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Whereas past research has examined the use of emotion regulation strategies in terms of individual differences or responses to experimental manipulations, this research takes a naturalistic and repeated-measures approach to examine suppression use in specific situations. Using an experience sampling design, we find evidence across two samples (total N = 215) that (1) there was substantial within-person variation in suppression use, (2) the situational use of suppression was explained by situational differences in extraversion and social hierarchy, and (3) when used in contexts in which people felt they were low in social hierarchy, the negative relationship between suppression and well-being was attenuated. These findings suggest there are contexts in which suppression use may not be maladaptive, and demonstrate the benefits of studying emotion processes in real-life.

The Big Five Inventory–2 (BFI-2) uses 60 items to hierarchically assess the Big Five personality domains and 15 more-specific facet traits. The present research develops two abbreviated forms of the BFI-2—the 30-item BFI-2-S and the 15-item BFI-2-XS—and then examines their measurement properties. At the level of the Big Five domains, we find that the BFI-2-S and BFI-2-XS retain much of the full measure’s reliability and validity. At the facet level, we find that the BFI-2-S may be useful for examining facet traits in reasonably large samples, whereas the BFI-2-XS should not be used to assess facets. Finally, we discuss some key tradeoffs to consider when deciding whether to administer an abbreviated form instead of the full BFI-2.

The present research uses a Social Relations Model approach to focus on individual differences in perceptual confidence – a person’s confidence in her or his impressions of others. Across two samples of group interactions, we found that the majority of variance in perceptual confidence was explained by individual differences in how people tended to perceive others (i.e., perceiver effects). A smaller percentage of variance was explained by differences in how people tended to be perceived by others (i.e., target effects). Both these individual differences were stable over time, were related to relevant personality measures, and group outcomes. Together, these results demonstrate that although perceptual confidence may not be substantially related to accuracy, it exists as a stable individual difference dimension that has important consequences for social interactions.

Different emotion regulation strategies have been linked to distinct social outcomes, but only concurrently or in the short-term. The present research employed a 4-year longitudinal design with peerreported measures of social functioning to examine the long-term social effects of emotion regulation. Individual differences in suppression before entering college predicted weaker social connections (e.g., less close relationships) at the end of college, whereas reappraisal predicted stronger social connections and more favorable sociometric standing (e.g., higher social status). These effects of emotion regulation remained intact even when controlling for baseline social functioning and Big Five personality traits. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of particular emotion regulation strategies have an enduring impact, shaping the individual’s social environment over time.

Beliefs that are negatively biased, inaccurate, and rigid are thought to play a key role in the mood and anxiety disorders. Our goal in this study was to examine whether a change in maladaptive beliefs mediated the outcome of individual cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD). In a sample of 47 individuals with SAD receiving CBT, we measured maladaptive interpersonal beliefs as well as emotional and behavioral components of social anxiety, both at baseline and after treatment completion. We found that (a) maladaptive interpersonal beliefs were associated with social anxiety at baseline and treatment completion; (b) maladaptive interpersonal beliefs were significantly reduced from baseline to treatment completion; and (c) treatment-related reductions in maladaptive interpersonal beliefs fully accounted for reductions in social anxiety after CBT. These results extend the literature by providing support for cognitive models of mental disorders, broadly, and SAD, specifically.

Reappraisal is generally viewed as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. Reappraisal frequency has been associated with greater well-being, and reappraisal ability is thought to be composed of several crucial cognitive control processes. However, the relationships among reappraisal ability, reappraisal frequency, well-being, and various cognitive control processes have not yet been determined. In this study, we experimentally examined individual differences in reappraisal ability (RA), and also assessed reappraisal frequency, well-being, and several cognitive control processes. We observed a positive relationship between RA, reappraisal frequency, and well-being. RA was also related positively to working memory capacity and set-shifting costs, and marginally related to abstract reasoning. These findings have important implications for understanding the cognitive components and affective outcomes of RA.

International audience; La description de la personnalité a été conçue à partir d'une variété de points de vue théoriques et à différents niveaux d'abstraction. Dans l'étude de la personnalité, l'unité la plus fréquemment utilisée pour mesurer les différences individuelles a été le trait. Un consensus semble se dégager actuellement sur une taxonomie générale des traits de la personnalité, les cinq facteurs de la personnalité, connus sous le nom des " Big Five ", expression introduite par Goldberg. Le but de cet article est de resituer l'élaboration de la version originale du Big Five Inventory (BFI) de John, Donahue et Kentle (1991) dans son histoire, et parmi les autres tests disponibles le " TDA ou trait descriptive adjective " de Goldberg et le " NEO PI-R ou NEO personality inventory revised " de Costa et McCrae. La revue reprend les différents stades de conceptualisation des catégories qui furent élaborées à partir d'une sélection d'adjectifs de dictionnaires permettant de différencier un individu d'un autre. Seuls les traits seront utilisés pour l'élaboration des trois tests mentionnés. Les " Big Five " retrouvés à partir d'analyses factorielles peuvent se résumer en cinq facteurs réplicables connus sous le nom de OCEAN ou CANOE de la personnalité, moyen mnémotechnique pour E (Extraversion, Énergie, Enthousiasme) ; A (Agréabilité, Altruisme, Affection) ; C (Conscience, Contrôle, Contrainte) ; N (Émotions Négatives, Névrosisme, Nervosité) ; O (Ouverture, Originalité, Ouverture d'esprit), ordre établi par les auteurs du BFI. La structure des " Big Five " regroupe à un haut niveau d'abstraction les points communs de la plupart des systèmes existant sur la description de la personnalité et met à disposition un modèle descriptif intégré pour des recherches sur la personnalité.

We studied subjective well-being (SWB) as a dynamic system, focusing on change processes in women who faced mid-life challenges of poor health. To examine both general and age-specific effects, we focused on two groups of ill women and compared each of them to healthy controls: the early-onset ill experienced their health challenge at 52 (i.e., normatively early) and the late-onset ill later at 61. Our 20-year longitudinal design combined quantitative and idiographic life data, testing hypotheses about frequent handicaps of ill people, how SWB can be recovered, and how the nature of stresses and recovery processes varies with period of life. Results suggest that processes of aging and development helped the early-onset ill to overcome handicaps through emphasis on generativity and the late-onset ill to regain involvement in life.

Scales were developed to assess 10 specific facet traits within the broad Big Five personality domains from the item pool of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). In two independent samples, the BFI facet scales demonstrated substantial (a) reliability, (b) convergence with self-reports on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory and peer-reports on the BFI, and (c) discriminant validity. These brief scales offer new opportunities for researchers who wish to assess specific personality characteristics within an overarching Big Five framework.

The present research developed a new, multi-step approach for hierarchically assessing the Big Five personality domains from a large and diverse pool of existing questionnaire items: those of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). First, the Abridged Big Five Circumplex (AB5C) structural model was used to organize the CPI item pool in Big Five factor space. Using the 10 resulting CPI-AB5C circumplexes as starting points, 16 facet scales were then developed to assess specific personality characteristics within the broad Big Five domains. Finally, principal components analysis with validimax rotation was used to score the five domains from the facet scales. In three independent samples, the resulting CPI-Big Five measure demonstrated strong reliability, convergence with self- and peer-reports, and discriminant validity. Availability of the new measure brings more than a half-century’s worth of archival CPI data to bear on contemporary research questions about the Big Five. Additionally, the process of developing the CPI-Big Five measure illustrates some of the challenges that may arise when attempting to assess new psychological constructs from existing measures, as well as methods for addressing such challenges.

We present automated, real-time models built with machine learning algorithms which use videotapes of subjects' faces in conjunction with physiological measurements to predict rated emotion (trained coders' second-by-second assessments of sadness or amusement). Input consisted of videotapes of 41 subjects watching emotionally evocative films along with measures of their cardiovascular activity, somatic activity, and electrodermal responding. We built algorithms based on extracted points from the subjects' faces as well as their physiological responses. Strengths of the current approach are (1) we are assessing real behavior of subjects watching emotional videos instead of actors making facial poses, (2) the training data allow us to predict both emotion type (amusement versus sadness) as well as the intensity level of each emotion, (3) we provide a direct comparison between person-specific, gender-specific, and general models. Results demonstrated good fits for the models overall, with better performance for emotion categories than for emotion intensity, for amusement ratings than sadness ratings, for a full model using both physiological measures and facial tracking than for either cue alone, and for person-specific models than for gender-specific or general models.

To provide a measure of the Big Five for contexts in which participant time is severely limited, we abbreviated the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) to a 10-item version, the BFI-10. To permit its use in cross-cultural research, the BFI-10 was developed simultaneously in several samples in both English and German. Results focus on the psychometric characteristics of the 2-item scales on the BFI-10, including their part-whole correlations with the BFI-44 scales, retest reliability, structural validity, convergent validity with the NEO-PI-R and its facets, and external validity using peer ratings. Overall, results indicate that the BFI-10 scales retain significant levels of reliability and validity. Thus, reducing the items of the BFI-44 to less than a fourth yielded effect sizes that were lower than those for the full BFI-44 but still sufficient for research settings with truly limited time constraints.

Resume L'inventaire des cinq grands facteurs fut cree pour donner aux cliniciens et aux chercheurs une mesure efficace des differences individuelles des cinq grandes dimensions de la personnalite normale qui sont l'Extraversion, l'Agreabilite, la Conscience, le Nevrosisme et l'Ouverture. Cet article permet : a) d'introduire la traduction francaise du Big Five Inventory ; et b) d'utiliser la traduction francaise dans un echantillon clinique. Trois echantillons francais (161 etudiants en medecine, 200 membres du personnel hospitalier et 100 patients hospitalises) ont rempli les 44 items du Big Five Inventory francais. Les donnees psychometriques des trois echantillons francais reunis sont comparees aux resultats d'echantillons americains et espagnols. Les moyennes, les ecart-types, la stabilite et la structure des facteurs etaient equivalents dans tous les echantillons ; on peut en conclure que la traduction francaise est une echelle psychometrique efficace pour mesurer les cinq facteurs de la personnalite dans des echantillons francais. Comme on pouvait le prevoir, les Big Five Inventory francais etaient correles aux diagnostics du manuel diagnostique des troubles mentaux.

Theories of adult development all agree that adulthood is a time of important changes in goals, resources, and coping. Yet, impressed with the rank-order stability of individual differences in personality, many researchers interested in personality traits and personality assessment doubt that personality changes in meaningful and systematic ways during adulthood. This article reviews large studies of mean-level change in personality characteristics measured with broad-band personality inventories, and includes both cross-sectional and cross-cohort longitudinal research. The results show considerable generalizability across samples, cohorts, and studies. In particular, people score higher with age on characteristics such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and norm-adherence, and they score lower with age on social vitality. These findings provide evidence that personality does change during adulthood and that these changes are non-negligible in size, systematic, not necessarily linear, and theoretically important.

Three different measures of the Big Five personality dimensions were developed from the battery of questionnaires used in the National Merit Twin Study: one from trait self-rating scales, one from personality inventory items, and one from an adjective check list. Behavior-genetic models were fit to what the three measures had in common, and to the variance distinctive to each. The results of the model fitting agreed with other recent studies in showing the Big Five dimensions to be substantially and about equally heritable, with little or no contribution of shared family environment. Heritabilities for males and females did not differ significantly. For Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, some effect of shared environment was found for measure-specific variance on the personality inventory, and for Extraversion and Neuroticism, models involving nonadditive genetic variance or twin contrast effects provided slightly better fits.

Using an explicit model of emotion, we developed the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire. This measure of emotional expressivity has three facets: impulse strength, negative expressivity, and positive expressivity. After evaluating its factor structure and psychometric properties, we tested propositions derived from an analysis of display rules. As predicted, women were more expressive than men; Asian-Americans less expressive than other ethnic groups; and Democrats more expressive than Republicans. Expressivity also was related to two mood dimensions and to four of the Big Five personality dimensions. The pattern of findings for the subscales showed convergent and discriminant validity. Positive mood, Extraversion, and Agreeableness were most strongly related to the Positive Expressivity subscale. Negative mood, Neuroticism, and somatic complaints were most strongly related to the Impulse Strength and Negative Expressivity subscales.

The psychometric literature on individual differences in social intelligence shows little agreement about the definition and the content of this construct. To examine its conceptual origin, subjects' implicit conceptions were studied. In Study 1, subjects judged 18 putative components of social intelligence in terms of their centrality, with considerable interjudge agreement. In Study 2, subjects described a peer whom they liked or disliked. The two studies suggest that the most central components of social intelligence: (1) include cognitive aspects (e.g. understanding others, knowing social rules) as well as behavioral aspects (dealing with people, social adaptability), (2) load together on a distinct factor in peer ratings, and (3) are independent of two other peer rating factors, Social Influence and Social Memory. The relations between subjects' implicit conception of social intelligence and several explicit models are discussed.