Malevolent Creativity: Does Personality Influence Malicious Divergent Thinking?

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between malevolent creativity and personality, with a specific focus on the traits of antagonism, aggression, and sympathy. Participants (N = 265) completed a series of personality measures and two divergent thinking tasks (uses for a brick and a pencil). Responses were coded for fluency and malevolent creativity. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that gender, conscientiousness, and trait physical aggression accounted for unique variability in malevolent creativity scores. These results confirm the link between personality and malevolent creativity, corroborating the General Model of Aggression and extending understanding of malevolent creativity, a new subfield of creativity research.     

Evidence for Use of Mathematical Inversion By Three-Year-Old Children

The principle of inversion—that a + b ? b must equal a—requires a sensitivity to the relation between addition and subtraction that is critical for understanding arithmetic. Use of inversion, albeit inconsistent, has been observed in school-age children, but when use of a computational shortcut based on inversion emerges and how awareness of the inversion principle relates to other mathematical or numerical skills remain unclear. Two possibilities were explored in 3-year-olds by adapting a method used previously with older children involving the addition and subtraction of blocks differing in length. These children were significantly more accurate on inversion than standard problems, this difference was observed even in children who did not count well, and performance did not differ between formats that afforded qualitative or quantitative solutions. Thus, 3-year-olds appear to develop an early sensitivity to quantitative inversion.     

Meaning in Life and Volunteerism in Older Adults

Researchers explored predictors of meaning in life such as physical and mental health and volunteerism in a representative sample of older adults. Measures included the Geriatric Depression Scale and the Life Regard Index. Implications for counseling older adults are discussed.     

Counterfactual potency

Counterfactual thoughts typically take the form of implied or explicit if-then statements. We propose that the multiplicative combination of "if likelihood" (the degree to which the antecedent condition of the counterfactual is perceived to be likely) and "then likelihood" (the perceived conditional likelihood of the outcome of the counterfactual, given the antecedent condition) determine the strength and impact of counterfactuals. This construct, termed counterfactual potency, is a reliable predictor of the degree of influence of counterfactual thinking upon judgments of regret, causation, and responsibility. Through 4 studies, we demonstrate the predictive power of this construct in a variety of contexts and show that it plays a causal role in determining the strength of the effects of counterfactual thought. Implications of counterfactual potency as a central factor of counterfactual influence are discussed.     

Reducing defensive distancing: Self-affirmation and risk regulation in response to relationship threats

The risk regulation model proposes that people with low self-esteem, but not those with high self-esteem, react to relationship-based self-threats by defensively distancing from their partner. In the present study, we hypothesized that a self-affirmation manipulation, by restoring self-worth and integrity for people with low self-esteem, would attenuate this defensive distancing behavior. Participants were exposed to either a relationship-based self-threat or no such threat, and then completed a self-affirmation or a control task. As predicted, when presented with a self-threat, individuals with low self-esteem distanced from their partner. This effect was attenuated if they were given the opportunity to self-affirm. By contrast, the threat and self-affirmation manipulations had no effect for those with high self-esteem. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for risk regulation theory and self-affirmation theory.     

Identification of cognitive profiles among women considering BRCA1/2 testing through the utilisation of cluster analytic techniques

Based on the cognitive-social health information processing model, we identified cognitive profiles of women at risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Prior to genetic counselling, participants (N = 171) completed a study questionnaire concerning their cognitive and affective responses to being at genetic risk. Using cluster analysis, four cognitive profiles were generated: (a) high perceived risk/low coping; (b) low value of screening/high expectancy of cancer; (c) moderate perceived risk/moderate efficacy of prevention/low informativeness of test result; and (d) high efficacy of prevention/high coping. The majority of women in Clusters One, Two and Three had no personal history of cancer, whereas Cluster Four consisted almost entirely of women affected with cancer. Women in Cluster One had the highest number of affected relatives and experienced higher levels of distress than women in the other three clusters. These results highlight the need to consider the psychological profile of women undergoing genetic testing when designing counselling interventions and messages.     

Predictors of relationship adjustment among couples coping with a high risk of developing breast/ovarian cancer

This study investigated the association between supportive and collaborative processes and dyadic adjustment in 94 women at increased risk of breast/ovarian cancer and their partners. Participants were recruited through two familial cancer clinics. They completed mailed, self-report questionnaires that included measures of psychological distress, dyadic adjustment (consensus, cohesion and satisfaction) and couple predictor variables (perceived support and team approach). Most couples reported average-to-high levels of consensus, cohesion and satisfaction, with a small proportion of couples (6.4%) reporting scores that reached clinically significant levels of dyadic distress. Greater perceived support was associated with better dyadic consensus and satisfaction, and dyadic cohesion and satisfaction were higher among couples who reported greater use of a team approach. General distress did not moderate the association between dyadic coping and relationship quality. There were no significant relationships between intra-couple congruence on support or team approach, and dyadic adjustment. Most couples had a functional relationship in the face of the current health stressor, although a subgroup may be at elevated risk of negative psychological consequences, including further relationship strain. The results highlight that dyadic coping strategies are important factors involved in the quality of couples' relationship following genetic counselling for breast/ovarian cancer risk.     

Political polarization projection: social projection of partisan attitude extremity and attitudinal processes

What influences perceptions of political polarization? The authors examine the polarization of people's own political attitudes as a source of perceived polarization: Individuals with more extreme partisan attitudes perceive greater polarization than individuals with less extreme partisan attitudes. This "polarization projection" was demonstrated in 3 studies in which people estimated the distribution of others' political attitudes: one study with a nationally representative sample concerning the 2008 presidential election, and 2 studies concerning university students evaluating a policy regarding scarce resource allocation. These studies demonstrate that polarization projection occurs simultaneously with and independently of simple projection, the tendency to assume that others share one's partisan political attitudes. Polarization projection may occur partly because people assume that others engage in similar attitudinal processes as the self, such as extensive thought and emotional arousal. The projection of various attitudinal processes was demonstrated in a study concerning health care reform policies. Further supporting this explanation, polarization projection increased when people introspected about their own attitudinal processes, which increased the accessibility of those processes. Implications for perceptions of partisanship, social judgment, and civic behavior are discussed.     

Quality of college students' same-sex friendships as a function of personality and interpersonal competence

The aim of the current study was to investigate personality traits and interpersonal competencies as predictors of the quality of same-sex friendships in young adulthood. Undergraduate students (N = 176), who attended a mid-Atlantic U.S., medium-sized university, completed self-report surveys on their personality, interpersonal competence, and friendship quality. Sex, class status, extraversion, agreeableness, and interpersonal competencies were associated with higher friendship quality, but only the interpersonal competence of self-disclosure significantly predicted friendship quality after controlling for sex, class status, and the five personality factors.     

Assessing Readiness for Advancing Women Scientists Using the Transtheoretical Model

The under-representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines is of wide interest. In this article we report on the development of new Transtheoretical Model-based measures to assess readiness to take action to advance women scientists. Reliable measures of Stage of Change, Decisional balance, and Self-efficacy were developed with a sample of science faculty from a northeastern university. Theoretical relationships among the constructs were validated and offer support for extending the Transtheoretical Model to this area. These measures are being used as part of a campus-wide initiative to examine the advancement of women scientists before and after a series of interventions.