A temperamental and development model for personality assessment: application to self-control in middle childhood

In personality theory and assessment, it is important to distinguish between dispositional and developmental constructs. This important but often neglected distinction is applied to general personality models, and, specifically, to psychological temperament dimensions and ego development. These conjoined domains are used as a framework to study impulsivity and self-control in a sample of middle-childhood boys. Impulsivity is conceptualized as a temperamental dimension and self-control as an ego-developmental dimension. A factor-analytic procedure was used to test the assumption of orthogonality between impulsivity and self-control. Results were consistent with the hypothesis and provide implications for the concept of ‘difficulty’ of temperament constellations and study of ego development in middle childhood.     

Associations between nonparental care experience and preschooler's emotion regulation in the presence of the mother

This study tested predictions concerning the associations between children's nonparental care experiences and emotion regulation. It involved 53 participants (21 girls and 32 boys) of preschool age and their mothers. The children's care experiences ranged from those who were raised exclusively at home to those who had nonparental care experience beginning in early infancy. The participants were observed in a laboratory playroom, and their mothers were asked to complete questionnaires regarding their children's care histories and their current care situations. The children with extensive nonparental care backgrounds were found to be more likely to use self-directed emotion regulation behaviors when faced with a mildly frustrating situation. In the same situation, the children who had experienced minimal nonparental care were found to be more likely to use other-directed emotion regulation behaviors. Additionally, the children who had experienced care settings with large numbers of children in each care group or who had experienced many caregiver changes were more likely to use self-directed emotion regulation behaviors, whereas those who had experienced settings with smaller care groups and fewer caregiver changes were more likely to use other-directed emotion regulation behaviors.     

Cross-cultural model testing: toward a solution of the etic-emic dilemma

A model for the prediction of behavior from attitudinal components, developed by Triandis, was tested with samples of U.S. and Mexican women, and with fertility relevant behaviors. The elements of the model are etic, but the operationalizations of the various variables were done emically. Results support the model in both cultures. While the predictive utility of the model is equivalent in two cultures, there are social class differences on which component of the model is most emphasized. The U.S. upper-middle-class sample and the Mexican upper-middle-class sample emphasized the person's attitude toward the act, while the Mexican lower SES (socio-economic status) sample emphasized the person's normative beliefs (moral obligations).     

Inhibitory control and set shifting describe different pathways from behavioral inhibition to socially anxious behavior

Individuals with a behaviorally inhibited (BI) temperament are more likely to develop social anxiety. However, the mechanisms by which socially anxious behavior emerges from BI are unclear. Variation in different forms of top‐down control, specifically executive functions (EF), may play distinct roles and characterize differential pathways to social anxiety. Here 291 children were assessed for BI in toddlerhood (ages 2 and 3), parent‐reported inhibitory control and set shifting during middle childhood (age 7), and multidimensional assessment of socially anxious behavior completed during late childhood and early adolescence (ages 9 and 12). Structural equation modeling revealed that early variation in BI predicted the development of socially anxious behavior through either higher levels of parent‐reported inhibitory control or lower levels of parent‐reported set shifting. These data reinforce the notion that top‐down control does not uniformly influence relations between temperament and socially anxious behavior. These data suggest novel approaches to thinking about the role of EFs and social anxiety outcomes as children approach adolescence.     

The flip side of vanity sizing: How consumers respond to and compensate for larger than expected clothing sizes

Vanity sizing has become a popular retail trend and recent work shows it has a favorable impact on consumers. However, as the current research demonstrates, significant variations in sizing standards across retailers mean that consumers are as likely to encounter larger sizes as they are smaller, “vanity” sizes when shopping, highlighting the importance of understanding how consumers react to this potential threat in the marketplace. Across five studies we demonstrate that larger sizes result in negative evaluations of clothing and show that these effects are driven by consumers' appearance self-esteem. Importantly, we also find that instead of unilaterally lowering purchase intent as one might assume, larger sizes can actually increase spending, as consumers engage in compensatory consumption to help repair their damaged self-esteem. In so doing, this research reveals a dynamic and complex relationship between consumers and sizing labels, where shopping can serve to build, strengthen, threaten, and/or repair appearance self-esteem.     

Punishment and the potential for negative reinforcement with histamine injection

The present study examined punishment of responding with histamine injection, and its potential to generate avoidance of punishment. Sprague–Dawley rats were trained under concurrent schedules in which responses on one lever (the punishment lever) produced food under a variable‐interval schedule, and under some conditions intermittent injections of histamine, which suppressed behavior. Responses on a second (avoidance) lever prevented histamine injections scheduled on the punishment lever. After stabilization of punished responding, a variable‐interval 15‐s schedule of cancellation of histamine (avoidance) was added for responding on the second/avoidance lever, without subsequent acquisition of responding on that lever. Progressive decreases in the length of the punishment variable‐interval schedule increased suppression on the punishment lever without increases in response rates on the avoidance lever. Exchanging contingencies on the levers ensured that response rates on the avoidance lever were sufficiently high to decrease the histamine injection frequency; nonetheless response rates on the avoidance lever decreased over subsequent sessions. Under no condition was responding maintained on the avoidance lever despite continued punishing effectiveness of histamine throughout. The present results suggest that avoidance conditioning is not a necessary condition for effective punishment, and confirm the importance of empirical rather than presumed categorization of behavioral effects of stimulus events.     

Cognitive processing of currency: Euros and dollars

In the current study, we evaluated whether the processing of currency was determined by familiarity of people with banknotes. In Experiment 1, participants who used the Euro currency named sequences of Euro banknotes and Dollar banknotes blocked by category or mixed with exemplars of other categories. The participants showed an interference effect in the blocked context with Dollar banknotes but not with Euro banknotes. In Experiment 2, the interference effect was observed with Euro banknotes when participants were not familiar with the Euro currency. These results suggest that the semantic processing of banknotes depends on the participants' familiarity with currency.