scholarly journals Causal Unity of Broader Traits is an Illusion

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 304-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens B. Asendorpf
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Developmental Antecedents

Mõttus alerts us to the widespread predictive heterogeneity of different indicators of the same trait. This heterogeneity violates the assumption that traits have causal unity in their developmental antecedents and effects on outcomes. I would go a step further: broader traits are useful units for description and prediction but not for explaining personality development and personality effects. In most cases, the measured trait indicators are closer to relevant causal mechanisms, and within a network perspective on personality, broader traits as entities with causal potential can be dismissed completely. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology

A Three–Part Framework for Self–Regulated Personality Development across Adulthood

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Hennecke ◽  
Wiebke Bleidorn ◽  
Jaap J. A. Denissen ◽  
Dustin Wood
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Personality Change ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Behavioural Changes ◽  
Personality Changes ◽  
Study Designs ◽  
View Change ◽  
Over Time

Recently, researchers interested in personality development have begun to acknowledge the roles of motivation and self–regulation for why traits change across adulthood. We propose three preconditions under which individuals may change their own levels of a personality trait through self–directed efforts. Firstly, individuals need to desire changing their trait–related behaviours either as an end in itself or in order to achieve other goals. Secondly, they need to consider behavioural changes feasible and be able to implement the desired changes. Thirdly, behavioural changes need to become habitual in order to constitute a stable trait. After elaborating on these three conditions, we review evidence attesting to the importance of motivation and self–regulation for trait development. We conclude with a discussion of the mutual interdependence of traits and goals, as well as the limits of self–regulated personality change. From our framework, we derive why personality changes across adulthood tend to be small to medium only, namely because they may require that all three preconditions for self–regulated personality change are fulfilled. We provide reasons for why people might not view change as desirable, feasible or fail to maintain it over time. Finally, we propose ideas for potential study designs to research self–regulated personality change. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology

Personality in Action: Assessing Personality to Identify an ‘Ideal’ Conscientious Response Type with Two Different Behavioural Tasks

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 808-825
Author(s):  
Gabriela Gniewosz ◽  
Tuulia M. Ortner ◽  
Thomas Scherndl
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Cognitive Styles ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Subjective Response ◽  
Response Type ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Typological Approach ◽  
Related Response

Performance on achievement tests is characterized by an interplay of different individual attributes such as personality traits, motivation or cognitive styles. However, the prediction of individuals’ performance from classical self–report personality measures obtained during large and comprehensive aptitude assessments is biased by, for example, subjective response tendencies. This study goes beyond by using behavioural data based on two different types of tasks, requiring different conscientious–related response behaviours. Moreover, a typological approach is proposed, which includes different behavioural indicators to obtain information on complex personality characteristics. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology

scholarly journals Does Cooperation in the Laboratory Reflect the Operation of A Broad Trait?

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Daniel E. Forster ◽  
Eric J. Pedersen ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Bifactor Model ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
General Factor ◽  
Valid Measure ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Self Assessments

The Dictator Game, a face valid measure of altruism, and the Trust Game, a face valid measure of trust and trustworthiness, are among the most widely used behavioural measures in human cooperation research. Researchers have observed considerable covariation among these and other economic games, leading them to assert that there exists a general human propensity to cooperate that varies in strength across individuals and manifests itself across a variety of social settings. To formalize this hypothesis, we created an S–1 bifactor model using 276 participants’ Dictator Game and Trust Game decisions. The general factor had significant, moderate associations with self–reported and peer–reported altruism, trust, and trustworthiness. Thus, the positive covariation among economic games is not reducible to the games’ shared situational features. Two hundred participants returned for a second session. The general factor based on Dictator Game and Trust Game decisions from this session did not significantly predict self–reported and peer–reported cooperation, suggesting that experience with economic games causes them to measure different traits from those that are reflected in self–assessments and peer–assessments of cooperativeness. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology

scholarly journals Person-Situation Transactions across the Lifespan

2017 ◽  
pp. 405-425
Author(s):  
Katherine S. Corker ◽  
M. Brent Donnellan
Keyword(s):  
Personality Development ◽  
Psychological Characteristics ◽  
Developmental Tasks ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Socioemotional Selectivity ◽  
Situational Characteristics ◽  
Explicit Consideration ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
Interactionist Approach

Research on situations has been reinvigorated within social and personality psychology. This chapter argues that a developmental perspective on situations can further enrich understanding of person-situation transactions and generate interesting predictions for future empirical tests. The approach is grounded in life course theory (Elder & Shanahan, 2006), an interactionist approach that considers person-situation dynamics as critical to understanding individual lives. The chapter describes an overarching perspective and reviews principles of personality development before turning to an explicit consideration of how situational characteristics (the Situational Eight DIAMONDS; Rauthmann et al., 2014) may change with age. It then outlines how a developmental tasks perspective and socioemotional selectivity theory can be integrated with the DIAMONDS characteristics. It concludes by describing different kinds of person-situation transactions that promote consistency and change in psychological characteristics across the lifespan and suggests a few future directions for research.

Episode 3: Personality Structure and Change (Transcript)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emorie D Beck
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Personality Structure ◽  
Personality Psychology

This is a show on the science of how people are different from one another, where these differences come from, how they develop, and why they matter. The podcast's hosts are Lisanne de Moor, René Mõttus, and Rebekka Weidmann, three personality researchers. It is a collaboration of the European Journal of Personality and the European Association of Personality Psychology (EAPP), and sponsored by EAPP. www.personalitypsychologypodcast.com. In this episode, we hear a presentation by Emorie Beck on her research on nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality structure and change, couched in a historical perspective.

Objections to the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure—and why those Objections Fail

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 492-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Ashton ◽  
Kibeom Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
European Association ◽  
Personality Structure ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Personality Research ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Dimensional Models ◽  
Hexaco Model

The six–dimensional HEXACO model of personality structure and its associated inventory have increasingly been used in personality research. But in spite of the evidence supporting this structure and demonstrating its advantages over five–dimensional models, some researchers continue to use and promote the latter. Although there has been little overt, organized argument against the adoption of the HEXACO model, we do hear sporadic offerings of reasons for retaining the five–dimensional systems, usually in informal conversations, in manuscript reviews, on social media platforms, and occasionally in published works. In this target article, we list all of the objections to the HEXACO model that we have heard of, and we then explain why each objection fails. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

scholarly journals Searching for Prosociality in Qualitative Data: Comparing Manual, Closed–Vocabulary, and Open–Vocabulary Methods

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 903-916
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Hannah Moshontz ◽  
Thomas G. McCauley ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Support Vector Machine ◽  
European Association ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Support Vector Machine Classifier ◽  
Goal Pursuit ◽  
Training Sample ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Personal Strivings

Although most people present themselves as possessing prosocial traits, people differ in the extent to which they actually act prosocially in everyday life. Qualitative data that were not ostensibly collected to measure prosociality might contain information about prosocial dispositions that is not distorted by self–presentation concerns. This paper seeks to characterise charitable donors from qualitative data. We compared a manual approach of extracting predictors from participants’ self–described personal strivings to two automated approaches: A summation of words predefined as prosocial and a support vector machine classifier. Although variables extracted by the support vector machine predicted donation behaviour well in the training sample ( N = 984), virtually, no variables from any method significantly predicted donations in a holdout sample ( N = 496). Raters’ attempts to predict donations to charity based on reading participants’ personal strivings were also unsuccessful. However, raters’ predictions were associated with past charitable involvement. In sum, predictors derived from personal strivings did not robustly explain variation in charitable behaviour, but personal strivings may nevertheless contain some information about trait prosociality. The sparseness of personal strivings data, rather than the irrelevance of open–ended text or individual differences in goal pursuit, likely explains their limited value in predicting prosocial behaviour. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

On Post–Apocalyptic and Doomsday Prepping Beliefs: A New Measure, Its Correlates, and the Motivation to Prep

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam K. Fetterman ◽  
Bastiaan T. Rutjens ◽  
Florian Landkammer ◽  
Benjamin M. Wilkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
European Association ◽  
Social Dominance Orientation ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Projective Test ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Societal Relevance ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Popular Television ◽  
Do So

Post–apocalyptic scenarios provide the basis for popular television shows, video games, and books. These scenarios may be popular because people have their own beliefs and visions about the apocalypse and the need to prepare. The prevalence of such beliefs might also hold societal relevance and serve as a type of projective test of personality. However, there are no quantitative accounts of post–apocalyptic or prepping beliefs. As such, we conducted seven studies ( Ntotal = 1034) to do so. In Studies 1 and 2, we developed a post–apocalyptic and prepping beliefs scale, explored its correlates, and confirmed its structure and psychometric properties. In Study 3, we attempted to activate a ‘prepper’ mindset and further explore the correlates of the new scale. In Studies 4 and 5, we investigated covariations in daily feelings, thoughts, and events, and prepping beliefs. In Studies 6a and 6b, we compared scores from ‘real’ preppers and to a non–prepping group. Overall, we found that post–apocalyptic concerns and prepping beliefs are predictive of low agreeableness and humility, paranoia, cynicism, conspiracy mentality, conservatism, and social dominance orientation. We also found that increased belief in the need to prep is associated with God–belief, negative daily experiences, and global political events. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology

European Association of Personality Psychology

2020 ◽  
pp. 1427-1428
Author(s):  
Jaap J. A. Denissen ◽  
John F. Rauthmann ◽  
Mitja D. Back
Keyword(s):  
European Association ◽  
Personality Psychology

A Framework for Testing Causality in Personality Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulio Costantini ◽  
Marco Perugini
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
European Association ◽  
Laboratory Research ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Personality Research ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Candidate Target ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Over Time

Causal explanations in personality require conceptual clarity about alternative causal conditions that could, even in principle, affect personality. These causal conditions crucially depend on the theoretical model of personality, each model constraining the possibility of planning and performing causal research in different ways. We discuss how some prominent models of personality allow for specific types of causal research and impede others. We then discuss causality from a network perspective, which sees personality as a phenomenon that emerges from a network of behaviours and environments over time. From a methodological perspective, we propose a three–step strategy to investigate causality: (1) identify a candidate target for manipulation (e.g. using network analysis), (2) identify and test a manipulation (e.g. using laboratory research), and (3) deliver the manipulation repeatedly for a congruous amount of time (e.g. using ecological momentary interventions) and evaluate its ability to generate trait change. We discuss how a part of these steps was implemented for trait conscientiousness and present a detailed plan for implementing the remaining steps. Copyright © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology

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