Gone too far—or not far enough? Comments on the article by Ashton and Lee (2001)

Ashton and Lee argue that Honesty should be added to the Big Five model of personality as a sixth factor, and present a theoretical framework for interpreting Big Five factors and Honesty that helps make sense of the proposed six‐factor structure. The attempt by Ashton and Lee to go beyond the Big Five is applauded, but numerous problems are evident. Adding Honesty to the Big Five is plausible only if one ignores key assumptions that the Big Five model consists of independent factors that are candidates for pervasive lexical universals. The proposal does not take into account significant deviations from the Anglo‐Germanic Big Five that have occurred in emic studies of languages having their origin outside of northern Europe, nor potential substantive interpretations of the widely replicated Negative Valence factor. Future studies should seek improvements or alternatives to the Big Five in a way that keeps constituent factors well discriminated from one another and enhances the likelihood of ubiquity across diverse languages and cultures. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The contribution to immediate serial recall of rehearsal,search speed,access to lexical memory,and phonological coding: An investigation at the construct level

Rehearsal speed has traditionally been seen to be the prime determinant of individual differences in memory span. Recent studies, in the main using young children as the participant population, have suggested other contributors to span performance. In the present research, we used structural equation modeling to explore, at the construct level, individual differences in immediate serial recall with respect to rehearsal, search, phonological coding, and speed of access to lexical memory. We replicated standard short-term phenomena; we showed that the variables that influence children's span performance influence adult performance in the same way; and we showed that speed of access to lexical memory and facility with phonological codes appear to be more potent sources of individual differences in immediate memory than is either rehearsal speed or search factors.     

Belief in luck and luckiness: Conceptual clarification and new measure validation

Research on the dimensionality and measurement of luck beliefs has yet to produce a clear conceptual and metrical consensus. This research theorizes a bidimensional model of luck beliefs that is tested through a series of studies (total n = 1205) validating the new Belief in Luck and Luckiness Scale. Unlike existing conceptualizations and measures, this new model is applicable to both believers and non-believers in luck, and reveals belief in luck and personal luckiness to be discrete, uncorrelated, and respectively unidimensional constructs.     

Varying Cautionary Instructions,Monetary Incentives,and Comorbid Diagnostic Training in Malingered Psychopathology Research

In this article, we combine two analogue experiments in which we empirically examined three malingering methodological issues in individuals trained and instructed to simulate posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI; Briere, 1995 Briere, J. 1995. Trauma Symptom Inventory professional manual, Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.  [Google Scholar]). In Experiment 1, we examined TSI scale effects of the following manipulations using a 2 × 2 design with 330 college students: (a) inclusion or exclusion of cautionary instructions regarding believability of participants' simulation and (b) different financial incentive levels. In Experiment 2, we examined comorbid psychiatric diagnostic training with 180 college students who were either trained to simulate PTSD and comorbid major depressive disorder or trained to simulate only PTSD. Caution main effects were significant for all but two TSI Clinical Scales, incentive main effects and interactions were only significant for one Clinical scale each, and the comorbidity manipulation did not yield any scale differences. We discuss malingering research design implications regarding the use of cautionary instructions, financial incentive levels, and comorbid training.