“Where You Lead,I Will Follow”: Partisan Cueing on High-Salience Issues in a Turbulent Multiparty System

The ability of parties to not only reflect, but actually shape, citizens' preferences on policy issues has been long debated, as it corresponds to a fundamental prediction of classic party identification theory. While most research draws on data from the United States or studies of low-salience issues, we exploit the unique opportunity presented by the 2013 Italian election, with the four major parties of a clear multiparty setting holding distinct positions on crucial issues of the campaign. Based on an experimental design, we test the impact of party cues on citizens' preferences on high-salience issues. The results are surprising: Despite a party system in flux (with relevant new parties) and a weakening of traditional party identities, we find large, significant partisan-cueing effects in all the three experimental issues, and for voters of all the major Italian parties—both old and new, governmental and opposition, ideologically clear or ambiguous.     

New Directions in the Conceptualization and Assessment of Personality—A Dynamic Systems Approach

In this paper, we demonstrate how an integrative approach to personality—one that combines within-person and between-person differences—can be achieved by drawing on the principles of dynamic systems theory. The dynamic systems perspective has the potential to reconcile both the stable and dynamic aspect of personality, it allows including different levels of analysis (i.e. traits and states), and it can account for regulatory mechanisms, as well as dynamic interactions between the elements of the system, and changes over time. While all of these features are obviously appealing, implementing a dynamic systems approach to personality is challenging. It requires new conceptual models, specific longitudinal research designs, and complex data analytical methods. In response to these issues, the first part of our paper discusses the Personality Dynamics model, a model that integrates the dynamic systems principles in a relatively straightforward way. Second, we review associated methodological and statistical tools that allow empirically testing the PersDyn model. Finally, the model and associated methodological and statistical tools are illustrated using an experience sampling methodology data set measuring Big Five personality states in 59 participants (N = 1916 repeated measurements). © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

True or False? Keying Direction and Acquiescence Influence the Validity of Socio-Emotional Skills Items in Predicting High School Achievement

What type of items, keyed positively or negatively, makes social-emotional skill or personality scales more valid? The present study examines the different criterion validities of true- and false-keyed items, before and after correction for acquiescence. The sample included 12,987 children and adolescents from 425 schools of the State of São Paulo Brazil (ages 11–18 attending grades 6–12). They answered a computerized 162-item questionnaire measuring 18 facets grouped into five broad domains of social-emotional skills, i.e.: Open-mindedness (O), Conscientious Self-Management (C), Engaging with others (E), Amity (A), and Negative-Emotion Regulation (N). All facet scales were fully balanced (3 true-keyed and 3 false-keyed items per facet). Criterion validity coefficients of scales composed of only true-keyed items versus only false-keyed items were compared. The criterion measure was a standardized achievement test of language and math ability. We found that coefficients were almost as twice as big for false-keyed items’ scales than for true-keyed items’ scales. After correcting for acquiescence coefficients became more similar. Acquiescence suppresses the criterion validity of unbalanced scales composed of true-keyed items. We conclude that balanced scales with pairs of true and false keyed items make a better scale in terms of internal structural and predictive validity.