Spontaneous interpersonal complementarity in the lab: A multilevel approach to modeling the antecedents and consequences of people's interpersonal behaviors and their dynamic interplay.

The principles of "interpersonal complementarity" posit that one person's behavior tends to evoke reactions from others that are similar with regard to affiliation, but dissimilar with regard to status (Carson, 1969). Empirical support for these assumptions has been mixed, especially with regard to the status dimension. The present study investigated influences of level of observation (behaviors vs. traits), personality, and instructional set on complementarity. Previously unacquainted participants (N = 182) were randomly assigned to dyads who engaged in videotaped discussions with either a cooperative or a competitive framing. Their behaviors were rated every 10 s in terms of affiliation and status. We used a multilevel modeling approach that enables powerful omnibus tests of core tenets of interpersonal theory, including previously overlooked influences of person and situation, as well as time-lags. Interpersonal complementarity was found for both affiliation and status. It was highest for simultaneous behaviors, (i.e., occurring within the same 10-s interval), but for status we also found lagged effects being anticomplementary. Complementarity was also moderately predicted by some personality traits. The situational context predicted the mean levels of interpersonal behaviors but not complementarity. Concerning consequences of complementarity, the participants' individual complementarity coefficients predicted their being liked by the interaction partner, observer judgments of their social competence, and their overall discussion performance. We clearly recommend this type of comprehensive multilevel modeling for future research into these and related issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychologically Adjusted Persons Are Less Aware of How They Are Perceived by Others.

Focusing on individual differences, we studied three influences on the accuracy of meta-perceptions of personality: (a) projection, that is, relying on one's self-perception; (b) normative meta-insight, that is, relying on the perception of the typical person by others; and (c) distinctive meta-insight, that is, relying on others' perception of one's unique personality attributes. Using a round-robin design, 52 groups of four acquainted students described themselves, three acquaintances, and their meta-perceptions on the Big-Five factors of personality, and provided self-reports of psychological adjustment. Projection, normative, and distinctive meta-insight contributed uniquely to meta-perception, yet qualified by systematic individual differences: Psychologically adjusted meta-perceivers projected more and relied on distinctive meta-insight less. Moreover, acquaintance raised projection. Thus, psychologically adjusted meta-perceivers were less aware of discrepancies between their self-perceptions and their actual perceptions by others, and the better people knew another person, the more strongly they expected that this other person perceived them like they perceived themselves.

The nature of creativity: The roles of genetic factors, personality traits, cognitive abilities, and environmental sources.

This multitrait multimethod twin study examined the structure and sources of individual differences in creativity. According to different theoretical and metrological perspectives, as well as suggestions based on previous research, we expected 2 aspects of individual differences, which can be described as perceived creativity and creative test performance. We hypothesized that perceived creativity, reflecting typical creative thinking and behavior, should be linked to specific personality traits, whereas test creativity, reflecting maximum task-related creative performance, should show specific associations with cognitive abilities. Moreover, we tested whether genetic variance in intelligence and personality traits account for the genetic component of creativity. Multiple-rater and multimethod data (self- and peer reports, observer ratings, and test scores) from 2 German twin studies-the Bielefeld Longitudinal Study of Adult Twins and the German Observational Study of Adult Twins-were analyzed. Confirmatory factor analyses yielded the expected 2 correlated aspects of creativity. Perceived creativity showed links to openness to experience and extraversion, whereas tested figural creativity was associated with intelligence and also with openness. Multivariate behavioral genetic analyses indicated that the heritability of tested figural creativity could be accounted for by the genetic component of intelligence and openness, whereas a substantial genetic component in perceived creativity could not be explained. A primary source of individual differences in creativity was due to environmental influences, even after controlling for random error and method variance. The findings are discussed in terms of the multifaceted nature and construct validity of creativity as an individual characteristic. (PsycINFO Database Record

How chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) perform in a modified emotional Stroop task.

The emotional Stroop task is an experimental paradigm developed to study the relationship between emotion and cognition. Human participants required to identify the color of words typically respond more slowly to negative than to neutral words (emotional Stroop effect). Here we investigated whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) would show a comparable effect. Using a touch screen, eight chimpanzees were trained to choose between two simultaneously presented stimuli based on color (two identical images with differently colored frames). In Experiment 1, the images within the color frames were shapes that were either of the same color as the surrounding frame or of the alternative color. Subjects made fewer errors and responded faster when shapes were of the same color as the frame surrounding them than when they were not, evidencing that embedded images affected target selection. Experiment 2, a modified version of the emotional Stroop task, presented subjects with four different categories of novel images: three categories of pictures of humans (veterinarian, caretaker, and stranger), and control stimuli showing a white square. Because visits by the veterinarian that include anaesthetization can be stressful for subjects, we expected impaired performance in trials presenting images of the veterinarian. For the first session, we found correct responses to be indeed slower in trials of this category. This effect was more pronounced for subjects whose last anaesthetization experience was more recent, indicating that emotional valence caused the slowdown. We propose our modified emotional Stroop task as a simple method to explore which emotional stimuli affect cognitive performance in nonhuman primates.

Accuracy of Judgments of Personality Based on Textual Information on Major Life Domains.

We studied the accuracy of personality impressions relying on textual information on important life domains. Specifically, how is accuracy moderated by the trait being judged, information being provided, judgeability of target persons, and perceptiveness of judges? A sample of 208 students was recruited in groups of four mutual acquaintances who described themselves and each other on a measure of the Five-Factor Model of personality. Moreover, they wrote essays on their hobbies, friends, family, academic studies, and plans for the future and provided self-reports on possible predictors of expressive accuracy. The essays were delivered to 130 strangers who reported their impressions of the personality of the targets and provided self-reports on possible predictors of perceptive accuracy. Accuracy was measured by correlating these impressions with the descriptions of the targets by their acquaintances. The judges used the available information efficiently. Overall, impressions of Openness to Experience were most accurate, but accuracy depended on the information being provided. Several predictors of expressive and perceptive accuracy were identified using Biesanz's (2010) social accuracy model. The results advance our understanding of factors contributing to and moderating the accuracy of personality impressions based on textual information.

Effects of Personality Disorders on Self-Other Agreement and Favorableness in Personality Descriptions.

The authors studied effects of self-reported personality disorder (PD) symptoms on interpersonal perception, particularly self-other agreement and favorableness. Using a round-robin design, 52 groups of four well-acquainted students described themselves and each other on a measure of the Five-Factor model of personality and were administered a self-report screening instrument for DSM-IV (Axis 2). Using the Social Accuracy Model, the peer reports were predicted, across items, from either (a) the target person's self-reports plus the self-report item means, or (b) the items' social desirability. This resulted in separate coefficients for each peer-target dyad, indicating either self-other agreement or favorableness. These coefficients were then predicted from the PD scores of the target and the peer, using multilevel modeling. Main findings were that persons scoring high on PD measures agreed less with their peers on their unique personality characteristics, and that such persons were described by, and described their peers, less favorably.

How are personality trait and profile agreement related?

It is argued that if we compute self-other agreement on some personality traits then we possess no or very little information about the individuals who are the targets of this judgment. This idea is largely based on two separate ways of computing self-other agreement: trait agreement (rT ) and profile agreement (rP ), which are typically associated with two different trait-centered and person-centered approaches in personality research. Personality traits of 4115 targets from Czech, Belgian, Estonian, and German samples were rated by themselves and knowledgeable informants. We demonstrate that trait agreement can be partialled into individual contributions so that it is possible to show how much each individual pair of judges contributes to agreement on a particular trait. Similarly, it is possible to decompose agreement between two personality profiles into the individual contributions of traits from which these profiles are assembled. If normativeness is separated from distinctiveness of personality scores and individual profiles are ipsatized, then mean profile agreement rP becomes identical to mean trait agreement r T . The views that trait-by-trait analysis does not provide information regarding accuracy level of a particular pair of judges and profile analysis does not permit assessment of the relative contributions of traits to overall accuracy are not supported.

Measurement invariance within and between individuals: a distinct problem in testing the equivalence of intra- and inter-individual model structures.

We address the question of equivalence between modeling results obtained on intra-individual and inter-individual levels of psychometric analysis. Our focus is on the concept of measurement invariance and the role it may play in this context. We discuss this in general against the background of the latent variable paradigm, complemented by an operational demonstration in terms of a linear state-space model, i.e., a time series model with latent variables. Implemented in a multiple-occasion and multiple-subject setting, the model simultaneously accounts for intra-individual and inter-individual differences. We consider the conditions-in terms of invariance constraints-under which modeling results are generalizable (a) over time within subjects, (b) over subjects within occasions, and (c) over time and subjects simultaneously thus implying an equivalence-relationship between both dimensions. Since we distinguish the measurement model from the structural model governing relations between the latent variables of interest, we decompose the invariance constraints into those that involve structural parameters and those that involve measurement parameters and relate to measurement invariance. Within the resulting taxonomy of models, we show that, under the condition of measurement invariance over time and subjects, there exists a form of structural equivalence between levels of analysis that is distinct from full structural equivalence, i.e., ergodicity. We demonstrate how measurement invariance between and within subjects can be tested in the context of high-frequency repeated measures in personality research. Finally, we relate problems of measurement variance to problems of non-ergodicity as currently discussed and approached in the literature.

Do Men Vary More than Women in Personality? A Study in 51 Cultures.

Do men vary more than women in personality? Evolutionary, genetic, and cultural arguments suggest that hypothesis. In this study we tested it using 12,156 college student raters from 51 cultures who described a person they knew well on the 3rd-person version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. In most cultures, male targets varied more than female targets, and ratings by female informants varied more than ratings by male informants, which may explain why higher variances for men are not found in self-reports. Variances were higher in more developed, and effects of target sex were stronger in more individualistic societies. It seems that individualistic cultures enable a less restricted expression of personality, resulting in larger variances and particularly so among men.

Sex differences in variability in personality: a study in four samples.

OBJECTIVE: Men vary more than women in cognitive abilities and physical attributes, and we expected that men would vary more in personality too. That this has not been found previously may reflect that (a) personality was measured by self-reports that confound target sex with informant sex, and (b) men actually vary more but accentuate personality differences less than women. METHOD: We analyzed informant reports and self-reports on the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R or NEO PI-3) collected for two community and two student samples from four countries: Czech Republic (N = 714; age M = 36.1, SD = 14.1; 58% women), Estonia (N = 1,685; age M = 42.6, SD = 13.4; 58% women), Belgium (N = 345; age M = 18.4, SD = 3.0; 78% women), and Germany (N = 302; age M = 23.4, SD = 2.7; 56% women). RESULTS: Higher male than female variability was found in each sample for informant reports of Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Men but not women were overrepresented in both tails of the distributions of several personality traits. CONCLUSIONS: According to liability-threshold models of mental disorders, this may contribute to men's overrepresentation in some kinds of deviant groups.

How people see others is different from how people see themselves: a replicable pattern across cultures.

Consensus studies from 4 cultures--in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Germany--as well as secondary analyses of self- and observer-reported Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) data from 29 cultures suggest that there is a cross-culturally replicable pattern of difference between internal and external perspectives for the Big Five personality traits. People see themselves as more neurotic and open to experience compared to how they are seen by other people. External observers generally hold a higher opinion of an individual's conscientiousness than he or she does about him- or herself. As a rule, people think that they have more positive emotions and excitement seeking but much less assertiveness than it seems from the vantage point of an external observer. This cross-culturally replicable disparity between internal and external perspectives was not consistent with predictions based on the actor-observer hypothesis because the size of the disparity was unrelated to the visibility of personality traits. A relatively strong negative correlation (r = -.53) between the average self-minus-observer profile and social desirability ratings suggests that people in most studied cultures view themselves less favorably than they are perceived by others.

More may be better but there may be too much: optimal trait level and self-enhancement bias.

Although one extreme is more desirable than the opposite extreme on most trait dimensions, neither extreme reflects the most favorable level of the trait. Rather, extreme trait levels are usually considered to be less than optimal. Using a round-robin design, 76 groups of 4 persons each described themselves and each other on 30 trait dimensions and indicated the optimal level on each dimension. Moreover, personality inventories and measures of socially desirable responding were administered to the participants for self- and peer descriptions. Associations between trait level and trait level desirability comprised linear as well as curvilinear components. Participants preferred the optimal level in describing themselves, but trait levels beyond the optimal level in describing peers. A new measure of self-enhancement bias is suggested.

Genetic and environmental influences on Person x Situation profiles.

Genetic and environmental influences on Person x Situation interactions were studied using data of the German Observational Study of Adult Twins. The performance of 168 monozygotic and 132 dizygotic twin pairs in 15 tasks was observed by 120 judges who never met the twins in person. Four judges observed one twin of each pair in one task. Twin similarities in Person x Situation profiles were analyzed via (a) correlations across tasks between co-twins' Person x Situation profiles (their personality signatures) and (b) common-pathway genetic models that partitioned genetic and environmental contributions to trait levels and to Person x Situation interactions. Genes accounted for about 25% of the reliable Person x Situation interactions, whereas shared environmental influences were negligible.

Thin slices of behavior as cues of personality and intelligence.

Self-reports, peer reports, intelligence tests, and ratings of personality and intelligence from 15 videotaped episodes were collected for 600 participants. The average cross-situational consistency of trait impressions across the 15 episodes was .43. Shared stereotypes related to gender and age were mostly accurate and contributed little to agreement among judges. Agreement was limited mainly by nonshared meaning systems and by nonoverlapping information. Personality inferences from thin slices of behavior were significantly associated with reports by knowledgeable informants. This association became stronger when more episodes were included, but gains in prediction were low beyond 6 episodes. Inferences of intelligence from thin slices of behavior strongly predicted intelligence test scores. A particularly strong single predictor was how persons read short sentences.

Sociability and positive emotionality: genetic and environmental contributions to the covariation between different facets of extraversion.

The relation between sociability and positive affect is one of the most often replicated results of research on personality and subjective well-being. It is shown how behavior genetics can contribute to our understanding of the covariance between sociability and positive emotionality. The results of a multimethod behavior-genetic study with 158 monozygotic and 120 dizygotic twins are reported. In this study, sociability and two components of positive emotionality (positive affect, energy) were assessed by self-report and other report. Additionally, positive state affect was assessed in five situations and aggregated across situations. The results showed that there are strong genetic correlations between all variables. Furthermore, there are substantive correlations between the nonshared environmental components of the different variables. Shared environmental influences, however, seemed to be unimportant for explaining the correlations between sociability and the different components of positive emotionality. The results are discussed with respect to their implications for future research on sociability and positive emotionality.

German Observational Study of Adult Twins (GOSAT): a multimodal investigation of personality, temperament and cognitive ability.

The German Observational Study of Adult Twins (GOSAT) is the largest population-based observational twin study in Germany to date. Embedded in the Bielefeld Longitudinal Study of Adult Twins (BiLSAT), it addresses the etiology of personality, temperament and cognitive ability in a sample of 300 monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) adult twin pairs between 18 and 70 years of age. A major aim of the GOSAT lies in the utilization of different modes of measurement, (i.e., peer reports and observational data), in addition to self-reports which have been used predominantly in past behavioral genetic research on personality and temperament in adults. Participants completed a full day assessment at the University of Bielefeld including videotaped social interactions and presentations, psychometric intelligence tests and computerized elementary cognitive tasks as well as objective measures and unobtrusive behavior counts. The research design of the GOSAT was devised to reduce the potential impact of systematic rater bias on estimates of genetic and environmental influences to a minimum. In combination with extensive self- and peer report data on key personality and personality related dimensions available from the BiLSAT, the GOSAT provides a rich dataset, which currently includes DNA samples from 80% of its participants.