Cognitive Decline Influences Emotional Creativity in the Elderly

Little is known about the relationship between emotional creativity and age-related cognitive decline. This study explored how deficits in some cognitive abilities are related to emotional creativity, i.e., cognitive abilities relating to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. One hundred and eighty-seven older adults (mean age = 63.2; 58.4% females) were administered the Emotional Creativity Inventory, the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, and the Cognitive Complaint Interview. As hypothesized, emotional creativity was negatively related to apathy and positively to disinhibition/emotional dysregulation. Several processes, such as apathy-related loss of interest, unconcern, subjective lack of energy, and changed perception of one’s disinhibited emotional reactions, may explain the observed results.     

Estimates of lay views about reversal multiple intelligences for self and others: Sex and cross‐cultural comparisons

This study focuses on lay conceptions of intelligence. It examined sex and cross‐cultural similarities and differences in estimated intelligences and beliefs about intelligence in two countries, Angola and East Timor, within the reversal theory framework. A total of 209 Angolan (109 women and 100 men) and 183 Timorese (89 women and 94 men) students were participated in this study. Participants completed a questionnaire in order to estimate their parents', partners' and own overall intelligence and the 8 reversal multiple intelligences (telic, paratelic, conformist, negativistic, autic mastery, autic sympathy, alloic mastery and alloic sympathy intelligence). Respondents also rated 6 questions about intelligence. Men rated their overall, conformist and autic mastery higher than women. Angolans rated their overall, telic, paratelic, conformist, negativistic, autic mastery, autic sympathy, alloic mastery and alloic sympathy intelligence higher than Timorese. In both countries, fathers have been perceived as more intelligent than mothers, and telic intelligence emerged as a significant predictor of overall intelligence. Principal component analysis of the 8 reversal multiple intelligences yielded one factor. Angolan participants revealed more IQ test experience than Timorese participants. Most of respondents in both countries did not believe in sex differences in intelligence. These findings are discussed by means of cross‐cultural literature.     

Personality and intelligence as predictors of creativity

Participants completed the Big Five NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992) as a personality measure, the Wonderlic Personnel Test (Wonderlic, 1992) as an intelligence measure, and four measures of creativity: Guilford’s (1967) unusual uses divergent thinking test; the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviours; a self-rated measure of creativity; and the Barron–Welsh Art Scale to measure creative judgement. Extraversion was significantly related to all four measures of creativity. Intelligence failed to add any incremental variance in predicting the creativity scores. Multiple regression indicated that up to 47% of the variance in divergent thinking scores can be accounted for by the Big Five personality traits. Personality correlates to creativity vary as a function of the creativity measure.     

Beliefs about the meaning and measurement of intelligence: a cross‐cultural comparison of American,British and Malaysian undergraduates

This study examined lay beliefs about intelligence cross‐culturally using a questionnaire based on an expert summary of what is known about intelligence. Two hundred and thirty five university undergraduates in Malaysia, 347 undergraduates in Britain and 137 undergraduates in the US rated for agreement 30 items about the nature, measurement, between‐group differences and practical importance of intelligence. An exploratory factor analysis revealed three factors: (1) stability, reliability and validity of intelligence tests; (2) practical importance of intelligence and (3) source and stability of within‐group intelligence. While the overall factor structure did not vary a great deal between groups, there were significant cross‐cultural differences on the mean scores for Factors 1–3. Explanations for cross‐cultural differences in implicit theories of intelligences are considered, and limitations of the study discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Patient preferences for psychological counsellors: Evidence of a similarity effect

This study sought to examine the individual difference variables that affect potential patient preferences for hypothetical psychological counsellors. A representative British sample of 257 adults indicated their preferences for eight psychological counsellors differentiated by sex, age, and training location. A five-way mixed analysis of variance (participant sex and age as within variables, and counsellor sex, age, ethnicity as between variables) indicated a significant main effect for only counsellors’ ethnicity. There were also sex and age interactions showing evidence of a matching hypothesis: participants preferred counsellors of their own sex and age. The implications of these findings are considered.     

Culture, trust, and social networks

Although the role of trust in group processes has been well established, less is known about the role of trust in social network processes. Trust, conceptualized to have generalized and particularistic aspects, was measured by generalized trust (people can be trusted in general) and relationism (people can be trusted if one has relationships), and their relations with social network characteristics of network homogeneity (extent to which one has a number of friends with similar attitudes) and network closure (extent to which one's social network is closed) were examined in three Western (Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and two East Asian countries (Japan and Korea). Although generalized trust was shown to be positively related to network closure across the five countries, generalized trust and relationism had different relations with network homogeneity in different cultures. The results were interpreted in terms of social institutional and cultural differences.     

Opportunities of student influence as a context for the development of engineering students’ study motivation

This longitudinal paper draws on data from a larger ongoing project and examines how students conceive of their opportunities to influence their study environment and how this may be related to their self-efficacy beliefs and their study motivation. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyze semi-structured in-depth interviews of 10 students of a Masters Program in Engineering. The results indicate that most students had confidence in their opportunities to influence their study environment and believed influencing could increase self-efficacy beliefs and study motivation. The high content of problem solving in courses was the principal motivator. Students that either perceived their opportunities to influence the study environment as not highly important or as satisfactory were more motivated and performed better than other students. Findings have implications for students’ motivation and performance if educators inform students of their formal and informal opportunities to influence their study environment.

Personality and individual difference correlates of positive body image

In the present study, 101 women and 106 men from a community sample of British adults completed the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS), along with a battery of individual difference measures and demographics. Contrary to previous findings, there were no sex differences in BAS scores, either before or after controlling for individual differences in other measures. The results also showed that, moderating for participants’ sex, self-assessed attractiveness, educational qualifications, neuroticism, extraversion, and BMI were all significant predictors of body appreciation. In addition, higher media consumption and higher (male-stereotypic) instrumentality were associated with, but did not predict, higher body appreciation. These results are discussed in relation to the extant work on body image.     

The Relationship of Trait EI with Personality,IQ and Sex in a UK Sample of Employees

The relationships among trait emotional intelligence (EI), personality, IQ and sex were investigated in a sample of 585 employees (478 males, 107 females). Participants completed the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, the Bar‐On Quotient Inventory (EQ‐i) and the Neuroticism–Extraversion–Openness Personality Inventory Revised. Bivariate correlations revealed significant associations between overall EQ‐i and Neuroticism (negative), Agreeableness, Extraversion, Openness and Conscientiousness (all positive). While there were no significant associations between overall EQ‐i and sex or IQ, significant correlations were observed when EI components were considered. Male participants scored significantly higher on Adaptability and females scored significantly higher on the Interpersonal facet. Moreover, IQ correlated with the Interpersonal composite in the male' sample. Results are discussed in the context of trait EI structure and its implications for interpretation of sex and IQ effects.     

Self- and other-estimates of multiple abilities in Britain and Turkey: a cross-cultural comparison of subjective ratings of intelligence

This study is part of a programmatic research effort into the determinants of self-assessed abilities. It examined cross-cultural differences in beliefs about intelligence and self- and other-estimated intelligence in two countries at extreme ends of the European continent. In all, 172 British and 272 Turkish students completed a three-part questionnaire where they estimated their parents', partners' and own multiple intelligences (Gardner (10) and Sternberg (3)). They also completed a measure of the 'big five' personality scales and rated six questions about intelligence. The British sample had more experience with IQ tests than the Turks. The majority of participants in both groups did not believe in sex differences in intelligence but did think there were race differences. They also believed that intelligence was primarily inherited. Participants rated their social and emotional intelligence highly (around one standard deviation above the norm). Results suggested that there were more cultural than sex differences in all the ratings, with various interactions mainly due to the British sample differentiating more between the sexes than the Turks. Males rated their overall, verbal, logical, spatial, creative and practical intelligence higher than females. Turks rated their musical, body-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence as well as existential, naturalistic, emotional, creative, and practical intelligence higher than the British. There was evidence of participants rating their fathers' intelligence on most factors higher than their mothers'. Factor analysis of the ten Gardner intelligences yield two clear factors: cognitive and social intelligence. The first factor was impacted by sex but not culture; it was the other way round for the second factor. Regressions showed that five factors predicted overall estimates: sex (male), age (older), test experience (has done tests), extraversion (strong) and openness (strong). Results are discussed in terms of the growing literature in the field.