A comparison of Agreeableness scores from the Big Five Inventory and the NEO PI-R: consequences for the study of narcissism and psychopathy

Despite being significantly correlated, there is evidence to suggest that the scales measuring Agreeableness from the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) do not capture identical constructs. More specifically, NEO PI-R Agreeableness contains content related to "honesty and humility" that is not contained by the BFI. In a sample of undergraduates (N = 290), the authors compared the correlations between these two measures of Agreeableness with traits from the HEXACO-PI-R as well as measures of narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, and psychopathy. As expected, the two scores were significantly correlated but NEO PI-R Agreeableness manifested stronger correlations with the domains/facets of Honesty-Humility, narcissism/NPD, and aspects of psychopathy; these differences appear to be due primarily to the inclusion of the NEO PI-R facets of Straightforwardness and Modesty. These differences have important implications for the assessment and conceptualization of personality and personality disorder.     

Self-disclosure in Latinos' intercultural and intracultural friendships and acquaintanceships: Links with collectivism, ethnic identity, and acculturation

Relationships among collectivism, ethnic identity, acculturation, and self-disclosure rates in Latinos' intercultural and intracultural friendships and acquaintanceships were examined. An online survey collected data from 59 international Latinos and 73 Latino American nationals. Results revealed that relationship type (friend vs. acquaintance) and relationship partner ethnicity (Latino vs. White American) had significant relationships with self-disclosure. Participants disclosed more personal information to friends than acquaintances, and they disclosed more to Latino than to White American persons. Higher collectivism was related to increased self-disclosure across all relationship types. Acculturation exerted a significant main effect only in the context of friendships but interacted significantly with ethnicity in both friendships and acquaintanceships. Ethnic identity did not display any significant direct or interaction effects.     

Strategic control in AGL is not attributable to simple letter frequencies alone

In Norman, Price, and Jones (2011), we argued that the ability to apply two sets of grammar rules flexibly from trial to trial on a “mixed-block” AGL classification task indicated strategic control over knowledge that was less than fully explicit. Jiménez (2011) suggested that our results do not in themselves prove that participants learned – and strategically controlled – complex properties of the structures of the grammars, but that they may be accounted for by learning of simple letter frequencies. We first explain why our main conclusions regarding strategic control and conscious awareness are a separable issue to this criticism. We then report additional data which show that our participants’ ability to discriminate between the two grammars was not attributable to differences in simple letter frequencies.     

Media Coverage of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing

Media coverage of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic testing shapes public perception of such testing. The purpose of this study was to determine and assess the themes presented by U.S. news media regarding DTC genetic testing. We performed a Lexis-Nexis search with the keywords “Direct-to-Consumer” and “genetic test” for news stories published from 2006–2009. The sample was coded on themes of genetic determinism, privacy, discrimination, validity, regulation, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), utility, and cost. Ninety-two news stories were included. Stories displayed moderate genetic determinism and were neutral about validity and utility. Stories indicated that insurance and employers were the most likely sources of discrimination, yet identified the physicians and DTC companies as groups most likely to violate privacy. Stories claimed lack of regulation would harm consumers, but most post-GINA stories did not discuss the law. The costs of tests were frequently included. The results of this study show a broad range of views toward DTC genetic testing and its potential impacts. The genetics community should be aware that the public has been exposed to multiple views of DTC genetic testing when discussing these tests.     

Sexism and Assertive Courtship Strategies

The popularity of speed-seduction techniques, such as those described in The Game (Strauss 2005) and advocated in the cable program The Pickup Artist (Malloy 2007), suggests some women respond positively to men??s assertive mating strategies. Drawing from these sources, assertive strategies were operationalized as involving attempts to isolate women, to compete with other men, and to tease or insult women. The present investigation examined whether hostile and benevolent sexism and sociosexuality, the degree to which individuals require closeness and commitment prior to engaging in sex, were associated with the reported use of assertive strategies by men and the reported positive reception to those strategies by women. It was predicted men and women who were more sexist and had an unrestricted sociosexuality would report using more and being more receptive to assertive strategies. Study 1 (N?=?363) surveyed a Midwestern undergraduate college student sample, and regression results indicated that sociosexuality was associated with assertive strategy preference and use, but sexism only predicted a positive reception of assertive strategies by women. Study 2 (N?=?850) replicated these results by surveying a larger, national U.S. volunteer sample via the internet. In addition to confirming the results of Study 1, regression results from Study 2 indicated that hostile sexism was predictive of reported assertive strategy use by men, suggesting that outside of the college culture, sexism is more predictive of assertive strategy use. Implications for courtship processes and the dating culture are discussed.     

The Latent Structure of Youth Responses to Peer Provocation

This study examined whether the three categories often applied to children’s behavior—aggressive, avoidant, and assertive—actually capture the structure of a naturalistic sample of youth behavior coded at a more micro level. A sample of lower-income youth (N = 392; M age = 12.69, SD = 0.95) completed a new multiple-choice measure asking them to select responses to scenarios depicting physical, verbal, and relational provocation by a peer. Youth responses to the vignettes showed the expected associations with self-reported aggression and regulation of anger, providing preliminary evidence for the convergent validity of the measure. Factor analysis confirmed that responses loaded on three factors: aggression, avoidance, and assertion. Model fit was adequate (RMSEA = .028) and cross-validated in a second sample (RMSEA = .039). Several types of responses loaded on two factors suggesting that some strategies that youth use to manage provocation are not “pure” examples of these broadband categories. Implications for conceptualization and measurement of youth social behavior are discussed.     

Intergenerational continuity and discontinuity in Mexican-origin youths' participation in organized activities: insights from mixed-methods

Motivation theories suggest that parents are an integral support for adolescents' participation in organized activities. Despite the importance of parents, the field knows very little about how parents' own experiences in activities influence the participation of their adolescent children. The goals of this study were to examine (a) the patterns of intergenerational continuity and discontinuity in parents' activity participation during adolescence and their adolescents' activity participation, and (b) the processes underlying each of these patterns within Mexican-origin families. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through three in-depth interviews conducted with 31 seventh-grade adolescents and their parents at three time points over a year. The quantitative data suggested there was modest intergenerational continuity in activity participation. There were three distinct patterns: nine families were continuous participants, seven families were continuous nonparticipants, and 15 families were discontinuous, where the parent did not participate but the youth did participate in activities. The continuous participant families included families in which parents valued how organized activities contributed to their own lives and actively encouraged their adolescents' participation. The continuous nonparticipant families reported less knowledge and experience with activities along with numerous barriers to participation. There were three central reasons for the change in the discontinuous families. For a third of these families, parents felt strongly about providing a different childhood for their adolescents than what they experienced. The intergenerational discontinuity in participation was also likely to be sparked by someone else in the family or an external influence (i.e., friends, schools).     

When it matters how you pronounce it: the influence of regional accents on job interview outcome

The visual dimension has featured prominently in person perception in the last 25 years. Alone, this dimension cannot give the complete 'picture' of others because language and speech (i.e., the auditory dimension) are also highly informative. Social-cognition research investigates the role of auditory information for impression formation. In a series of experiments, we tested perceived competence, hirability, and socio-intellectual status of different targets based on their regional accents. Given identical content of statements in different conditions of an alleged job interview, regional German accents (Saxon, Bavarian, and Berlin) resulted in lower perceived competence and hirability than standard German, even though the Bavarian accent at the same time resulted in higher ratings of socio-intellectual status compared to other regional accents (Experiment 1). These findings were confirmed when using a broader population sample and a 'matched guise' technique (Experiment 2). Our findings indicate that regional accents, similar to faces, can be very powerful in creating differentiated pictures of individuals.     

Do cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes? A cross‐cultural multilevel approach

This study examined whether cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes. The main objective was to shed light on the moral universalism and relativism debate by showing that the answer depends on the moral issues studied. Using items from the Morally Debatable Behaviours Scale (MDBS) fielded in the World Value Survey (WVS), we found that moral issues can be differentiated cross‐culturally into attitudes towards (1) dishonest–illegal and (2) personal–sexual issues. Drawing upon evolutionary and cultural theories, we expected that the former moral domain is not related to cultural values, whereas the latter is influenced by cultural conceptions of the self (i.e. independent versus interdependent selves). We used multilevel modelling with Schwartz' cultural values as the independent variables and the two moral domains as assessed through the MDBS as dependent variables to test our hypothesis. After controlling for individual‐level differences in moral attitudes as well as the socio‐economic development of countries, our findings confirmed that attitudes towards dishonest–illegal issues were not related to cultural values whereas attitudes towards personal–sexual issues were predicted by the Autonomy–Embeddedness value dimension. We conclude that our study sheds not only light on the universalism and relativism debate, but also on the discriminant validity of cultural values. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.