Cohort differences in Big Five personality factors over a period of 25 years

The notion of personality traits implies a certain degree of stability in the life span of an individual. But what about generational effects? Are there generational changes in the distribution or structure of personality traits? This article examines cohort changes on the Big Five personality factors Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience, among first-year psychology students in The Netherlands, ages 18 to 25 years, between 1982 and 2007. Because measurement invariance of a personality test is essential for a sound interpretation of cohort differences in personality, we first assessed measurement invariance with respect to cohort for males and females separately on the Big Five personality factors, as measured by the Dutch instrument Five Personality Factors Test. Results identified 11 (females) and 2 (males) biased items with respect to cohort, out of a total of 70 items. Analyzing the unbiased items, results indicated small linear increases over time in Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness and small linear decreases over time in Neuroticism. No clear patterns were found on the Openness to Experience factor. Secondary analyses on students from 1971 to 2007 of females and males of different ages together revealed linear trends comparable to those in the main analyses among young adults between 1982 onward. The results imply that the broad sociocultural context may affect personality factors.     

The unconscious pursuit of emotion regulation: implications for psychological health

Because of the central involvement of emotion regulation in psychological health and the role that implicit (largely unconscious) processes appear to play in emotion regulation, implicit emotion-regulatory processes should play a vital role in psychological health. We hypothesised that implicitly valuing emotion regulation translates into better psychological health in individuals who use adaptive emotion-regulation strategies. A community sample of 222 individuals (56% women) who had recently experienced a stressful life event completed an implicit measure of emotion regulation valuing (ER-IAT) and reported on their habitual use of an important adaptive emotion-regulation strategy: cognitive reappraisal. We measured three domains of psychological health: well-being, depressive symptoms, and social adjustment. As hypothesised, individuals who implicitly valued emotion regulation exhibited greater levels of psychological health, but only when they were high in cognitive reappraisal use. These findings suggest that salutary effects of unconscious emotion-regulation processes depend on its interplay with conscious emotion-regulation processes.     

Personal Growth of Mothers of Preterms: Objective Severity of the Event,Subjective Stress,Personal Resources,and Maternal Emotional Support

This prospective study investigated the personal growth of Israeli mothers of premature babies at two medically defined risk levels (infants at low risk, n = 42; infants at moderate-high risk, n = 52), examining the contribution to the five dimensions of personal growth of objective event characteristics (baby’s risk level), perceived levels of mother’s stress (linear and curvilinear associations), and mother’s personal resources (self-esteem, attachment styles, perceived emotional support from her own mother). In addition, the role of the event severity as a moderator of the association between perceived maternal emotional support and personal growth was explored. Findings indicate that mothers in the two risk groups did not differ in level of perceived stress. Mothers of infants at moderate-high risk, however, experienced more spiritual change. In addition, consistent curvilinear associations emerged between perceived levels of stress and personal growth for three dimensions of growth: new possibilities, personal strength, and relations with others (with a similar trend for appreciation of life). Thus, mothers reporting moderate stress levels experienced the highest personal growth. Finally, risk group played a moderating role in the association between perceived maternal emotional support and personal growth on the dimensions of new possibilities, personal strength, and relations with others. On these dimensions, only among mothers of low-risk babies were higher levels of maternal emotional support associated with greater personal growth. The results highlight the importance of the subjective experience and the value of maternal emotional support for the personal growth of mothers of preterms. These findings may help in designing measures to identify populations at risk and developing appropriate interventions, as well as impact on the working procedures and support currently offered in most neonatal intensive care units.     

Safety Behavior After Extinction Triggers a Return of Threat Expectancy

Safety behavior is involved in the maintenance of anxiety disorders, presumably because it prevents the violation of negative expectancies. Recent research showed that safety behavior is resistant to fear extinction. This fear conditioning study investigated whether safety behavior after fear extinction triggers a return of fear in healthy participants. Participants learned that two stimuli (A and C) were followed by an aversive loud noise (“threat”), and one stimulus (B) was not. Participants then learned to use safety behavior that prevented the loud noise. Next, A and C were no longer followed by the loud noise, which typically led to extinction of threat expectancy. Safety behavior then became available again for C, but not for A and B. All participants used safety behavior on these C trials. In a final test phase, A, B, and C were presented once without the availability to use safety behavior. At each stimulus presentation, participants rated threat expectancy by indicating to what extent they expected that the loud noise would follow. Compared with the last extinction trial, threat expectancy increased for C in the test phase, whereas it did not increase for A and B. Hence, safety behavior after the extinction of classically conditioned fear caused a partial return of fear. The findings suggest that safety behavior may be involved in relapse after exposure-based therapy for anxiety disorders.     

Potential Job Facilitation Benefits of “Water Cooler” Conversations: The Importance of Social Interactions in the Workplace

This study looked at the extent to which personality and cultural factors predicted participants’ perceptions of the importance private interactions played in the workplace. The 134 participants read a vignette (where a new employee socially interacted at low or high levels with co-workers) and completed the Big Five Inventory, Social Axioms Survey, and questions concerning expected workplace experiences. Results indicated employees who engaged in high levels of private interaction with co-workers were expected to be better liked, to receive better performance evaluations, were more likely to receive co-worker assistance, and were thought to be more likely chosen for future projects. However, the personality and social axiom variables studied did not significantly interact with social interaction to influence expectations of workplace outcomes.     

Epidemiology of nonfatal deliberate self-harm in the United States as described in three medical databases

The absence of validated U.S. rates of nonfatal suicidal behavior places risk management and injury prevention programs at danger of being poorly informed and inadequately conceptualized. In this study we compare estimated rates of intentional self-harm from two ongoing surveys (National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program-NEISS-AIP; National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey-NHAMCS) to data from the Toxic Exposure Surveillance System. Results suggest that, for every 2002-2003 suicide, there were 12 (NEISSAIP) or 15 (NHAMCS) self-harm-related emergency department visits, and for every intentional self-poisoning death there were 33 intentional overdoses reported to poison control centers, of which two ultimately went untreated.     

Learning of letter names and sounds and their contribution to word recognition

This study investigated knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, their learning, and their contributions to word recognition. Of 123 preschoolers examined on letter knowledge, 65 underwent training on both letter names and letter sounds in a counterbalanced order. Prior to training, children were more advanced in associating letters with their names than with their sounds and could provide the sound of a letter only if they could name it. However, children learned more easily to associate letters with sounds than with names. Training just on names improved performance on sounds, but the sounds produced were extended (CV) rather than phonemic. Learning sounds facilitated later learning of the same letters' names, but not vice versa. Training either on names or on sounds improved word recognition and explanation of printed words. Results are discussed with reference to cognitive and societal factors affecting letter knowledge acquisition, features of the Hebrew alphabet and orthography, and educational implications.     

Phonological Constraints on the Assembly of Skeletal Structure in Reading

Linguistic research suggests that certain skeletal frames (e.g., CVC) are preferred to others (e.g., VCC). We examine whether such preferences constrain reading in the Stroop task. We demonstrate that CCVC nonwords facilitate naming the color black (/blæk{{\rm /bl{\ae}k}}/, a CCVC frame) relative to CVC controls. Conversely, CCVC items inhibit red (a CVC frame) relative to CVC controls. These results suggest that readers are sensitive to the congruency between the skeletal structure of color names and printed nonwords. However, various frames are not all equally preferred: the color black is named faster with a VCC frame, an infrequent and ill-formed frame, relative to a CVC frame, a frequent and grammatically preferred frame. These findings suggest that the representation of printed words specifies distinct slots for consonants and vowels, and readers are equipped with preferences (either grammatical or statistical) concerning skeletal frames. These conclusions underscore the contribution of linguistic knowledge to skilled reading.