Emotional (in)stability: Neuroticism is associated with increased variability in negative emotion after all.

The personality trait neuroticism is tightly linked to mental health, and neurotic people experience stronger negative emotions in everyday life. But, do their negative emotions also show greater fluctuation? This commonsensical notion was recently questioned by [Kalokerinos et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112, 15838-15843 (2020)], who suggested that the associations found in previous studies were spurious. Less neurotic people often report very low levels of negative emotion, which is usually measured with bounded rating scales. Therefore, they often pick the lowest possible response option, which severely constrains the amount of emotional variability that can be observed in principle. Applying a multistep statistical procedure that is supposed to correct for this dependency, [Kalokerinos et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112, 15838-15843 (2020)] no longer found an association between neuroticism and emotional variability. However, like other common approaches for controlling for undesirable effects due to bounded scales, this method is opaque with respect to the assumed mechanism of data generation and might not result in a successful correction. We thus suggest an alternative approach that a) takes into account that emotional states outside of the scale bounds can occur and b) models associations between neuroticism and both the mean and variability of emotion in a single step with the help of Bayesian censored location-scale models. Simulations supported this model over alternative approaches. We analyzed 13 longitudinal datasets (2,518 individuals and 11,170 measurements in total) and found clear evidence that more neurotic people experience greater variability in negative emotion.

No evidence that economic inequality moderates the effect of income on generosity.

A landmark study published in PNAS [Côté S, House J, Willer R (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112:15838-15843] showed that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals only if they reside in a US state with comparatively large economic inequality. This finding might serve to reconcile inconsistent findings on the effect of social class on generosity by highlighting the moderating role of economic inequality. On the basis of the importance of replicating a major finding before readily accepting it as evidence, we analyzed the effect of the interaction between income and inequality on generosity in three large representative datasets. We analyzed the donating behavior of 27,714 US households (study 1), the generosity of 1,334 German individuals in an economic game (study 2), and volunteering to participate in charitable activities in 30,985 participants from 30 countries (study 3). We found no evidence for the postulated moderation effect in any study. This result is especially remarkable because (i) our samples were very large, leading to high power to detect effects that exist, and (ii) the cross-country analysis employed in study 3 led to much greater variability in economic inequality. These findings indicate that the moderation effect might be rather specific and cannot be easily generalized. Consequently, economic inequality might not be a plausible explanation for the heterogeneous results on the effect of social class on prosociality.

The only thing that can stop bad causal inference is good causal inference.

In psychology, causal inference - both the transport from lab estimates to the real world and estimation on the basis of observational data - is often pursued in a casual manner. Underlying assumptions remain unarticulated; potential pitfalls are compiled in post-hoc lists of flaws. The field should move on to coherent frameworks of causal inference and generalizability that have been developed elsewhere.

Disentangling the Sources of Mimicry: Social Relations Analyses of the Link Between Mimicry and Liking.

Mimicry is an important interpersonal behavior for initiating and maintaining relationships. By observing the same participants ( N = 139) in multiple dyadic interactions (618 data points) in a round-robin design, we disentangled the extent to which mimicry is due to (a) the mimicker's general tendency to mimic (imitativity), (b) the mimickee's general tendency to evoke mimicry (imitatability), and (c) the unique dyadic relationship between the mimicker and the mimickee. We explored how these mimicry components affected liking and metaperceptions of liking (i.e., metaliking). Employing social relations models, we found substantial interindividual differences in imitativity, which predicted popularity. However, we found only small interindividual differences in imitatability. We found support for our proposition that mimicry is a substantially dyadic construct explained mostly by the unique relationship between two people. Finally, we explored the link between dyadic mimicry and liking, and we found that a person's initial liking of his or her interaction partner led to mimicry, which in turn increased the partner's liking of the mimicker.

Does Smile Intensity in Photographs Really Predict Longevity? A Replication and Extension of Abel and Kruger (2010).

Abel and Kruger (2010) found that the smile intensity of professional baseball players who were active in 1952, as coded from photographs, predicted these players' longevity. In the current investigation, we sought to replicate this result and to extend the initial analyses. We analyzed (a) a sample that was almost identical to the one from Abel and Kruger's study using the same database and inclusion criteria ( N = 224), (b) a considerably larger nonoverlapping sample consisting of other players from the same cohort ( N = 527), and (c) all players in the database ( N = 13,530 valid cases). Like Abel and Kruger, we relied on categorical smile codings as indicators of positive affectivity, yet we supplemented these codings with subjective ratings of joy intensity and automatic codings of positive affectivity made by computer programs. In both samples and for all three indicators, we found that positive affectivity did not predict mortality once birth year was controlled as a covariate.

Successfully Striving for Happiness: Socially Engaged Pursuits Predict Increases in Life Satisfaction.

Happiness is considered a highly desirable attribute, but whether or not individuals can actively steer their lives toward greater well-being is an open empirical question. In this study, respondents from a representative German sample reported, in text format, ideas for how they could improve their life satisfaction. We investigated which of these ideas predicted changes in life satisfaction 1 year later. Active pursuits per se-as opposed to statements about external circumstances or fortune-were not associated with changes in life satisfaction ( n = 1,178). However, in line with our preregistered hypothesis, among individuals who described active pursuits ( n = 582), those who described social ideas (e.g., spending more time with friends and family) ended up being more satisfied, and this effect was partly mediated by increased socializing. Our results demonstrate that not all pursuits of happiness are equally successful and corroborate the great importance of social relationships for human well-being.

Accuracy of Self-Esteem Judgments at Zero Acquaintance.

OBJECTIVE: Perceptions of strangers' self-esteem can have wide-ranging interpersonal consequences. Aiming to reconcile inconsistent results from previous research that had predominantly suggested that self-esteem is a trait that can hardly be accurately judged at zero acquaintance, we examined unaquainted others' accuracy in inferring individuals' actual self-esteem. METHOD: Ninety-nine target participants (77 female; Mage = 23.5 years) were videotaped in a self-introductory situation, and self-esteem self-reports and reports by well-known informants were obtained as separate accuracy criteria. Forty unacquainted observers judged targets' self-esteem on the basis of these short video sequences (M = 23s, SD = 7.7). RESULTS: Results showed that both self-reported (r = .31, p = .002) and informant-reported self-esteem (r = .21, p = .040) of targets could be inferred by strangers. The degree of accuracy in self-esteem judgments could be explained with lens model analyses: Self- and informant-reported self-esteem predicted nonverbal and vocal friendliness, both of which predicted self-esteem judgments by observers. In addition, observers' accuracy in inferring informant-reported self-esteem was mediated by the utilization of targets' physical attractiveness. Besides using valid behavioral information to infer strangers' self-esteem, observers inappropriately relied on invalid behavioral information reflecting nonverbal, vocal, and verbal self-assuredness. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that strangers can quite accurately detect individuals' self-reported and informant-reported self-esteem when targets are observed in a public self-presentational situation.

Examining the effects of birth order on personality.

This study examined the long-standing question of whether a person's position among siblings has a lasting impact on that person's life course. Empirical research on the relation between birth order and intelligence has convincingly documented that performances on psychometric intelligence tests decline slightly from firstborns to later-borns. By contrast, the search for birth-order effects on personality has not yet resulted in conclusive findings. We used data from three large national panels from the United States (n = 5,240), Great Britain (n = 4,489), and Germany (n = 10,457) to resolve this open research question. This database allowed us to identify even very small effects of birth order on personality with sufficiently high statistical power and to investigate whether effects emerge across different samples. We furthermore used two different analytical strategies by comparing siblings with different birth-order positions (i) within the same family (within-family design) and (ii) between different families (between-family design). In our analyses, we confirmed the expected birth-order effect on intelligence. We also observed a significant decline of a 10th of a SD in self-reported intellect with increasing birth-order position, and this effect persisted after controlling for objectively measured intelligence. Most important, however, we consistently found no birth-order effects on extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, or imagination. On the basis of the high statistical power and the consistent results across samples and analytical designs, we must conclude that birth order does not have a lasting effect on broad personality traits outside of the intellectual domain.

Probing Birth-Order Effects on Narrow Traits Using Specification-Curve Analysis.

The idea that birth-order position has a lasting impact on personality has been discussed for the past 100 years. Recent large-scale studies have indicated that birth-order effects on the Big Five personality traits are negligible. In the current study, we examined a variety of more narrow personality traits in a large representative sample ( n = 6,500-10,500 in between-family analyses; n = 900-1,200 in within-family analyses). We used specification-curve analysis to assess evidence for birth-order effects across a range of models implementing defensible yet arbitrary analytical decisions (e.g., whether to control for age effects or to exclude participants on the basis of sibling spacing). Although specification-curve analysis clearly confirmed the previously reported birth-order effect on intellect, we found no meaningful effects on life satisfaction, locus of control, interpersonal trust, reciprocity, risk taking, patience, impulsivity, or political orientation. The lack of meaningful birth-order effects on self-reports of personality was not limited to broad traits but also held for more narrowly defined characteristics.

Accurate judgments of neuroticism at zero acquaintance: a question of relevance.

Prior studies have consistently found a surprising inaccuracy of people's neuroticism judgments at zero acquaintance. Based on the Realistic Accuracy Model (Funder, 1995), we hypothesize that this is due to a lack of relevance of the situation in which targets are typically observed. Fifty participants were videotaped in a highly trait-relevant (i.e., socially stressful) situation as well as three less relevant situations. An aggregate of self-reports and informant reports was used as the accuracy criterion. Four independent groups of unacquainted observers judged participants' neuroticism based on these short video sequences. Results showed that neuroticism judgments were significantly more accurate for the most trait-relevant situation compared with the other three situations. This finding can be explained using lens model analyses: Only in the most relevant situation did neuroticism predict both visual nervousness and vocal nervousness, both of which in turn predicted neuroticism judgments by lay observers. Our findings show that strangers are sensitive to interindividual differences in neuroticism as long as targets are observed in a trait-relevant situation.

Using within-person change in three large panel studies to estimate personality age trajectories.

How does personality change when people get older? Numerous studies have investigated this question, overall supporting the idea of so-called personality maturation. However, heterogeneous findings have left open questions, such as whether maturation continues in old age and how large the effects are. We suggest that the heterogeneity is partly rooted in methodological issues. First, studies may have failed to recover age effects as they did not stringently separate within-person changes from confounding between-person differences. Second, items supposedly belonging to the same trait may show different individual trajectories, thus rendering results sensitive to the specific set of items used. We analyzed panel data from Australia (N = 15,268; Study 1), Germany (N = 22,833; Study 2), and the Netherlands (N = 10,163; Study 3) to investigate age trends in the Big Five on the levels of both scores and items. We applied a fixed effects approach that incorporates only within-person changes over time. Developmental trends in the Big Five scores were generally moderate to large and broadly confirmed personality maturation at younger ages. At older ages, maturation consistently continued for Neuroticism, whereas we found mixed evidence for such changes in Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Furthermore, in each study, individual items showed age trends that diverged from the rest of the corresponding trait, and these differential patterns could be partly replicated across the three studies. Our results highlight the importance of items in the study of personality development and provide an explanation for previously unaccounted for variability in age trends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

TripleR: an R package for social relations analyses based on round-robin designs.

In this article, we present TripleR, an R package for the calculation of social relations analyses (Kenny, 1994) based on round-robin designs. The scope of existing software solutions is ported to R and enhanced with previously unimplemented methods of significance testing in single groups (Lashley & Bond, 1997) and handling of missing values. The package requires only minimal knowledge of R, and results can be exported for subsequent analyses to other software packages. We demonstrate the use of TripleR with several didactic examples.

The development of the rank-order stability of the Big Five across the life span.

Several studies have suggested that the rank-order stability of personality increases until midlife and declines later in old age. However, this inverted U-shaped pattern has not consistently emerged in previous research; in particular, a recent investigation implementing several methodological advances failed to support it. To resolve the matter, we analyzed data from two representative panel studies and investigated how certain methodological decisions affect conclusions regarding the age trajectories of stability. The data came from Australia (N = 15,465; Study 1) and Germany (N = 21,777; Study 2), and each study included four waves of personality assessment. We investigated the life span development of the rank-order stability of the Big Five for 4-, 8-, and 12-year intervals. Whereas Study 1 provided strong evidence for an inverted U-shape with rank-order stability declining past age 50, Study 2 provided more mixed results that nonetheless generally supported the inverted U-shape. This developmental trend held for single personality traits as well as for the overall pattern across traits; and it held for all three retest intervals-both descriptively and in formal tests. Additionally, we found evidence that health-related changes accounted for the decline in rank-order stability in older age. This suggests that if analyses are implicitly conditioned on health (e.g., by excluding participants with missing data on later waves), the decline in stability in old age will be underestimated or even missed. Our results provide further evidence for the inverted U-shaped age pattern in personality stability development but also extend knowledge about the underlying processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Transformer-Based Deep Neural Language Modeling for Construct-Specific Automatic Item Generation.

Algorithmic automatic item generation can be used to obtain large quantities of cognitive items in the domains of knowledge and aptitude testing. However, conventional item models used by template-based automatic item generation techniques are not ideal for the creation of items for non-cognitive constructs. Progress in this area has been made recently by employing long short-term memory recurrent neural networks to produce word sequences that syntactically resemble items typically found in personality questionnaires. To date, such items have been produced unconditionally, without the possibility of selectively targeting personality domains. In this article, we offer a brief synopsis on past developments in natural language processing and explain why the automatic generation of construct-specific items has become attainable only due to recent technological progress. We propose that pre-trained causal transformer models can be fine-tuned to achieve this task using implicit parameterization in conjunction with conditional generation. We demonstrate this method in a tutorial-like fashion and finally compare aspects of validity in human- and machine-authored items using empirical data. Our study finds that approximately two-thirds of the automatically generated items show good psychometric properties (factor loadings above .40) and that one-third even have properties equivalent to established and highly curated human-authored items. Our work thus demonstrates the practical use of deep neural networks for non-cognitive automatic item generation.

Knowing your own mate value: sex-specific personality effects on the accuracy of expected mate choices.

Knowing one's mate value (mate-value accuracy) is an important element in reproductive success. We investigated within- and between-sex differences in this ability in a real-life speed-dating event. A total of 190 men and 192 women filled out a personality questionnaire and participated in speed-dating sessions. Immediately after each date, participants recorded who they would choose as mates and who they expected would choose them. In line with evolutionarily informed hypotheses, results indicated that sociosexually unrestricted men and more agreeable women showed greater mate-value accuracy than sociosexually restricted men and less agreeable women, respectively. These results have important implications for understanding mating behavior and perhaps the origin of sex differences in personality.

Investigating contributors to performance evaluations in small groups: Task competence, speaking time, physical expressiveness, and likability.

This study compared the impacts of actual individual task competence, speaking time and physical expressiveness as indicators of verbal and nonverbal communication behavior, and likability on performance evaluations in a group task. 164 participants who were assigned to 41 groups first solved a problem individually and later solved it as a team. After the group interaction, participants' performance was evaluated by both their team members and qualified external observers. We found that these performance evaluations were significantly affected not only by task competence but even more by speaking time and nonverbal physical expressiveness. Likability also explained additional variance in performance evaluations. The implications of these findings are discussed for both the people being evaluated and the people doing the evaluating.

Putting the Self in Self-Correction: Findings From the Loss-of-Confidence Project.

Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the day progressively approximating truth more accurately over time. In practice, however, cumulative self-correction tends to proceed less efficiently than one might naively suppose. Far from evaluating new evidence dispassionately and infallibly, individual scientists often cling stubbornly to prior findings. Here we explore the dynamics of scientific self-correction at an individual rather than collective level. In 13 written statements, researchers from diverse branches of psychology share why and how they have lost confidence in one of their own published findings. We qualitatively characterize these disclosures and explore their implications. A cross-disciplinary survey suggests that such loss-of-confidence sentiments are surprisingly common among members of the broader scientific population yet rarely become part of the public record. We argue that removing barriers to self-correction at the individual level is imperative if the scientific community as a whole is to achieve the ideal of efficient self-correction.

Predicting actual behavior from the explicit and implicit self-concept of personality.

The authors present a behavioral process model of personality that specifies explicit and implicit aspects of the self-concept of personality as predictors of actual behavior. An extensive behavioral study (N = 130) including a variety of relevant social situations was conducted. This approach allowed reliable measurement of more than 50 behavioral indicators. A priori assignment of indicators to the Big Five dimensions was conducted on the basis of theory and expert ratings. In line with the authors' model, 3 main findings were revealed: First, direct measures (questionnaires) of personality predicted actual behavior for all Big Five dimensions. Second, indirect measures (implicit association tests) of neuroticism and extraversion also predicted actual behavior. Third, the predictive validity of these indirect measures was incremental. The authors were additionally able to show that controlling for valence did not affect any of these results. Implications and future prospects for the study of personality and actual behavior are discussed.