Developmental regulation before and after a developmental deadline: the sample case of "biological clock" for childbearing.

This quasi-experimental research investigates developmental regulation around a critical life-span transition, the "biological clock" for childbearing. The action-phase model of developmental regulation proposes contrasting control orientations in individuals approaching versus those having passed a developmental deadline. Individuals in an urgency phase close to the deadline should be invested in goal pursuit, whereas those who have passed the deadline without attaining the goal should focus on goal disengagement and self-protection. In 2 studies, women at different ages and with or without children were compared with regard to various indicators of primary and secondary control striving for goal attainment versus goal disengagement and self-protection. Findings support the action-phase model of developmental regulation. Patterns of control striving congruent with the participants' status as pre- versus postdeadline were associated with superior psychological well-being.

Toward a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: traits as density distribution of states.

Three experience-sampling studies explored the distributions of Big-Five-relevant states (behavior) across 2 to 3 weeks of everyday life. Within-person variability was high, such that the typical individual regularly and routinely manifested nearly all levels of all traits in his or her everyday behavior. Second, individual differences in central tendencies of behavioral distributions were almost perfectly stable. Third, amount of behavioral variability (and skew and kurtosis) were revealed as stable individual differences. Finally, amount of within-person variability in extraversion was shown to reflect individual differences in reactivity to extraversion-relevant situational cues. Thus, decontextualized and noncontingent Big-Five content is highly useful for descriptions of individuals' density distributions as wholes. Simultaneously, contextualized and contingent personality units (e.g., conditional traits, goals) are needed for describing the considerable within-person variation.

More or less "me" in past, present, and future: perceived lifetime personality during adulthood.

This article examines whether adults perceive different levels of their own personality traits at different target ages, and what the differences are. Using abbreviated versions of assessments of the 5-factor model of personality (NEO-FFI, P.T. Costa & R.R. McCrae, 1989) and of well-being (C. D. Ryff, 1989), 398 heterogeneous participants (age 26-64) described their own personality (a) in the present, (b) when they were 20-25 years old, (c) when they will be 65-70 years old, and (d) in the ideal. Participants' responses across the 3 target ages indicated moderate change across adulthood and more variability than is typically observed in longitudinal studies of adult personality development. Anticipated late adulthood personality contained more losses than gains, although all target ages showed some gains. Participants' perceptions were characterized by early adulthood exploration, middle adulthood productivity, and later adulthood comfortableness. Additionally, older adults reported slightly lower ideals but in other ways responded very similarly to younger and middle-aged adults.

Daydreaming, absorption and hypnotizability.

The revised form of the Absorption Scale extracted from Tellegen's Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (Tellegen, 1981; Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974) and the Short Imaginal Processes Inventory (Huba, Aneshensel, & Singer, 1981), a self-report questionnaire concerned with daydreaming activity, were administered to 2 samples of Ss (N = 479, N = 476), who also received the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A (Shor & E. Orne, 1962). In both samples, hypnotizability was significantly correlated with absorption (average r = .24) and with a subscale measuring positive-constructive daydreaming (average r = .13). Absorption and positive-constructive daydreaming were also highly correlated (average r = .57). Of the subscales of the positive-constructive daydreaming scale, only those relating to positive reactions to daydreaming, and problem solving in daydreaming, consistently correlated with hypnotizability. Daydreaming and absorption each share some features in common with hypnosis, but they appear to have more in common with each other.