Who makes a more consistent first impression? Examining the structure and correlates of dissensus.

OBJECTIVE AND BACKGROUND: How do targets shape consensus in impression formation? Targets are known to play an outsized role in the accuracy of first impressions, but their influence on consensus has been difficult to study. With the help of the recently developed extended Social Relations Model, we explore the structure and correlates of individual differences in consensus (i.e., dissensus). METHOD: Across 3 studies, 187 photographs of targets were rated by 960 perceivers on personality and evaluative traits, as well as being coded for physical cues by trained coders. We explored the within-target consistency of consensus across traits, as well as its relationship to four categories of theoretically relevant correlates: expressiveness, normativity, positivity, and social categories. RESULTS: The tendency to make a consistent impression on others was broadly consistent across traits. High-consensus targets tended to be more expressive, had more normative physical cues, and were viewed more positively. CONCLUSIONS: At least in a first impression context, targets may play a unique role in predicting the consensus of personality judgments by providing perceivers with more information to work with, and making a negative impression on others may carry social costs.

Interpersonal traits and the neural representations of cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex.

Adaptive interpersonal functioning relies on the effectiveness of behavioral and neural systems involved in cognitive control. Whether different subcomponents of cognitive control and their neural representations are associated with distinctive interpersonal dispositions has yet to be determined. The present study investigated the relationships between prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation associated with two subcomponents of cognitive control and individual differences in interpersonally relevant traits and facets within the Five-Factor Model of personality. Undergraduate participants (n = 237) provided self-ratings of interpersonal traits and underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure activation in regions-of-interest linked to subcomponents of cognitive control: the right lateral PFC and its involvement in response selection and inhibition/suppression (RS) during a go/no-go task, and the left lateral PFC associated with goal selection, updating, representation, and maintenance (GS) on a tower planning task. Multilevel models revealed that during both RS and GS, Neuroticism and Extraversion were associated with lower and higher levels of activation, respectively. Higher Agreeableness was related to lower activation during RS but also with greater activation during GS. More narrowly defined interpersonal facets subsumed within the broader trait domains were differentially associated with RS- and GS-related neural responses. Taken together, these findings highlight potential avenues of future research to better understand the ways in which the neural processes that subserve cognitive control may underlie interpersonal dispositions.

Basic psychological needs and neurophysiological responsiveness to decisional conflict: an event-related potential study of integrative self processes.

Fulfillment of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy is believed to facilitate people's integrative tendencies to process psychological conflicts and develop a coherent sense of self. The present study therefore used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the relation between need fulfillment and the amplitude of conflict negativity (CN), a neurophysiological measure of conflict during personal decision making. Participants completed a decision-making task in which they made a series of forced choices according to their personal preferences. Three types of decision-making situations were created on the basis of participants' unique preference ratings, which were obtained prior to ERP recording: low-conflict situations (choosing between an attractive and an unattractive option), high-conflict approach-approach situations (choosing between two similarly attractive options), and high-conflict avoidance-avoidance situations (choosing between two similarly unattractive options). As expected, CN amplitudes were larger in high- relative to low-conflict situations, and source localization analyses suggested that the anterior cingulate cortex was the generating structure of the CN. Most importantly, people reporting higher need fulfillment exhibited larger CN amplitudes in avoidance-avoidance situations relative to low-conflict situations; to a lesser extent, they also exhibited larger CN amplitudes in approach-approach situations relative to low-conflict situations. By contrast, people reporting lower need fulfillment exhibited CN amplitudes that poorly discriminated the three decision situations. These results suggest that need fulfillment may promote self-coherent functioning by increasing people's receptivity to and processing of events that challenge their abilities to make efficient, self-congruent choices.

Decision-making conflict and the neural efficiency hypothesis of intelligence: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy investigation.

Research on the neural efficiency hypothesis of intelligence (NEH) has revealed that the brains of more intelligent individuals consume less energy when performing easy cognitive tasks but more energy when engaged in difficult mental operations. However, previous studies testing the NEH have relied on cognitive tasks that closely resemble psychometric tests of intelligence, potentially confounding efficiency during intelligence-test performance with neural efficiency per se. The present study sought to provide a novel test of the NEH by examining patterns of prefrontal activity while participants completed an experimental paradigm that is qualitatively distinct from the contents of psychometric tests of intelligence. Specifically, participants completed a personal decision-making task (e.g., which occupation would you prefer, dancer or chemist?) in which they made a series of forced choices according to their subjective preferences. The degree of decisional conflict (i.e., choice difficulty) between the available response options was manipulated on the basis of participants' unique preference ratings for the target stimuli, which were obtained prior to scanning. Evoked oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex was measured using 16-channel continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Consistent with the NEH, intelligence predicted decreased activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during low-conflict situations and increased activation of the right-IFG during high-conflict situations. This pattern of right-IFG activity among more intelligent individuals was complemented by faster reaction times in high-conflict situations. These results provide new support for the NEH and suggest that the neural efficiency of more intelligent individuals generalizes to the performance of cognitive tasks that are distinct from intelligence tests.

Thirty Years of Psychological Wisdom Research: What We Know About the Correlates of an Ancient Concept.

Psychologists have studied the ancient concept of wisdom for 3 decades. Nevertheless, apparent discrepancies in theories and empirical findings have left the nomological network of the construct unclear. Using multilevel meta-analyses, we summarized wisdom's correlations with age, intelligence, the Big Five personality traits, narcissism, self-esteem, social desirability, and well-being. We furthermore examined whether these correlations were moderated by the general approach to conceptualizing and measuring wisdom (i.e., phenomenological wisdom as indexed by self-report vs. performative wisdom as indexed by performance ratings), by specific wisdom measures, and by variable-specific factors (e.g., age range, type of intelligence measures, and well-being type). Although phenomenological and performative approaches to conceptualizing and measuring wisdom had some unique correlates, both were correlated with openness, hedonic well-being, and eudaimonic well-being, especially the growth aspect of eudaimonic well-being. Differences between phenomenological and performative wisdom are discussed in terms of the differences between typical and maximal performance, self-ratings and observer ratings, and global and state wisdom. This article will help move the scientific study of wisdom forward by elucidating reliable wisdom correlates and by offering concrete suggestions for future empirical research based on the meta-analytic findings.

Criterion a of the alternative model of personality disorders: Structure and validity in a community sample.

The alternative model of personality disorders were designed to represent the presence of personality dysfunction (Criterion A) and pathological personality traits (Criterion B). Much of the empirical attention toward this model has been directed toward testing the performance of Criterion B. However, the development of the Levels of Personality Functioning Scale-Self-Report (LPFS-SR) has sparked a growing amount of interest and debate around Criterion A. Specifically, there is significant disagreement in the research examining the validity of the LPFS-SR, with ongoing discrepancies regarding the measure's underlying structure and measurement of Criterion A. The present study aimed to compare four models (one-factor, four-factor, higher order, and bifactor models) in a sample of 416 adults (49.5% women, 63.5% White) to better understand the structure of the LPFS-SR. This study also built on existing efforts to establish convergent and divergent validity of the LPFS-SR by examining how criteria are related to independent measures of both self and interpersonal pathology. The results from the present study supported a bifactor model. Additionally, the four subscales of the LPFS-SR each captured unique variance above and beyond the general factor. Structural equation models predicting identity disturbance and interpersonal traits demonstrated that while the strongest relationships were found between the general factor and the scales, some support was found for the convergent and discriminant validity of the four factors. This work advances our understanding of the LPFS-SR and provides support for the LPFS-SR as a valid marker of personality pathology in clinical and research settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Bridging development and disturbance: A translational approach to the study of identity.

Across the subdisciplines of personality and clinical psychology, identity has been a psychological construct of wide-reaching importance in understanding both normative processes of human development as well as psychopathology. However, despite its wide-reaching importance, differences in the conceptualization and measurement of identity across these subdisciplines have contributed to more fragmentation, rather than unification, in our understanding of this central principle. In the present study, we sought to unify the measurement of identity across these subdisciplines through examining the extent to which personality and clinical measures of identity converge, as well as the predictive validity of identity measures across layers of personality functioning, employing a unique design for a dynamic assessment of identity. Our results supported a 1-factor model, as opposed to a 2-factor model, of identity. This Identity/Identity Dysfunction factor was significantly associated with mean-level neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness, but not significantly associated with stability of personality trait expression. It was also associated with more extrinsic values and aspirations, and the stability of extrinsic aspirations. Finally, the Identity/Identity Dysfunction factor demonstrated moderate and negative relationships with indices of narrative coherence. Our results suggest that identity falls along a continuum of development and disturbance and is meaningfully connected to all layers of personality functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Medial prefrontal activity during self-other judgments is modulated by relationship need fulfillment.

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays an important role in representing semantic self-knowledge. Studies comparing semantic self-judgments with judgments of close others suggest that interpersonal closeness may influence the degree to which the MPFC differentiates self and other. We used optical neuroimaging to examine if support for competence, relatedness, and autonomy from relationship partners moderates MPFC activity during a personality judgment task. Participants (N = 109) were asked to judge the descriptive accuracy of trait adjectives for both themselves and a friend. Participants who reported lower need fulfillment with their friend showed elevated activity only in the self-judgment condition; in contrast, participants who reported higher need fulfillment with their friend showed similarly high levels of MPFC activity across the conditions. These results are consistent with the idea that the MPFC differentially represents others on the basis of the need fulfillment experienced within the relationship.

Dimensions of human hierarchy as determinants of health and happiness.

No matter what rung someone holds on the social ladder, they are likely to experience better health and happiness than those below them in the hierarchy and poorer health and happiness than those above. Social gradients have been found for cardiovascular, respiratory, rheumatoid, and psychiatric disease as well as mortality from all causes. These findings are often mediated by subjective social status, defined as a person's perceptions of their place in the social structure. Social gradients have also been found for happiness, which seems to be affected by sociometric status (i.e. being respected by others) more than by socioeconomic status (e.g. income). I conclude by considering the extent to which social hierarchies scaffold the fulfillment of people's basic psychological needs.

Integrating dispositions, signatures, and the interpersonal domain.

A person's behavior across situations can be characterized in terms of a mean level (disposition), a dispersion within the person around that mean level, and a stable organization to the pattern of dispersion (signature). The authors' goals were to examine the structure and stability of behavior, both at the level of behavioral dispositions and at the level of behavioral signatures. Participants completed event-contingent records of their social interactions over a 20-day period. Participants recorded their own social behavior (dominant, agreeable, submissive, quarrelsome) in 4 situations defined by the perceived social behavior of their primary interaction partners (agreeable-dominant, agreeable-submissive, quarrelsome- submissive, quarrelsome-dominant). Findings suggest that (a) once the normative influences of situations on behavior are removed, the remaining behavioral variation reflects both consistent cross-situational differences between individuals (dispositions) and consistent situational differences within individuals (signatures); (b) both dispositions and signatures display a 2-dimensional structure in adherence to the interpersonal circle; and (c) both dispositions and signatures constitute stable aspects of personality functioning.

For better and for worse: everyday social comparisons between romantic partners.

The authors examined the frequency, direction, and impact of social comparisons between romantic partners. Comparisons were expected to occur on a daily basis, owing to regular interactions between partners. To the extent that one empathizes and shares outcomes with one's partner, one might respond more positively to upward than to downward comparisons. Study 1a was an experience-sampling study in which participants reported comparisons made to their spouse over 2 weeks. Study 1b examined reactions to the most significant comparisons made during the experience-sampling study. Participants reported making comparisons to their romantic partner more than once a day on average and experienced more positive responses to upward than to downward comparisons. Study 2 demonstrated that participants empathized and shared outcomes with their partner to a greater extent than with a friend. Study 3 confirmed that participants responded more positively to upward than to downward comparisons even for domains high in self-relevance and even when the comparison had negative self-evaluative implications. These results suggest that, owing to higher levels of empathy and shared fate with partners, comparisons function differently in romantic than in other relationships.

"It was the best worst day of my life": Narrative Content, Structure, and Process in Wisdom-Fostering Life Event Memories.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine laypeople's subjective understanding of their own wisdom development. To do this, autobiographical memories of wisdom-fostering life events were examined for (a) life-event characteristics, and (b) self-reflective processes believed to support growth in wisdom through life experience. Methods: Midlife adults (N = 482) provided a written autobiographical memory of a wisdom-fostering life event. Memories were content analyzed by expert coders for life-event characteristics (i.e., fundamentality, emotional valence, cultural normativity, and specific event types) and self-reflective processes (i.e., narrative coherence, meaning-making, and personal growth). Participants also completed self-report and performance measures of wisdom. Results: Wisdom-fostering life events tended to be fundamental to life, culturally non-normative, and emotionally negative. Participants frequently reported developing wisdom from relationship events (e.g., interpersonal conflict, divorce) and life-threatening/mortality events (e.g., death, serious illness). Wisdom was positively associated with reconstructive (i.e., narrative coherence) and analytical (i.e., meaning-making, personal growth) components of self-reflection. Self-reflective processes varied as a function of life-event characteristics. Discussion: This study emphasizes the role of both persons and environments in the development of wisdom, and highlights the importance of self-reflection as a mechanism through which wisdom is constructed from life experience.

The Signs and Significance of Personality Coherence in Personal Stories and Strivings.

The concept of personality coherence refers to the extent of psychological unity and wholeness embodied within each individual. In the present research, we examined the extent to which the narrative, functional, and organismic conceptualizations of personality coherence interrelate, as well as their associations with psychological abilities and personal adjustment. College students ( N = 391) narrated accounts of three personal memories; listed five personal strivings that they subsequently compared and evaluated; completed performance measures of their intelligence, wisdom, and creativity; and rated their hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Individuals who coherently organized their autobiographical memories were protected against feeling pressured or compelled in their personal strivings and against being steered toward need-detracting futures. Narrative indicators of coherence were otherwise independent of the functional and organismic indicators, although all indicators of personality coherence correlated with personal adjustment. Wisdom and creativity predicted narrative coherence, which partially mediated the associations they demonstrated with eudaimonic well-being.

Social rank strategies in hierarchical relationships.

Social rank theorists propose that threat appraisals evoke escalation behavior toward subordinates and de-escalation behavior toward superiors. These hypotheses were examined among records of behavior sampled ecologically from the work environments of 90 individuals. At the level of the event, situated threat appraisals (feeling criticized) predicted different kinds of behavior across status situations. Individuals tended to quarrel when criticized by subordinates and to submit when criticized by superiors. At the level of the person, aggregated rank appraisals (feeling inferior) predicted different kinds of behavior across status situations. Individuals who typically felt more inferior tended to quarrel more frequently with subordinates and to submit more frequently with superiors. Findings implicated inferiority and threat as fundamental dimensions underlying the behavior of the social rank system.

In search of integrative processes: basic psychological need satisfaction predicts medial prefrontal activation during decisional conflict.

Research has shown that people's abilities to develop and act from a coherent sense of self are facilitated by satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The present study utilized functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the effect of need satisfaction on activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), a key region in processing information about the self. Participants completed a decision-making task (e.g., Which occupation would you prefer, dancer or chemist?) in which they made a series of forced choices according to their personal preferences. The degree of decisional conflict (i.e., choice difficulty) between the available response options was manipulated on the basis of participants' unique preference ratings for the target stimuli, which were obtained prior to scanning. Need satisfaction predicted elevated MPFC activity during high-conflict relative to low-conflict situations, suggesting that one way need satisfaction may promote self-coherence is by enhancing the utilization of self-knowledge in the resolution of decisional conflicts.