Personality Psychology Compass Research Articles

Just Research: Advancing Antiracist and Antioppressive Social Work Research.

The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) created its Research Capacity and Development Committee in 2017 to build research capacity across the careers of social work scholars. The committee has initiated multiple conferences and webinar sessions that have increasingly focused on antiracist and antioppressive (ARAO) research, including "Mentorship for Antiracist and Inclusive Research" and "Strategies for Supporting Antiracist Pedagogy & Scholarship: Reimagining Institutional Systems & Structures." This commentary integrates themes from these sessions and other discussions among committee members about strategies to advance ARAO research. Although SSWR board members reviewed and approved this submission, it is not an official statement of SSWR or its board of directors.

Is “thank you” effective even in Japan where “sorry” may be preferred? Toward extending the Find‐Remind‐and‐Bind theory

The core idea of the find‐remind‐and‐bind theory articulated by (Algoe, 2012, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 455) is that receiving expressed gratitude facilitates positive attitudes toward the expressor such as increased prosocial behaviour. The current study tries to observe the phenomena in Japan where apologies are sometimes used when people express gratitude. In this experimental study, 671 Japanese participants received expressions of gratitude, apologies, both, or neither (control condition) in exchange for their help. The results showed that expressed gratitude had the most positive effect compared to the control, apology and both conditions; that is, expressed gratitude most strongly facilitated the message receiver's prosocial behaviour, self‐disclosure, predicted outcome values, and social worth. Expressed apologies showed a limited positive effect. A structural equation model further indicated that predicted outcome values and social worth functioned in unique ways to mediate the link between expressed gratitude and prosocial behaviour as well as self‐disclosure.

The Effect of Big Five Personality Traits on Leader Member Exchange and Organization Citizenship Behavior in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities

The Effect of Big Five Personality Traits on Leader Member Exchange and Organization Citizenship Behavior in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universities

The Multidimensional Forced-Choice Format as an Alternative for Rating Scales

The Multidimensional Forced-Choice Format as an Alternative for Rating Scales

Fat Studies 101: Learning to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Fat Studies 101: Learning to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Towards an Emplaced, Relationally‐Focused and Action‐Orientated Social Psychology of Homelessness

This guide accompanies the following article: Hodgetts, D., Stolte, O., and Groot, S. (2014), . Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8: 156–164. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12096

Above and below baselines

The current study tests an explanation inspired by social baseline theory ( Beckes & Coan, 2011 . Social baseline theory: The role of social proximity in emotion and economy of action. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5, 976–988. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00400) for the mixed blessings associated with received emotional support from one’s partner. We reason that the receipt of emotional support engenders benefits only up to individualized baseline points—that is, support effects will be nonmonotonic. In two dyadic daily-diary samples ( N = 38/80 couples, over 21/35 days, respectively), we used piecewise multilevel modeling, finding support for our hypotheses. Receiving emotional support exceeding one’s baseline was associated with little affective change; receiving emotional support falling short of one’s baseline was consistently associated with worsened moods and relationship feelings. This work highlights the importance of individuals’ baseline levels as reference or comparison points for understanding support’s effects.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: A General Model of Preventive and Interventive Self‐Control

Author’s Introduction The field of self-control has witnessed an unprecedented boom, not least due to the immense implications of successful and unsuccessful self-control for people’s lives. However, successful and unsuccessful self-control can take many different forms, and many conceptual problems have been raised as to what self-control is about and how to best study it. Integrating different literatures, our Social and Personality Psychology Compass article provides a general model of self-control, which distinguishes between preventive (i.e., anticipatory) and interventive (i.e., momentary) forms of self-control. The proposed Preventive-Interventive Model (PI-Model) of Self-Control combines seven basic components: preventive strategies, desire, conflict, motivation, volition, opportunity constraints, and behavioral enactment. The model helps to distinguish self-control from standard motivational processes, to define the concept of temptation, and to identify different types of self-control failure including self-monitoring failure, motivational self-control failure, and volitional self-control failure .F urther, the model helps to outlinefive broad mechanisms through which people may be able to proactively boost self-control success. In this 10-week supplementary teaching and learning guide, weeks 1–2 are spent reviewing previous models from which the PI-Model drew ideas. Week 3 is spent reading about integrative models of self-control including the PI-Model. Weeks 4–7 focus on core components from the PI-Model: desire, conflict, motivation, and preventive self-control. Week 8 covers pertinent topics to self-control including affect and self-regulation. Week 9 takes the learner into the context of everyday life and self-control. And finally, week 10 deals with practical ways to boost self-control. We believe that a thorough reading and discussion of the papers in this teaching andlearning guide will provide a broad introduction to the field of self-control and might also help the learner identify self-control conflicts and make smart decisions about how to handle them. Syllabus

Breakdown Is Built into It: A Politics of Resilience in a Disabling World

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture...

Teaching and Learning Guide for Stress and Health: A Structural and Functional Analysis of Chronic Stress

Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7/7 (2013): 502–506, 10.1111/spc3.12034 Teaching and Learning Guide for Stress and Health: A Structural and Functional Analysis of Chronic Stress Matthew J. Zawadzki and Joshua M. Smyth Pennsylvania State University This guide accompanies the following article: Smyth, J. M., Zawadzki, M. J., & Gerin, W. (2013). Stress and health: A structural and functional analysis of chronic stress. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7, 217–227. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12020. Author’s Introduction It is widely believed that “stress” is bad for health, especially stress that is considered “chronic”. Yet, defining precisely what is meant by chronic has largely been absent from theoretical and empirical examinations of stress. This article provides working definitions of acute and chronic stress, discusses how chronic stress can take different forms, and focuses on delineating the conditions that tend to give rise to chronic stress. As part of this discussion, this article considers the role that various features of the environment, and how the environment is perceived, contribute to the chronicity of stress. In addition, it discusses the important role that engaging in perseverative cognitions (such as ruminating or worrying) has in leading a person to experience stress too often and for too long. More specifically, it describes how perseverative cognitions can interact with each of the conditions that give rise to chronic stress, thus exacerbating the amount (and impact) of chronic stress the person is experiencing. One take-home message is that there may not be just one “kind” of chronic stress; rather, chronic stress may arise from a range of contributing sources and may have different shapes and forms. Extending this logic, the article concludes with a discussion of how interventions to reduce stress may benefit from ideographically tailoring treatment to the type(s) of chronic stress an individual is experiencing. Author Recommends Baum, A., O’Keefe, M. K., & Davidson, L. M. (1990). Acute stressors and chronic responses: The case of traumatic stress. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 20, 1643–1654. doi: 10.1111/j. 1559-1816.1990.tb01499.x Baum and colleagues describe three different ways to categorize the duration of a stress response: duration of the physical stressor, the duration of perception of the stressor as a threat, and the persistence of the response to the stressor. These factors are then discussed in terms of how singular events can cause extended physiological responding beyond the stressor being present and what would constitute a typical time of recovery. This work is drawn upon to consider the different factors that give rise to chronic stress. Brosschot, J. F., Gerin, W., & Thayer, J. F. (2006). The perseverative cognition hypothesis: A review of worry, prolonged stress-related physiological activation, and health. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 60, 113–124. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2005.06.074 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Social Identity and Corporate Mergers

Social psychology is concerned with people interacting as members of social groups. Cor- porate mergers provide an interesting field to apply social psychological theory in practice and also provide a context for the test and development of such theories. Mergers and acquisitions have been shown to often fail their financial and other strategic aims – one key reason for this failure is that human resources, that is, the needs of employees involved in the merger, are often considered less important than legal, techno- logical or other factors by senior managers. In particular, it is often the merger’s impact on employee identities as members of the pre-merger organizations and its consideration by change leaders that determines the merger’s failure or success. The article ‘Social Identity and Corporate Mergers’ utilizes a social identity approach to analyze the problem zones of mergers and we provide research suggesting how to lead a merger into success. In particular, leaders should provide reasons for why the merger is necessary, they should demonstrate actual and future continuity to reduce uncertainties due to the merger situation and leaders should pay attention to status differentials (e.g., between employees of the acquiring versus the acquired organization) as employees of the lower status merger partner have different concerns than employees of the higher status merger organization.

Social Identity and Corporate Mergers

AbstractCorporate mergers require proper human resources management to reach their financial and strategic objectives and minimize negative consequences for employee well‐being. Understanding the antecedents of employees’ identification with the merged organization during the corporate merger is crucial, because stronger post‐merger identification results in less conflict and higher levels of motivation. Unfortunately, employees often identify more strongly with their pre‐merger organizations than with the merged organization. One influential approach to understanding the processes underlying organizational identification is the social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Research applying this perspective to organizational mergers shows that levels of identification with the merged organization are partly explained by status and dominance differences of the involved organizations, by motivational threats and uncertainties during the merger, and by the representation of the post‐merger identity. Leaders and managers of corporate mergers are able to influence these processes and, thus, to provide a path for successful merger integration.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: A Really Big Picture of Personality

Teaching & Learning Guide for: A Really Big Picture of Personality

Personality and Pathways of Influence on Physical Health

AbstractSome individuals are prone to illness, decline, and premature mortality while others recover quickly, maintain health, and live long lives. Personality, an individual’s biopsychosocial pattern of reactions and behaviors, is related to health across time, but the pathways are complex, with interrelated causal and non‐causal links. Causal pathways linking personality and health include: health behaviors and habits; number and quality of social relationships; reactions to challenges and psychophysiological stress; and situation selection and evocation. Important but non‐causal (spurious) links include: genes and early experiences; and disease‐caused personality changes. Attending to the multiple links between personality and health within a lifespan perspective will aid causal understanding and facilitate the most appropriate interventions.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Once Upon a Time: Explaining Cultural Differences in Episodic Specificity

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Once Upon a Time: Explaining Cultural Differences in Episodic Specificity

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Body in Mind: The Role of Embodied Cognition in Self‐Regulation

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Body in Mind: The Role of Embodied Cognition in Self‐Regulation

The Impact of Self‐Affirmation on Health‐Related Cognition and Health Behaviour: Issues and Prospects

AbstractIn a recent paper (Harris & Epton, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2009; 3, 962–978), we reviewed the evidence showing that self‐affirming – the act of reflecting upon cherished values or attributes – can reduce resistance to health‐risk information. In this companion paper, we extend the discussion of issues arising from that review and describe key questions for future research. Overall, we regard the picture emerging from this nascent literature as encouraging. Nevertheless, more needs to be discovered about how self‐affirming achieves its effects and their limits. Despite lowering an important barrier to health behaviour change by reducing message resistance, there is currently only limited evidence that self‐affirming changes subsequent health behaviour. We consider why. We also discuss issues to address in interventions involving self‐affirmation and examine evidence that self‐affirming alters relationships between variables. There is also scope for extending the range of samples, health information and health behaviours examined and for assessing more spontaneous self‐affirmation.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: The Nature of Contemporary Prejudice: Insights from Aversive Racism

Intergroup bias is one of the most actively researched topics in the field of social psychology. Hundreds of books and thousands of research articles have addressed this issue over more than half a century. Although the psychological roots of blatant prejudices are well documented, the development of more subtle and often unintentional forms in societies in which its expression is discouraged poses new and unique challenges to the pursuit of justice and equality in contemporary society. Our interests in the psychological underpinnings of prejudice as researchers and educators are both practical and conceptual. On the practical side, understanding the nature of contemporary forms of prejudice has clear implications for developing effective techniques for combating bias and discrimination. In 1967, nearly 3 years after the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, race riots in the United States prompted the Kerner Commission to investigate the sources of racial tension. Upon the conclusion of its investigation, the commission cited White America’s failure to assist Blacks in need, rather than actively trying to harm Blacks, as a primary cause of racial disparities and, ultimately, civil unrest (Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968). Indeed, it was research on the differential helping behavior of politically liberal Whites toward Black and White motorists who were stranded on a highway that represented the first empirical work on aversive racism (Gaertner, 1973). Considerable subsequent research on aversive racism has revealed that the consequences of subtle bias can be as severe and pernicious as those of blatant prejudice. Conceptually, the complexities of contemporary forms of prejudice and recent advances in techniques and tools for studying non-conscious biases make this research area an exciting and challenging one. We hope that this guide can help orient educators to the many excellent resources that exist and convey our enthusiasm for exploring what psychological methods and theories can contribute to understanding one of the most challenging social issues faced in contemporary society.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Imagined Intergroup Contact: Theory, Paradigm, and Practice

A goal shared enthusiastically amongst many social psychologists is the improvement of intergroup relations. Conflict between groups is usually related to distinct, and in many cases opposing, identities, based on (for example) ethnicity, nationality, and religion, but also gender, age, sexual orientation and political or individual preferences. Our research has developed a new intervention for improving intergroup relations based on an integration of theory and empirical work on social cognition and intergroup relations. We've called the technique Imagined Contact because it is based on the mental simulation of intergroup contact experiences. Collectively, our research has focused on refining and evaluating imagined contact as an effective tool for the enhancement of intergroup relations. Our article in Social and Personality Psychology Compass provides a summary of the basic theory underlying imagined contact, a review of empirical findings to date, and a framework for developing practical applications of the intervention (in particular as a school-based intervention). We wanted to offer a teaching and learning guide for this article because we believe that the imagined contact task provides a flexible, effective, and easy-to-use tool for teachers, seminar leaders, students, and practitioners. The task can be used as a basis for encouraging more positive and open attitudes towards other groups, a way of preparing people for future intergroup encounters, a stimulus for discussions about the value in experiencing social diversity, and a way of illustrating the power of mental processes in forming and challenging attitudes about others.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Suggestions for a New Integration in the Psychology of Morality

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Suggestions for a New Integration in the Psychology of Morality