Cross-cultural replication of the five-factor model and comparison of the NEO-PI-R and MMPI-2 PSY-5 scales in a Dutch psychiatric sample

The authors investigated cross-cultural replicability of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality as represented by the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) in a sample of 423 Dutch psychiatric patients. Also, NEO-PI-R domain scales were compared with the Personality Psychopathology Five (PSY-5; A. R. Harkness & J. L. McNulty, 1994) scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, & B. Kaemmer, 2002). Principal-components analysis with procrustean rotation confirmed the hypothesized structural similarity of the present sample with the U.S. normative factor scores. All of the hypothesized relations between NEO-PI-R and PSY-5 scales were confirmed. The results provide evidence for cross-cultural replicability of the FFM and for validity of the NEO-PI-R and PSY-5 constructs in the psychological assessment of psychiatric patients.     

An approach to the problem of differential prediction

A procedure for maximizing selective efficiency is developed for application to situations in which it is desired to select from a single group of applicants for several possible assignments. The problem of comparable units for the several criteria whose values must be compared to each other for differential assignment purposes is discussed. It is demonstrated that, assuming linear regressions, maximal selection is obtained if individuals in any given assignment are differentiated from those rejected according to critical rejection scores on the multiple weighted sum of the predictors and from another possible assignment by critical difference scores which are merely the differences between the two critical rejection scores. Since the relationships just indicated give no way of determining the magnitude of the critical scores required to select the required number of persons for each assignment, a successive approximation procedure for accomplishing this purpose has been devised and a computational example is worked out.The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not to be construed as official or as those of the War Department.     

A rationale for minimizing distortion in personality questionnaire keys

A rationale and a procedure for constructing questionnaire keys so as to minimize the effect of distortion or faking by the respondents is developed. This rationale is based on the supposition that suppressor items can be identified to reduce distortion in, and thus add to, the validity of questionnaire keys. The procedure is designed primarily for application to the construction of forced choice items.The results of an empirical test of the efficicacy of the forced choice pairing procedure developed as a consequence of this rationale are presented. A key based on forced choice pairs developed by this procedure gave a validity of .33; a second key based on forced choice pairs developed by more conventional procedures gave a validity of .23.The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not to be construed as reflecting official Department of the Army policy. The rationale presented herein was developed and used in an Army research program concerned with the selection of ROTC cadets. In substance, the content of this paper is contained in PRS Report 868,A rationale for minimizing distortion in personality questionnaire keys.     

Memory for actions: Item and relational information in categorized lists

Enacting action phrases in subject-performed tasks (SPTs) leads to better free recall than hearing or reading the same materials in verbal tasks (VTs). This enactment effect is usually explained by better item-specific information in SPTs than in VTs. The role of relational information is controversial. In the present paper, we will take the multiple recall approach to study the role of item and relational information in memory for actions by computing the number of item gains and the number of item losses over trials. This approach has previously been applied to lists of unrelated action phrases. We applied it to categorically related lists, also allowing a measure of relational information by clustering scores. It was found that SPTs produced more item gains than VTs. This finding confirmed the assumption that SPTs provide better item-specific information than VTs. The number of item losses did not differ between VTs and SPTs. This finding suggests that relational information is equally provided by VTs and SPTs. However, the organizational scores showed a more differentiated picture. Clustering was greater in SPTs than in VTs with randomly presented lists, but not with blocked lists. We suggested that these results, as well as other findings from the literature, could be explained by distinguishing automatic and strategic processes and the types of item associations that are addressed by these processes.     

Order-Constrained Solutions in <Emphasis Type="Italic">K</Emphasis>-Means Clustering: Even Better Than Being Globally Optimal

This paper proposes an order-constrained K-means cluster analysis strategy, and implements that strategy through an auxiliary quadratic assignment optimization heuristic that identifies an initial object order. A subsequent dynamic programming recursion is applied to optimally subdivide the object set subject to the order constraint. We show that although the usual K-means sum-of-squared-error criterion is not guaranteed to be minimal, a true underlying cluster structure may be more accurately recovered. Also, substantive interpretability seems generally improved when constrained solutions are considered. We illustrate the procedure with several data sets from the literature.     

Conspiracy stereotyping and perceptions of group entitativity of Jews, Germans, Arabs and homosexuals by Polish students

The relationship among conspiracy stereotypes and perceived entitativity (the degree to which a collection of persons are perceived as being bonded together in a homogeneous entity) of Jews, Germans, Arabs, and homosexuals was examined. 63 volunteer university students answered the Conspiracy Beliefs Scale and the Group Entitativity Scale. The conspiracy stereotypes of all the categories were positively correlated with scores for perceived entitativity. The perception of entitativity seems to be an important factor in conspiracy stereotyping and therefore in intergroup relations.