DAPP-BQ: factor structure in French Canadians

Personality traits may be involved in predisposition to a range of clinical and behavioral phenotypes. Given their importance, it is necessary to establish the extent to which different levels of personality traits are applicable to and reproducible across cultures and sexes. In a well-characterized, longitudinal sample of young French Canadians, we examined structural equivalence of broad personality traits using the Diagnostic Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ). We also investigated sex-based patterns of item-endorsement, scale reliabilities, and factor solutions. Our four-factor solution closely resembles the structure reported in the source population of British Columbians, especially in terms of Factors I through III. In contrast to the original study, however, together with compulsivity, rejection rather than passive aggression, defined Factor IV. We, furthermore, observed sex-based differences in item endorsement and both broad and narrow personality trait scores. Subtle differences notwithstanding, our results offer additional evidence for structural stability of broad DAPP-BQ personality traits across sociodemographic and cultural contexts.     

Job search and social cognitive theory: The role of career-relevant activities

Social cognitive theory was used to explain the relationships between career-relevant activities (environmental and self career exploration, career resources, and training), self-regulatory variables (job search self-efficacy and job search clarity), variables from the Theory of Planned Behavior (job search attitude, subjective norm, job search intention), and job search intensity. Based on a sample of employed and unemployed job seekers, we found that job seekers who spent more time in career exploration, attended more training programs, and used more career resources reported higher job search clarity and job search self-efficacy. Job search self-efficacy, job search attitude, and subjective norm predicted job search intention, and job search clarity and job search intention predicted job search intensity eight months later. The results of this study provide practical information on what job seekers can do to improve their job search clarity and job search self-efficacy and demonstrate the application of social cognitive theory for understanding and predicting job search behavior.     

Rethinking attentional development: reflexive and volitional orienting in children and adults

It is thought that a child takes the first 8 years of life to develop an adult‐like volitional attention system. The data that support this belief, however, are based on studies that inadvertently measured a combination of volitional and reflexive attention, rather than volitional attention alone. What is immature then in children that are younger than 8 years of age? The volitional attention system or the manner that volitional and reflexive attention systems combine? We investigated this issue, with preschool and adult populations, by first isolating and then combining volitional and reflexive attention systems. Our results indicate that both volitional attention, and the way it combines with reflexive orienting, are immature in preschool children. We suggest that when volitional attention becomes adult‐like its combination with reflexive attention will also become mature.     

Attentional control and reflexive orienting to gaze and arrow cues

A wealth of data indicate that central spatially nonpredictive eyes and arrows trigger very similar reflexive spatial orienting, although the effects of eyes may be more strongly reflexive (e.g., Friesen, Ristic, & Kingstone, 2004). Pratt and Hommel (2003) recently reported that the orienting effect for arrows is sensitive to arbitrary cue-target color contingencies; for example, an attentional orienting effect for blue colored arrows is evident only for blue targets. We reasoned that if the orienting effect elicited by eye direction is more strongly reflexive than the orienting effect elicited by arrow direction, it follows that eyes, unlike arrows, may trigger orienting effects that generalize across congruent and incongruent cue-target color contingencies. Replicating Pratt and Hommel (2003), we found that the reflexive attention effect elicited by arrows is specific to color-congruent target stimuli. The attention effect triggered by eyes, however, generalizes across color-congruent and color-incongruent target stimuli. These data support the hypothesis that eye direction and arrow direction trigger similar reflexive shifts in spatial attention, but that the attention effect triggered by eye direction is more strongly reflexive.     

Living in History: How War, Terrorism, and Natural Disaster Affect the Organization of Autobiographical Memory

ABSTRACT— Memories of war, terrorism, and natural disaster play a critical role in the construction of group identity and the persistence of group conflict. Here, we argue that personal memory and knowledge of the collective past become entwined only when public events have a direct, forceful, and prolonged impact on a population. Support for this position comes from a cross-national study in which participants thought aloud as they dated mundane autobiographical events. We found that Bosnians often mentioned their civil war and that Izmit Turks made frequent reference to the 1999 earthquake in their country. In contrast, public events were rarely mentioned by Serbs, Montenegrins, Ankara Turks, Canadians, Danes, or Israelis. Surprisingly, historical references were absent from (post–September 11) protocols collected in New York City and elsewhere in the United States. Taken together, these findings indicate that it is personal significance, not historical importance, that determines whether public events play a role in organizing autobiographical memory.     

Career transitions and their causes: A country‐comparative perspective

This empirical paper investigates how individuals conceptualize causes of career transitions, focusing on the three European countries of Austria, Serbia, and Spain in comparison to the USA and China. Collectively, these countries represent four separate cultural regions according to Schwartz. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with members of three occupational groups: business people, nurses, and blue‐collar workers. Analysis of the data generates greater insight about the existence of both region‐specific patterns as well as potentially universalistic tendencies regarding perceived causes of career transitions. Perceptions of internal (to the person) drivers of career transitions as activating forces are evident in all five countries. The overall results support contemporary notions of occupational careers that are highly individualized, a characterization strongly emphasized in the current career literature. In the European culture clusters, causes of career transitions are attributed internally and externally. China, representing the Confucian cultural region, stresses external causes for career transitions. By contrast, in the USA only internal attributions of causes are reported.     

Personality factors and posttraumatic stress: associations in civilians one year after air attacks

There is an ongoing debate on which risk factors for developing posttraumatic stress symptoms are more important--personality traits reflecting vulnerability, previous stressful experiences or characteristics of the traumatic event. In this study, posttraumatic stress symptoms and their relationship with personality traits, previous stressful experiences and exposure to stressful events during air attacks in Yugoslavia were investigated. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI; Millon, 1983), Impact of Events Scale (IES; Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979), Life Stressor Checklist Revised (LSCL-R; Wolfe & Kimerling, 1997), and List of Stressors were administered to a homogeneous group of medical students 1 year after the attacks. In multiple regression analyses, compulsive and passive-aggressive personality traits and a higher level of exposure to stressors during air attacks independently predicted the degree of intrusion symptoms. Avoidance symptoms were predicted by avoidant personality traits and a higher exposure to stressors both previously in life and during the attacks. In the next step, we tested in analyses of variance whether personality traits, previous stressful experiences, and stressful events during attacks as independent variables interact in predicting intrusion and avoidance symptoms. For this, students were clustered into three groups depending on their predominant personality traits. In addition to direct predictive effects, there were significant interaction effects in predicting both intrusion and avoidance. The findings suggest that each of the tested factors, i.e., personality traits, previous stressful experiences, and exposure to traumatic events may have an independent and direct influence on developing posttraumatic stress. However, the effect of these factors cannot just be added up. Rather, the factors interact in their impact on posttraumatic stress symptoms. Bigger samples and longitudinal designs will be required to understand precisely how different personality traits influence response to stressful events.