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The development and promotion of social-emotional skills in childhood and adolescence contributes to subsequent well-being and positive life outcomes. However, the assessment of these skills is associated with conceptual and methodological challenges. This review discusses how social-emotional skill measurement in youth could be improved in terms of skills' conceptualization and classification, and in terms of assessment techniques and methodologies. The first part of the review discusses various conceptualizations of social-emotional skills, demonstrates their overlap with related constructs such as emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality dimensions, and proposes an integrative set of social-emotional skill domains that has been developed recently. Next, methodological approaches that are innovative and may improve social-emotional assessments are presented, illustrated by concrete examples. We discuss how these innovations could advance social-emotional assessments, and demonstrate links to similar issues in related fields. We conclude the review by providing several concrete assessment recommendations that follow from this discussion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

This series of studies investigated whether the good psychometric properties of the English version of the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) could be replicated using its Dutch adaptation. Second, it aimed to further examine the predictive validity of both the Big Five domain and the more specific facet scales of the BFI-2 in a large and representative sample. Results indicated that the structure found in the English version was replicated in the Dutch adaptation. The 60-item BFI-2 was reliable at the level of both domains and facets, as were the abbreviated versions. In terms of validity, the domain scales predicted a broad range of criteria. Examination of preregistered hypotheses regarding the discriminant validity of the facets indicated that experts were able to predict which facets would be most strongly associated with specific criteria. Overall, results confirm the strong psychometric properties of the BFI-2 Big Five domain scales and indicate that theoretically identified facets can be more valid predictors of criteria than other facets of the same domain.

Recent studies have begun to document the diversity of ways people regulate their emotions. However, one unanswered question is why people regulate their emotions as they do in everyday life. In the present research, we examined how social context and goals influence strategy selection in daily high points and low points. As expected, suppression was particularly tied to social features of context: it was used more when others were present, especially non-close partners, and when people had instrumental goals, especially more interpersonal ones (e.g., avoid conflict). Distraction and reappraisal were used more when regulating for hedonic reasons (e.g., to feel better), but these strategies were also linked to certain instrumental goals (e.g., getting work done). When contra-hedonic regulation occurred, it primarily took the form of dampening positive emotion during high points. Suppression was more likely to be used for contra-hedonic regulation, whereas reappraisal and distraction were used more for pro-hedonic regulation. Overall, these findings highlight the social nature of emotion regulation and underscore the importance of examining regulation in both positive and negative contexts.

Recent experimental work demonstrates that temporal distancing from negative experiences reduces distress. Yet two central questions remain: (a) do people differ in the habitual tendency to temporally distance from negative experiences, and if so (b) what implications does this tendency have for well-being? Seven studies explored these questions. Study 1 describes the construction and reliability of the Temporal Distancing Questionnaire, a new measure of individual differences in the tendency to place negative experiences into a broader future time perspective. Study 2 establishes a nomological network around this construct, examining the relationship of temporal distancing to other theoretically related constructs. Study 3 tests whether people high in temporal distancing (i.e., "high temporal distancers") experience greater concurrent well-being, including greater positive affect and life satisfaction and lesser negative affect, worry, and depressive symptoms. Study 4 examines whether temporal distancing predicts well-being measured at the daily level, and across time. Finally, Studies 5a-5c explore a key way in which temporal distancing may support psychological well-being-by facilitating more adaptive responses to negative experiences. Our results demonstrate that the tendency to temporally distance from negative experiences predicts a more positive profile of affective experiences and stress-reactivity that may support immediate and longer-term well-being. Moreover, many of these findings remained significant when controlling for general reappraisal tendencies. (PsycINFO Database Record

Abstract. Individuals differ in the way they use rating scales to describe themselves, and these differences are particularly pronounced in children and early adolescents. One promising remedy is to correct (or “anchor”) an individual’s responses according to the way they use the scale when they rate an anchoring vignette (a set of hypothetical targets differing on the attribute of interest). Studying adolescents’ self-reports of their socio-emotional attributes, we compared traditional self-report scores with vignette-corrected scores in terms of reliability (internal consistency), discriminant validity (scale intercorrelations), and criterion validity (predicting achievement test scores in language and math). A large and representative sample of 12th grade Brazilian students (N = 8,582, 62% female, mean age 18.2) were administered a Portuguese-language self-report inventory assessing social-emotional skills related to the Big Five personality dimensions. Correcting scores according to vignette ratings led to increases in the reliability of scales measuring Conscientiousness and Openness, but discriminant validity and criterion validity increased only when each scale was corrected using its own corresponding vignette set. Moreover, accuracy in rating the vignettes was correlated with language achievement test scores, suggesting that verbal factors play a role in providing both normative vignette ratings of others and self-reports that are reliable and valid.

Individuals differ in the degree to which they tend to habitually accept their emotions and thoughts without judging them-a process here referred to as habitual acceptance. Acceptance has been linked with greater psychological health, which we propose may be due to the role acceptance plays in negative emotional responses to stressors: acceptance helps keep individuals from reacting to-and thus exacerbating-their negative mental experiences. Over time, experiencing lower negative emotion should promote psychological health. To test these hypotheses, Study 1 (N = 1,003) verified that habitually accepting mental experiences broadly predicted psychological health (psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and depressive and anxiety symptoms), even when controlling for potentially related constructs (reappraisal, rumination, and other mindfulness facets including observing, describing, acting with awareness, and nonreactivity). Next, in a laboratory study (Study 2, N = 156), habitual acceptance predicted lower negative (but not positive) emotional responses to a standardized stressor. Finally, in a longitudinal design (Study 3, N = 222), acceptance predicted lower negative (but not positive) emotion experienced during daily stressors that, in turn, accounted for the link between acceptance and psychological health 6 months later. This link between acceptance and psychological health was unique to accepting mental experiences and was not observed for accepting situations. Additionally, we ruled out potential confounding effects of gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and life stress severity. Overall, these results suggest that individuals who accept rather than judge their mental experiences may attain better psychological health, in part because acceptance helps them experience less negative emotion in response to stressors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Likert-type self-report scales are frequently used in large-scale educational assessment of social-emotional skills. Self-report scales rely on the assumption that their items elicit information only about the trait they are supposed to measure. However, different response biases may threat this assumption. Specifically in children, the response style of acquiescence is an important source of systematic error. Balanced scales have been proposed as a solution to control for acquiescence, but the reasons why this design feature worked from the perspective of modern psychometric models have been underexplored. Three methods for controlling for acquiescence are compared: (a) Classical ipsatization by partialling out the mean, (b) an Item Response Theory method to measure Person Differential Functioning (DPF), and (c) random intercept item factor analysis. Comparative analyses are conducted on simulated ratings and on self-ratings provided by 40,649 students (aged 11 to 18) on a fully balanced 30-item scale assessing Conscientious Self-management. Acquiescence bias was explained as person differential item functioning and it was demonstrated that: (a) the acquiescence index is highly related to DPF, (b) balanced scales resolve DPF, and (c) that random intercept factors are highly related to DPF and the substantive factor is controlled for DPF.

Likert-type self-report scales are frequently used in large-scale educational assessment of social-emotional skills. Self-report scales rely on the assumption that their items elicit information only about the trait they are supposed to measure. However, different response biases may threaten this assumption. Specifically, in children, the response style of acquiescence is an important source of systematic error. Balanced scales, including an equal number of positively and negatively keyed items, have been proposed as a solution to control for acquiescence, but the reasons why this design feature worked from the perspective of modern psychometric models have been underexplored. Three methods for controlling for acquiescence are compared: classical method by partialling out the mean; an item response theory method to measure differential person functioning (DPF); and multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) with random intercept. Comparative analyses are conducted on simulated ratings and on self-ratings provided by 40,649 students (aged 11-18) on a fully balanced 30-item scale assessing conscientious self-management. Acquiescence bias was explained as DPF and it was demonstrated that: the acquiescence index is highly related to DPF; balanced scales produce scores controlled for DPF; and MIRT factor scores are highly related to scores controlled for DPF and the random intercept is highly related to DPF.

When analyzed via item response theory, Likert-type items are modeled by estimating a set of thresholds (i.e., parameters that inform on the latent trait level required for endorsing a given scale option) that are assumed to be invariant across the population of individuals. If persons vary in response styles this assumption may not hold. This is called person differential functioning (PDIF). Anchoring vignettes offer an approach to learn how individuals translate the latent trait into Likert responses, and a method to assess potential variability in item thresholds across individuals. A vignette presents hypothetical persons differing on the attribute of interest (usually low, medium and high), and asks respondents to rate the hypothetical persons in the same Likert scale used in self-assessment. This can then be used to resolve PDIF, potentially producing measures that are more comparable. We investigated if the patters of responses to vignettes have a developmental trend and if they are related to cognitive capacity, using data from a large-scale educational assessment. We then investigated if anchor-adjusted scores produce more reliable and valid measures.

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.

Neubert, Mainert, Kretzschmar, and Greiff (2015) plea to integrate the 21st century skills of complex problem solving (CPS) and collaborative problem solving (ColPS) in the assessment and development suite of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists, given the expected increase in nonroutine and interactive tasks in the new workplace. At the same time, they promote new ways of assessing these skills using computer-based microworlds, enabling the systematic variation of problem features in assessment. Neubert and colleagues’ (2015) suggestions are a valuable step in connecting differential psychologists’ models of human differences and functioning with human resources professionals’ interest in understanding and predicting behavior at work. We concur that CPS and ColPS are important transversal skills, useful for I-O psychologists, but these are only two babies of a single family, and the domain of 21st century skills includes other families of a different kind that are also with utility for I-O psychologists. The current contribution is meant to broaden this interesting discussion in two important ways. We clarify that CPS and ColPS need to be considered in the context of a wider set of 21st century skills with an origin in the education domain, and we highlight a number of crucial steps that still need to be taken before “getting started” (Neubert et al., 2015, p. last page of the discussion) with this taxonomic framework. But first, we feel the need to slightly reframe the relevance of considering 21st century skills in I-O psychology by shifting the attention from narrow task-related skills to the broader domain of career management competencies.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 113(1) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2017-26058-001).In the article, all citations to McCrae and Costa (2008), except for the instance in which it appears in the first paragraph of the introduction, should instead appear as McCrae and Costa (2010). The complete citation should read as follows: McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (2010). NEO Inventories professional manual. Lutz, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources. The attribution to the BFI-2 items that appears in the Table 6 note should read as follows: BFI-2 items adapted from "Conceptualization, Development, and Initial Validation of the Big Five Inventory-2," by C. J. Soto and O. P. John, 2015, Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Association for Research in Personality. Copyright 2015 by Oliver P. John and Christopher J. Soto. The complete citation in the References list should appear as follows: Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2015, June). Conceptualization, development, and initial validation of the Big Five Inventory-2. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Association for Research in Personality, St. Louis, MO. Available from http://www.colby.edu/psych/personality-lab/ All versions of this article have been corrected. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Three studies were conducted to develop and validate the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2), a major revision of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). Study 1 specified a hierarchical model of personality structure with 15 facet traits nested within the Big Five domains, and developed a preliminary item pool to measure this structure. Study 2 used conceptual and empirical criteria to construct the BFI-2 domain and facet scales from the preliminary item pool. Study 3 used data from 2 validation samples to evaluate the BFI-2's measurement properties and substantive relations with self-reported and peer-reported criteria. The results of these studies indicate that the BFI-2 is a reliable and valid personality measure, and an important advance over the original BFI. Specifically, the BFI-2 introduces a robust hierarchical structure, controls for individual differences in acquiescent responding, and provides greater bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power than the original BFI, while still retaining the original measure's conceptual focus, brevity, and ease of understanding. The BFI-2 therefore offers valuable new opportunities for research examining the structure, assessment, development, and life outcomes of personality traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Researchers have noted strong parallels in the symptoms of mania—including grandiosity, hostility, goal-driven behavior, and overly sexualized behavior—and dominance. Drawing on these parallels, it has been hypothesized that bipolar disorder might be related to dysregulations of the dominance system, which includes dominance motivation, power, and dominance behavior. The goal of the current study was to consider whether manic tendencies related to the dominance system as measured in an ecologically valid experimental paradigm. Participants took part in small group interactions in which they negotiated merit pay for candidates seeking promotion. They completed ratings of their own and peers' dominance behaviors during the interaction. All participants also completed the Hypomanic Personality Scale to assess risk for mania, as well as scales to assess for current (hypo)mania and history of depression. Whereas history of depression was related to lower dominance motivation, mania risk was related to dominance behavior during the task, and peers rated this dominance behavior unfavorably. Findings provide a framework for understanding some of the social problems observed in bipolar disorder, with both depression history and mania risk contributing to dysregulations in the dominance system.

In the current research we tested a comprehensive model of spirituality, religiosity, compassion, and altruism, investigating the independent effects of spirituality and religiosity on compassion and altruism. We hypothesized that, even though spirituality and religiosity are closely related, spirituality and religiosity would have different and unique associations with compassion and altruism. In Study 1 and 2 we documented that more spiritual individuals experience and show greater compassion. The link between religiosity and compassion was no longer significant after controlling for the impact of spirituality. Compassion has the capacity to motivate people to transcend selfish motives and act altruistically toward strangers. Therefore, we reasoned that spirituality (but not religiosity) would predict altruistic behavior and that compassion would help explain this link. Indeed, in Studies 3, 4, and 5 we found that more spiritual individuals behaved more altruistically in economic choice and decision-making tasks, and that the tendency of spiritual individuals to feel greater compassion mediated the spirituality-to-altruism relationship. In contrast, more religious participants did not consistently feel more compassion nor behave more altruistically. Moreover, in Studies 3 and 4 we found that the broader traits of Agreeableness, Openness, and Extraversion did not help explain why more spiritual individuals behaved more altruistically. Our findings argue that spirituality—above and beyond religiosity—is uniquely associated with greater compassion and enhanced altruism toward strangers.

The present research was conducted to map the hierarchical structure of youths' personality traits, to identify the foundational level of this structure, and to test whether the meanings of some youth personality dimensions shift with age. We addressed these issues by analyzing personality parent reports describing a cross-sectional sample of 16,000 children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 3 to 20). These parent reports were made using a broadband measure of youths' personal characteristics, the common-language California Child Q-Set. Analyses of the full sample and comparisons of 16 age groups supported three main conclusions. First, the hierarchical structure of youths' personality traits both resembles and differs from the adult personality hierarchy in important ways. Second, a set of six dimensions--Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and Activity--may constitute the foundational level of the youth personality hierarchy from middle childhood through adolescence. This "Little Six" structure represents a union of the most prominent personality and temperament dimensions. Third, the meanings of some youth personality dimensions (e.g., Activity, Conscientiousness) shift systematically with age. These findings advance our understanding of when and how personality structure develops during the first two decades of life.

Individuals differ in the strategies they use to regulate their emotions (e.g., suppression, reappraisal), and these regulatory strategies can differentially influence social outcomes. However, the mechanisms underlying these social effects remain to be specified. We examined one potential mediator that arises directly from emotion-regulatory effort (expression of positive emotion), and another mediator that does not involve emotion processes per se, but instead results from the link between regulation and self-processes (subjective inauthenticity). Across three studies, only inauthenticity mediated the link between habitual use of suppression and poor social functioning (lower relationship satisfaction, lower social support). These findings replicated across individuals socialized in Western and East Asian cultural contexts, younger and older adults, when predicting social functioning concurrently and a decade later, and even when broader adjustment was controlled. Thus, the social costs of suppression do not seem to be due to reduced positive emotion expression but rather the incongruence between inner-self and outer-behavior. Reappraisal was not consistently related to social functioning. Implications of these findings for emotion processes, self processes, and interpersonal relationships are discussed.

Objective Although Loevinger's model of ego development is a theory of personality growth, there are few studies that have examined age-related change in ego level over developmentally significant periods of adulthood. To address this gap in the literature, we examined mean-level change and individual differences in change in ego level over 18 years of midlife. Method In this longitudinal study, participants were 79 predominantly White, college-educated women who completed the Washington University Sentence Completion Test in early (age 43) and late (age 61) midlife as well as measures of the trait of Openness (ages 21, 43, 52, and 61) and accommodative processing (assessed from narratives of difficult life events at age 52). Results As hypothesized, the sample overall showed a mean-level increase in ego level from age 43 to age 61. Additionally, a regression analysis showed that both the trait of Openness at age 21 and accommodative processing of difficult events that occurred during (as opposed to prior to) midlife were each predictive of increasing ego level from age 43 to age 61. Conclusions These findings counter prior claims that ego level remains stable during adulthood and contribute to our understanding of the underlying processes involved in personality growth in midlife.

Abstract. Whereas the structure of individual differences in personal attributes is well understood in adults, much less work has been done in children and adolescents. On the assessment side, numerous instruments are in use for children but they measure discordant attributes, ranging from one single factor (self-esteem; grit) to three factors (social, emotional, and academic self-efficacy) to five factors (strength and difficulties; Big Five traits). To construct a comprehensive measure for large-scale studies in Brazilian schools, we selected the eight most promising instruments and studied their structure at the item level (Study 1; N = 3,023). The resulting six-factor structure captures the major domains of child differences represented in these instruments and resembles the well-known Big Five personality dimensions plus a negative self-evaluation factor. In a large representative sample in Rio de Janeiro State (Study 2; N = 24,605), we tested a self-report inventory (SENNA1.0) assessing these six dimensions of socio-emotional skills with less than 100 items and found a robust and replicable structure and measurement invariance across grades, demonstrating feasibility for large-scale assessments across diverse student groups in Brazil. Discussion focuses on the contribution to socio-emotional research in education and its measurement as well as on limitations and suggestions for future research.

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.

Data from a cross-sectional sample (N = 601 men and women) and a longitudinal sample (N = 125 women) were used to test hypotheses about the development of Big Five domains and facets from early adulthood through middle age. Analyses of mean-level age trends indicated that overall Agreeableness and Conscientiousness increased with age and that several facets showed distinctive trends that replicated across the samples. Cross-sectional analyses of trait intercorrelations and covariances indicated that interrelations between the Big Five domains, and between their more specific facets, were quite similar at older versus younger ages. Finally, longitudinal analyses of individual-level changes indicated that (a) different people's personalities changed in markedly different ways; (b) these changes were predominantly independent, rather than correlated, across Big Five domains; and (c) the pattern of change correlations between Big Five facets could be explained by the facets' interrelations at the first assessment time. Taken together, these results suggest that a complete understanding of personality development requires consideration of facet-level traits and that adult personality development is predominantly influenced by narrowly acting mechanisms that each affect a single Big Five domain, or a small cluster of related facets, rather than by broadly acting mechanisms that simultaneously affect previously independent traits.

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.

Scholars who examine the psychological effects of power have often argued that possessing power shapes individual behavior because it instills an elevated sense of power. However, little is known about the personal sense of power because very few studies have examined it empirically. In studies involving a total of 1,141 participants and nine different samples, we found that the personal sense of power was coherent within social contexts; for example, individuals who believed that they can get their way in a group also believed that they can influence fellow group members' attitudes and opinions. The personal sense of power was also moderately consistent across relationships but showed considerable relationship specificity; for example, individuals' personal sense of power vis-a-vis their friend tended to be distinct but moderately related to their personal sense of power vis-a-vis their parent. And the personal sense of power was affected not only by sociostructural factors (e.g., social position, status) but also by personality variables such as dominance.

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.

Few long-term longitudinal studies have examined how dimensions of personality are related to work lives, especially in women. We propose a life-course framework for studying work over time, from preparatory activities (in the 20s) to descending work involvement (after age 60), using 50 years of life data from the women in the Mills Longitudinal Study. We hypothesized differential work effects for Extraversion (work as pursuit of rewards), Openness (work as self-actualization), and Conscientiousness (work as duty) and measured these 3 traits as predictor variables when the women were still in college. In a prospective longitudinal design, we then studied how these traits predicted the women's subsequent work lives from young adulthood to age 70 and how these effects depended on the changing sociocultural context. Specifically, the young adulthood of the Mills women in the mid-1960s was rigidly gender typed and family oriented; neither work nor education variables at that time were predicted from earlier personality traits. However, as women's roles changed, later work variables became related to all 3 traits, as expected from current Big Five theory and research. For example, early personality traits predicted the timing of involvement in work, the kinds of jobs chosen, and the status and satisfaction achieved, as well as continued work participation and financial security in late adulthood. Early traits were also linked to specific cultural influences, such as the traditional feminine role, the women's movement, and graduate education for careers.

Do people use different emotion regulation strategies in different social contexts? To answer this question, we compared typical emotion regulation use with emotion regulation use at a temporary annual art festival (Burning Man). We assessed two common emotion regulation strategies: expressive suppression (linked to generally negative outcomes) and cognitive reappraisal (linked to generally positive outcomes). Compared to typical emotion regulation use at home, at Burning Man participants reported decreased suppression use and increased reappraisal use. We consider implications for understanding contextual variation in emotion regulation and discuss the properties of the Burning Man context that may facilitate this more adaptive emotion regulation profile.

It is now clear that positive emotion leads to enhanced psychological functioning. What is less clear, however, is just why this is so. Drawing on a social-functional perspective, we argue that positive emotional behavior that accurately signals to others the individual's internal state will enhance social connectedness. Positive emotional behavior that does not accurately signal a person's experience--such as a smile that is not felt--may impede social connectedness and, in turn, psychological functioning. This perspective suggests that (a) the degree to which experience and behavior are dissociated during positive emotional episodes, over and above level of positive behavior, should predict worse psychological functioning and (b) the effect of dissociation should be mediated by social connectedness. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a short-term prospective longitudinal study, with a baseline assessment of depressive symptoms and well-being at Time 1. Six months later, at Time 2, we used a novel within-individual laboratory paradigm to measure the degree to which positive emotional behavior was dissociated from (vs. coherent with) a participant's positive emotional experience. We also assessed level of positive behavior and experience. Then, another 6 months later, we assessed social connectedness as a mediator and depressive symptoms and well-being as outcomes at Time 3. Even when controlling for baseline functioning and for level of positive emotion behavior and experience, we found that greater positive experience-behavior dissociation at Time 2 predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower levels of well-being at Time 3. As predicted, these associations were mediated by social connectedness.

Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10-65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality.

Four studies document underestimations of the prevalence of others’ negative emotions and suggest causes and correlates of these erroneous perceptions. In Study 1a, participants reported that their negative emotions were more private or hidden than were their positive emotions; in Study 1b, participants underestimated the peer prevalence of common negative, but not positive, experiences described in Study 1a. In Study 2, people underestimated negative emotions and overestimated positive emotions even for well-known peers, and this effect was partially mediated by the degree to which those peers reported suppression of negative (vs. positive) emotions. Study 3 showed that lower estimations of the prevalence of negative emotional experiences predicted greater loneliness and rumination and lower life satisfaction and that higher estimations for positive emotional experiences predicted lower life satisfaction. Taken together, these studies suggest that people may think they are more alone in their emotional difficulties than they really are.

We present an approach for evaluating coherence in multivariate systems that considers all the variables simultaneously. We operationalize the multivariate system as a network and define coherence as the efficiency with which a signal is transmitted throughout the network. We illustrate this approach with time series data from 15 psychophysiological signals representing individuals’ moment-by-moment emotional reactions to emotional films. First, we summarize the time series through nonparametric Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves. Second, we use Spearman rank correlations to calculate relationships between each pair of variables. Third, based on the obtained associations, we construct a network using the variables as nodes. Finally, we examine signal transmission through all the nodes in the network. Our results indicate that the network consisting of the 15 psychophysiological signals has a small-world structure, with three clusters of variables and strong within-cluster connections. This structure supports an effective signal transmission across the entire network. When compared across experimental conditions, our results indicate that coherence is relatively stronger for intense emotional stimuli than for neutral stimuli. These findings are discussed in relation to multivariate methods and emotion theories.

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.

Do women’s interactions with their grown children improve their emotional lives later in life? Women in their early 60sparticipated in a 7-day daily experience study of positive and negative events to examine how interactions with their grownchildren contribute to specific daily emotions as well as how individual differences in adult attachment moderate these effects.Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that when they interacted with their children, women low in attachment avoidance expe-riencedboostsinjoy,love,andpride,whereaswomenhighinattachmentavoidanceonlyexperiencedboostsinlove.Womenlowin attachment avoidance also experienced reduced anger but greater sadness during negative events involving their children,whereas for women high in avoidance, the experience of anger and sadness was unaffected by the presence of their children.Implications for attachment theory and parenting across the lifespan are discussed.Keywordsadult attachment, parenting, discrete emotions, children, daily experience methodsMost parents would agree that their children give their lives arich sense of meaning and purpose. Seventy-seven percent ofTime (2005) magazine readers listed their relationship withtheir children as their major source of happiness. Yet whenwomen are asked to rate how much satisfaction they get fromvarious daily activities, taking care of young children is nearthe bottom of the list, ranking below cooking and only slightlyabove housework (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, &Stone, 2004). This research has focused on women caring foryoung children, but what happens when the children are grownup and no longer living at home? In the current research, weexamined how women’s interactions with their grown childrencontribute to specific emotions in later adulthood as well aswhether individual differences in avoidant attachment moder-ate these effects.

The goal of this research was to develop and validate an Italian version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ, Gross & John, 2003 ). In an Italian undergraduate sample (N = 416), the two-scale ERQ structure was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis, and each of the two scales (Reappraisal and Suppression) showed good internal consistency. The Italian ERQ also showed the predicted associations with measures of coping, affect, personality, and social functioning. Specifically, Reappraisal was positively correlated with positive reinterpretation, positive affect, and extraversion, and negatively correlated with negative affect and neuroticism. Suppression, by contrast, was negatively correlated with the venting of emotions, positive affect, extraversion, social support and social diversion. Taken together, these findings suggest that the Italian ERQ is a reliable and valid measure that inherits the nomological network of associations from the original version of the ERQ.

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.

There is growing interest in understanding how emotion regulation affects adaptation. The present study examined expressive suppression (which involves inhibiting the overt expression of emotion) and how it affects one critical domain of adaptation, social functioning. This investigation focused on the transition to college, a time that presents a variety of emotional and social challenges. Analyses focused on two components of suppression: a stable component, representing individual differences expressed both before and after the transition; and a dynamic component, representing variance specific to the new college context. Both components of suppression predicted lower social support, less closeness to others, and lower social satisfaction. These findings were robustly corroborated across weekly experience reports, self-reports, and peer reports, and are consistent with a theoretical framework that defines emotion regulation as a dynamic process shaped by both stable person factors and environmental demands.

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.

Zusammenfassung. Vorgestellt wird eine deutsche Adaption des „Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire” (BEQ; Gross & John, 1995 ). Das Instrument erfasst mit Hilfe von 16 Items ökonomisch drei Dimensionen der Expressivität: Negative Expressivität, Positive Expressivität und Impulsintensität. In Studie 1 (n = 385) wurden mittels konfirmatorischer Faktorenanalyse die interne faktorielle Struktur und die psychometrischen Eigenschaften für die Faktoren des BEQ bestimmt. In einer Längsschnittstudie (Studie 2) wurden die Stabilität und Validität des BEQ untersucht: Zum ersten Messzeitpunkt wurde die selbstberichtete Expressivität von 220 Probanden erhoben. Zum zweiten Messzeitpunkt (sechs Monate später) wurden neben der selbstberichteten Expressivität für jeden Probanden zwei Fremdurteile sowie globale Maße der Persönlichkeit, positive und negative Affektivität und Maße der physischen und psychischen Gesundheit erfasst. Die Dimensionen des BEQ sind zeitlich stabil und positiv mit den Fremdurteilen korreliert. Negative Expressivität und Impulsintensität sind mit Neurotizismus, negativer Affektivität, physischen Beschwerden und Depressivität verbunden. Positive Expressivität ist mit Extraversion, Offenheit und positiver Affektivität assoziiert. Frauen zeigen im Vergleich zu Männern höhere Werte in allen Dimensionen des BEQ, welche mit Alter negativ korreliert sind.

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.

Animal studies once pervaded the field of social psychology, but over the last half century focus on this topic has faded. Here we argue that animal studies can still usefully contribute to several areas of social psychology. Two studies implemented a new cross–species comparative approach to compare human–to–human perceptions with human–to–dog perceptions. Our findings show that people's projection of their self–views or their views of others onto dogs are no stronger than their projections onto other humans. Findings also illuminate how appearance–based stereotypes affect perceptions of domestic dogs. The present research provides a conceptual and empirical paradigm for future research on human perceptions of animals of both the human and nonhuman variety.

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.

When interest in self-esteem exploded in the 1980s, many longitudinal studies were already under way and thus did not administer self-esteem measures. Consequently, not much is known about the developmental course of self-esteem during adulthood. In order to facilitate life-span research using existing longitudinal studies, a new self-esteem scale (CPI-SE) was derived from the California Psychological Inventory. Study 1 documented the internal consistency and test – retest reliability of the CPI-SE, as well as its convergent validity by comparing it to three commonly used measures of self-esteem. Study 2 examined the nomological network of the CPI-SE by relating it to interviewer ratings of self-esteem, affect, coping style, social skills, intelligence, and physical attractiveness, obtained with the California Adult Q-Set. Together, these two studies provide evidence for the construct validity of the CPI-SE.

The authors hypothesized that teasing, a social interaction that benefits relational bonds at the expense of the self, should be viewed as more affiliative, and experienced as more pleasurable, by members of cultures that deemphasize positive self-differentiation. In four multimethod studies, Asian Americans attributed more affiliative intent to teasers and reported more positive target experience than did European Americans. Teaser behavior, attribution biases, and personality did not account for culture-related differences in teasing experience. Rather, childhood teasing may better prepare Asian American children to overlook a tease's affront to the self in favor of its relational rewards. Implications of deemphasizing positive selfdifferentiation in social interaction are discussed.

Although theorists have proposed the existence of multiple distinct varieties of positive emotion, dispositional positive affect is typically treated as a unidimensional variable in personality research. We present data elaborating conceptual and empirical differences among seven positive emotion dispositions in their relationships with two core personality constructs, the “Big Five” and adult attachment style. We found that the positive emotion dispositions were differentially associated with self- and peer-rated Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and Neuroticism. We also found that different adult attachment styles were associated with different kinds of emotional rewards. Findings support the theoretical utility of differentiating among several dispositional positive emotion constructs in personality research.

Zusammenfassung. Die zunehmende Etablierung des Fünf-Faktoren-Modells der Persönlichkeit hat zur Folge, dass die so genannten “Big Five“ vermehrt auch in Anwendungskontexten erhoben werden sollen. Da jedoch gerade in diesen Bereichen die Untersuchungszeit oft stark begrenzt ist, sind die herkömmlichen Verfahren zur Erfassung der fünf Faktoren oft zu umfangreich. In der vorliegenden Studie wurde deshalb ein Fragebogen, das BFI-K, entwickelt, das mit 21 Items bzw. einer durchschnittlichen Bearbeitungsdauer unter 2 Minuten als extrem ökonomisch angesehen werden kann. Die Ergebnisse belegen zufriedenstellende psychometrische Kennwerte für das BFI-K. Neben ausreichenden Reliabilitäten konnten sowohl die faktorielle Validität des Verfahrens als auch hohe Übereinstimmungen mit Bekanntenurteilen und mit anderen etablierten Verfahren zu Erfassung des Fünf-Faktoren-Modells bestätigt werden.

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.

Self-enhancement bias has been studied from 2 perspectives: L. Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they perceive others) and G. W. Allport's (1937) self-insight theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they are perceived by others). These 2 perspectives are theoretically and empirically distinct, and the failure to recognize their differences has led to a protracted debate. A new interpersonal approach to self-enhancement decomposes self-perception into 3 components: perceiver effect, target effect, and unique self-perception. Both theoretical derivations and an illustrative study suggest that this resulting measure of self-enhancement is less confounded by unwanted components of interpersonal perception than previous social comparison and self-insight measures. Findings help reconcile conflicting views about whether self-enhancement is adaptive or maladaptive.

Different theories make different predictions about how mean levels of personality traits change in adulthood. The biological view of the Five-factor theory proposes the plaster hypothesis: All personality traits stop changing by age 30. In contrast, contextualist perspectives propose that changes should be more varied and should persist throughout adulthood. This study compared these perspectives in a large (N 132,515) sample of adults aged 21– 60 who completed a Big Five personality measure on the Internet. Conscientiousness and Agreeableness increased throughout early and middle adulthood at varying rates; Neuroticism declined among women but did not change among men. The variety in patterns of change suggests that the Big Five traits are complex phenomena subject to a variety of developmental influences. How does personality change during adulthood? Psychologists since William James (1890/1950) have struggled with the question of whether various aspects of personality, including personality traits, change in meaningful ways during adulthood, and when those changes take place. Contemporary hypotheses about the development of personality traits stem from theories about what personality traits are. McCrae and Costa’s (1996) five-factor theory asserts that personality traits arise exclusively from biological causes (i.e., genes) and that they reach full maturity in early adulthood; thus, this theory predicts little or no change on any personality dimension after early adulthood. By contrast, contextualist perspectives argue that traits are multiply determined, and that one important influence on traits is the individual’s social environment (Haan, Millsap, & Hartka, 1986; Helson, Jones, & Kwan, 2002). Contextualist perspectives thus predict plasticity: Change is complex and ongoing, owing to the many factors that can affect personality traits. In this study, we set out to understand how personality traits change in early and middle adulthood by examining the Big Five personality trait dimensions (Goldberg, 1992; John & Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1999). We used a cross-sectional design to study how mean levels of personality traits differ by age and whether those age effects are moderated by gender. 1 We were particularly interested in examining whether change on all of the Big Five dimensions stops or slows in middle adulthood, as predicted by the five-factor theory, or whether change is ongoing and differentiated, as predicted by contextualist theories.

The authors propose that people in relationships become emotionally similar over time--as this similarity would help coordinate the thoughts and behaviors of the relationship partners, increase their mutual understanding, and foster their social cohesion. Using laboratory procedures to induce and assess emotional response, the authors found that dating partners (Study 1) and college roommates (Studies 2 and 3) became more similar in their emotional responses over the course of a year. Further, relationship partners with less power made more of the change necessary for convergence to occur. Consistent with the proposed benefits of emotional similarity, relationships whose partners were more emotionally similar were more cohesive and less likely to dissolve. Discussion focuses on implications of emotional convergence and on potential mechanisms.