Measuring Global Character Dimensions: An Ant Colony Optimization Approach toward Three Core Strength Scales.

The Values in Action (VIA) framework encompasses 24 universally valued character strengths. Recent factor-analytic work has identified three global core strengths (metatraits) that proved to be well-interpretable and cross-culturally replicable: positivity, dependability, and mastery. However, there are no short scales to economically measure these core strengths that would encourage (large-scale) survey-based research on the global level of the VIA trait space. In the present study, we selected 18 items to measure the three metatraits from the 96-item IPIP-VIA-R inventory. To optimize the item selection while considering multiple psychometric criteria simultaneously, we made use of Ant Colony Optimization. Thereby, we obtained balanced-keyed scales that cover the heterogeneous constructs well, showed good model fit and reliability across six samples from Germany and the U.K. (total N = 2,754), and achieved scalar measurement invariance across countries. Furthermore, we demonstrated each scale's validity by locating the three core strengths in a nomological net with personality and value metatraits, life satisfaction, and behavioral criteria. Available in the public domain in English and German, these both valid and economical core strength scales may further stimulate integrative research on personality and values.

Measuring Intellectual Curiosity across Cultures: Validity and Comparability of a New Scale in Six Languages.

Intellectual curiosity-the tendency to seek out and engage in opportunities for effortful cognitive activity-is a crucial construct in educational research and beyond. Measures of intellectual curiosity vary widely in psychometric quality, and few measures have demonstrated validity and comparability of scores across multiple languages. We analyzed a novel, six-item intellectual curiosity scale (ICS) originally developed for cross-national comparisons in the context of the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Samples from six countries representing six national languages (U.S. Germany, France, Spain, Poland, and Japan; total N = 5,557) confirmed that the ICS possesses very good psychometric properties. The scale is essentially unidimensional and showed excellent reliability estimates. On top of factorial validity, the scale demonstrated strict measurement invariance across demographic segments (gender, age groups, and educational strata) and at least partial scalar invariance across countries. As per its convergent and divergent associations with a broad range of constructs (e.g., Open-Mindedness and other Big Five traits, Perseverance, Sensation Seeking, Job Orientations, and Vocational Interests), it also showed convincing construct validity. Given its internal and external relationships, we recommend the ICS for assessing intellectual curiosity, especially in cross-cultural research applications, yet we also point out future research areas.

Measuring the Four Higher-Order Values in Schwartz's Theory: Validation of a 17-Item Inventory.

Schwartz's theory of basic human values is the dominant framework for assessing values. One of its strengths is that it allows for different levels of analysis. The 10 basic values can be reliably assigned to four higher-order dimensions: Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Transcendence, and Self-Enhancement. In this paper, we examined the psychometric properties of the Higher-Order-Value Scale-17 (HOVS17), an inventory that economically assesses these higher-order values. We analyzed data from the GESIS Panel, an ongoing large-scale probability-based panel study that fields HOVS17 annually since 2013 and for which HOVS17 was originally developed. We found HOVS17 to have satisfactory psychometric properties. The 17 items were located in the two-dimensional multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) space as hypothesized. All four subscales were unidimensional, showed good fit when modeled as reflective latent variables, and had acceptable reliabilities as well as one-year test-retest stabilities (.65 to .69). The subscales correlated in theoretically plausible ways with a wide range of correlates and criteria, such as personality traits and well-being. This demonstrates that HOVS17 provides a sound basis for studying the development, precursors, and consequences of the higher-order values in the GESIS Panel and in future surveys that adopt HOVS17. We also discuss suggestions for further improvements of the inventory.

Measuring Six Facets of Curiosity in Germany and the UK: A German-Language Adaptation of the 5DCR and Its Comparability with the English-Language Source Version.

The five-dimensional curiosity-scale revised (5DCR) by Kashdan et al. (2020) is the most comprehensive curiosity inventory available to date. 5DCR measures six facets of curiosity with four items each. Here, we present a German-language adaptation of the 5DCR and comprehensively validate this adaptation in a diverse sample of adults from Germany (N = 486). Moreover, we provide new evidence on the original English-language 5DCR in a parallel sample from the UK (N = 483). In both countries, we investigate the six facets' reliability, factorial validity, and convergent and discriminant validity with a large set of individual-differences constructs. In addition, we analyze the measurement invariance of the curiosity facets across the UK and Germany and across socio-demographic subgroups defined by age, sex, and education. Findings demonstrate that the new German-language adaptation of 5DCR and its English-language source version show psychometric properties similar to the original studies by Kashdan et al. (2020) in the United States. All six curiosity facets reach at least partial scalar invariance across cultures, sex, education, and mostly also across age groups. The findings support the six-faceted theory of curiosity and show that 5DCR allows for a valid assessment of curiosity across cultures.

Why we need to abandon fixed cutoffs for goodness-of-fit indices: An extensive simulation and possible solutions.

To evaluate model fit in confirmatory factor analysis, researchers compare goodness-of-fit indices (GOFs) against fixed cutoff values (e.g., CFI > .950) derived from simulation studies. Methodologists have cautioned that cutoffs for GOFs are only valid for settings similar to the simulation scenarios from which cutoffs originated. Despite these warnings, fixed cutoffs for popular GOFs (i.e., χ2, χ2/df, CFI, RMSEA, SRMR) continue to be widely used in applied research. We (1) argue that the practice of using fixed cutoffs needs to be abandoned and (2) review time-honored and emerging alternatives to fixed cutoffs. We first present the most in-depth simulation study to date on the sensitivity of GOFs to model misspecification (i.e., misspecified factor dimensionality and unmodeled cross-loadings) and their susceptibility to further data and analysis characteristics (i.e., estimator, number of indicators, number and distribution of response options, loading magnitude, sample size, and factor correlation). We included all characteristics identified as influential in previous studies. Our simulation enabled us to replicate well-known influences on GOFs and establish hitherto unknown or underappreciated ones. In particular, the magnitude of the factor correlation turned out to moderate the effects of several characteristics on GOFs. Second, to address these problems, we discuss several strategies for assessing model fit that take the dependency of GOFs on the modeling context into account. We highlight tailored (or "dynamic") cutoffs as a way forward. We provide convenient tables with scenario-specific cutoffs as well as regression formulae to predict cutoffs tailored to the empirical setting of interest.

Personality, cognitive ability, and academic performance: Differential associations across school subjects and school tracks.

AIM: Personality traits and cognitive ability are well-established predictors of academic performance. Yet, how consistent and generalizable are the associations between personality, cognitive ability, and performance? Building on theoretical arguments that trait-performance relations should vary depending on the demands and opportunities for trait expression in the learning environment, we investigated whether the associations of personality (Big Five) and cognitive ability (fluid intelligence) with academic performance (grades and tests scores) vary across school subjects (German and math) and across ability-grouped school tracks (academic, intermediate, and vocational). METHOD: Multiple group structural equation models in a large representative sample of ninth-grade students (N = 12,915) from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). RESULTS: Differential associations across school subjects emerged for cognitive ability, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness (math > German); and for Openness and Extraversion (German > math). Differential associations across school tracks emerged for cognitive ability, Conscientiousness (academic > intermediate > vocational) and Agreeableness (academic > intermediate > vocational). Personality traits explained more variation in academic performance in the academic than in the other tracks. CONCLUSION: Most trait-performance relations varied across subjects, tracks, or both. These findings highlight the need for more nuanced and context-minded perspective on trait-performance relations.

Social Comparison in Coping With Occupational Uncertainty: Self-Improvement, Self-Enhancement, and the Regional Context.

OBJECTIVE: Taking into account the regional context, we investigated whether social comparison in coping with occupational uncertainty served self-improvement (i.e., adaptive coping) or self-enhancement (i.e., subjective well-being). METHOD: Respondents were 620 German adults aged 16 to 43, 59% female, who participated in three yearly follow-ups of a larger survey. The number of observations was 1,309 for contemporaneous and 1,079 for longitudinal analyses. Participants reported on perceived occupational uncertainty (e.g., risk of losing a job and difficulties with career planning), strategies for coping with it, and whether, and in which direction, they made social comparisons in coping with occupational uncertainty. RESULTS: Making social comparisons (vs. not) was associated with higher goal engagement and lower goal disengagement. Upward (as opposed to downward) comparison prospectively predicted higher goal engagement. Under high regional unemployment, upward comparison prospectively predicted lower goal disengagement, whereas making social comparisons was contemporaneously associated with higher subjective well-being. Higher regional unemployment rates predicted more frequent comparison, whereas comparison direction was predicted only by situational variables, especially personal control over the outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: When operationalized as a conscious mental action and put in the context of coping with occupational uncertainty, social comparison serves primarily self-improvement.

Do Immigrants Suffer More From Job Loss? Unemployment and Subjective Well-being in Germany.

This study asks whether immigrants suffer more from unemployment than German natives. Differences between these groups in pre-unemployment characteristics, the type of the transition into unemployment, and the consequences of this transition suggest that factors intensifying the negative impact of unemployment on subjective well-being are more concentrated in immigrants than in natives. Based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (1990-2014; N = 34,767 persons aged 20 to 64; N = 210,930 person-years), we used fixed-effects models to trace within-person change in subjective well-being across the transition from employment into unemployment and over several years of continued unemployment. Results showed that immigrants' average declines in subjective well-being exceeded those of natives. Further analyses revealed gender interactions. Among women, declines were smaller and similar among immigrants and natives. Among men, declines were larger and differed between immigrants and natives. Immigrant men showed the largest declines, amounting to one standard deviation of within-person change over time in subjective well-being. Normative, social, and economic factors did not explain these disproportionate declines. We discuss alternative explanations for why immigrant men are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of unemployment in Germany.

Who Reaps the Benefits of Social Change? Exploration and Its Socioecological Boundaries.

We investigated the interplay between the personality trait exploration and objective socioecological conditions in shaping individual differences in the experience of two individual-level benefits of current social change: new lifestyle options, which arise from the societal trend toward individualization, and new learning opportunities, which accrue from the societal trend toward lifelong learning. We hypothesized that people with higher trait exploration experience a greater increase in lifestyle options and learning opportunities--but more so in social ecologies in which individualization and lifelong learning are stronger, thus offering greater latitude for exploring the benefits of these trends. We employed structural equation modeling in two parallel adult samples from Germany (N = 2,448) and Poland (N = 2,571), using regional divorce rates as a proxy for individualization and Internet domain registration rates as a proxy for lifelong learning. Higher exploration was related to a greater perceived increase in lifestyle options and in learning opportunities over the past 5 years. These associations were stronger in regions in which the trends toward individualization and lifelong learning, respectively, were more prominent. Individuals higher in exploration are better equipped to reap the benefits of current social change--but the effects of exploration are bounded by the conditions in the social ecology.

Getting going and letting go: Religiosity fosters opportunity-congruent coping with work-related uncertainties.

This study investigated how religiosity relates to goal engagement (i.e., investing time and effort; overcoming obstacles) and goal disengagement (i.e., protecting self-esteem and motivational resources against failure experiences; distancing from unattainable goals) in coping with perceived work-related uncertainties (e.g., growing risk of job loss) that arise from current social change. We hypothesised that religiosity not only expands individuals' capacities for both engagement and disengagement but also fosters an opportunity-congruent pattern of engagement and disengagement, promoting engagement especially under favourable opportunities for goal-striving in the social ecology and facilitating disengagement especially under unfavourable opportunities. Multilevel analyses in a sample of N = 2089 Polish adults aged 20-46 years partly supported these predictions. Religiosity was associated with higher goal engagement, especially under favourable economic opportunities for goal-striving in the social ecology (as measured by the regional net migration rate). For disengagement, the results were more mixed; religiosity was related to higher self-protection independently of the economic opportunity structure and predicted higher goal-distancing only under the most unfavourable opportunities. These results suggest that religiosity can promote different coping strategies under different conditions, fostering a pattern of opportunity-congruent engagement and, to some extent, disengagement that is likely to be adaptive.

Basic human values and the adoption of cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency is an attempt to create an alternative to centralized financial systems using blockchain technology. However, our understanding of the psychological mechanisms that drive cryptocurrency adoption is limited. This study examines the role of basic human values in three stages of cryptocurrency adoption-awareness, intention to buy, and ownership-using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Logistic regression analysis was conducted on a quota sample of 714 German adults, and the results showed that openness-to-change values increased the likelihood of cryptocurrency awareness, while self-enhancement values increased the likelihood of intention to buy and ownership. These findings were consistent even after controlling for demographic characteristics, attitudinal beliefs, and perceived behavioral control, which are important factors in the TPB. The results suggest that basic human values may influence an individual's decision to adopt cryptocurrency, but the transition from awareness to ownership may be influenced by socio-economic opportunities available to interested individuals.

AI Psychometrics: Assessing the Psychological Profiles of Large Language Models Through Psychometric Inventories.

We illustrate how standard psychometric inventories originally designed for assessing noncognitive human traits can be repurposed as diagnostic tools to evaluate analogous traits in large language models (LLMs). We start from the assumption that LLMs, inadvertently yet inevitably, acquire psychological traits (metaphorically speaking) from the vast text corpora on which they are trained. Such corpora contain sediments of the personalities, values, beliefs, and biases of the countless human authors of these texts, which LLMs learn through a complex training process. The traits that LLMs acquire in such a way can potentially influence their behavior, that is, their outputs in downstream tasks and applications in which they are employed, which in turn may have real-world consequences for individuals and social groups. By eliciting LLMs' responses to language-based psychometric inventories, we can bring their traits to light. Psychometric profiling enables researchers to study and compare LLMs in terms of noncognitive characteristics, thereby providing a window into the personalities, values, beliefs, and biases these models exhibit (or mimic). We discuss the history of similar ideas and outline possible psychometric approaches for LLMs. We demonstrate one promising approach, zero-shot classification, for several LLMs and psychometric inventories. We conclude by highlighting open challenges and future avenues of research for AI Psychometrics.

Assessing Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills in Just a Few Minutes: 96-, 45-, and 20-Item Short Forms of the BESSI.

Social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills matter for individuals' well-being and success. The behavioral, emotional, and social skills inventory (BESSI) uses 192 items to assess 32 specific SEB skills across five broad skill domains. This research developed three short forms of the BESSI-192 and explored their measurement properties, predictive validity, and cross-cultural comparability. We found that BESSI-96, BESSI-45, and BESSI-20 largely captured the psychological content of the BESSI-192 measure, retained a robust multidimensional structure, and demonstrated adequate reliability. At the domain and facet level, the BESSI short forms showed patterns of associations with external criteria that were similar to the BESSI-192 and preserved most of the BESSI-192's predictive power. The BESSI short forms also demonstrated full or partial measurement invariance between the primarily U.S.-based and German adult samples. We conclude by discussing contexts in which the short forms may be useful for researchers and practitioners.

Aspiration-attainment gaps predict adolescents' subjective well-being after transition to vocational education and training in Germany.

An occupational aspiration-attainment gap (AAG) is defined as a discrepancy between the socioeconomic status (SES) of the aspired occupation and the one attained. We investigated how experiencing an occupational AAG after transition to vocational education and training (VET) affects three domains of subjective well-being (SWB) among adolescents in Germany (general life, job, and income satisfaction). Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we could track respondents' SWB during the transition to and during VET. Results from latent growth curve models revealed that both under- and overachievement of aspirations (i.e., negative and positive AAGs) reduced initial levels of SWB after VET entry-especially work-related satisfaction (i.e., income and job satisfaction). Individuals with an AAG (both negative and positive) tended to experience a slightly larger increase in SWB during VET than those who met their aspirations. Overall, our results suggest that the decisive factor for adolescents' SWB is not the SES of the VET position they attain, but rather whether that position is the exact type of position to which they aspired.

Justice Evaluation of the Income Distribution (JEID): Development and validation of a short scale for the subjective assessment of objective differences in earnings.

Justice evaluations are proposed to provide a link between the objective level of inequality and the consequences at the individual and societal level. Available instruments, however, focus on the subjective perception of inequality and income distributions. In light of findings that subjective perceptions of inequality and income levels can be biased and subject to method effects, we present the newly developed Justice Evaluation of the Income Distribution (JEID) Scale, which captures justice evaluations of the actual earnings distribution. JEID comprises five items that provide respondents with earnings information for five groups at different segments along the distribution of earnings in a given country. We provide a German-language and an English-language version of the scale. The German-language version was developed and validated based on three comprehensive heterogeneous quota samples from Germany; the translated English-language version was validated in one comprehensive heterogeneous quota sample from the UK. Using latent profile analysis and k-means clustering, we identified three typical response patterns, which we labeled "inequality averse," "bottom-inequality averse," and "status quo justification." JEID was found to be related to normative orientations in the sense that egalitarian views were associated with stronger injustice evaluations at the bottom and top ends of the earnings distribution. With a completion time of between 1.50 and 2.75 min, the JEID scale can be applied in any self-report survey in the social sciences to investigate the distribution, precursors, and consequences of individuals' subjective evaluations of objective differences in earnings.

An English-Language adaptation and validation of the Justice Sensitivity Short Scales-8 (JSS-8).

The construct of justice sensitivity has four perspectives that capture individual differences in the strength of reactions to injustice when becoming a victim of injustice (victim sensitivity), when witnessing injustice as an outsider (observer sensitivity), when passively benefitting from an injustice done to others (beneficiary sensitivity), or when committing an injustice (perpetrator sensitivity). Individual differences in these four justice sensitivity perspectives are highly relevant in moral research. With just eight items in total, the Justice Sensitivity Short Scales-8 (JSS-8) are a very efficient way to measure the four perspectives. JSS-8 was initially constructed in German (Ungerechtigkeitssensibilität-Skalen-8, USS-8) and later translated into English. In the present study, we empirically validated this English-language adaptation in a heterogeneous quota sample from the UK. The results show that the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability, validity, standardization) of JSS-8 are good, and that they are comparable with those of the German-language source version. Because of the invariance of loadings, intercepts, and residual variances, researchers can compare manifest scale statistics (i.e., means, variances) of JSS-8 across the UK and Germany. JSS-8 is thus particularly suitable for measuring justice sensitivity in various research areas with constraints on assessment time and questionnaire space.

Changing contexts of youth development: an overview of recent social trends and a psychological model.

Globalization and economic change are translated into a variety of changes in the proximal contexts of youth development, which are perceived and tackled differently by different individuals.

Beyond Competencies: Associations between Personality and School Grades Are Largely Independent of Subject-Specific and General Cognitive Competencies.

The Big Five personality traits are established predictors of school grades. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not yet well understood. Effects of personality on grades might arise because behavioral tendencies facilitate learning and increase subject-specific competencies. Alternatively, personality effects on grades might be independent of cognitive competencies and reflect otherwise valued behaviors or teachers' grading practices. In the current study, we drew on large-scale data of 7th and 9th graders in Germany to explore the extent to which personality predicted grades even after accounting for competencies. Controlling for competencies and other key covariates, we cross-sectionally and longitudinally examined personality-grade associations across different school subjects, grade levels, and school types. Results indicate that the predictive power of personality is largely independent of subject-specific and general cognitive competencies. The largest effects emerged for conscientiousness. For openness, associations with grades partly overlapped with competencies, suggesting that openness may operate by fostering competencies. Overall, our results suggest that the associations between personality and grades unfold mostly independently of course mastery. This finding underlines the socioemotional value of personality in the classroom and encourages a more fine-grained view of the interplay between personality, competencies, classroom behavior, and grades.

Fluid Intelligence and Competence Development in Secondary Schooling: No Evidence for a Moderating Role of Conscientiousness.

Fluid intelligence and conscientiousness are important predictors of students' academic performance and competence gains. Although their individual contributions have been widely acknowledged, less is known about their potential interplay. Do students profit disproportionately from being both smart and conscientious? We addressed this question using longitudinal data from two large student samples of the German National Educational Panel Study. In the first sample, we analyzed reading and mathematics competencies of 3778 fourth graders (Mage = 9.29, 51% female) and gains therein until grade 7. In the second sample, we analyzed the same competencies in 4942 seventh graders (Mage = 12.49, 49% female) and gains therein until grade 9. The results of (moderated) latent change score models supported fluid intelligence as the most consistent predictor of competence levels and gains, whereas conscientiousness predicted initial competence levels in mathematics and reading as well as gains in mathematics (but not reading) only in the older sample. There was no evidence for interaction effects between fluid intelligence and conscientiousness. We found only one statistically significant synergistic interaction in the older sample for gains in reading competence, which disappeared when including covariates. Although our findings point to largely independent effects of fluid intelligence and conscientiousness on competence gains, we delineate avenues for future research to illuminate their potential interplay.

The impulsive behavior short scale-8 (I-8): A comprehensive validation of the English-language adaptation.

The Impulsive Behavior Short Scale-8 (I-8) measures the psychological construct of impulsivity with four subscales comprising two items each (completion time < 1 min). The aim of the present study was threefold: (1) to assess the psychometric properties (objectivity, reliability, and validity) of the English-language I-8; (2) to compare these psychometric properties with those of the original German-language source version of the scale; and (3) to test the cross-national comparability of the scale via measurement invariance tests. For this purpose, we used heterogeneous quota samples from the UK and Germany. Our results indicate that I-8 is a reliable and valid short scale with highly comparable psychometric properties across both language versions. In addition, I-8 showed a highly similar correlational pattern with various extraneous variables across the two nations. Furthermore, partial scalar invariance and full invariance of residual variances held, allowing the comparison of latent means and observed (co)variances across nations. I-8 lends itself as a measure of impulsive behavior especially in surveys in which assessment time is limited, such as in large-scale cross-national surveys.