Taking religion to heart: the relationship between the Five Factor Model and the New Indices of Religious Orientation among religious students

The relationship between religious orientation and personality has been investigated using several different measures and diverse samples. As part of a larger study, 114 undergraduate students were given the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) to include only those participants who were considered religious. The final sample of 80 participants were given the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO PI-R) and the New Indices of Religious Orientation (NIRO). Based on the results of the bivariate correlations, higher levels of intrinsic religious orientation were associated with greater Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Multivariate analyses further revealed that Agreeableness was the most important personality variable when predicting intrinsic and quest religious orientations, with higher levels of Agreeableness predicting greater intrinsic and lower quest orientations. While lower levels of Neuroticism predicted greater intrinsic orientation, higher levels of Neuroticism predicted greater quest orientations. Higher Conscientiousness predicted greater intrinsic and lower quest orientations. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Cognitive function and young drivers: The relationship between driving,attitudes, personality and cognition

Young drivers (aged 17–25 years) are the highest risk age group for driving crashes and are over-represented in car crash statistics in Australia. A relationship between cognitive functioning and driving in older drivers (60 years and older) has been consistently supported in previous literature, however, this relationship has been neglected in research regarding younger drivers. The role of cognitive functioning in young people’s driving was investigated both independently and within a current model of younger peoples driving performance. With young drivers as participants, driving behaviour, attitudes, personality and cognitive functioning were tested and driving performance was operationalised through two measures on a driving simulator, speeding and lane deviations. Cognitive functioning was found to contribute to driving behaviour, along with driving attitudes and personality traits, in accounting for young people’s driving performance. The young drivers who performed better on cognitive functioning tasks engaged in less speeding behaviour and less lane deviation on the driving simulator than those who performed worse on these tasks. This result was found independent of the role of driving behaviour, driving attitudes and personality traits, accounting for unique variance in driving ability.     

Thinking bigger: The Cronbachian paradigm & personality theory integration

Personality theories largely mirror disparities between fundamental paradigms that guide most psychology: one based upon Galton’s emphasis on inter-individual differences and the lexical hypothesis; the other inspired by Wundt is focused upon intra-individual processes, such as temperament and Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. Previous integrations of personality models using these paradigms failed to account for observed variance, suggesting model incommensurability. We propose that a broader conception—developed from Cronbach and colleagues’ generalisability theory—provides an effective integrating framework, and show how Galtonian and Wundtian models may be assimilated within Cronbachian approaches. Additionally, Cronbachian models have novel practical implications. Application of the Cronbachian paradigm to personality will be challenging, but provides an opportunity to achieve genuine coherence in personality research.     

The Big Five personality traits as antecedents of eco-friendly tourist behavior

This article reports the findings of a study, conducted among 227 foreign tourists who visited Cyprus, that aimed to identify the relationships between the Big Five personality dimensions and tourists’ environmentalism. Structural equation modeling revealed that Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism are positively associated with pro-environmental tourist behavior. In contrast, no significant relationship was observed between Openness and ecological action.     

A good thing isn’t always a good thing: Dispositional attitudes predict non-normative judgments

A common belief in social sciences is that people like or dislike stimuli based on the properties possessed by those stimuli. Therefore, stimuli with many (few) positives should be universally liked (disliked). However, differences in opinion are common, and one source of disagreement may be personality. This research demonstrates that dispositional attitudes (an individual difference in the tendency to like/dislike stimuli), are associated with qualitative attitude differences (i.e., liking rather than disliking) for stimuli across important domains such as health, business, entertainment, and politics. Qualitative attitude differences frequently predict interpersonal conflict and diametrically opposed behavioral outcomes (e.g., voting for or against a candidate). Thus, these results have implications for understanding seemingly intractable differences found in nearly all social science fields.     

Personality and substance use in Japanese adolescents: The Japanese version of Substance Use Risk Profile Scale

Substance Use Risk Profile Scale (SURPS; Conrod & Woicik, 2002) measures four risk personality dimensions related to substance use; anxiety sensitivity (AS), hopelessness (H), sensation seeking (SS), impulsivity (IMP). The aim of this study is to develop the Japanese version of Substance Use Risk Profile Scale (SURPS-J) and to probe the reliability and validity of this scale to the Japanese context. This study consists of the test of the factor analysis (Study 1; N = 462), the reliability (Study 2; N = 64), and the validity (Study 3; N = 182). Our findings are as below; Study 1 showed the conformed factorial structure of SURPS-J and Study 2 revealed the good test–retest reliability. Additionally, Study 3 demonstrated the adequate validity of SURPS-J and its sensitivity in identifying risky drinking motivations and lifetime tobacco and alcohol use. Results showed that high H individuals are likely to experience smoking under the personal and collective situations, while high SS and IMP individuals are prone to drink alcohol under the collective situation. Additionally, high AS individuals are prone to drink by virtue of negative reinforcement motives and high SS and IMP drink by reason of all drinking reinforcement motives.     

Pet personality: A review

An increasing amount of research is being conducted on pet personality, with a variety of goals, from standardization of methodology to development. Most of this work is done on dogs (n = 95), but there is some on cats (n = 24) as well. Very little is done on rabbits or other pets, such as ferrets, or amphibians or reptiles. The work that is being done has improved, with many more researchers reporting reliability and validity for their measures. For dogs, 56.82% of studies reported reliability measures (as compared with 19% in a previous analysis), and 70.45% reported validity measures (as compared with 27% in a previous analysis). However, there is still much work to be done on the standardization of methods both within and across species. This type of research is important as it has the potential to affect the welfare and other health and life outcomes of these animals, as well as elucidating evolutionary relationships that may offer clues to domestication.     

Spitefulness and moral values

The relationship between spitefulness and an individual’s sense of morality or lack thereof has been neglected in studies of personality. It seems probable that individuals with higher levels of spitefulness exhibit fewer moral concerns relative to those with lower levels of spite. To examine associations between spitefulness and moral concerns, 436 community participants completed self-report measures concerning their spitefulness, basic personality dimensions, and moral concerns. Spitefulness was negatively associated with individualizing values (i.e., sensitivity to harm and fairness) such that spiteful individuals were less concerned about issues related to avoiding harm or injustice to others when making moral judgments. However, spitefulness was not simply associated with a general reduction in moral concerns as it was not significantly associated with binding values (i.e., concerns about ingroup loyalty, authority, and purity).