Affect, personality, and social activity.

These studies examined relations between social activity and state and trait measures of Positive and Negative Affect. In Study 1 Ss completed scales relevant to 3-factor models of personality and a weekly mood and social activity questionnaire for 13 weeks. In Study 2 Ss completed measures of the 5-factor model of personality and a daily mood and social activity survey for 6-7 weeks. In within- and between-Ss analyses, socializing correlated significantly with state measures of Positive Affect and with trait measures of Extraversion/Positive Emotionality. These relations were relatively general across various types of positive affect and social events; however, specific types of social events also were differentially related to affect. In contrast, social activity had no consistent association with measures of Negative Affect or the other personality dimensions. The results support a temperamental view of Extraversion.     

Repression at encoding: discrete appraisals of emotional stimuli.

In previous research, the emotions associated with repressors' memorial representations were found to be more discrete than those associated with nonrepressors'. In each of the 3 experiments reported here, repressive discreteness was apparent in repressors' appraisals of emotional stimuli at the time they were encoded. In 1 experiment, Ss appraised individual facial expressions of emotion. Repressors judged the dominant emotions in these faces as no less intense than did nonrepressors, but they appraised the blend of nondominant emotions as less intense than did nonrepressors. In the remaining 2 experiments, Ss appraised crowds of emotional faces as well as crowds of geometric shapes. In both crowd experiments, the repressive discreteness was evident in appraisals of crowds of emotional faces but not in appraisals of crowds of geometric shapes. The repressive discreteness effect did not appear to reflect a general repressor-nonrepressor difference in the appraisal of stimulus features. Rather, the results suggested that repressive discreteness may be constrained to appraisals of emotions.     

Effects of Pointing Rate and Availability of Visual Feedback on Visual and Proprioceptive Components of Prism Adaptation

While looking through laterally displacing prisms, subjects pointed 60 times straight ahead of their nose at a rate of one complete movement every 2 or 3 s, with visual feedback available early in the pointing movement or delayed until the end of the movement. Sagittal pointing was paced such that movement speed covaried with pointing rate. Aftereffect measures (obtained after every 10 pointing trials) showed that when the limb became visible early in a pointing movement, proprioceptive adaptation was greater than visual, but when visual feedback was delayed until the end of the movement, the reverse was true. This effect occurred only with the 3-s pointing rate, however. With the 2-s pointing rate, adaptation was predominately proprioceptive in nature, regardless of feedback availability. Independent of the availability of visual feedback, visual adaptation developed more quickly with 3-s pointing, whereas proprioceptive adaptation developed more rapidly with 2-s pointing. These results are discussed in terms of a model of perceptual-motor organization in which the direction of coordinative (guidance) linkage between eye-head (visual) and hand-head (proprioceptive) systems (and consequently the locus of discordance registration and adaptive recalibration) is determined jointly by pointing rate and feedback availability. An additional effect of pointing rate is to determine the rate of discordant inputs. Maximal adaptive recalibration occurs when the input (pointing) rate matches the time constant of the adaptive encoder in the guided system.     

Factors and Taxa, Traits and Types, Differences of Degree and Differences in Kind

ABSTRACT A taxon is a nonarbitrary class whose existence is conjectured as an empirical question, not a mere semantic convenience. Numerous taxa are known to exist in nature and society (chemical elements, biological species, organic diseases, geological strata, kinds of stars, elementary particles, races, cultures, Mendelizing mental deficiencies, major psychoses, vocations, ideologies, religions). What personality types, if any, occur in the nonpathological population remains to be researched by sophisticated methods, and cannot be settled by fiat or "dimensional" preference. The intuitive concept of taxonicity is to be explicated by a combination of formal-numerical and causal criteria. Taxometric methods should include consistency tests that provide Popperian risk of strong discorroboration. In social science, latent class methods are probably more useful than cluster algorithms.     

Classification of adult attachment: an integrative taxonomy from attachment and psychoanalytic theories.

Developmental and psychoanalytic theorists have focused increasingly on empirically determined early childhood antecedents of adult attachments, with several resulting taxonomic models. This article suggests a theoretically based and clinically based model of attachment consistent with both psychoanalytic and attachment theories, resulting in an integrative taxonomy of four adult attachment styles: dependent, avoidant, hostile, and resistant-ambivalent. These styles reflect behavioral manifestations of dependence and anger, as derived from the interaction of primitive relational drives, defenses, and interpersonal experience. In addition to theoretical construction, brief clinical examples are presented to facilitate discussion of the model.     

Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: behavior, physiology, and health.

Seventy-three married couples were studied in 1983 and 1987. To identify marital processes associated with dissolution, a balance theory of marriage was used to generate 1 variable for dividing couples into regulated and nonregulated groups. For studying the precursors of divorce, a "cascade" model of marital dissolution, which forms a Guttman-like scale, received preliminary support. Compared with regulated couples, nonregulated couples had (a) marital problems rated as more severe (Time 1); (b) lower marital satisfaction (Time 1 and Time 2); (c) poorer health (Time 2); (d) smaller finger pulse amplitudes (wives); (e) more negative ratings for interactions; (f) more negative emotional expression; (g) less positive emotional expression; (h) more stubbornness and withdrawal from interaction; (i) greater defensiveness; and (j) greater risk for marital dissolution (lower marital satisfaction and higher incidence of consideration of dissolution and of actual separation).     

Maximizing versus matching on concurrent variable-interval schedules

Maximization and matching predictions were examined for a time-based analogue of the concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio schedule. One alternative was a variable interval whose time base operated relatively independent of the schedule chosen, and the other was a discontinuous variable interval for which timing progressed only when selected. Pigeons switched between schedules by pecking a changeover key. The maximization hypothesis predicts that subjects will show a bias toward the discontinuous variable interval and undermatching; however the obtained results conformed closely to the predictions of the matching law. Finally, a quantitative comparison was made of the bias and sensitivity estimates obtained in published concurrent variable-interval variable-ratio analogue studies. Results indicated that only the ratio-based analogue of the concurrent variable interval variable ratio studied by Green, Rachlin, and Hanson (1983) produced significant bias toward the variable-ratio alternative and undermatching, as predicted by reinforcement maximization.