Long-term stability in the Big Five personality traits in adulthood

This study investigated the stability of the Big Five personality traits in adulthood from age 33 to 42. Participants (89 men, 103 women) were drawn from the ongoing Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development. The results showed that the mean‐level of Neuroticism decreased whereas the mean‐level of Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness increased from age 33 to 42. The Structural Equation Modeling analyses revealed both gender differences and similarities in the rank‐order stability of the Big Five: Neuroticism and Extraversion were more stable in men than in women, whereas Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were as stable in men as in women. Stability coefficients for the Big Five personality traits across 9 years were moderate to high, ranging from 0.73 to 0.97 in men and from 0.65 to 0.95 in women. The highest gender‐equal stability was found for Openness to Experience and the lowest for Conscientiousness.     

Parental monitoring moderates the importance of genetic and environmental influences on adolescent smoking

Although there is a substantial literature on the role of parenting in adolescent substance use, most parenting effects have been small in magnitude and studied outside the context of genetically informative designs, raising debate and controversy about the influence that parents have on their children (D. C. Rowe, 1994). Using a genetically informative twin-family design, the authors studied the role of parental monitoring on adolescent smoking at age 14. Although monitoring had only small main effects, consistent with the literature, there were dramatic moderation effects associated with parental monitoring: At high levels of parental monitoring, environmental influences were predominant in the etiology of adolescent smoking, but at low levels of parental monitoring, genetic influences assumed far greater importance. These analyses demonstrate that the etiology of adolescent smoking varies dramatically as a function of parenting.     

Offensive and defensive aggression in humans: A longitudinal perspective

Offensive and defensive aggression were distinguished on the basis of associated events. Behavior delivering noxious stimuli was defined as defensive when it was a response a threatening situation and as offensive when it was an unprovoked act. The existence of a general aggression factor was implied by the finding that initiators of aggression also readily defend themselves if attacked. The use of a peer nomination and teacher rating variable for offensive aggression, “Attacks without reason, teases others, naughty things”; and another for defensive aggression, “Defends him/herself if teased, but does not tease or attack others without reason,” yielded differential results. Offensive aggression at age 14 was significantly predicted by aggressive behavior age 8, while defensive aggression was not. Intercorrelations of rating variables at 14 showed that offensive aggression was related to weak self-control and defensive aggression to strong self-control. Only offensive aggression at age 14 predicted criminality at age 20. The results indicate a diversity of motivations for aggressive behaviors, as suggested by observations on animal behavior.     

Controlling reactive aggression through cognitive evaluation of proactive aggression cues

The authors investigated how the relationship between the acts of proactive and reactive aggression was moderated by the individual differences in cognitive regulation of emotion. An aggression paradigm, a electrocardiogram recording, a cognitive assessment battery, and a short form IQ test were completed by 109 children, aged 8 to 13 years (Juujärvi, Kaartinen, Laitinen, Vanninen, & Pulkkinen, 2006 Juujärvi, P., Kaartinen, J., Laitinen, T., Vanninen, E. and Pulkkinen, L. 2006. Effects of physical provocations on heart rate reactivity, and reactive aggression in children. Aggressive Behavior, 32: 99–109. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Juujärvi, Kooistra, Kaartinen, & Pulkkinen, 2001 Juujärvi, P., Kooistra, L., Kaartinen, J. and Pulkkinen, L. 2001. An aggression machine: V. Determinants of reactive aggression revisited. Aggressive Behavior, 27: 430–445. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Lehto, Juujärvi, Kooistra, & Pulkkinen, 2003 Lehto, J. E., Juujärvi, P., Kooistra, L. and Pulkkinen, L. 2003. Dimensions of executive functioning: Evidence from children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 21: 59–80. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The less the children subdued the intensity of their defence to the attacks in the aggression paradigm, the poorer they performed in the cognitive assessment battery tasks measuring Working memory capacity and in the task assessing crystallised intelligence. The mean cardiovascular reactivity during the aggression paradigm was neither associated with the performances in either the cognitive assessment battery nor the intelligence tasks. Both information processing and knowledge dimensions of cognition contributed to regulation of emotion, but the respective effects of the processes cannot be inferred from the mean cardiovascular reactivity.     

The factor structure and factorial invariance of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) across time: evidence from two community-based samples

This study provides new knowledge about the factor structure of the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12; D. Goldberg, 1972) through the application of confirmatory factor analysis to longitudinal data, thereby enabling investigation of the factor structure, its invariance across time, and the rank-order stability of the factors. Two community-based longitudinal adult samples with 1-year (n = 640) and 6-year (n = 330) follow-up times were studied. As a result, the correlated 3-factor model (i.e., Anxiety/Depression, Social Dysfunction, and Loss of Confidence) showed a better fit with both samples than the alternative models. The correlated 3-factor structure was also relatively invariant across time in both samples, indicating that the scale has good construct validity. The rank-order stabilities of the factors were low across time, which suggests that the GHQ-12 measures temporal mental state.     

Femininity and fertility in sisters with twin brothers: prenatal androgenization? Cross-sex socialization?

Are sisters of twin brothers behaviorally or physiologically masculinized? Prenatal exposure to their brothers' androgens and postnatal socialization experiences unique to girls growing up with twin brothers might influence their attitudes, pubertal development, and reproductive histories. To investigate, we studied age- and cohort-matched samples of Finnish sisters from same-sex and opposite-sex twin pairs. Using data from two ongoing longitudinal studies of consecutive birth cohorts of Finnish twins, we assessed pubertal development at ages 11 and 14 and endorsement of attitudes associated with femininity at age 16. We also studied fertility in Finnish women from same- and opposite-sex twin pairs born from 1958 through 1971, obtaining information on their child-bearing histories when they were ages 15 to 28. Results of each comparison were unambiguously negative: There was no evidence of differences between sisters from same- and opposite-sex twin pairs, and thus, no evidence of either androgenization or cross-sex socialization.     

Aggression in childhood and long-term unemployment in adulthood: a cycle of maladaptation and some protective factors

The present study was designed to shed light on specific risk mechanisms and protective factors in the relation between aggression in childhood and long-term unemployment in adulthood. Participants were drawn from the ongoing Jyv?skyl? Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development; data gathered at the ages of 8 (N = 369), 14, 27, and 36 years (n = 311) were used in the present study. Teacher-rated aggression at age 8 was related to subsequent long-term unemployment through a cycle of maladaptation. Specifically, childhood aggression predicted school maladjustment at age 14, which was both directly and indirectly (via problem drinking and lack of occupational alternatives at age 27) related to long-term unemployment. Child-centered parenting and prosocial tendencies in an aggressive child significantly lowered his or her probability of becoming long-term unemployed in adulthood.     

Constructions of Agency in Accounts of Drunk Driving at the Outset of Semi-Mandatory Counseling

Convicted drunk drivers, in accounts of their offenses, rarely display qualities of agency that would contribute to a favorable outcome in counseling. Instead, the discursive and rhetorical aim of the accounts is often to evade responsibility and ownership of the offending behavior. Such disclaim of personal agency can be achieved in various ways in the narration of drunk driving (DD) incidences. This study examined how five aspects of agentic presentation (reflexivity, historicity, intentionality, causal attribution, and relationality) were present in or missing from such accounts. It was found that a tentative model of (non)agentic display based on those five aspects could differentiate between the cases in a meaningful way and contribute to an understanding of the clients’ ways of positioning themselves in semi-mandatory counseling as well as of their uses of the counseling context.