A cross-cultural comparison of personality: English and Austrian children

The Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was given to 457 boys and 431 girls in Austria. Factor comparisons indicated that the dimensions of psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and social desirability were identical in Austria and in England. Minimal item changes were required to produce a viable Austrian scoring key with satisfactorily high reliabilities for all dimensions except in the case of P for girls, which was somewhat weaker. Austrian norms indicated that boys score higher than girls on P and E but lower on N and L. Direct cross-cultural comparisons revealed few marked personality differences between Austrian and English children, there being a slight tendency for the former to score higher on psychoticism, extraversion and the lie scale but slightly lower on neuroticism.     

Androgyny,depression, and self-esteem in irish homosexual and heterosexual males and females

An examination was made of the following research questions: (a) Do Irish homosexuals and heterosexuals differ in the frequency of their classification in sex-role categories? (b) Is sexual orientation related to psychological adjustment? (c) Is androgyny related to psychological adjustment? Subjects were 112 Irish men and women who were administered Bem's Sex-Role Inventory, Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale, and a questionnaire. Results indicated that Irish homosexuals were classified more frequently than Irish heterosexuals as androgynous. Homosexuals did not differ from heterosexuals in self-esteem or depression scores. Among these Irish subjects, psychological sex-role category is a more powerful influence on psychological health than actual sexual orientation. It is not whether you are homosexual or heterosexual that affects your psychological health, but how you perceive your own psychological masculinity and femininity.     

Rorschach space response and aggression

The study investigated the construct validity of the Rorschach space response by factor analyzing the stress-coping reactions to highly stressful conditions. Self-report reactions to stress of 173 medical students measured on the Habits of Nervous Tension showed that space responding loaded highest on a factor identified as "anger affect" and secondarily loaded negatively on a factor identified as "regressive withdrawal." Findings were consistent with earlier results for space response on validity.     

The assessment of personality factors across 25 countries

The means for each scale score from the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were compared individually and conjointly across 25 countries. Comparisons were carried out using coded difference scores, Pearson correlations, Euclidean distances, cluster analyses and non-metric multidimensional scaling. It was possible to compare the personality (as defined by the scale scores on E, N, P and L) of each country with all other countries, culminating in a one-dimensional non-metric scale of distances for both the male and female data from each country. The assumptions underlying the rationale of the measures used and the comparisons undertaken are briefly discussed.     

Modes of information integration and Piagetian measures of concrete operational thought

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationships between modes of information integration and performance on a variety of Piagetian concrete operational tasks. The sample consisted of 180 6- to 8-year-olds. Factor analysis of the Piaget tests revealed five interpretable factors: conversation of substance—equality, conservation of substance— inequality, conservation of number, class inclusion, and matrices. Factor analysis of the marker tests for information integration revealed two factors: simultaneous and successive. All the Piaget measures, with the exception of class inclusion, were related to the simultaneous factor. Class inclusion was weakly related to the successive factor.     

Reaction time, intelligence, and attention

The roles of attention in reaction time and in the relationships among reaction time, intelligence, and achievement were analyzed. The subjects were 105 seventh-grade children. The results were generally consistent with most studies involving the Hick paradigm: both mean reaction time and the standard deviation of reaction time correlated with the intelligence and achievement measures used. Reaction time measures were correlated with attention and perceptual speed as well as with general intelligence, or g. Implications of these results for current theories linking reaction time and intelligence are discussed.     

Impulsiveness and antisocial behaviour in children

An Impulsiveness inventory was completed by 118 boys and 309 girls from London comprehensive schools. Of these, 101 boys and 306 girls also completed the Eysenck Junior Personality Questionnaire and an Antisocial Behaviour Scale. Intercorrelations of the scores suggest that there is a strong link between antisocial behaviour in children and impulsiveness, as well as psychoticism or toughmindedness, and a weaker link with venturesomeness, extraversion and lack of empathy. Neuroticism was only slightly implicated for girls and hardly at all for boys.     

A genetic and environmental analysis of sensation seeking

The genetic and environmental contributions to the trait of sensation seeking were analyzed using the responses of 422 pairs of twins to the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form IV). The biometrical method of Jinks and Fulker was applied to the data. The data fit the model indicating the likelihood of a predominantly additive gene action controlling the general trait. The heritability figure of 58% (69% of the reliable variance) was quite high for a personality trait. Data from other studies suggest that the heritability of the personality trait rests upon specific inherited biological traits, such as the biochemicals of the brain and gonadal hormones which affect arousability of the central nervous system and relevant traits, such as mood, impulsivity, risk taking, and sociability.     

Reversal and nonreversal shifts in autistic children

Reversal and nonreversal shifts in nineteen 2- to 14-year-old autistic children were studied. Each child was taught both a reversal and nonreversal shift discrimination task. The reversal shift condition entailed teaching the child to respond to one (the S+) of a pair of stimuli during training and subsequently reversing the S+ during testing. The nonreversal shift condition consisted of teaching the child two unrelated discriminations during training and testing. The results indicated that the older autistic children did better on reversal shifts than younger children who did better on nonreversal shifts. These findings are consistent with those for normal children.