Revaluating the evidence for the General Factor of Personality in the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire: Concerns about Rushton and Irwing (2009)

We evaluated whether the Big Five-based hierarchical model for the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) reported by Rushton and Irwing (2009) would replicate in a second sample of 733 participants. We were unable to confirm their hierarchical model and detected problems with the reporting of the original results. Exploratory factor analytic investigations generally supported the canonical three factor solution for the MPQ described in the existing literature. This was the case for both the present dataset and for the correlation matrix analyzed by Rushton and Irwing.     

Are valence and social avoidance associated with the memory conformity effect?

Pairs of participants were shown photographs which varied in terms of valence from negative to positive, and two days later, together, they were given a memory recognition test. When the first person responded the second person saw the response. This affected how the second person responded, what is called memory conformity. The memory conformity effect was larger for previously unseen stimuli (fillers) than for previously seen stimuli (targets), and was greatest for those with low scores on a social avoidance measure. While memory for negative (and most arousing) stimuli was most accurate, the memory conformity effect did not differ significantly by the stimulus valence. Implications for theories of memory malleability and for assessing the reliability of memories in a forensic context are discussed.     

The use of the self in group leadership: a relational perspective

This article, written from a relational perspective, describes a shift that is taking place in the thinking of many psychodynamically oriented psychotherapists regarding the practice of therapy and the implications it has for group therapists. The shift, from one-person to two-person and multi-person theory, has particular importance for group leaders since it recommends making the subjective involvement of the therapist in the interactional field of the group much more a part of the treatment process. Theory and research on the use of countertransference, non-interpretive interventions, humor, and spontaneity by the leader are reviewed and vignettes are presented to illustrate the application of these ideas. Guidelines regarding the application of such ideas in group therapy are also discussed.     

Route choices, anticipated forgetting, and interface design for on-line reference documents

Preference and usability are imperfectly correlated when choice among procedures depends on anticipating cognitive difficulties. Navigation choices were explored by offering 2 routes through an on-line price catalog. The harder route never varied, but interface features of the easier route varied across readers. In Experiment 1, readers chose the easier route (82% trials) when it was visually salient but otherwise preferred the harder route from the active window. This suggested that visual factors influenced decisions. Experiment 2 equated visual factors, but choice of the easier route fell significantly when it needed an activation click. Navigating the harder route increased readers' use of an on-line notebook (i.e., people more often anticipated forgetting prices while reading). People choose easier procedures unless interface design miscues anticipated effort. Thus, usability evaluation needs to include factors influencing choices among methods.     

Psychological masculinity-femininity via the gender diagnosticity approach: heritability and consistency across ages and populations

Several aspects of the Gender Diagnosticity (GD) approach of Lippa (1995) to measuring the psychological trait of masculinity-femininity within sexes were explored in four samples ranging from 363 to 5,859 individuals, including Swedish and Australian adults, U.S. elderly, and Australian adolescents. Two ways of deriving GD scales yielded highly similar results. Moderate stability of individual differences was found across ages 12 to 16 among adolescents, but substantial shifts over age occurred in relationships with Eysenck scales. Considerable generality of GD scales was obtained across languages and populations. Substantial heritabilities (about 40%) and minimal effects of shared family environments suggest that within-sex masculinity-femininity behaves as a fairly typical personality trait. Cross-age continuity appeared mainly to reflect the influence of the genes.     

Forward association, backward association, and the false-memory illusion

In the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false-memory illusion, forward associative strength (FAS) is unrelated to the strength of the illusion; this is puzzling, because high-FAS lists ought to share more semantic features with critical unpresented words than should low-FAS lists. The authors show that this null result is probably a truncated range artifact. When FAS and its complement, backward associative strength (BAS), were independently manipulated in factorial designs, they both affected illusion strength. Moreover, their effects did not interact and were of comparable magnitude. Conjoint-recognition analyses were used to pinpoint the influence of BAS and FAS on retrieval processes that support or suppress false-memory responses. Although the variables affected both types of processes, their effects on suppressive processes were larger and more consistent. This research also provided the first clear evidence that subjects often use suppressive processes inappropriately to reject studied items that preserve the gist of experience.     

Learning processes in matching and oddity: the oddity preference effect and sample reinforcement

Eight pigeons learned either matching (to sample) or oddity (from sample) with or without reward for sample responding. The training stimuli were coarse-white, fine-black, or smooth-mauve gravels in pots with buried grain as the reinforcer. Oddity without sample reward was learned most rapidly, followed by matching with sample reward, oddity with sample reward, and matching without sample reward. Transfer was related to acquisition rate: The oddity group without sample reward showed full (equal to baseline) color and texture transfer; the matching group with sample reward showed partial texture transfer; other groups showed no transfer. Sample reward was shown to determine rate of acquisition of matching and oddity and the oddity preference effect. The results are discussed in terms of item-specific associations operating early in learning prior to any relational learning between sample and comparison stimuli.     

Dissociation, cognitive failures, and working memory

The relationships between two personality measures (dissociation and cognitive failures) and different measures of interference from secondary tasks for working memory are investigated. Although the personality and cognitive measures were correlated with one another, canonical and bivariate correlations revealed no systematic relationships between the personality measures and the working memory measures. The upper bounds of the confidence intervals showed that, at most, only 10% of the variance was shared. We discuss the implications for theories of dissociation and cognitive functioning.     

Antecedents of Goal Commitment: An Empirical Examination of Personal and Situational Factors1

The purpose of this study was to provide a partial test of the Hollenbeck and Klein (1987) model of goal commitment. Four variables from that model (reward structure, social influence, type-A behavior, and self-esteem) were examined as to their relationships with the expectancy and attractiveness of goal attainment and goal commitment. The results, based on 88 college students performing an anagram task, were generally supportive. Significant person by situation interactions were also observed.     

The word-length effect in probed and serial recall

The word-length effect in immediate serial recall has been explained as the possible consequence of rehearsal processes or of output processes. In the first experiment adult subjects heard lists of five long or short words while engaging in articulatory suppression during presentation. Full serial recall or probed recall for a single item followed the list either immediately or after a 5-second delay to encourage rehearsal. The word-length effect was not influenced by recall delay, but was much smaller in probed than in serial recall. Examination of the serial position curves suggested that this might be due to a recency component operating in probed recall. Experiment 2 confirmed a word-length-insensitive recency effect in probed recall and showed that this was resistant to an auditory suffix, unlike the small recency effect found in serial recall. Experiment 3 used visual presentation without concurrent articulation. Under these conditions there was no recency effect for either recall method, but the word-length effect was again much smaller in probed than in serial recall. This was confirmed in Experiment 4, in which the presentation of serial and probed recall was randomized across trials, showing that the differences between recall methods could not be due to encoding strategies. We conclude that for visual presentation, at least part of the word-length effect originates in output processes. For auditory presentation the position is less clear, as serial and probed recall appear to draw on different resources. The nature of the output processes that may give rise to word-length effects is discussed.