Reconstructing Adulthood: Revising the Markers of Adulthood Scale for Increased Ecological Validity.

Young adults endorse more individualistic and internal adulthood milestones compared to prior generations. Arnett (1994) introduced the Markers of Adulthood (MoA) scale to capture this shift in the transition to adulthood using 38 markers associated with becoming an adult, including marriage, having children, and living independently. These items were based on psychological, anthropological, and sociological determinations concerning adulthood, and were arranged into subscales based on their theoretical association rather than statistical analysis. Since the scale was introduced, researchers have addressed crucial questions about the validity of the MoA scale's milestones. A recurring theme was identifying items that could be sorted into reliable subscales. We examined a collection of original items and included new ones, such as "have a professional social media account" and "recognize personal capabilities and shortcomings" to configure a revised MoA model. A total of 861 participants in seven national locations responded to a demographic survey, the Inventory of the Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood (IDEA; Reifman, et al., 2007), and a collection of MoA items. We conducted a principal component analysis to identify 22 items and four factors (role transitions, independence, legality markers, and relative maturity) which represented 55% of the total variance in the dataset. All factors except legality markers were identified by prior researchers. While four factors demonstrated the best fit for subscale configurations, the revised MoA was considered most reliable when used in its entirety. Our examination ends with a discussion of future directions for configuring items which may produce reliable subscales.

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network.

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA's mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.

Commentary on Sources of Ostracism Research.

This article briefly introduces and provides commentary on this special issue, "Investigating How Individuals Feel Ostracizing Others" in the Journal of Social Psychology. This commentary uses first-person recollections from early ostracism studies to help frame the special issue in the larger scope of ostracism research. Modern ostracism research started in the early 1990s and hundreds of studies have advanced our understanding of this phenomenon. However, the preponderance of research has focused on the target of ostracism (those being ostracized) and relied primarily on a single method in experimental studies. The present special issue includes articles that employed a variety of research approaches and focused exclusively on the sources (those who do the ostracism). Finally, this commentary invites researchers to more fully investigate this understudied aspect of a common phenomenon that people are likely to engage in regularly.

Harnessing the Undiscovered Resource of Student Research Projects.

This article suggests that undergraduate research can help advance the science of psychology. We introduce a hypothetical "question-list paradigm" as a mechanism to do this. Each year, thousands of undergraduate projects are completed as part of the educational experience. Although many of these studies may not contain sufficient contributions for publication, they provide a good test of the replicability of established findings across populations at different institutions and geographic locations. Thus, these projects could meet the needs of recent calls for increased replications of psychological studies while simultaneously benefiting the student researchers, their instructors, and the field in general.

An ecological examination of rapport using a dyadic puzzle task.

Previous studies have indicated that situational context impacts the rapport experience (e.g., F. J. Bernieri, J. S. Gillis, J. M. Davis, & J. E. Grahe, 1996; N. M. Puccinelli, L. Tickle-Degnen, & R. Rosenthal, 2003). The authors designed the present study to further document the behavioral and experiential predictors of dyadic rapport and to evaluate dyadic rapport experiences when contributions were required from both interactants. Participants (N = 60) were paired into dyads and instructed to complete children's puzzles. However, the dyadic members were restricted in how they could accomplish this task: Only one interactant was allowed to work on the puzzle and had to do so blindfolded, while the second interactant gave instructions. Results suggested that less attribution of responsibility to the worker and the instructor's experience of enjoyment and frustration were indicative of higher rapport. Other characteristics of dyads reporting higher dyadic rapport included difficulty completing the task and more communicative behavior. The results provide important information for the understanding of the dyadic experience of rapport.