Moral reasoning,emotion understanding,and callous-unemotional traits in early-to-middle childhood

Relatively little is known about features of moral reasoning among young children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits (e.g., lack of guilt and empathy). This study tested associations between CU traits and emotion attributions (i.e., identification of others’ emotional states) and justifications (i.e., explanations for those emotional states), across social scenarios involving discreet versus salient distress cues. The participants were boys aged 6-to-10 years (N = 50; M_age = 7 years 7 months), who were interviewed about 12 hypothetical scenarios (eight with discreet and four with salient distress cues). Regression models indicated that CU traits, in interaction with high levels of antisocial behaviour, were associated with reduced emotion attributions of fear in discreet but not salient immoral scenarios. Higher CU traits were also associated with reduced justifications referencing others’ welfare in discreet scenarios, and increased references to action-orientated justifications in salient scenarios. These findings suggest that CU traits are associated with early moral reasoning impairments and that salience of distress may be important to these processes.     

Cornell College: Program in Science and Religion

Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, has established a new interdisciplinary program in science and religion. One of the features of this program is an undergraduate major in science and religion that requires substantial course work in at least one of the natural sciences as well as course work in philosophy, religion, and history. As a result of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Cornell College will offer a special course, God and Physics: From Aquinas to Quantum Mechanics (April 1998), and will sponsor an international symposium on creation and contemporary cosmology (April 1999). Opportunities exist for interested scholars to come to Cornell as Templeton Visiting Fellows in order to participate in these activities.     

大生态医学—21世纪医学发展的战略走向

文章基于可持续发展战略思想和对现代医学弊端的分析,认为医学正面临一轮新的革命。结合传统中国文化思想和世界性潮流,提炼出新的健康概念,并以此为基石构建大生态医学模式,认为它将代表２１世纪医学发展的战略走向     

A Study of Current, Former, and New Elderly Volunteers: A Comparison of Developmental and Trait Models of Personality

This study examined relationships among personality traits, ego development, and volunteering among retired seniors who were current, former, and new volunteers. Volunteer history, but not extensiveness of volunteer experience, was associated with higher ego development. Current volunteers had higher levels of ego development than former and new volunteers, and former volunteers had higher levels than new volunteers. Openness to experience and ego development were positively associated. Results of multiple-regression analyses indicated that openness and volunteering history and extensiveness positively predicted ego development. This study supported the hypothesis that ego development is related to volunteering and suggests that participation in volunteer work promotes ego development.     

Personality characteristics in primary benzodiazepine-dependent patients: Comparison with controls and polydrug users

The present study applied Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) to study (i) if patients with benzodiazepine dependence have a characteristic personality profile, (ii) if the personality characteristics in patients with benzodiazepine dependence differ from those of polydrug users and normal controls, (iii) if differences in treatment outcome existed between the groups, and (iv) if the possible difference in treatment outcome was associated with any particular personality characteristic shown by the patients. The personality characteristics of primary benzodiazepine dependent patients (BDZ) and a group of polydrug users (MIX) were studied initially (during the first week in project as an inpatient) and approximately one year after drug discontinuation, and a comparison was made with healthy controls on both test occasions. The results showed that the personality of both groups of patients differed significantly from the Controls in the following characteristics: Detachment, Socialization, Somatic Anxiety, Muscular Tension, Psychic Anxiety, and Psychasthenia. Significant differences existed between the polydrug and benzodiazepine users in Somatic and Psychic Anxiety as well as in Socialization. The MIX group differed significantly from the BDZ group and from the Controls in Suspicion. Results of treatment outcome indicated that the benzodiazepine dependent patients were significantly more successful in quitting their drug use compared to polydrug users. Further, the results demonstrated that patients scoring high in the investigated personality characteristics are those who fail the treatment goal of quitting their drug use, especially the patients with a high level of anxiety and detachment.     

Examining Individual Differences in Interpersonal Influence: On the Psychometric Properties of the Generalized Opinion Leadership Scale (GOLS)

Opinion leadership describes an individual's tendency to informally influence others’ attitudes and overt behaviors. In contrast to contemporary views of opinion leadership as a highly domain-specific trait, this paper introduces a multi-faceted personality trait, generalized opinion leadership (GOL) that characterizes exceptionally influential individuals independent of a specific subject area. Two studies report on the psychometric properties of a scale to assess GOL. Study 1 is based on three independent samples (N = 1,575, N = 1,275, and N = 231) and demonstrates the factorial structure of the instrument and its measurement invariance across sex, age, and educational levels. Study 2 (N = 310) analyzes multitrait-multiinformant data to highlight the scale's discriminant validity with regard to innovativeness and trendsetting.     

The Effect of General Creative Personality and Freedom of Task Choice on Adolescents' Social Creativity

This study investigated the effect of general creative personality and freedom of task choice on the social creativity of adolescents. The results indicated, first, that senior high school students scored higher than junior high school students. Second, girls scored higher than boys on originality, fluency, flexibility, appropriateness, and utility with regard to creative social problem‐solving. Third, freedom of task choice and its interaction with creative personality had significant effects on the originality, appropriateness, utility, flexibility, and fluency of social creativity. Adolescents who completed the task voluntarily scored higher on these dimensions than adolescents who completed it reluctantly and, among the voluntary adolescents, those with high and medium creative personality scored higher than those with low creative personality, whereas no such difference was found among the reluctant adolescents. Adolescents were more likely to show social creativity, and their general creative personality was more likely to be brought into effect under the freedom of task choice condition.     

Corruption as a Propensity: Personality and Motivational Determinants Among Nigerians

Psychologically oriented studies on corruption are lacking despite the fact that psychology has contributed enormously to the understanding of criminal behaviors over the past decades. Part of this problem relates to the lack of psychological tone in the definition and measurement of corruption. Taking a clue from the extensive psychological discourse on crime, which provides strong evidence for the existence of criminal tendencies, we conceptualized corruption here in terms of propensity. Possible personality and motivation determinants of this propensity were then explored. Results revealed that extraversion and conscientiousness positively and inversely predicted corruption tendencies, respectively. Results further showed that extrinsic motivation positively potentiates corruption tendencies, whereas intrinsic motivation was inversely related to corruption tendencies. Analysis of demographic variables revealed that males were more likely to be corrupt than their female counterparts. In general, findings here are consistent with the criminal behavior literature, which strongly suggests that the study of corruption is indeed amenable to psychological theories and methods and that individual differences variables constitute important explanatory variables in this regard.