Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample

Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10-65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality.     

The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives: Personality Profiles,Interaction Styles,and the Things They Leave Behind

Although skeptics continue to doubt that most people are “ideological,” evidence suggests that meaningful left‐right differences do exist and that they may be rooted in basic personality dispositions, that is, relatively stable individual differences in psychological needs, motives, and orientations toward the world. Seventy‐five years of theory and research on personality and political orientation has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and behaviors. Applying a theory of ideology as motivated social cognition and a “Big Five” framework, we find that two traits, Openness to New Experiences and Conscientiousness, parsimoniously capture many of the ways in which individual differences underlying political orientation have been conceptualized. In three studies we investigate the relationship between personality and political orientation using multiple domains and measurement techniques, including: self‐reported personality assessment; nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction; and personal possessions and the characteristics of living and working spaces. We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open‐minded, creative, curious, and novelty seeking, whereas conservatives are more orderly, conventional, and better organized.     

Locating attractiveness in the face space: Faces are more attractive when closer to <Emphasis Type="Italic">their</Emphasis> group prototype

Face attractiveness relates positively to the mathematical averageness of a face, but how close attractive faces of varying groups are to their own and to other-group prototypes in the face space remains unclear. In two studies, we modeled the locations of attractive and unattractive Caucasian, Asian, and African faces in participants’ face space using multidimensional scaling analysis. In all three sets of faces, facial attractiveness significantly increased with the absolute proximity of a face to its group prototype. In the case of Caucasian and African faces (Study 1), facial attractiveness also tended to increase with the absolute proximity of a face to the other-group prototype. However, this association was at best marginal, and it became clearly nonsignificant when distance to the own-group prototype was controlled for. Thus, the present research provides original evidence that average features of faces contribute to increasing their attractiveness, but only when these features are average to the group to which a face belongs. The present research also offers further support to face space models of people’s mental representations of faces.     

Rethinking Cognition: On Coulter on Discourse and Mind

This paper responds to, and comments on, Coulter's (1999) critique of discursive psychology with particular reference to how cognition is conceptualised theoretically and analytically. It first identifies a number of basic misreadings of discursive psychological writings, which distort and, at times, reverse its position on the status of cognition. Second, it reviews the main ways in which cognition, mental states, and thoughts have been analytically conceptualised in discursive psychology (respecification of topics from mainstream psychology, studies of the psychological thesaurus in action, and studies of the way psychological issues are managed). Third, it considers two of Coulter's substantive issues: the role of correct usage and the role of conceptual vs. empirical analysis. A series of problems are identified with Coulter's development of both of these issues.     

Using image analysis techniques to analyze figure-copying performance of patients with visuospatial neglect and control groups.

Figure copying is often used to detect visuospatial neglect (VSN) in brain-damaged patients. We describe algorithms that enable the computation of parameters for describing figure-copying performance. The researcher can readily implement these algorithms on a computer using image analysis software, and they provide information on goodness-of-fit, relative to a standard model, as well as on dynamic aspects of subjects' performance in completing figure copies. To demonstrate the clinical utility of these algorithms, preliminary results from a group of right-hemisphere brain-damaged patients, some of whom have VSN, are compared with those for age-matched controls.     

The activation of phonology during silent Chinese word reading.

The role of phonology in silent Chinese compound-character reading was studied in 2 experiments using a semantic relatedness judgment task. There was significant interference from a homophone of a "target" word that was semantically related to an initially presented cue word whether the homophone was orthographically similar to the target or not. This interference was only observed for exact homophones (i.e., those that had the same tone, consonant, and vowel). In addition, the effect was not significantly modulated by target or distractor frequency, nor was it restricted to cases of associative priming. Substantial interference was also found from orthographically similar nonhomophones of the targets. Together these data are best accounted for by a model that allows for parallel access of semantics via 2 routes, 1 directly from orthography to semantics and the other from orthography to phonology to semantics.     

Language and reading development in profoundly hearing-impaired children—Intelligence,learning, and communication factors: A review

This review defines educational underachievement and presents information confirming the low reading and even lower language development of profoundly hearing-impaired children. It then discusses the role of intelligence, learning ability, and communication factors in this educational underachievement. Teacher and pupil classroom communication are identified as major factors in the poor educational performance of hearing-impaired children. Some research needs are discussed.