Nov 19

RESULTS
Because this study consists of three separate parts and the anticipations for Part 2 and Part 3 depend on the results obtained in Part 1, the Results section necessarily will include some theoretical hypotheses. Part 1: Coherence, Replicability, and Psychological Nature of Preschool Personality Prototypes Determining the Number of Replicable Preschool Personality Prototypes Inverse (Q) factor analysis followed by varimax rotation was employed to identify the personality prototypes. This procedure results in a factor loading for each participant and a (person) factor score for each CCQ item. A prototypical individual loads highly on one factor only (Gorsuch, 1983). Factor loadings were used to measure individual differences; a loading “indexes the degree to which the individual’s particular personality configuration resembles that captured by the factor and thus provides a normed index of membership in each personality prototype category for each individual” (York & John, 1992, p. 495). In contrast, factor scores were used to interpret each personality prototype. Vectors of 100 factor scores (one for each CCQ item) can be correlated and the resulting correlation denotes the degree of factor similarity.
The number of personality prototypes was determined by factor replicability analysis (see Everett, 1983). The sample was randomly divided into two nonoverlapping subsamples and each random half was subjected to inverse factor analysis. The 100 factor scores independently identified in each half were then correlated, the assumption being that only factors identified in each half were replicable. The traditional criterion for acceptable factor replicability is a congruence correlation of .80 or greater (e.g., Asendorpf&van Aken, 1999). Three of our personality prototypes (or person factors) met or
exceeded this criterion and were retained for further analyses.

Fifty-six individuals (55%) received their highest loading on the first personality prototype, 35 (34%) on the second, and 11 (10%) on the third. The three factors explained 65% (Factor 1 = 41%, Factor 2 = 17%, and Factor 3 = 7%) of the total variance in the CCQ evaluations. This factor solution is comparable to the one reported for German children by Asendorpf and van Aken (1999). Consistent with our results, these authors also reported that the factors did not differ for the sexes.2 To ensure that the participants were sufficiently pure representatives of only one personality prototype, they had to load at least .40 on one personality prototype and their second highest loading had to be at least .20 lower than their highest loading. Participants with loadings of .40   higher on more than one prototype were excluded. These criteria successfully classified 83 (39 boys and 44 girls) of the 102 participants, or 84%. Subsequent analyses are based on these 83 participants. To ensure that the three personality prototypes were sufficiently different, the participants were assigned to nonoverlapping groups based on their highest loading (see York & John, 1992). The means and standard deviations of the loadings for each factor were then calculated. As Table 1 shows, the mean factor loadings were substantially higher and the mean standard deviations were substantially lower when the participants were assigned to the prototype on which they had received their highest loading.
Interpreting the Psychological Nature of the Three Personality Prototypes The correlations of the personality prototypes with ego resiliency were .79, .33, and –.33; their correlations with ego undercontrol were –.29, .89, and –.11. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) showed a significant interaction between the three personality prototypes and the two personality constructs (F = 38.03, p < .001), indicating that the three factors were defined by distinctly different configurations of ego resiliency and ego undercontrol. The three personality prototypes were labeled overcontrolled resilients, resilient undercontrollers, and brittles, respectively. To further evaluate the potential effects of attrition, personality prototypes were developed using all 157 children in the age-4 sample, not only the 102 participating in the current study. Also in this larger sample, three replicable prototypes were discerned. The correlations between these prototypes, based on the partly overlapping samples, were also very high, ranging from .99 to .96. The correlations with the ego resiliency and ego undercontrol measures were also virtually identical for the two sets of prototypes. The 10 most and least characteristic CCQ items are displayed in Table 2 separately for each personality prototype. The first personality prototype, overcontrolled resilient, was characterized by CCQ items such as dependable, attentive, helpful, reasonable, and personable, and not by items indicative of aggression, unworthiness, or stress reactivity. This personality configuration portrays a socially well-adjusted preschooler likely to adapt well to a broad range of situations. Block and Block (1980) noted, “For the overcontrolling child, the presence of ego resiliency results in a high degree of socialization that fits and feels well, a relative absence of anxiety and intimidation in reacting to and acting on the world” (p. 88).

The second personality prototype, resilient undercontrol, was characterized by CCQ items such as energetic, assertive, aggressive, expressive, sociable, and able to stand up for themselves. This personality prototype portrays a lively, assertive, and socially outgoing preschooler who is unlikely to withhold his or her thoughts and emotions from others. Consistent with the finding reported by Hart et al. (1997), our undercontrolled factor did not include the elements of interpersonal exploitation reported by Robins et al. (1996) for their undercontrolled type. Robins et al. (1998) subsequently distinguished between two subtypes: the antisocial and the impulsive undercontroller. The resilient undercontroller, largely free of antisocial and interpersonally antagonistic tendencies, appears similar to the impulsive type. The relatively high level of resiliency may explain this absence of undercontrol-related problems. Finally, the third personality prototype, brittles, was characterized by CCQ items such as shyness, hypersensitivity, and anxiety, and not by items indicative of a calm, empathic, and self-reliant mode of relating to others. Replicability of the Personality Prototypes Across Studies Next, we compared our three preschool personality prototypes with the typologies identified by Asendorpf and van Aken (1999), Hart et al. (1997), and Robins et al. (1996).3 To obtain a reliable estimate and to reduce the influence of sample fluctuations, we averaged, separately for each type, the person factor scores obtained in
these three other studies and then correlated the resulting three mean person factor scores with our three personality prototype scores. The resulting convergence correlations were .81 for the first, .71 for the second, and .53 for the third personality prototype. The declining size of the convergence correlations is consistent with previous studies; the highest correlation has always been obtained for the first factor and the lowest correlation has always been obtained for the third factor. This decline in size may result from the lower reliability and poorer definition that can be expected to characterize
later extracted factors (e.g., Hart et al., 1997). In sum, good convergence was found with other studies, although our first factor was slightly more overcontrolled, our second factor slightly more resilient, and our third factor slightly less overcontrolled than the factors reported by Asendorpf and van Aken (1999), Hart et al. (1997), and Robins et al. (1996).
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 19

METHOD
Participants and Procedures
The participants who took part in the Block Longitudinal Project (Block & Block, 1980; Gjerde, 1995) were recruited in preschool while attending either a parent cooperative or a university-run nursery school. The participants in this particular study were selected from 116 children who were recruited at age 3 and an additional group of 41 children who were added at age 4. Observer ratings in the Q-sort format were available for 102 of these 157 participants both in preschool and in young adulthood. This core longitudinal sample was later assessed at ages 5, 7, 11, 14, 18, 23, and 32, with observer ratings obtained at all ages with the exception of ages 5 and 32. At each age, the participants were seen at multiple occasions and completed a variety of tasks.1 Both as preschoolers and adolescents, most participants lived in urban settings. About two thirds of the participants are European American, one quarter are African American, and one twelfth are Asian American. Although this sample is heterogeneous with respect to social class and parental education, it is skewed toward middle-class socioeconomic status. For the core longitudinal sample included in this study, the average Duncan (1961) socioeconomic status score for fathers was 642.88 (SD = 215.95) when the participants were 3 years old. To ensure that the sample used in the present study did not differ substantially from the age 3 sample of 116 children, we compared the participants in this study with those excluded from the larger sample on ego resiliency, ego undercontrol, and parental socioeconomic status. Identical analyses were conducted for the age-4 sample that contained 41 additional children. None of these comparisons revealed significant differences. Nursery school teachers described the participants’ personality using the California Child Q-sort (CCQ) at pages 3 and 4 (Block & Block, 1980). Examiners used the California Adult Q-sort (CAQ) to describe the participants’ personality at age 14 (Block, 1961/1978). The participants also completed a variety of experimental procedures assessing four themes: ego resiliency, ego undercontrol, cognitive maturity, and socioemotional functioning (see Block & Block, 1980, for an overview of the measures administered and the CCQ). Each child was seen 10 times for a period between 15 and 25 min at the Harold Jones Child Study Center associated with the University of California at Berkeley. The procedures, conducted in rooms specially equipped for the testing of preschool children, were introduced as games or fun activities. The examiners were paid research assistants and Ph.D. psychologists, all of whom had received careful training in administering the tasks. The experimental data reported in this study were collected when the children were 3 years old.

Measures
Measuring child personality: The CCQ. Three nursery school teachers used the CCQ (Block & Block, 1980) to evaluate each participant at age 3. Three different nursery school teachers evaluated the children at age 4. Each teacher had known the child for at least 6 months. The CCQ is widely used in developmental and personality psychology (e.g., Gjerde, 1995; Hart et al., 1997; Robins et al., 1996). The assessors were provided with 100 statements about the characteristics of children, each printed on a separate card. The assessors described each child by arranging theCCQitems into a forced distribution using nine categories, ranging from highly uncharacteristic to highly characteristic of the child being described. The CCQ descriptions were aggregated for each child separately at each of the two ages. The two aggregates were then aggregated and this final age-3/age-4 aggregate was used in subsequent analyses. The alpha of theCCQitem, based on correlations among nursery school teachers, averaged .65 both at age 3 and age 4. The average CCQ item reliability was .72. TheCCQis an ipsative procedure; there is a “scale for every individual and a population of an individual trait score is distributed about that individual’s mean” (Guilford, 1952, p. 30). A Q-item reflects the salience relative to other Q-items with reference to a particular person. Thus, the Q-sort can be said to provide personcentered rather than variable-centered information (Block, 1971).

All assessors sorted the CCQ items into a forced distribution that stipulates the number of cards included in each of the nine piles. The use of this identical scaling method provides all participants with identical means and standard deviations across the 100 items. Thus, in inverse factor analysis, standardizing the columns in the transposed matrix is unnecessary. This is important because correlations among persons are influenced by differences among variable means (e.g.,Waller&Meehl, 1998). In sum, the forced distribution Q-sort method is uniquely suited for inverse factor analysis (Asendorpf & van Aken, 1999). Measuring preschool ego resiliency and ego undercontrol using the CCQ. Three psychologists used the CCQ to describe a prototypical ego resilient child (α = .91) and a prototypical ego undercontrolled child (α = .90). Each participant’s CCQ profile was then correlated separately with each of the two personality prototype definitions. If this correlation was high, the participant could be described in terms of this construct; if this correlation was low or negative, the participant was dissimilar from this construct (see Onishi, Gjerde, & Block, 2001, for a detailed description of this method). For the participants included in this study, the average ego resiliency score was .45 (SD = .32) and the average ego undercontrol score was .08 (SD = .32). These scores—based on the average correlation of the two prototype definitions with each participant’s overall Q-sort profile across the sample—are comparable to those reported by Robins et al. (1996) and Hart et al. (1997): .40 and .36 for ego resiliency and .06 and .09 for ego undercontrol, respectively.

Measuring adolescent personality: The CAQ. The CAQ shares the same psychometric principles as the CCQ, but the 100 items are written to reflect characteristics of adolescents and adults. At age 14, five advanced graduate students used the CAQ (Block, 1961/1978) to describe the personality characteristics of each participant. Prior to the assessment, the graduate students received thorough training in the Q-sort methodology and the content of each item was discussed. The assessors described the participants after having observed them performing in a variety of experimental procedures on four occasions, each lasting between 2 and 3 hr, in a laboratory setting. An interview also was conducted by one of the assessors. These five independent CAQ descriptions were averaged for each participant and this aggregate was used in subsequent analyses. Developing adolescent personality constructs using the CAQ. Knowledgeable psychologists used the CAQ to provide definitions of the following personality constructs: ego resiliency, ego undercontrol, shyness, and activity level. Shyness and activity level were included because they relate directly to ego undercontrol. Expert descriptions also were obtained for the Big Five trait dimensions: Agreeableness, Extroversion, Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. No psychologist defined more than one construct. Scores for each participant on each of these personality constructs were developed using the method described above for the CCQ-based measures of ego resiliency and undercontrol. The alpha reliabilities exceeded .85 for all constructs.
Measuring Preschool Ego Resiliency Using Laboratory Measures The motor inhibition task. This task (Maccoby, Dowley, Hagen, & Degerman, 1965) measured the child’s ability to change from a modal tempo to a slower tempo according to instructions. The child was first asked to draw a line, walk, and wind a toy without instructions, followed by instructions to perform these activities “very, very slowly, just as slowly as you can.” The final inhibition score is a composite regression-adjusted score that reflects how long it took the child to complete the task under the slow-speed instruction conditions, controlling for the child’s speed under the regular (or noninstruction) conditions. Estimated time was approximately 12 min.

The egocentrism task. This task (Flavell, Botkin, Fry, Wright,&Jarvis, 1968) assessed a child’s ability to predict which objects other persons can or cannot see. The examiner covered different parts of a double-sided picture board and asked the child what the examiner could see. An egocentric response was defined as one in which the child chose a picture that could be seen from his or her side but not from the experimenter’s side. Estimated time was approximately 5 min. The Lowenfeld mosaics test. This task (Lowenfeld, 1954) assessed the aesthetic quality of mosaic constructions. The child was given a tray and 132 geometric shapes and asked to “do something with the pieces on this tray.” The mosaics were evaluated both for imaginativeness and structure. In this study, we only used the imaginativeness ratings thought to reflect ego resiliency. Four judges, whose ratings were subsequently composited, scaled the mosaic photographs for imaginativeness using a sevencategory Q-sort. Estimated time was approximately 12 min.

Measuring Preschool Ego Undercontrol Using Laboratory
Measures
The actometer task. This task (Schulman & Reisman, 1959) was designed to measure activity level. An actometer is a self-winding watch activated by a child’s
movements. The participants wore the actometer on the wrist of the nonfavored hand for 2 hr. Four actometer measurements, each separated by 1 week, were conducted and then composited. The delay-of-gratification task. In this task (Funder, Block, & Block, 1983), the child received an enticingly wrapped gift. He or she was then given a puzzle task and told that she or he could have the gift later. The delay-ofgratification score is a composite based on (a) the number of verbal behaviors toward the gift, (b) the number of physical behaviors toward the gift, (c) the time before the child took the present, and (d) the swiftness of opening the present. Estimated time was approximately 5 min. Wechsler intelligence tests. The Wechsler Preliminary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence Test (WPPSI) was administered at age 4, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) was administered at age 11, and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-R (WAIS-R) was administered at age 18 (Wechsler, 1981). Drug usage. The videotaped age-14 interview included questions about a wide variety of issues (e.g., family relations, peers, and schoolwork). The participants also were asked about their usage of illegal drugs, including both marijuana and “harder drugs,” such as heroin and cocaine. Marijuana use was measured on a 6-point scale: never used marijuana (0) to used more than once a week (6).
“Harder drugs” was measured on a 2-point scale: never used (1) to used once or more (2). Two raters who showed near exact agreement separately coded drug use. (Block, Block, and Keyes [1988] provide a complete description of the development of the drug measures and relevant descriptive statistics.) We initially conducted separate analyses of marijuana and harder drugs use. Because the relations between the personality prototypes and the two drug measures were virtually identical, we composited the two drug measures (α = .91).

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 19

Internal Coherence, Cross-Study Replicability, and Developmental Outcomes in Adolescence

This study classified for resemblance 102 preschool children, who were described by their nursery school teachers using the California Child Q-sort. Inverse (Q) factor analysis identified three personality prototypes initially defined in terms of ego resiliency and ego undercontrol: overcontrolled resilient, resilient undercontrolled, and brittle. These personality prototypes showed strong to moderate similarity with typologies obtained in comparable studies and theoretical meaningful relations with experimental measures of ego functioning and IQ. Ten years later, as adolescents, overcontrolled resilients were shy and restrained yet conscientious and intelligent; resilient undercontrollers were extraverted, assertive, and impulsive; and brittles were relatively unintelligent. The discussion focused on the several meanings of person-centered methods, the sample-dependence of personality typologies, and the complementary contributions made by person versus variable-centered analytical strategies in the study of human development.

Research on personality development has mostly been governed by a variable-centered analytical strategy. This approach examines relations among variables (most commonly conceptualized as traits) and individuals’ relative (or rank-order) standing on one or several trait variables. Although variable-centered studies have provided invaluable knowledge, it has—as any other method— limitations. For example, it is restricted to providing information on aggregates of individuals, or on what Lewin (1931) once called the mythical “average child.” Mishler (1996) also has criticized reliance on group means, arguing that these “inferences lead to an idealized, universal child” (p. 78) and called for case-based studies that, in his view, maintain greater respect for agency, history, and intentionality. Recently, a complementary approach to the study of personality has been receiving renewed attention (e.g., Cairns, Kagan, & Bergman, 1998). This orientation— typically referred to as person centered—uses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Examples include inverse factor analysis (Block, 1971), narrative methodologies (Hauser, 1999; McAdams, 1999), and biographical studies of lives (Runyan, 1982). The personcentered approach has a long tradition; it can be traced back at least as far as to Murray’s (1938) personology, the ideographic approach of Allport (1937), and more recent critiques for not using the individual as the unit of analysis (Carlson, 1971). Recent person-centered studies have attempted to identify homogeneous and replicable typologies of individuals (e.g., Asendorpf & van Aken, 1999; Hart, Hofmann, Edelstein, & Keller, 1997; Robins, John, Caspi, Moffitt, & Stauthamer-Loeber, 1996). Robins, John, and Caspi (1998), in particular, argued strongly for the existence of three basic personality types: resilients, undercontrollers, and overcontrollers. Important, albeit not incontestable, support for these types has been obtained in samples differing both in age and
national origin (e.g., Asendorpf&van Aken, 1999; Caspi & Silva, 1995; Hart et al., 1997; Robins et al., 1996). Conceptual Framework: Ego Resiliency and Ego Control Several recent person-centered studies (Asendorpf & van Aken, 1999; Hart et al., 1997; Robins et al., 1996) have defined their typologies in terms of two personality constructs: ego resiliency and ego control (Block & Block, 1980). Ego resiliency refers to an individual’s ability to adapt flexibly to changing environmental circumstances. In contrast, ego control refers to an individual’s threshold of impulse expression and ranges from overcontrol (i.e., high threshold) to undercontrol of impulse expression (i.e., low threshold). Overcontrol refers to “excessive containment of impulses, delay of gratification, inhibition of action and affect, and insulation from environmental distractors,” whereas undercontrol refers to “insufficient modulation of impulse, inability to delay gratification, and immediate and direct expression of motivation and affects, and vulnerability to environmental distractors” (Block & Block, 1980, p. 43). To compare our personality prototypes with those obtained in previous studies, this study also initially defined each personality prototype in terms of ego resiliency and ego control.

Personality Typologies: Discrete Categories Versus “Fuzzy” Entities Most person-centered studies have assigned individuals to nonoverlapping groups based on their highest factor loading (e.g., Robins et al., 1996), thereby assuming that personality typologies are best considered as discrete, mutually exclusive, and nonoverlapping categories. In contrast, York and John (1992) argued that “category membership need not be ‘all or none’ but is a matter of degree: individuals differ in their degree of fit to the category personality prototype, with some being more prototypical instances than others” (p. 495). This procedure is consistent with Rosch’s view (1978) of natural categories as “fuzzy” entities and Meehl’s (1995) argument that latent taxons need not have clear-cut “surface” indicators. This study adopted this latter procedure. Because our typologies are therefore not mutually exclusive and the category boundaries not discrete, we use the term “personality prototype” rather than “personality type” (see York & John, 1992, for a detailed description of this approach). The Aims of the Current Study With few exceptions (Asendorpf & van Aken, 1999; Caspi, Henry, McGee, Moffitt, & Silva, 1995; Hart et al., 1997), current typologies are based on participants ranging in age from adolescence through middle age (e.g., Block, 1971; York & John, 1992). Typologies, however,
may not be independent of age. For example, Magnusson’s (2000) holistic notion of individuals as organized wholes implies the presence of “personality crystallization,” whereby increasing age leads to clearer resemblance within groups of persons and clearer distinctions among groups of persons across time. Thus, it is uncertain whether typologies developed early in life are as psychologically coherent as those based on older individuals forwhomgreater differentiation in personality structure can be expected. Overview of the Current Study Coherence and replicability. This study consists of three parts. The first part examined two issues: (a) Can psychologically coherent personality prototypes be discerned as early as in preschool (i.e., coherence)? and (b) Do our preschool personality prototypes converge with those identified in other samples (i.e., replicability)? To address these issues, we (a) derived preschool personality prototypes by means of inverse factor analysis, (b) examined their replicability within the current sample, (c) interpreted the psychological content of the personality prototypes, and (d) studied their similarity vis-à-vis personality types obtained in three other studies that also used inverse factor analysis to identify their typologies and defined them in terms of ego resiliency and ego control (Asendorpf & van Aken, 1999; Hart et al., 1997; Robins et al., 1996). Evaluating construct validity using laboratory procedures. The second part focused on the construct validity of the personality prototypes obtained in this study. If different measures based on different kinds of data converge in their implications, greater confidence can be invested in the validity of a construct. Thus, we evaluated whether the three personality prototypes—based on observer observations provided by nursery school teachers— showed theoretically meaningful relations to performance on standardized, objective laboratory procedures specifically devised to index ego resiliency and ego undercontrol.

Developmental implications a decade later. The third part investigated the developmental outcomes of each personality prototype a decade later once the participants had reached adolescence. Very few longitudinal studies have examined the developmental implications of preschool personality prototypes. In their German sample, Asendorpf and van Aken (1999) reported that although the overcontrolled type scored high as preschoolers on IQ, school performance, and self-esteem, they declined on all three attributes over time. In their New Zealand sample, Caspi and Silva (1995) found undercontrolled preschoolers to be impulsive, aggressive, and lacking good interpersonal relations as adolescents; inhibited preschoolers to be low on aggression and impulsivity as adolescents; and well-adjusted preschoolers to be resilient and self-confident as adolescents. In their study of Icelandic children, Hart et al. (1997) reported that the resilient type improved in academic performance, the undercontrolled type showed increased aggressive problems, and the overcontrolled type tended to withdraw from social interaction over time. The current study is the first to examine the developmental implications of preschool personality prototype membership in a North American sample.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 19

STUDY 1
We have proposed that some scientific conceptions of personality reflect an essentialist understanding of human attributes, and that this understanding may also be reflected in laypeople’s implicit personality theories. Study 1 was conducted to determine whether essentialist beliefs that had been found to covary in research on social categories (Haslam et al., 2000, 2002) also cohered in beliefs about personality. Simply put, we asked whether beliefs about the discreteness, biological basis, immutability, informativeness, homogeneity, and inherence of personality characteristics form a coherent set, such that characteristics judged high on each property also tend to be essentialized on the others.We also asked how the structure of this expected covariation should be described.

Previous research and theory offer two alternative models of the structure of essentialist beliefs. Gelman’s (2003) work implies a unifactorial structure, as she formed a composite essentialism score by combining all of her items. Alternatively, previous work by Haslam et al. (2000, 2002) favors a model containing distinct and orthogonal dimensions of naturalness and entitativity consistent with Rothbart andTaylor’s (1992) description of essentialism as having distinct aspects of inalterability and inductive potential. However, this work exclusively addresses social categories, and the two-dimensional structure may not apply in the personality domain. If a different structure applies in that domain, then essentialist thinking might have different determinants and implications from those documented in the study of social categories. For example, essentialist beliefs about personality might not have the same links to prejudice and devaluation. A unifactorial structure would also cast doubt on the applicability of concepts of natural kind and entitativity in the personality domain. Given the plausibility of both one- and two-dimensional models, we made no specific structural predictions beyond an expectation of overall covariation among the essentialist beliefs.

Study 1 also tests three hypotheses about possible correlates of personality essentialism. Little is known about why some social distinctions are essentialized more than others and some possibilities—for example, visible morphology for race and gender (Rothbart & Taylor, 1992), descent and endogamy for ethnicity (Gil-White, 2001), abrupt transformation (Keil et al., 1999) for disease—do not apply to personality characteristics. Our hypotheses were, therefore, speculative. First, we hypothesized that affective personality characteristics should tend to be more essentialized than others because, according to folk psychology, emotions are intimately linked to the person’s biology (D’Andrade, 1987). As a result of this embodiment, emotion-related personality characteristics should be understood in a more naturalized manner than others. This prediction about lay conceptions of personality accords with scientific conceptions of temperament, which is normally understood to be composed of emotional traits that are substantially heritable and biologically based (Clark & Watson, 1999). Our second and third hypotheses derive from the recent work of Leyens et al. (2000, 2001), who argued that people selectively attribute a distinctively human essence or nature to themselves and their ingroup. By implication, personality characteristics should be essentialized if they are understood to be aspects of human nature. Because human nature is a normative concept, representing valued and in principle, widely shared human attributes, personality characteristics that are understood as aspects of it should be relatively desirable and prevalent. Thus, positive (Hypothesis 2) and prevalent
(Hypothesis 3) characteristics should be essentialized more than others because they are more likely to be seen as elements of human nature.

Neither of these hypotheses is self-evident. Ethnic and sexual minorities—groups both devalued and of low prevalence—have been the focus of much past research on essentialist beliefs. It has often been argued that essentialist beliefs play an important role in prejudice (e.g., Allport, 1954; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992), implying that they are associated with the attribution of undesirable characteristics; and one study finds that more essentialized social groups tend to have lower social status (Haslam et al., 2000). Nevertheless, the logic of the work of Leyens et al. (2000, 2001) is that aspects of normative human nature—of which personality characteristics are more likely candidates than particular ethnic or sexual identities—should tend to be essentialized.

Method Participants. Seventy-three undergraduate psychology students (58 women, 15 men), mean age 21.5 years (SD = 1.6), participated in the study as part of a laboratory session. Materials. All participants completed a questionnaire in which they rated 80 personality descriptors. The descriptors were systematically selected to yield a broad and evaluatively diverse sample based on an inclusive understanding of personality that extends beyond standard trait models (see Table 1). Forty terms were sampled from adjectival markers of the Big Five trait dimensions developed by John and Srivastava (1999), taking 4 descriptors from each pole of every dimension. Twenty terms were sampled from Schwartz’s (1992) value taxonomy, taking 2 from each value segment. Ten terms were derived from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) personality disorders, taking 1 emblematic term for each disorder. Finally, 10 negative terms were sampled from Benet-Martínez and Waller’s (2002) fivedimensional model of highly evaluative terms. Participants rated the personality descriptors on subsets of nine items. Six of these items assessed essentialist beliefs and were based on the Essentialist Beliefs Scale developed by Haslam et al. (2000, 2002). That scale’s original “uniformity” item was modified to refer to the cross-situational consistency of behavior rather than the similarity of category members because both refer to forms of homogeneity. All items were rated on 7-point Likert-type scales (1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree) with the exception of biological basis, and the items were written as follows: Discreteness: “People either have this characteristic or they do not: those who have it are a distinct type of person” Biological basis: “To what extent is this characteristic based on the person’s biological or genetic make-up? Write one of the following percentages in the space provided” (percentages from 0 to 100 in increments of 10) Immutability: “It is easy to change this characteristic: it is not a fixed attribute of the person” (reverse scored) Informativeness: “This characteristic has broad ramifications: it influences people’s behavior in a wide variety of situations and in many aspects of their lives” Consistency: “People who have this characteristic will tend to display it in a consistent manner, showing it in different situations and with different people” Inherence: “This characteristic is a deeply-rooted part of the personality: it lies deep within the person and underlies the person’s behavior” Three additional items were written to assess variables hypothesized to be correlates of essentialist beliefs about personality. These items assessed the social desirability, population prevalence, and affectivity of personality characteristics: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 19

Two studies examine implicit theories about the nature of personality characteristics, asking whether they are understood as underlying essences. Consistent with the hypothesis, essentialist beliefs about personality formed a coherent and replicable set. Personality characteristics differed systematically in the extent to which they were judged to be discrete, biologically based, immutable, informative, consistent across situations, and deeply inherent within the person. In Study 1, the extent to which characteristics were essentialized was positively associated with their perceived desirability, prevalence, and emotionality. In Study 2, essentialized characteristics were judged to be particularly important for defining people’s identity, for forming impressions of
people, and for communicating about a third person. The findings indicate that people understand some personality attributes in an essentialist fashion, that these attributes are taken to be valued elements of a shared human nature, and that they are particularly central to social identity and judgment.

Psychologists have recently begun to examine laypeople’s beliefs about the nature of social categories. A growing body of theory and research indicates that some categories are understood in an “essentialist” manner, such that a fixed, underlying essence is attributed to their members. This essence, whose nature is often only dimly understood, is believed to determine the identity of category members, to render them all fundamentally alike, and to allow many inferences to be drawn about them. Essentialist beliefs have been documented in methodologically diverse studies of ethnicity (Gil-White, 2001), race (Hirschfeld, 1996; Verkuyten, 2003), gender (Mahalingam, 2003), religion (Boyer, 1993), disease (Keil, Levin, Richman, & Gutheil, 1999), and mental
disorder (Haslam & Ernst, 2002).

Several broad conclusions can be drawn from this work. First, essentialist beliefs form a coherent set that captures perceived differences between social categories (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2000) and individual differences in perceptions of particular categories (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2002). Although theorists often conceptualize the elements of this set differently, these elements include beliefs in the immutability, naturalness, homogeneity, informativeness (inductive potential), inherence, and discreteness of social categories. Second, essentialist thinking is usually theorized to be negative in its implications. Rothbart and Taylor (1992) argued that viewing social categories as essentialized “natural kinds” is a dangerous misapprehension that
accentuates group differences. Allport (1954) described the ascription of essences to outgroups as a basic component of prejudice, and Yzerbyt, Rocher, and Schadron (1997) presented it as a way in which unequal social arrangements are legitimated and naturalized. Essentialist beliefs are associated with some forms of prejudice (Haslam et al., 2002), and Leyens et al. (2000, 2001) have shown that essentialized outgroups are often “infrahumanized,” denied distinctively human emotions that are readily attributed to ingroup members.

Most social psychological research on essentialist beliefs addresses social categories. Personality characteristics — differences between people of a different kind—have been almost completely neglected. At first blush, these characteristics might seem unlikely candidates for essentialist understandings. They are usually understood as personal attributes rather than social identities, represented as adjectival descriptors rather than noun categories, and rarely serve as bases for social organization or discrimination. Nevertheless, personality theorists commonly discuss traits as if they were essences, as
Millon and Davis’s (1996) definition illustrates:
Personality is . . . a complex pattern of deeply embedded psychological characteristics that are largely non-conscious and not easily altered, expressing themselves automatically in almost every facet of functioning. Intrinsic and pervasive, these traits emerge from a complicated matrix of biological dispositions and experiential learnings. (p. 4, italics added) This definition resonates with several of the beliefs identified by writers on psychological essentialism: Personality characteristics are described as deeply rooted and intrinsic, substantially fixed, inductively potent, and at least partly rooted in biological nature. Millon and Davis’s (1996) scientific view of personality is widely shared among trait psychologists. In this view, traits are powerful sources of consistency (crosssituational homogeneity), stability (immutability), and, hence, predictability (informativeness) in behavior. Often these attributes are also understood to have biological underpinnings and to be universal. Proponents of the five-factor model, for example, have distinguished
between these “basic tendencies”—viewed as highly stable, primarily genetic in origin, and largely immune to culture and individual experience—and “characteristic adaptations,” such as values, that are more malleable, contextual, and culturally conditioned (McCrae & Costa, 1999).

Others have framed the same distinction in a plainly essentialist fashion, distinguishing deeply rooted “core” from “surface” attributes (Asendorpf & van Aken, 2003). Indeed, the only essentialist belief that does not feature prominently in scientific conceptions of personality is discreteness, as traits are usually understood as continuous dimensions rather than bounded “types” (Haslam, 2003; Meehl, 1992). This essentialist view of traits has not gone unchallenged, and critiques of trait psychology have a decidedly antiessentialist flavor. The inherence of personality characteristics has been challenged by writers who see traits as mere labels, social constructions, or perceptual categories used to judge others reputationally (Hogan, 1996) or who conceptualize traits as summaries of observable acts rather than as reified latent variables (Buss & Craik, 1983). The consistency (homogeneity) of traits was one target of Mischel’s (1968) situationist critique, which also challenges their predictive power (informativeness). The supposed immutability of personality— the idea that it is “set like plaster”—has been attacked by writers (e.g., Srivastava, John, Gosling, & Potter, 2003) who also take issue with the “biologism” of trait theories.

If the essentialist view of personality has been challenged and defended within academic personality psychology—albeit not by that name—it is unclear
whether similarly essentialist beliefs pervade implicit personality theory. Does the layperson’s folk psychology, that is, construe personality characteristics as immutable, informative, discrete, and biologically based entities that inhere within the person? Research examining this possibility is scarce, because most research on implicit personality theory addresses the covariation structure of personality (e.g., Haslam, Bain, & Neal, 2004) rather
than its ontological status. Several studies partially remedy this neglect. Semin and Krahé (1987) found that lay conceptions of personality operated at more than one tier, drawing inferences between underlying (genotypic) and manifest (phenotypic) levels of understanding. Research by Chiu, Hong, and Dweck (1997) indicates that laypeople hold a view of personality as enduring and latent dispositions (“lay dispositionism”). Levy, Stroessner, and Dweck’s (1998) work on “implicit person theories” shows that people who hold an “entity theory,” in which personality is taken to be fixed, tend to favor biological and intrinsic explanations of stereotype content. They also draw trait-based inferences more rapidly and extensively than their peers in a way that implies a belief that traits are highly informative. Heyman and Gelman (2000a) found that young children hold mixed views on whether traits are innately determined but judge them to be less heritable than physical features. Heyman and Gelman (2000b) also demonstrated that preschool children draw inductive inferences from personality traits in preference to outward appearance and do so much more strongly when these traits are ascribed to people rather than dolls.

All of these studies address aspects of essentialist thinking about personality—particularly inherence, immutability, naturalness, and informativeness or inductive potential—but they do not conceptualize these as elements of a broader essentialist view. Gelman (1992) first drew attention to essentialist assumptions in lay conceptions of personality. Commenting on work by Yuill (1992), which theorizes that people hold a realist view of traits as underlying causal entities rather than mere descriptive labels, Gelman proposed that the realist view corresponds to a belief in essences. Understanding traits as latent causes implies that they have a nonobvious basis and rich inductive potential, which may reflect an extension of a biological view of essences: People very likely transfer some of their  assumptions about biological essences to their ideas about traits. For example, people may assume that traits—like essences—are innate and biologically based. The environmental impact on traits and their context sensitivity may be downplayed; their fixedness may be exaggerated. (p. 284) Gelman (2003) subsequently examined essentialist thinking about personality in a pioneering study in which undergraduates rated 12 characteristics on items assessing a variety of beliefs (e.g., in innate predisposition, genetic basis, biological underpinnings, immutability, universality). Gelman reported consistent differences between characteristics in levels of ascribed essentialism, with “politically conservative” lowest and “schizophrenic” highest, although most mean ratings were in the antiessentialist direction on the scale. These ratings were, therefore, lower than would be expected for racial, ethnic, and gender categories, indicating that personality characteristics are typically essentialized to a moderate extent.

Gelman’s (2003) study represents an important first contribution to this topic, demonstrating that personality attributes are often somewhat essentialized, that different essentialist beliefs cohere, and that some attributes are essentialized more than others. As a first step, it also has some limitations. First, the study does not establish the structure of essentialist beliefs about personality and whether the relevant questionnaire items form a coherent set. Second, the sample of personality characteristics is small. Third, the study does not investigate any factors that might contribute to the differential essentializing of personality characteristics or any correlates or implications of these differences. The studies reported in this article were designed to examine these questions. In two studies, we investigated whether personality characteristics are essentialized in a coherent way and how the structure of essentialist beliefs about personality should be described. Our studies also examine several possible correlates of essentialist beliefs.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 17

During the 1970s, social psychology was of two minds when it came to experimentation. As shown in Figures 1 through 3, early in the decade there was a marked increase in experimentation relative to individual differences approaches. Even as researchers turned increasingly to experimental approaches, however, the field underwent a wrenching “crisis” that was marked by considerable doubts regarding the utility of experimentation (see Jones, 1998, for a discussion). Questions arose regarding both the internal as well as external validity of experiments. Together, these questions may have diminished experimentation’s appeal in much the same way that Mischel’s critique sucked the wind from personality psychology’s sails several years earlier. Difficulties in Establishing the Internal Validity of Experiments In theory, experiments can provide higher levels of confidence regarding the causal mechanisms underlying phenomena than correlational approaches. What the crisis forced social psychologists to realize, how- ever, was that the results of experiments are not always as illuminating as they could be in principle. Although not among the instigators of the crisis, Aronson and Carlsmith (1968) articulated a central concern, How can we be sure that this operation is, in fact, an empirical realization of our conceptual variable? Or conversely, how can we abstract a conceptual variable from our procedures? . . . There is no cheap solution to the problem. This is largely due to the fact that in social psychology there exist relatively few standard methods of manipulating any given conceptual variable.
(pp. 14-15) But the problem goes much deeper than this. Consider the common assumption that one advantage of experimental designs over nonexperimental designs is that, through randomization, researchers eliminate the “omitted variable” problem (i.e., the possibility that some variable other than the one that was manipulated was responsible for an effect). This is not true of social psychological experimentation or, for that matter, any other type of experimentation. Bollen (1980) notes that “in any experiment we must be aware that variables other than the intended one may be influenced by the treatment
and that these other variables could be responsible for the effects found” (p. 76). In theory, the omitted variable problem could be addressed by a procedure for validating manipulations— parallel to the construct validation process designed by Cronbach and Meehl (1954) for psychological tests.

Although Brunswik and his students (e.g., 1944, 1947; for a overview, see Hammond, 1980) attempted to address this issue through the development of his  representative design” and “rich stimulus” approaches, these approaches have garnered little support by social psychologists. Perhaps the most serious effort to address the validity issue has been the use of “manipulation checks.” Nevertheless, on those infrequent occasions wherein manipulation checks are used and reported, they are themselves of unknown validity. Moreover, if the results of manipulation checks fail to converge with the primary findings of the study, investigators often assume that the manipulation check was faulty or that the effects of the manipulation were simply inaccessible to participants (e.g., Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). And even if valid manipulation checks were used routinely, they would not fully address the omitted variable problem because they are only capable of revealing what the manipulation did do; they cannot provide assurances that the manipulations’ effects were limited to those intended.
Although the omitted variable problem is not fatal, recognition of this and related problems did dampen some of the enthusiasm enjoyed by advocates of experimental approaches. This problem was further compounded by the recognition of experimentation’s problems with external validity. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 17

The resurgence of personality psychology is a largescale sociological phenomenon. Like any such phenomenon, it is apt to have many causes that are difficult to document and impossible to quantify. Nevertheless, we have identified two distinct classes of hypotheses that might explain the resurgence of personality psychology: (a) increased awareness of personality’s strengths resulting from a series of vigorous rebuttals of Mischel’s critique coupled with scrupulous attention to methodological issues and (b) increased awareness of experimentation’s limitations brought about by the “crisis in social psychology.” We discuss each of these below. Increased Awareness of Personality Psychology’s Strengths Relative to Its Shortcomings Although Mischel (1968) was surely the most influential critic of personality psychology, he was by no means the first (e.g., Ichheiser, 1943) or the last (e.g., Nisbett, 1980). These critics have raised two distinct issues: (a) relative to situational influences, personality accounts for minimal variance in behavior and (b) correlational approaches are methodologically weak. In what follows, we discuss how personality psychologists have responded to each of these concerns. Rebuttals of the “Personality
Accounts for Minimal Variance in Behavior” Argument Perhaps the most positive contribution of Mischel’s book was that it inspired psychologists to carefully and creatively dissect the assertion that personality variables account for relatively little variance in behavior relative to situations. Although there were many important contributors to this effort, David Funder and his colleagues led the charge (see especially, Funder, 1999, 2001, 2002; Funder & Colvin, 1991; Funder & Ozer, 1983; Kenrick & Funder, 1988). Together, they identified five key qualifiers to Mischel’s critique.6 1. The “if personality effects are weak then situational effects are strong” syllogism is flawed. Evidence indicating that personality measures seldom correlated with behavior at levels that exceeded .30 does not imply that situations must account for the remainder of the variance because the unexplained variance could be due to trait-situation interactions, unmeasured traits, or error.

In fact, when Bowers (1973) reviewed several representative studies and compared the magnitude of the effects associated with situations, persons, and their interaction, he reported that interactions generally “won.” A few years after his original book, Mischel (1973, 1984) modified his approach in favor of a more interactionist approach.

2. The pool of studies Mischel reviewed and the particular studies he selected for consideration may have been biased. For a sample of experiments to offer valid estimates of the relative effects of persons and situations, the reviewer who scrutinizes the sample must be unbiased in selecting representative studies and the pool of studies must itself be unbiased. Regarding the unbiased selection of studies requirement, some (e.g., Block, 1977; Hogan, DeSoto,&Solano, 1977) have argued that Mischel selected studies that favored the influence of situations over personality variables. Regarding the unbiased pool of studies requirement, the pool of relevant studies may be biased in favor of situational effects because (a) social psychologists are more apt to design and conduct experiments than personality psychologists and (b) most social psychologists are well versed in designing situational manipulations and unschooled in the science of test construction, so they may therefore choose manipulations of situations that are exceptionally strong and measures of traits that are exceptionally weak.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 17

The publication of Mischel’s (1968) book was followed by a marked decline in the number of research studies, graduate training programs, and dissertations
devoted to personality psychology. We consider each of these consequences in turn. Research After Mischel’s Critique To determine if the landscape of published personality and social psychological research changed following Mischel’s criticisms, we surveyed the past 35 years of articles in one of the flagship journals of personality and social psychology: the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP). We chose the JPSP for several reasons.
First, of the journals that publish research on both social and personality psychology, it is arguably the most representative; indeed, empirical evidence (Sherman, Buddie, Dragan, End, & Finney, 1999) indicates that publication trends in other influential journals (e.g., Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin) resemble trends in JPSP. Second, it is unique among the most prominent journals in that its publication history extends back to 1965, thus permitting us to establish baseline publication rates prior to the appearance of Mischel’s book. Finally, JPSP is consistently ranked as having the highest
impact score of the journals in social-personality psychology, making it both a reflection of and an influence on the most important research in the field (Reis & Stiller, 1992). Several interesting findings emerged from our analysis.

1 Figure 1 shows the average percentage of articles in each issue of JPSP containing any reference to individual differences (i.e., individual difference, Experiment × Individual Difference, or experiment with incidental measure of individual differences) versus those with no reference to individual differences. In 1966, 50% of the articles included at least one individual difference measure, but this figure subsequently drops precipitously.2
By 1977, studies of individual differences have dipped to their lowest point, significantly lower than any year except 1972 (p < .001).3 The data thus suggest that the publication of Mischel’s book was followed by a rise in experimentation at the expense of studies of individual differences. After 1977, however, researchers began returning to personality psychology almost as quickly as they had abandoned it. Two distinct mechanisms may have underlied personality psychology’s recovery: (a) researchers themselves decided that it was time to return to the study of personality or (b) the creation of a separate section of JPSP (“Personality and Individual Differences”) in 1980 facilitated the publication of personality articles. To assess the relative viability of these two possibilities, our judges examined in more detail the years surrounding the reorganization of JPSP into its current three-section format.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 17

The behaviorist John Watson (1925) once boasted that he could fashion people into whatever he desired—regardless of their unique qualities and personalities. A decade or so later Kurt Lewin (widely regarded as the father of experimental social psychology) challenged this one-sided view of psychology. In his field theory, Lewin argued that behavior was a function of both persons and situations (Lewin, 1946). Nevertheless, Lewin’s interactionist message was largely lost on his extremely influential student, Leon Festinger. For Festinger, the Person in Lewin’s widely heralded Behavior = f (Person × Situation) deserved scrutiny only in the service of understanding the influence of the Situation; personality variables were merely “error variance” and of relatively little
intrinsic interest. His viewpoints helped shape the perspectives of an entire generation of social psychologists, particularly those trained in the 1950s.
Although behaviorism gradually yielded to more cognitive approaches in the 1960s, it was still a force to be reckoned with when Mischel (1968) wrote his critique of personality psychology. Indeed, Mischel himself advocated one of behaviorism’s intellectual children—social learning theory—as an alternative to traditional personality approaches. After doing so, he went on to evaluate the predictive power of extant measures of personality, In sum, the data reviewed on the utility of psychometrically measured traits . . . show that responses have not served very usefully as indirect signs of states and traits. . . . With the possible exception of intelligence, highly generalized behavioral consistencies have not been demonstrated and the concept of personality traits as broad response predispositions is thus untenable. . . . The initial assumptions of trait-state theory were logical, inherently plausible, and also consistent with common sense and intuitive impressions about personality. Their real limitation turned out to be empirical—they simply have not been supported adequately. (pp. 145-147) At first blush, Mischel’s (1968) conclusions hardly seem to be the stuff of which knockout punches are made. Yet his reference to conventional personality approaches in the past tense seemed to some to imply that it was time to consign them to the fate of phlogiston, ether, and the four humors.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Nov 17

Psychology’s early allegiance to behaviorism and experimental methods led many to disparage personality approaches throughout much of last century. Doubts about personality psychology’s viability culminated in Mischel’s assertion that measures of personality account for modest amounts of variance in behavior. In the years immediately following this critique, interest in personality research waned and many psychology departments dropped their training programs in personality. Throughout the past two decades, however, personality psychology has enjoyed a resurgence. The authors discuss several possible explanations for personality’s comeback and then describe the emergence of a promising symbiosis between personality psychology and its sister discipline, social psychology. The article concludes by noting that although this emerging symbiosis is likely to continue bearing considerable theoretical fruit, the traditional distinction between personal, situational, and interactional determinants of behavior continues to be useful within appropriate contexts.

Several years ago, an undergraduate student wandered into the first author’s office wearing a mystified frown on her face. The student explained that after much soul searching, she had decided that she wanted to pursue a graduate degree in personality psychology. When she looked for potential grad programs, however, she was disappointed to learn that relatively few training programs in personality psychology existed. Her first response was to develop second thoughts about the viability of her chosen specialization. Later, however, these doubts changed to concerns about the perspicacity of the field of psychology: “Psychologists recognize how fundamental personality is, right? If so, then why has the field of psychology banished personality psychology
while related areas like social psychology have continued to thrive?”

The first author responded by attempting to place the fate of personality psychology in historical perspective. He began by considering the factors that caused personality psychology to lose force within psychology and showed how these factors laid the groundwork for a later critique of personality by Walter Mischel (1968). He noted that this critique was something of a bitter pill for personality psychologists; although it diminished interest in personality psychology in the short run, it inspired a core of dedicated psychologists to press on and make important discoveries. Specifically, these researchers
unraveled a host of subtle and complex issues that qualified and, in the eyes of many, effectively refuted the notion that personality was unimportant. Their efforts, together with changes within the social psychological community, brought personality psychology back into the psychological mainstream.
This article represents an elaboration of the conversation between the student and first author. After discussing the history of skepticism toward personality psychology, we document its fall and subsequent rise by examining trends in three decades of published research articles, graduate training programs, and dissertation research. We then consider two distinct explanations of personality psychology’s comeback. First, psychologists may have been persuaded by thoughtful rebuttals to Mischel’s critique and refinements to personality research. Second, a process of self-recrimination may have persuaded social psychologists to conclude that had Mischel’s (1968) alter ego drawn a series of conceptually analogous arrows from his quiver and aimed them at
social psychology, he would just as easily have found his mark. Both of these sets of considerations may have enhanced the relative attractiveness of personality psychology. In the concluding section, we suggest that personality psychology’s comeback is a positive development in that it has set the stage for a symbiosis with social psychology that will enrich both subdisciplines. We begin by identifying some key movements that shaped psychology in the last century, particularly behaviorism and related themes.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

« Previous Entries