Stability and Invariance of Psychopathic Traits from Late Adolescence to Young Adulthood

The current study examined the longitudinal stability and invariance of psychopathic traits in a large community sample of male twins from ages 17 to 23. Participants were assessed across 6 years to gauge the stability and measurement invariance of the Minnesota Temperament Inventory (MTI), a Cleckley-based measure of psychopathic personality traits, and how family functioning and externalizing behavior were linked to these traits. A latent variable approach was used to model the structure of the MTI and provide a statistical test of measurement invariance across time. The results revealed support for invariance and moderate to strong stability of the MTI factors, which showed significant associations with the external correlates in late adolescence but not early adulthood.     

Sex differences in latent cognitive abilities ages 5 to 17: Evidence from the Differential Ability Scales—Second Edition

Sex differences in the latent general and broad cognitive abilities underlying the Differential Ability Scales, Second Edition were investigated for children and youth ages 5 through 17. Multi-group mean and covariance structural equation modeling was used to investigate sex differences in latent cognitive abilities as well as changes in these differences across age. Most broad abilities showed mean differences across the sexes, and all such differences varied across ages. Girls showed an advantage on the processing speed (Gs) first-order residual factor. Girls also showed advantages at some ages on free-recall memory, a narrow ability of long term retrieval (Glr). Boys showed a developmentally-related advantage on a visual-spatial ability (Gv) first-order residual factor, depending on age. Younger girls showed an advantage on short-term memory (Gsm). No statistically significant sex differences were shown on the latent comprehension-knowledge (Gc) factor, or on a second-order, latent g factor. Boys showed larger variances for several broad abilities, some substantial, but those differences were not statistically significant.     

The function of wisdom dimensions in ego‐identity development among Chinese university students

This study investigates the relationship between wisdom and ego‐identity among university students in China. Using Marcia's ego‐identity statuses and Ardelt's wisdom dimensions as the theoretical and conceptual framework, the study investigates 356 university students in China. After exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, four factors from wisdom and five factors from ego‐identity were retrieved. A structural equation model was then conducted to analyse the relationships. The findings were: (1) among wisdom dimensions, cognitive, and reflective wisdom, especially perspective‐taking best predicted achievement, (2) all three dimensions of wisdom predicted moratorium, but reflective wisdom was the most pronounced predictor, (3) all three dimensions of wisdom predicted diffusion, but resentment items from reflective wisdom were the most pronounced predictors, and (4) gender was a significant predictor of ego‐identity achievement and diffusion. These findings suggest that efforts to build reflective wisdom might contribute to healthier ego‐identity formation.     

Rural Neighborhoods and Child Aggression

Structural equation modeling with latent variables was used to evaluate the direct and mediated effects of a neighborhood risk factor (negative teen behaviors) on the parent-report aggressive behavior of 213 students in grades 3 through 5 attending a school in a low-income, rural community. Contagion and social control hypotheses were examined as well as hypotheses about whether the neighborhood served as a microsystem or exosystem for rural pre-adolescents. Analyses took into account the clustering of students and ordinal nature of the data. Findings suggest that rural neighborhoods may operate as both a microsystem and exosystem for children, with direct contagion effects on their aggressive behaviors as well as indirect social control effects through parenting practices. Direct effects on aggression were also found for parenting practices and child reports of friends’ negative behaviors. Pre-adolescence may be a transitional stage, when influences of the neighborhood on child behavior begin to compete with influences of caregivers. Findings can inform the timing and targets of violence prevention in rural communities.     

Manager–salesperson congruence in customer orientation and job outcomes: The bright and dark sides of leadership in aligning values

To create customer-oriented organizations, managers are often asked to promote a values-based vision. Yet, many managers struggle with transferring their values to employees making strategic value changes difficult. Despite this challenge, research has yet to demonstrate how managers effectively align values within the sales force, or the impact alignment has on job outcomes. Therefore, we develop and empirically test a conceptual framework to examine the role of transformational leadership in aligning salesperson customer orientation (CO) values. We find that transformational leadership is a strong mechanism in creating perceived value congruence, yet may have a surprising dark side. Results suggest that transformational managers achieve congruence by raising or, contrary to conventional wisdom, lowering salesperson CO values to meet the perceived values of the manager. Response surface modelling results support the importance of perceived manager values. Customer-oriented salespeople have higher job satisfaction and sales performance when they perceive their manager to also have high CO. When values are misaligned, job satisfaction increases more for low CO salespeople as perceptions of manager CO increase. Exploratory findings show that performance was higher under situations of perfect alignment but also under severe misalignment suggesting that values generate performance under complementary or supplementary conditions.     

Levels of analysis and sources of data in sales research: a multilevel-multisource review

Sales researchers are increasingly adopting a multilevel-multisource (MLMS) approach to answer many key questions involving sales managers, salespeople and customers. MLMS research involves the acquisition and analysis of data collected from two or more sources pertaining to multiple hierarchical levels and presents a number of opportunities and challenges for sales researchers to consider. The authors highlight the benefits and the drawbacks of MLMS research and describe various approaches for implementing an MLMS collection and analysis. Additionally, a review of the MLMS studies conducted in the sales domain is provided which summarizes and delineates relationships tested in the extant literature. Based on this review, the authors advance a number of underdeveloped areas of research where MLMS approaches can be applied to further the understanding of the dynamic conditions that typify sales research.     

A neural cognitive model of argumentation with application to legal inference and decision making

Formal models of argumentation have been investigated in several areas, from multi-agent systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to decision making, philosophy and law. In artificial intelligence, logic-based models have been the standard for the representation of argumentative reasoning. More recently, the standard logic-based models have been shown equivalent to standard connectionist models. This has created a new line of research where (i) neural networks can be used as a parallel computational model for argumentation and (ii) neural networks can be used to combine argumentation, quantitative reasoning and statistical learning. At the same time, non-standard logic models of argumentation started to emerge. In this paper, we propose a connectionist cognitive model of argumentation that accounts for both standard and non-standard forms of argumentation. The model is shown to be an adequate framework for dealing with standard and non-standard argumentation, including joint-attacks, argument support, ordered attacks, disjunctive attacks, meta-level attacks, self-defeating attacks, argument accrual and uncertainty. We show that the neural cognitive approach offers an adequate way of modelling all of these different aspects of argumentation. We have applied the framework to the modelling of a public prosecution charging decision as part of a real legal decision making case study containing many of the above aspects of argumentation. The results show that the model can be a useful tool in the analysis of legal decision making, including the analysis of what-if questions and the analysis of alternative conclusions. The approach opens up two new perspectives in the short-term: the use of neural networks for computing prevailing arguments efficiently through the propagation in parallel of neuronal activations, and the use of the same networks to evolve the structure of the argumentation network through learning (e.g. to learn the strength of arguments from data).     

基于结构方程模型的多重中介效应分析

多重中介模型是指存在多个中介变量的模型。多重中介模型可以分析特定中介效应、总的中介效应和对比中介效应。指出了目前多重中介模型分析普遍存在的问题,包括分析不完整、使用Sobel检验带来的局限。建议通过增加辅助变量的方法进行完整的多重中介效应分析,使用偏差校正的Bootstrap方法进行中介检验。总结出一个多重中介SEM分析流程,并有示例和相应的MPLUS程序。随后展望了辅助变量和中介效应检验方法的发展方向。