achieving ADHD boys tended to overestimate their competence the most in the domains in which they were the most impaired. Results are discussed in terms of prior literature on "positive illusions" in ADHD children.     

Discrimination of individual vocalizations by black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla)

The auditory perceptual abilities of male black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla) were examined using an operant go/no-go discrimination among 16 individual vocalizations recorded at 5 m. The birds learned to discriminate about equally well among eight male chickadee fee-bee songs and eight female zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) distance calls. These results do not indicate that chickadees have a species-specific advantage in individual recognition for conspecific over heterospecific vocalizations. We then transferred the chickadees to a discrimination of the same songs and calls rerecorded at a moderate distance. These results showed accurate transfer of discrimination from 16 vocalizations recorded at 5 m to novel versions of the same 16 songs and calls rerecorded at 25 m. That is, chickadees recognized individual songs and calls despite degradation produced by rerecording at 25 m. Identifying individual vocalizations despite their transformation by distance cues is here described as a biologically important example of perceptual constancy.