Global self-esteem across the life span

This study provides a comprehensive picture of age differences in self-esteem from age 9 to 90 years using cross-sectional data collected from 326,641 individuals over the Internet. Self-esteem levels were high in childhood, dropped during adolescence, rose gradually throughout adulthood, and declined sharply in old age. This trajectory generally held across gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and nationality (U.S. citizens vs. non-U.S. citizens). Overall, these findings support previous research, help clarify inconsistencies in the literature, and document new trends that require further investigation.     

Stability and factor structure of the Jackson Personality Inventory--Revised

The Jackson Personality Inventory--Revised comprises 15 bipolar scales and five cluster scores concerning an individual's interpersonal patterns of interaction, cognitive styles, and value orientation. Recent reviews of this revised version raise questions about test-retest stability as well as the factor structure on which cluster scores are based. 74 men and 33 women (29-63 years of age, M = 42.3) completed the inventory while participating in a continuing education program. Of these 45 participated in a second session 13 wk. later. Test-retest correlations are significant, with 12 of the 15 scales having correlations > or = .75. Intercorrelations among all subscales indicate that the Jackson subscales for the most part remain distinct from each other ranging from .01 to .59. A Principal Components Analysis with a varimax rotation yielded three factors that parallel the NEO big five, i.e., Openness, Neuroticism, and Extroversion and replicated previous factor structure found for both versions of the Jackson inventory. The fourth and fifth factors here were labeled Trustworthy and Organization; however, the composition of these factors across several studies appears to be unstable, suggesting optimal certainty when interpreting the clusters of subscales associated only with Openness, Neuroticism, and Extroversion. Further research may help clarify the instability associated with the other factors of this inventory.     

Young infants' expectations about hidden objects

Infants aged 3-5 months (mean of approximately 4 months) were given a novel anticipatory looking task to test object permanence understanding. They were trained to expect an experimenter to retrieve an object from behind a transparent screen upon hearing a cue ("Doors up, here comes the hand"). The experimenter then hid the object behind one of two opaque screens and after either 2 or 8s gave the "doors up" cue. Infants looked to the correct location after the two-second delay, but not after the eight-second delay. This indicates a brief memory that the object is present behind the occluder. The study provides converging evidence that infants grasp object permanence by a young age. The novel anticipatory looking paradigm helps rule out counter-explanations applied to violation-of-expectation tasks.     

Between-individual comparisons in performance evaluation: a perspective from prospect theory

This article examines how between-individual comparisons influence performance evaluations in rating tasks. The authors demonstrated a systematic change in the perceived difference across ratees as a result of changing the way performance information is expressed. Study 1 found that perceived performance difference between 2 individuals was greater when their objective performance levels were presented with small numbers (e.g., absence rates of 2% vs. 5%) than when they were presented with large numbers (e.g., attendance rates of 98% vs. 95%). Extending this finding to situations involving trade-offs between multiple performance attributes across ratees, Study 2 showed that the relative preference for 1 ratee over another actually reversed when the presentation format of the performance information changed. The authors draw upon prospect theory to offer a theoretical framework describing the between-individual comparison aspect of performance evaluation.     

Depression and Contributors to Vocational Satisfaction in Roman Catholic Secular Clergy

A nationally selected, random sample of Roman Catholic secular (i.e., diocesan) priests was examined using the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale and an instrument developed for this study to assess contributors to priests' vocational satisfaction. In addition, a self-report inventory gathered information regarding participants' demographics as well as four categories of predictor variables (i.e., overall level of vocational satisfaction, social support, spiritual activities, physical environment). The study yielded a response rate of 45%. Secular clergy reported rates of depression approximately seven times greater than are found in the general population, and also indicated that the recent sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic church had negatively affected their mood. Priests' engagement in sacramental activities contributed greatly to their vocational satisfaction, and low levels of vocational satisfaction were found to be most predictive of depression. Factors comprising priests' vocational satisfaction were External Manifestations (e.g., preaching, teaching), Internal Manifestations (e.g., prayer life, affirmation of God's call), and Social Manifestations (e.g., relationships with parishioners, appreciation from others).     

Comparison-induced decoy effects

Extant theories of decoy effects on evaluations of attribute values were assessed with respect to their ability to account for a one-dimensional analogue of the asymmetric dominance effect. Parducci's (1965, 1995) range-frequency theory, Krumhansl's (1978) distance-density model, Tversky's (1977) diagnosticity principle, and reference point theories (e.g., Holyoak & Mah, 1982) were unable to account for this effect. One version of Helson's (1964) adaptation-level theory and our comparison-induced distortion theory (Choplin & Hummel, 2002) were able to account for the qualitative effect. Quantitative fits revealed that comparison-induced distortion theory provides a better account of this effect than does adaptation-level theory. These results suggest that, in some cases, biases created by language-expressible magnitude comparisons mediate the effects of decoys on evaluation.     

Effects of ongoing task context and target typicality on prospective memory performance: the importance of associative cueing

Two experiments examined whether prospective memory performance is influenced by contextual cues. In our automatic activation model, any information available at encoding and retrieval should aid recall of the prospective task. The first experiment demonstrated an effect of the ongoing task context; performance was better when information about the ongoing task present at retrieval was available at encoding. Performance was also improved by a strong association between the prospective memory target as it was presented at retrieval and the intention as it was encoded. Experiment 2 demonstrated boundary conditions of the ongoing task context effect, which implicate the association between the ongoing and prospective tasks formed at encoding as the source of the context effect. The results of this study are consistent with predictions based on automatic activation of intentions.     

New approaches to demystifying insight

After a person has become stuck on a problem, they sometimes achieve a clear and sudden solution through insight--the so-called Aha! experience. Because of its distinctive experience, the origins and characteristics of insight have received considerable attention historically in psychological research. However, despite considerable progress in characterizing insight, the underlying mechanisms remain mysterious. We argue that research on insight could be greatly advanced by supplementing traditional insight research, which depends on a few complex problems, with paradigms common in other domains of cognitive science. We describe a large set of mini-insight problems to which multiple methods can be applied, together with subjective reports to identify insight problem-solving. Behavioral priming and neuroimaging methods are providing evidence about what, where, and how neural activity occurs during insight. Such evidence constrains theories of component processes, and will help to demystify insight.