Personality for free: Psychometric properties of a public domain Australian measure of the five‐factor model

Fifty items from Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool were compiled to form a public‐domain measure of personality, the Australian Personality Inventory (API). Data from a random community sample (N = 7615) and a university‐based sample (N = 271) were used to explore psychometric properties of this 50‐item measure of the five‐factor model of personality (FFM). In both samples, internal reliabilities were adequate. In the university‐based sample an appropriate pattern of convergent and divergent relationship was found between scale scores and domain scores from the NEO Five‐Factor Inventory. After adjusting for an apparent response set (mean response across items), exploratory factor analyses clearly retrieved the FFM in both samples. It is provisionally concluded that raw scale scores from the API provide reliable estimates of the FFM, but adjustment for mean response across the 50 items might clarify the five‐factor structure, especially in less educated samples.     

Examining memory for heterosexual college students' sexual experiences using an electronic mail diary.

To examine memory for sexual expenences, the authors asked 37 sexually active, nonmonogamous, heterosexual college students to complete an e-mail diary every day for 1 month. The diary contained questions about their sexual behaviors. Six to 12 months later, they returned for a surprise memory test, which contained questions about their sexual experiences from the diary phase. They were asked about their sexual partners, the types of sexual experiences they had, and condom use. Participants underreported the number of partners they had, but they overreported both sexual experiences and condom use. The results have implications for both sexual health educators and for people who engage in high-risk sexual behaviors.     

Building false memories without suggestions

People can come to remember doing things they have never done. The question we asked in this study is whether people can systematically come to remember performing actions they never really did, in the absence of any suggestion from the experimenter. People built LEGO vehicles, performing some steps but not others. For half the people, all the pieces needed to assemble each vehicle were laid out in order in front of them while they did the building; for the other half, the pieces were hidden from view. The next day, everyone returned for a surprise recognition test. People falsely and confidently remembered having carried out steps they did not; those who saw all the pieces while they built each vehicle were more likely to correctly remember performing steps they did perform but equally likely to falsely remember performing steps they did not. We explain our results using the source monitoring framework: People used the relationships between actions to internally generate the missing, related actions, later mistaking that information for genuine experience.     

TEACHING CHILDREN WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER TO MAND FOR INFORMATION USING “WHICH?”

We examined a procedure consisting of a preference assessment, prompting, contrived conditioned establishing operations, and consequences for correct and incorrect responses for teaching children with autism to mand “which?” We used a modified multiple baseline design across 3 participants. All the children learned to mand “which?” Generalization occurred to the natural environment, to a novel activity, and to a novel container; the results were maintained over time.Key words: mand for information, verbal behavior, verbal operant, whichContrived motivating operations have been used to teach mands for information to children with autism, including the mands “what?” (e.g., Williams, Donley, & Keller, 2000), “where?” (e.g., Betz, Higbee, & Pollard, 2010; Lechago, Carr, Grow, Love, & Almason, 2010), and “who?” (e.g., Endicott & Higbee, 2007; Sundberg, Loeb, Hale, & Eigenheer, 2002). More recently, researchers have examined the effects of contriving establishing operations (CEOs) in four different ways to teach children with autism to acquire the mands “what?” (Marion, Martin, Yu, & Buhler, 2011; Roy-Wsiaki, Marion, Martin, & Yu, 2010) and “where?” (Marion, Martin, Yu, Buhler, & Kerr, in press). Like the mands “what?” and “where?,” the mand “which?” is a mand for information that gives the speaker the ability to gather specific information regarding an item (e.g., “Which book is mine?”). Given the dearth of research that has examined interventions to teach mands for information using “which?,” the purpose of the present study was to extend the work of Marion et al. (2011, in press) by contriving one of four CEOs for teaching the mand “which?” to children with autism, and to assess for generalization to the other CEOs, the natural environment, and over time.     

On the (non)persuasive power of a brain image

The persuasive power of brain images has captivated scholars in many disciplines. Like others, we too were intrigued by the finding that a brain image makes accompanying information more credible (McCabe & Castel in Cognition 107:343-352, 2008). But when our attempts to build on this effect failed, we instead ran a series of systematic replications of the original study—comprising 10 experiments and nearly 2,000 subjects. When we combined the original data with ours in a meta-analysis, we arrived at a more precise estimate of the effect, determining that a brain image exerted little to no influence. The persistent meme of the influential brain image should be viewed with a critical eye.     

Bodily knowing

This paper questions the view that knowledge must be articulable or at least experiential. It asserts that what distinguishes habitual yet intentional action from a mechanistic response is its grounding in a suitable claim to knowledge. However, it denies that a necessary condition for knowing how to perform an action is the ability of the subject to either articulate the particulars of that act, or experience it as appropriate.     

Conditional estimation of exponential random graph models from snowball sampling designs

A complete survey of a network in a large population may be prohibitively difficult and costly. So it is important to estimate models for networks using data from various network sampling designs, such as link-tracing designs. We focus here on snowball sampling designs, designs in which the members of an initial sample of network members are asked to nominate their network partners, their network partners are then traced and asked to nominate their network partners, and so on. We assume an exponential random graph model (ERGM) of a particular parametric form and outline a conditional maximum likelihood estimation procedure for obtaining estimates of ERGM parameters. This procedure is intended to complement the likelihood approach developed by  Handcock and Gile (2010) by providing a practical means of estimation when the size of the complete network is unknown and/or the complete network is very large. We report the outcome of a simulation study with a known model designed to assess the impact of initial sample size, population size, and number of sampling waves on properties of the estimates. We conclude with a discussion of the potential applications and further developments of the approach.     

The moderating role of subordinate political skill on supervisors' impressions of subordinate ingratiation and ratings of subordinate interpersonal facilitation

Nearly 2 decades ago, social influence theorists called for a new stream of research that would investigate why and how influence tactics are effective. The present study proposed that political skill affects the style of execution of influence attempts. It utilized balance theory to explain the moderating effect of employee political skill on the relationships between self- and supervisor-reported ingratiation. Additionally, supervisor reports of subordinate ingratiation were hypothesized to be negatively related to supervisor ratings of subordinate interpersonal facilitation. Results from a combined sample of 2 retail service organizations provided evidence that subordinates with high political skill were less likely than those low in political skill to have their demonstrated ingratiation behavior perceived by targets as a manipulative influence attempt. Also, when subordinates were perceived by their supervisors to engage in more ingratiation behavior, the subordinates were rated lower on interpersonal facilitation. Implications of these findings, limitations, and future research directions are provided.