Personality Certainty and Politics: Increasing the Predictive Utility of Individual‐Difference Inventories

Research on political psychology has benefitted from using individual‐difference measures to predict political attitudes and behavior. And, previous research has further identified a number of specific variables that enhance the predictive utility of individual‐difference scales. However, a potentially important factor that has been overlooked is the certainty with which people make their responses. The present research establishes that the certainty with which people respond to scales is associated with stability of the scale responses over time and correspondence between the scale and related outcomes. In addition, the effects of certainty in political ideological identification in predicting politically relevant outcomes hold when controlling for a number of previously established moderators. This research suggests that measuring certainty in answers to individual‐difference scales can be a useful and efficient way to increase the predictive utility of those scales within the political domain and beyond. This benefit is demonstrated with need for cognition (Study 1), need to evaluate (Study 2), and ideological identification (Studies 2 and 3).     

The rise and fall of the Pacquiao Effect: Contrastive priming and national identification

We demonstrate in a series of field and controlled experiments that assimilative and contrastive priming effects can be observed in the pattern of self‐concept change in response to a major cultural event. Study 1 used the brief implicit association test (BIAT) to measure national identification of Filipinos online across a period of time that encompassed a national sporting event. The pattern of scores support the hypothesis that while people who were ambivalent about identifying with Filipino concepts exhibited an assimilation effect (i.e. a slight rise in identification after the fight), people who already highly identified with being Filipino experienced a contrast effect (i.e. a slight drop in identification). Study 2 replicated this result five months later with a new sample and ruled out several possible alternative hypotheses. A subsequent controlled experiment and a qualitative investigation consistently supported the hypothesis that the pattern observed in the previous studies is more consistent with assimilative and contrastive priming effects rather than disidentification.     

Narcissism,identification, and longitudinal change in psychological health: Dynamic predictions

The narcissist has been described as “dependent on others to provide confirmation of the grandiose ego ideal” (American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.). The present study shows how the combination of dependent identification and unhealthy narcissism leads to decreasing psychological health across 42 years of adulthood. Change in psychological health is studied in 156 participants of the Intergenerational Studies, Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. We predicted that longitudinal decline in psychological health, as assessed by longitudinal hierarchical linear modeling analyses of the California Personality Inventory v3 scale [Gough, H. G., & Bradley, P. (1996). California Psychological Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press], would be predicted by the joint presence in early adulthood of maladaptive narcissism [Wink, P. (1992). Three narcissism scales for the California Q-set. Journal of Personality Assessment, 58, 51–66] and defensive identification [Cramer, P. (1991a). The development of defense mechanisms: Theory, research and assessment. New York: Springer-Verlag]. In contrast, we predicted healthy narcissism would be positively related to psychological health throughout adulthood. Predictions were confirmed via regression analyses including interaction terms, and are explained by the insoluble conflict that occurs when narcissistic gratification is dependent on the admiration of others, but the tie to others interferes with independent growth and accomplishment.     

Scene congruency biases Binocular Rivalry

Contextual regularities, that is, objects’ tendency to appear with certain other objects, facilitate the processing of visual scenes and confer contextually incongruent objects with a special attentional status. This study was aimed at investigating the mechanisms underlying this attentional advantage using Binocular Rivalry (BR). In two experiments, congruent and incongruent images (e.g., a man drinking from a glass vs. a man “drinking” from a hairbrush) were pitted against each other, yielding a version of BR in which two objects rival within a given scene. Incongruent objects predominated in awareness longer than congruent ones. This effect stemmed from the fact that their dominance epochs lasted longer on the average than those of congruent objects, suggesting a difficulty to disengage attention from such objects. On the other hand, no support was found for the notion that incongruent objects also attract attention.     

Do local properties function as cues for musical key perception?1

Abstract: A global property (i.e., pitch set) of a melody appears to serve as a primary cue for key identification. Previous studies have proposed specific local properties in a melody (e.g., the augmented fourth, the perfect fifth, etc.) that may function as further cues. However, the role of the latter in key identification is controversial. The present study was designed to investigate what kinds of local properties, if any, function as reliable cues for key identification. Listeners were asked to identify keys for 450 melodies that consisted of the same pitch set, but which differed in sequential constraints. Using multiple discriminant analyses, we evaluated relative contributions of as many kinds of local properties as possible (e.g., single intervals, single pitch classes in each sequential position, etc.). The results showed that, except for the pitch class of the final tone, for which interpretation should be taken cautiously, none of the specific local properties examined contributed significantly to key identification. This finding suggests that, contrary to prior findings, key identification is derived from unidentified properties other than the specific local properties.     

Variation among developmental dyslexics: evidence from a printed-word-learning task

A word-learning task was used to investigate variation among developmental dyslexics classified as phonological and surface dyslexics. Dyslexic children and chronological age (CA)- and reading level (RL)-matched normal readers were taught to pronounce novel nonsense words such as veep. Words were assigned either a regular (e.g., "veep") or an irregular (e.g., "vip") pronunciation. Phonological dyslexics learned both regular and exception words more slowly than the normal readers and, unlike the other groups, did not show a regular-word advantage. Surface dyslexics also learned regular and exception words more slowly than the CA group, consistent with a specific problem in mastering arbitrary item-specific pronunciations, but their performance resembled that of the RL group. The results parallel earlier findings from Manis, Seidenberg, Doi, McBride-Chang, & Petersen [Cognition 58 (1996) 157-195] indicating that surface dyslexics and phonological dyslexics have a different profile of reading deficits, with surface dyslexics resembling younger normal readers and phonological dyslexics showing a specific phonological deficit. Models of reading and reading disability need to account for the heterogeneity in reading processes among dyslexic children.     

北宋医理进展及渊源考述:以五脏辨证体系为线索

张仲景时期五脏证治概念界定边缘清晰,又能化整为零,分散于各具体证治。之后经六朝隋唐,杂病领域的积累致使内部有重新整合的刚性需求。而承载多层五脏辨证新说的七篇《大论》的出现切合发展时机。进入北宋之后,七篇《大论》没有立刻产生影响,直至仁宗时,由于国家校正医书局整理刊刻新《素问》才流行开来。随之而来,医家不断发挥新说。标志当时学术高度的是钱乙的《小儿药证直诀》,书中将化博为约、重新审察旧说、注重五脏辨证等北宋医学之新象发挥得淋漓尽致。北宋医理的突出进展,是发生于五脏辨证的学术脉络之下。     

On the capacity to suffer one's self

Problems in the establishment of the sense of a ‘psychic’ skin, in the ways described by Bick and Meltzer for example, commonly give rise to distortions in the capacity for self‐experiences as a consequence of difficulties in relation to projective and identificatory processes. These latter may acquire a markedly adhesive character as a defence against the anxieties that arise. This makes for considerable technical difficulties in an analysis. This essay addresses the nature of these problems and considers some of the ways in which they may be approached clinically.