Is the genetic structure of human personality universal? A cross-cultural twin study from North America, Europe, and Asia

This study examined whether universality of the 5-factor model (FFM) of personality operationalized by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory is due to genetic influences that are invariant across diverse nations. Factor analyses were conducted on matrices of phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations estimated in a sample of 1,209 monozygotic and 701 dizygotic twin pairs from Canada, Germany, and Japan. Five genetic and environmental factors were extracted for each sample. High congruence coefficients were observed when phenotypic, genetic, and environmental factors were compared in each sample as well as when each factor was compared across samples. These results suggest that the FFM has a solid biological basis and may represent a common heritage of the human species.     

An inferential approach to the knew-it-all-along phenomenon

Two studies tested the hypothesis that the knew-it-all-along effect may be the result of an inferential process. Specifically, that individuals use their feelings and experiences (e.g., "This question seems so familiar to me, surely I would have known the answer!") to infer their judgement. Drawing on subjective feelings such as certainty or perceptual fluency, individuals can use a provided actual value as an informational cue and draw inferences from it. Thus, the occurrence of the knew-it-all-along effect is expected to depend on the experienced feeling of confidence with a question. This feeling may indicate to an individual that he or she did know the answer; a total lack of such a feeling may suggest that he or she never would have known the answer. In the reported studies we both measured feelings of confidence (Study 1) and induced them by manipulating perceptual fluency (Study 2) to show that the knew-it-all-along effect proves to be a phenomenon of inferences based on these experienced feelings. Participants experiencing high confidence or high perceptual fluency more strongly assimilated their judgements to the provided values, than did participants experiencing low confidence or low perceptual fluency.     

Modal Ontology and Generalized Quantifiers

Timothy Williamson has argued that in the debate on modal ontology, the familiar distinction between actualism and possibilism should be replaced by a distinction between positions he calls contingentism and necessitism. He has also argued in favor of necessitism, using results on quantified modal logic with plurally interpreted second-order quantifiers showing that necessitists can draw distinctions contingentists cannot draw. Some of these results are similar to well-known results on the relative expressivity of quantified modal logics with so-called inner and outer quantifiers. The present paper deals with these issues in the context of quantified modal logics with generalized quantifiers. Its main aim is to establish two results for such a logic: Firstly, contingentists can draw the distinctions necessitists can draw if and only if the logic with inner quantifiers is at least as expressive as the logic with outer quantifiers, and necessitists can draw the distinctions contingentists can draw if and only if the logic with outer quantifiers is at least as expressive as the logic with inner quantifiers. Secondly, the former two items are the case if and only if all of the generalized quantifiers are first-order definable, and the latter two items are the case if and only if first-order logic with these generalized quantifiers relativizes.     

Item Factor Structure of the Personality Adjective Check List

This study reports on a principal-components analysis of the Personality Adjective Check List (PACL) at the item level. Data came from a national sample of normal adults and included the responses-of 1,058 men and 1,194 women (N = 2,252). Analyses were conducted separately for men and women, and for the sexes combined. The scree test was applied to decide on the number of factors to extract. Retained factors were rotated by varimax and direct oblimin procedures. Results were very similar for each analysis, with coefficients of congruence for the five orthogonal factors obtained from men and women separately being .95, .92, .94, .94, and .92. The five unipolar personality dimensions isolated were interpreted as Aggressive/Dominant, Neurotic, Conscientious, Detached/Introverted, and Surgent/Extraverted. These were compared to item factors of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-I), MCMI-II, Adjective Check List (ACL), and to Norman's Big Five dimensions.     

Three Approaches to Interpersonal Behavior and Their Common Factors

This study examined the factor dimensions common to three different approaches to interpersonal behavior- the interpersonal circle, Millon's theory of personality, and a factor analytic (FA) approach. These were compared with the Norman (1963) "Big Five" factors. Measures employed were the revised Wiggins (1979) Interpersonal Adjective Scales, Strack's Personality Adjective Check List (1990), and the short form of the Lorr (1986) Interpersonal Style Inventory. Subjects were 146 college students (83 men and 63 women). A principal components analysis with varimax rotation revealed four distinct factors, based on a scree test, that accounted for 55.4% of the variance: Dominance-Submission, Extraversion-Introversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeable-Disagreeable. Each of the models measured the circumplex axes of dominance and affiliation, but only the Millon (1969/1983) and FA approaches measured more than these elements, with the FA paradigm most sufficiently addressing all four. Dominance-Submission, the largest factor, was not explicit in the Big Five. Results suggest that earlier studies isolating five factors of personality may not have adequately represented this dimension.     

Will you thrive under pressure or burn out? Linking anxiety motivation and emotional exhaustion

Can individual differences in the tendency to use anxiety as a source of motivation explain emotional exhaustion? We examined the effects of using anxiety as a source of energy or as a source of information (viewed here as two forms of anxiety motivation) on emotional exhaustion. In Study 1, the use of anxiety as a source of energy predicted decreased emotional exhaustion one year later. Moreover, both forms of anxiety motivation buffered people from the detrimental effects of trait anxiety on later emotional exhaustion. In Study 2, an experiment, participants who were instructed to use anxiety as a source of energy reported lower emotional exhaustion following a stressful task, compared to those instructed to focus on the task or to simply do their best. These findings suggest that using anxiety as a source of motivation may protect people against emotional exhaustion.     

Test of Motowidlo et al.'s (1997) Theory of Individual Differences in Task and Contextual Performance

This article examines 20 key issues related to the sliding band method of candidate referral in personnel selection. It does so in a point-and-counter-point format. Its purpose is to facilitate consideration of relevant issues, to correct what we believe are misconceptions and misunderstandings of the technical, legal, and social implications of the method, and to allow us to state our position on these issues clearly. Some scientists and practitioners may choose not to use this approach, but at least their decisions should be based on a clear understanding of the logic and technical basis for it.     

Explanation of Two Anomalous Results in Statistical Mediation Analysis

Previous studies of different methods of testing mediation models have consistently found two anomalous results. The first result is elevated Type I error rates for the bias-corrected and accelerated bias-corrected bootstrap tests not found in nonresampling tests or in resampling tests that did not include a bias correction. This is of special concern as the bias-corrected bootstrap is often recommended and used due to its higher statistical power compared with other tests. The second result is statistical power reaching an asymptote far below 1.0 and in some conditions even declining slightly as the size of the relationship between X and M, a, increased. Two computer simulations were conducted to examine these findings in greater detail. Results from the first simulation found that the increased Type I error rates for the bias-corrected and accelerated bias-corrected bootstrap are a function of an interaction between the size of the individual paths making up the mediated effect and the sample size, such that elevated Type I error rates occur when the sample size is small and the effect size of the nonzero path is medium or larger. Results from the second simulation found that stagnation and decreases in statistical power as a function of the effect size of the a path occurred primarily when the path between M and Y, b, was small. Two empirical mediation examples are provided using data from a steroid prevention and health promotion program aimed at high school football players (Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids; Goldberg et al., 1996), one to illustrate a possible Type I error for the bias-corrected bootstrap test and a second to illustrate a loss in power related to the size of a. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Job Performance as Multivariate Dynamic Criteria: Experience Sampling and Multiway Component Analysis

Questions about the dynamic processes that drive behavior at work have been the focus of increasing attention in recent years. Models describing behavior at work and research on momentary behavior indicate that substantial variation exists within individuals. This article examines the rationale behind this body of work and explores a method of analyzing momentary work behavior using experience sampling methods. The article also examines a previously unused set of methods for analyzing data produced by experience sampling. These methods are known collectively as multiway component analysis. Two archetypal techniques of multimode factor analysis, the Parallel factor analysis and the Tucker3 models, are used to analyze data from Miner, Glomb, and Hulin's (2010) experience sampling study of work behavior. The efficacy of these techniques for analyzing experience sampling data is discussed as are the substantive multimode component models obtained.