Quantifying Idiodynamics: A Process Approach to Personality Psychology

Rosenzweig's (1950) concept of idiodynamics is presented, and the importance of time in applied idiodynamics is stressed. Time-series analyses are proposed as one method for realizing the potential of idiodynamics for understanding and modeling individual lives. Building on this, and incorporating Cattell's (1966) notion of the data box, a process approach to personality research is proposed. This approach begins with idiodynamic analyses at the level of individual lives in an effort to identify patterns or themes, then proceeds to examine individual differences in the patterns or themes so identified. Examples of applying this process approach to personality questions are provided. These include identification of cycles in daily moods, assessing the link between each individual's moods and the events in his/her daily life, and the relation between repressive coping style and the experience of and memory for affect-charged life events. Conclusions emphasize how this approach can retain the appeal of the dynamic while maintaining the precision and rule-governed discourse afforded by quantification.     

HUMAN FLUCTUATING ASYMMETRY AND SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

This report presents evidence that sexual selection may favor develop-mental stability (ie, the absence of fluctuating asymmetry) in humans Subtle, heritable asymmetries in seven nonfacial human body traits correlated negatively with number of self-reported, lifetime sex partners and correlated positively with self-reported age at first copulation in a college student sample These relationships remained statistically significant when age, marital status, body height, ethnicity, physical anomalies associated with early prenatal development, and physical attractiveness were statistically controlled The strength of the relationships did not differ significantly as a function of sex It ts unlikely that the relationships are generated by false self-reporting of sexual experience     

Do Promise Keepers Dream of Feminist Sheep?

This article describes a qualitative researchstudy of Promise Keeper fathers. Twenty-two middleclass, primarily White suburban fathers were interviewedin focus groups abouttheir fathering experiences. The grounded theory analysis found that the menwere experiencing gender role strain as they tried toconform to traditional masculine role norms. The PromiseKeeper movement provided them with an ideology and social supportsystem that facilitated theirbecoming more involved fathers, while simultaneouslyreassuring them that they were the leaders of theirfamilies. Using these supports, the men were able to construct a more personally gratifyingfatherhood identity. These results suggest a possibleinterpretation of why the Promise Keeper movement hasappealed to more men than has the pro-feminist men's movement.     

Susceptibility to Affect: A Comparison of Three Personality Taxonomies

This study had three major goals: to clarify the relationships between Eysenck's, Gray's, and Cloninger's personality taxonomies, to show that traits from these taxonomies predict differential sensitivities to emotional states, and to explore the relationship between sensitivity to an emotional state and how much that state is actually experienced. A factor analysis of traits from Eysenck's, Gray's, and Cloninger's personality taxonomies resulted in three factors that were named reward sensitivity, impulsivity-thrill seeking, and punishment sensitivity. These factors predicted a global measure of affect, emotional reactions to a laboratory mood induction, and self-reported affect in daily life. Generally, reward sensitivity predicted positive, but not negative emotions, whereas punishment sensitivity predicted negative, but not positive emotions. Impulsivity-thrill seeking predicted few emotions in either context. Coherence among the relationships found across methodological contexts suggests that the traits that predict emotion susceptibilities in the laboratory similarly predict emotional experience in ongoing daily life.     

Parental Contributions to Preschoolers' Emotional Competence: Direct and Indirect Effects

The present study examines the contributions of (1) parental socialization of emotion and preschoolers' emotional interaction with parents to their emotional competence, and (2) parental socialization and child emotional competence to their general social competence. Both observational and self-report techniques were used to measure emotion socialization, emotional competence, and social competence of preschoolers (average age = 49.8 months) from 60 middle-socioeconomic-status families. Data were collected in both classroom and home settings. In general, the results suggest that parental modeling of expressive styles and emotional responsiveness to child emotions are important predictors of preschoolers' emotional competence and their overall social competence. Children whose parents were more affectively positive tended to display more positive emotion with peers, whereas children whose parents were more negative appeared less socially competent in the preschool. Parents who were better coaches of their children's emotions had children who understood emotions better. Age and sex moderated several of the study's key findings. The results are consistent with earlier research indicating that parental socialization of emotion impacts the child's emotional and social functioning both at home and in the preschool.     

A SELF-EVALUATION TOKEN SYSTEM versus AN EXTERNAL EVALUATION TOKEN SYSTEM ALONE IN A RESIDENTIAL SETTING WITH PREDELINQUENT YOUTH1

This study compared the effects of self-evaluation and adult-dispensed tokens on room-cleaning behavior of six predelinquent youths in a residential token-economy setting. The self-evaluation token system proved to be as effective as the external adult-administered system in increasing room-cleaning behavior and was more effective in maintaining performance after contingencies were withdrawn. The self-evaluation token system increased resistance to extinction, compared to the external token system, and appeared to be a useful component for a traditional token-economy system.     

Eye movement in perception of another person's looking behavior.

Eye contact is a non-verbal behavior category of major concern in the study of social interaction. Within this category many behaviors are included which serve a wide range of functions. It was hypothesied that (1) one of the important stimulus properties that distinguish these behaviors is the movement pattern of the eye and (2) that people use different criteria to judge whether another person is looking at them, depending upon whether the other person is displaying a dynamic or static eye presentation. Data are presented to support these hypotheses.     

The assessment of empathy in early childhood

In much of the literature on empathy in young children, researchers have assessed empathy with the FASTE (Feshbach and Roe Affective Situations Test for Empathy). Consequently, much of the literature on early affective responsiveness and the role of empathy in prosocial development is dependent on the validity of the FASTE. However, examination of the literature on gender differences in young children's empathy has suggested a methodological flaw in picture/story techniques such as the FASTE; children's responses to these instruments appear to vary as a function of the interaction of sex of experimenter with sex of subject. In the present study, we empirically examined the effects of sex of experimenter on children's responses to the FASTE. Eighty preschool children were randomly assigned by sex to four male and four female experimenters and were administered the FASTE. Children scored higher when interviewed by a same-sex experimenter, especially if only the stories that the children comprehended (the happy/sad episodes, not the anger or fear episodes) were examined. The implications of the findings for interpreting the literature on children's empathy (especially gender differences in empathy) are discussed.