Research on emotional bonding, or ‘attachment,’ in close relationships, beginning with the infant–caregiver relationship, burgeoned following the publication of Bowlby’s (1973, 1980, 1982) three-volume analysis of attachment, separation, and loss. In recent years, research by personality/social psychologists has focused on attachment processes in adolescent and adult relationships. In this chapter we review self-report measures of attachment orientations or styles and of individual differences in the functioning of other social ‘behavioral systems’ (Bowlby, 1982) such as caregiving and power. These measures are continuously being revised, expanded, extended, and translated into languages other than English, so the array of measures is likely to continue to evolve. But the measures included here provide a good starting point for anyone seeking to conduct research on adult attachment.

Self-esteem is one of the most widely studied and oldest constructs in scientific psychology. Accordingly, a number of measures have been used over the past century. Despite the wide variety of measures that have appeared in the literature, the majority of researchers use either the Rosenberg (1989) Self-Esteem scale or Harter's (e.g., Harter & Pike, 1988) Self-Perception Profile series of scales. This chapter provides a detailed description of these two measures that is updated from the last edition of the chapter. We also provide extensive coverage of three additional scales that were either not available for the last edition of the chapter or not extensively reviewed: the Self-Liking and Self-Competence Questionnaires (e.g., Tafarodi & Swann, 1995), the series of Self-Description Questionnaires (e.g., Marsh, 1992a), and the Single-Item Self-Esteem Scale (Robins et al., 2001). We provide a critical evaluation of each measure and make recommendations for future research.

The chapter describes six prominent measures of coping that are broken into two categories covering (1) trait coping and (2) state coping. The measures reviewed are The Miller Behavioral Style Scale (Miller, 1987); The Mainz Coping Inventory (Krohne, 1993); The Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (Endler & Parker, 1990, 1994); The COPE Inventory (Carver et al., 1989); The Coping Strategy Indicator (Amirkhan, 1990); and The Ways of Coping Questionnaire (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988). The chapter reviews antecedents and triggers of coping, and theoretical distinctions (or ‘frameworks’) in coping research. Challenges and future directions in coping research are discussed.

Twenty-first century intergroup biases are more automatic, ambivalent, and ambiguous than were old-fashioned biases such as authoritarianism and overt racism, which overtly expressed intergroup hostility. Beyond traditional self-report measures of ethnocentrism and hostile sexism, current measures tap more subtle manifestations of bias. Social dominance orientation assesses beliefs about the desirability of group hierarchies and predicts social attitudes such as ethnocentrism. The stereotype content model maps societal groups’ stereotypes, based on perceived social structure, predicting emotional prejudices and discriminatory tendencies. Recent racism measures tap modern policy-related attitude configurations, relatively automatic associations between groups and evaluations, and indirect indicators of intergroup attitudes. Current sexism scales assess modern versions oriented toward policies and an ambivalent version separating benevolence and hostility. Ageism scales measure both modern beliefs and prescriptive ambivalence toward older people. Current measures are less direct than earlier ones, consistent with 21st century patterns.

This chapter reviews 11 salient measures associated with the concept of emotional intelligence (EI). Both experimental and commercial measures are included here. However, in view of the proliferation of EI measures, the chapter focuses on those with a solid presence in the scientific literature. The reviews are organized in line with recent developments and the divergence of the field into two areas (i.e., ability and trait EI), based on their method of measurement. Reviews of three performance-based, or ability EI measures, precede the reviews of eight typical-performance, or trait EI measures. All three performance measures are designed for assessment of ability EI in the general populations, whereas the trait EI measures include four general-population scales as well as four workplace-oriented measures, designed for occupational assessment or research in workplace contexts.

We first present an interpretative framework for describing cross-cultural applications of personality instruments. A distinction is made between publication identifiers (such as name of instrument and publication type), psychometric characteristics (such as internal consistency), and cross-cultural issues (such as translation checks and equivalence and bias tests). We review the most frequently employed personality inventories in terms of these characteristics. It is concluded that structural equivalence (referring to the similarity of the factorial structure of an instrument across all countries studied) is often supported. Furthermore, in the relatively few cases comparability issues are addressed, there is a focus on establishing invariance across cultures, thereby insufficiently paying attention to possible culture-specific aspects of personality, notably in a non-Western context.

The past 40 years have witnessed rapid growth in the study of sexual orientation and identity. Within psychology, this has been accompanied by an ever-growing number of measures designed to assess sexual orientation related constructs. This chapter reviews the most recent and widely employed self-report instruments. These measures diversely assess attitudes of heterosexual individuals toward Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual targets as well as the attitudes of LGB individuals toward their own sexual orientation. Though these assessments all tap self-reported anti-LGB bias, they differ widely in the definition, hypothesized components, and labeling of the construct of interest. The goal of this chapter is to provide information about these important variations in the operationalization of anti-LGB bias and the psychometric quality of resulting tests in a centralized location.

Culture plays an important role in solving complex social coordination problems. To avoid cutthroat competitions among individuals striving to maximize their personal fitness, members of the society negotiate and agree on the way to make sense of the reality and on the human qualities or behaviors that are socially desirable and allowed. These consensual views are integral parts of a culture. Given the social significance of culture, many measures have been constructed to capture cultural differences along major psychological dimensions. The present review covers the psychometric properties of the measures that were developed to study cultural variations in personality, social beliefs, values, and perceived norms in the society and its residents. Although many measures have been used in cross-cultural studies (e.g., measures of self-esteem, locus of control, the Big 5 personality trait constructs), these measures were not developed to capture cultural differences in human psychology and are therefore not included in the present review. The measures reviewed here are the Value System Module, the Schwartz Value Survey, the World Values Survey, the GLOBE Cultural Values, Measure of the Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions of Individualism and Collectivism, the Cultural Orientation Scale, the Cross-cultural Personality Assessment Inventory, the Social Axioms Survey, and the Tightness and Looseness Scale. Instead of providing a comprehensive survey of all cross-cultural measures, the present review aims at illustrating representative measures that are recently developed to capture different aspects of cultural differences.

This chapter reviews the major approaches to measure empathy, considers their validity and reliability, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Empathy is a complex multifaceted construct that is important for interpersonal relationships and social functioning in normal and pathological populations. This complexity is also reflected in the approaches used to measure empathy. The approaches can be categorized as self-report questionnaires, behavioral measures, and neuroscientific measures. Some measurement approaches focus more on the affective components of empathy, others focus more on the cognitive components, and some take a multidimensional perspective. Measures also vary according to whether they are used in clinical or medical contexts or with younger age groups. While self-report measures are the most commonly used and well-validated, behavioral and neuroscientific measures are becoming increasingly popular in research and practice.

People differ in the degree to which they are attuned to other people’s evaluations of them, are motivated to make desired impressions on others, experience distress when their public images are damaged or others’ evaluations of them are unfavorable, and use various tactics to convey public impressions of themselves to others. This chapter focuses on measures of nine personality characteristics that reflect individual differences in such concerns, including public self-consciousness, self-monitoring, approval motivation, social anxiety, social scrutiny fear, social physique anxiety, embarrassability, self-presentation tactics, and impression management styles. Each measure is described, along with psychometric information regarding its reliability and validity.