International optimism: Correlates and consequences of dispositional optimism across 61 countries.

OBJECTIVE: The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world. METHOD: Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean-level differences in optimism were computed along with their relationships with individual and country-level variables. RESULTS: Worldwide, mean optimism levels were above the midpoint of the scale. Perhaps surprisingly, country-level optimism was negatively related to gross domestic product per capita, population density, and democratic norms and positively related to income inequality and perceived corruption. However, country-level optimism was positively related to projected economic improvement. Individual-level optimism was positively related to individual well-being within every country, although this relationship was less strong in countries with challenging economic and social circumstances. CONCLUSIONS: While individuals around the world are generally optimistic, societal characteristics appear to affect the degree to which their optimism is associated with psychological well-being, sometimes in seemingly anomalous ways.

Situational experience around the world: A replication and extension in 62 countries.

OBJECTIVE: The current study seeks to replicate and extend principal findings reported in The World at 7:00, a project that examined the psychological experience of situations in 20 countries. METHOD: Data were collected from participants in 62 countries (N = 15,318), recruited from universities by local collaborators to complete the study via a custom-built website using 42 languages. RESULTS: Several findings of the previous study were replicated. The average reported situational experience around the world was mildly positive. The same countries tended to be most alike in reported situational experience (r = .60) across the two studies, among the countries included in both. As in the previous study, the homogeneity of reported situational experience was significantly greater within than between countries, although the difference was small. The previously reported exploratory finding that negative aspects of situations varied more across countries than positive aspects did not replicate. Correlations between aspects of reported situational experience and country-level average value scores, personality, and demographic variables were largely similar between the two studies. CONCLUSION: The findings underscore the importance of cross-cultural situational research and the need to replicate its results, and highlight the complex interplay of culture and situational experience.

Associations between informant ratings of personality disorder traits, self-reports of personality, and directly observed behavior.

OBJECTIVE: Diagnoses of personality disorders (PD) must rely on judgments of observers-either clinicians or acquaintances-because personality disorders are primarily defined in terms of maladaptive interpersonal behavior. Little is known, however, about how closely acquaintances' judgments of PD traits relate to self-reports of theoretically relevant Big Five traits or directly observed behavioral outcomes in interpersonal situations. The present study examines associations between judgments of the 10 PD traits provided by close acquaintances, self-reports of PD-relevant Big Five personality traits, and observed interpersonal behaviors across three different three-person laboratory interactions (i.e., unstructured chat, cooperative task, competitive game). METHOD: The sample consisted of 256 undergraduate students (130 females; Mage = 19.83, SD = 1.25). Four unacquainted observers independently rated participants' behaviors from video recordings. RESULTS: In line with previous work, informant reports of PD traits demonstrate strong convergent validity with relevant self-reported Big Five traits (as identified by Lynam & Widiger, 2001). Directly observed behavior is meaningfully associated with acquaintances' judgments and self-reports of PD-relevant traits, and the associations between these judgments and behavior are strongest for traits associated with histrionic and schizoid PD. Vector correlations between behavioral profiles associated with informant and self-reports show that both assessments have similar behavioral correlates. Associations between PD trait ratings and behavior appeared to differ as a function of gender, with males showing more and stronger correlations. CONCLUSIONS: Informants' ratings of PD traits are impressively accurate, converging both with self-reports of relevant traits and directly observed interpersonal behavior. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of PDs and associated traits can be augmented by information from multiple acquaintances who have the opportunity to observe how an individual interacts with others on a daily basis across diverse contexts.

Accurate perceptions do not need complete information to reflect reality.

Social reality of a group emerges from interpersonal perceptions and beliefs put to action under a host of environmental conditions. By extending the study of fast-and-frugal heuristics, we view social perceptions as judgment tools and assert that perceptions are ecologically rational to the degree that they adapt to the social reality. We maintain that the veracity of both stereotypes and base rates, as judgment tools, can be determined solely by accuracy research.

The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries.

The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world. Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance. Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross-cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.

Towards a de-biased social psychology: The effects of ideological perspective go beyond politics.

Reasonable conservatives are in short supply and will not arrive to save social psychology any time soon. The field needs to save itself through de-biasing. The effects of a liberal worldview permeate and distort discussion of many topics that are not overtly political, including behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, the fundamental attribution error, and the remarkably persistent consistency controversy.

Improving the dependability of research in personality and social psychology: recommendations for research and educational practice.

In this article, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Task Force on Publication and Research Practices offers a brief statistical primer and recommendations for improving the dependability of research. Recommendations for research practice include (a) describing and addressing the choice of N (sample size) and consequent issues of statistical power, (b) reporting effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals (CIs), (c) avoiding "questionable research practices" that can inflate the probability of Type I error, (d) making available research materials necessary to replicate reported results, (e) adhering to SPSP's data sharing policy, (f) encouraging publication of high-quality replication studies, and (g) maintaining flexibility and openness to alternative standards and methods. Recommendations for educational practice include (a) encouraging a culture of "getting it right," (b) teaching and encouraging transparency of data reporting, (c) improving methodological instruction, and (d) modeling sound science and supporting junior researchers who seek to "get it right."

Weighing dispositional and situational factors in accounting for suicide terrorism.

Lankford's book makes the important point that analyses of suicide terrorists often commit the error of overestimating the importance of situational causes of behavior and underestimating dispositional causes, such as underlying pathology. Personality and individual differences are important; suicide terrorists are not ordinary people driven by situational pressures. However, citation of empirical evidence is haphazard; the scholarly argument is not well-developed.

How are curious people viewed and how do they behave in social situations? From the perspectives of self, friends, parents, and unacquainted observers.

OBJECTIVE: People who are open and curious orient their lives around an appreciation of novelty and a strong urge to explore, discover, and grow. Researchers have recently shown that being an open, curious person is linked to healthy social outcomes. METHOD: To better understand the benefits (and liabilities) of being a curious person, we used a multimethod design of social behavior to assess the perspectives of multiple informants (including self, friends, and parents) and behavior coded from direct observations in unstructured social interactions. RESULTS: We found an impressive degree of convergence among self, friend, and parent reports of curiosity, and observer-rated behavioral correlates of curiosity. A curious personality was linked to a wide range of adaptive behaviors, including tolerance of anxiety and uncertainty, positive emotional expressiveness, initiation of humor and playfulness, unconventional thinking, and a nondefensive, noncritical attitude. CONCLUSIONS: This characterization of curious people provides insights into mechanisms underlying associated healthy social outcomes.

Who in the world is trying to change their personality traits? Volitional personality change among college students in six continents.

Recent research conducted largely in the United States suggests that most people would like to change one or more of their personality traits. Yet almost no research has investigated the degree to which and in what ways volitional personality change (VPC), or individuals' active efforts toward personality change, might be common around the world. Through a custom-built website, 13,278 college student participants from 55 countries and one of a larger country (Hong Kong, S.A.R.) using 42 different languages reported whether they were currently trying to change their personality and, if so, what they were trying to change. Around the world, 60.40% of participants reported that they are currently trying to change their personalities, with the highest percentage in Thailand (81.91%) and the lowest in Kenya (21.41%). Among those who provide open-ended responses to the aspect of personality they are trying to change, the most common goals were to increase emotional stability (29.73%), conscientiousness (19.71%), extraversion (15.94%), and agreeableness (13.53%). In line with previous research, students who are trying to change any personality trait tend to have relatively low levels of emotional stability and happiness. Moreover, those with relatively low levels of socially desirable traits reported attempting to increase what they lacked. These principal findings were generalizable around the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Why Has Personality Psychology Played an Outsized Role in the Credibility Revolution?

Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing "credibility revolution" in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field's practices and norms have now become models for other fields to emulate (or, for those who share Baumeister's (2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.02.003) skeptical view of the consequences of increasing rigor, a model for what to avoid). In this article we discuss some unique features of our field that may have placed us in an ideal position to be leaders in this movement. We do so from a subjective perspective, describing our impressions and opinions about possible explanations for personality psychology's disproportionate role in the credibility revolution. We also discuss some ways in which personality psychology remains less-than-optimal, and how we can address these flaws.

Gender differences in the correlates of self-referent word use: authority, entitlement, and depressive symptoms.

Past research shows that self-focused attention is robustly positively related to depression, and women are more likely than men to self-focus in response to depressed mood (e.g., R. Ingram, 1990; S. Nolen-Hoeksema, 1987). The goal of the current study was to further delineate gender differences in the correlates of self-focus as measured through the frequency of spontaneous use of self-referencing words. The frequency of such word use during a life history interview was correlated with self-reports, observations by clinically trained interviewers, and personality judgments by acquaintances. Results indicated that the relationship between self-reference and observations of depressive symptoms was stronger for women than men, and the relationship between self-reference and narcissistic authority and entitlement was stronger for men than for women. Acquaintance ratings supported these correlates. These findings illuminate the importance of using multiple measures and paying attention to gender differences in research on self-focus.

Personality as manifest in word use: correlations with self-report, acquaintance report, and behavior.

The use of words is one of the most direct means of expressing thoughts and feelings. However, past studies have had limited success in correlating word use with personality. The purpose of the present study was to identify categories of word use relevant to personality using a broad range of personality data. Using data from 181 participants, the present study correlated word use within a 1-hr life history interview with self-judgments of personality, judgments of personality provided by close acquaintances (who were not exposed to the language sample), and behavioral ratings based on direct observation from a context entirely separate from that from which the language sample was derived. Several categories of word use yielded a large number of correlates with self- and acquaintance personality ratings and behavior. It is suggested that word use is related to personality to a larger degree than previously observed and deserves increased attention as a source of data in personality assessment.

Information quantity and quality affect the realistic accuracy of personality judgment.

Triads of unacquainted college students interacted in 1 of 5 experimental conditions that manipulated information quantity (amount of information) and information quality (relevance of information to personality), and they then made judgments of each others' personalities. To determine accuracy, the authors compared the ratings of each judge to a broad-based accuracy criterion composed of personality ratings from 3 types of knowledgeable informants (the self, real-life acquaintances, and clinician-interviewers). Results supported the hypothesis that information quantity and quality would be positively related to objective knowledge about the targets and realistic accuracy. Interjudge consensus and self-other agreement followed a similar pattern. These findings are consistent with expectations based on models of the process of accurate judgment (D. C. Funder, 1995, 1999) and consensus (D. A. Kenny, 1994).

Personality reconsidered: a considered response.

The article by Hooker and McAdams (2003) challenges psychologists to rethink some of the theoretical distinctions used in everyday research. Although their theory aims to integrate approaches to gathering and understanding data, such an integration may or may not be all encompassing, or indeed, desirable. Nonetheless, the six foci provide a framework as valid as any for the exploration of personality across a lifetime.

The "consistency" controversy and the accuracy of personality judgments.

Areas of clear and acknowledged disagreement in the personality literature's "consistency controversy" are surprisingly difficult to pin down. The present essay suggests that one basic and real disagreement nowadays is the admissability of subjective judgments of personality as data: Personologists are willing to use them, and situationists are not. Situationists generally regard judgments as so influenced by error as to be essentially unusable, and instead prefer direct measurements of specific behaviors. The relative uses and limitations of global judgments and specific measures are considered. It is concluded that any position that judgments reflect "nothing but" error is untenable. It is further concluded that each sort of data has distinct uses and limitations, provides a check on the other, and is indispensable.

Personality and life satisfaction: a facet-level analysis.

At the global level of the Big Five, Extraversion and Neuroticism are the strongest predictors of life satisfaction. However, Extraversion and Neuroticism are multifaceted constructs that combine more specific traits. This article examined the contribution of facets of Extraversion and Neuroticism to life satisfaction in four studies. The depression facet of Neuroticism and the positive emotions/cheerfulness facet of Extraversion were the strongest and most consistent predictors of life satisfaction. These two facets often accounted for more variance in life satisfaction than Neuroticism and Extraversion. The findings suggest that measures of depression and positive emotions/cheerfulness are necessary and sufficient to predict life satisfaction from personality traits. The results also lead to a more refined understanding of the specific personality traits that influence life satisfaction: Depression is more important than anxiety or anger and a cheerful temperament is more important than being active or sociable.

Complementarity of interpersonal behaviors in dyadic interactions.

An important assumption of interpersonal theory is that during social interactions the behavior of one person tends to invite complementary behavior from the other person. Past research examining complementarity has usually used either confederates or fictitious interaction partners in their designs and has produced inconsistent results. The current study used observational ratings of behaviors of 158 participants as they interacted with partners across three different dyadic social situations. Randomization tests of hypothesized order relations found that the behaviors exhibited during these interactions tended to occur in a circular pattern predicted by the interpersonal circumplex. These tests also indicated support for Leary's (1957) orientation of the control and affiliation dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex and Carson's (1969) notion that dominant behavior induces submissive responses and friendly behavior encourages friendly responses.

The Situational Eight DIAMONDS: a taxonomy of major dimensions of situation characteristics.

Taxonomies of person characteristics are well developed, whereas taxonomies of psychologically important situation characteristics are underdeveloped. A working model of situation perception implies the existence of taxonomizable dimensions of psychologically meaningful, important, and consequential situation characteristics tied to situation cues, goal affordances, and behavior. Such dimensions are developed and demonstrated in a multi-method set of 6 studies. First, the "Situational Eight DIAMONDS" dimensions Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Deception, and Sociality (Study 1) are established from the Riverside Situational Q-Sort (Sherman, Nave, & Funder, 2010, 2012, 2013; Wagerman & Funder, 2009). Second, their rater agreement (Study 2) and associations with situation cues and goal/trait affordances (Studies 3 and 4) are examined. Finally, the usefulness of these dimensions is demonstrated by examining their predictive power of behavior (Study 5), particularly vis-à-vis measures of personality and situations (Study 6). Together, we provide extensive and compelling evidence that the DIAMONDS taxonomy is useful for organizing major dimensions of situation characteristics. We discuss the DIAMONDS taxonomy in the context of previous taxonomic approaches and sketch future research directions.

The behavioral correlates of overall and distinctive life history strategy.

Life history (LH) theory provides an evolutionary theoretical framework for understanding individual differences in maturation, mating, reproduction, parenting, and social interaction. However, the psychometric assessment of human life history has been largely limited to generalized self-reports. Using template matching, this article examines the relationship between personality differences associated with slow-life history (slow-LH) and social behavior in 3 archival datasets. Two of these datasets include direct observations of behavior in the laboratory, and the 3rd provides self-reports of behavior in real life situations experienced within the preceding 24 hr. The results paint a consistent picture of the slow-LH individual as engaging in numerous adaptive social behaviors. However, when "normativeness" (the tendency for most people to be normal in both the statistical and evaluative sense) is statistically removed from the LH scores, a slightly different picture emerges. Both slow-LH and fast-LH persons display a number of behaviors that may be either adaptive or maladaptive in different contexts. Specifically, slow-LH individuals tended to behave in a manner that was considerate, kind, hard-working, and reliable but also socially awkward, insecure, and overcontrolling. Fast-LH individuals came across as talkative, socially skilled, dominant, and charming but also unpredictable, hostile, manipulative, and impulsive. These results are consistent with the evolutionary interpretation of LH strategies as being adapted to systematically different environments rather than better or worse approaches to reproductive fitness overall.