Towards a comprehensive science of situations: On the importance of typicality and the lexical approach.

The two commentaries to the CAPTION derivation paper (Parrigon, Woo, Tay, & Wang, 2017) provided insightful points regarding the consistency of emergent dimensional structures in the extant literature (Rauthmann & Sherman, 2018, p. 482) and potential concerns regarding the use of the lexical approach to identify psychologically important situation dimensions (Reis, 2018, p. 489). In this rejoinder, we seek to further these important discussions by (a) emphasizing the importance of Typicality in understanding a broad range of psychological processes, (b) clarifying the utility of broad, dimensional-based situation taxonomies such as the CAPTION model for providing key theoretical and empirical linkages across discrete situations, as well as for capturing a broad range of psychologically meaningful dimensions of situations, and (c) reaffirming the need for cross-cultural/language and facet-level investigations of the CAPTION dimensions in future research. We hope that these discussions continue to advance the field toward a more comprehensive science of situations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cultural and Intellectual Openness Differentially Relate to Social Judgments of Potential Work Partners.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates the differential functioning of cultural and intellectual openness (the two aspects of Openness to Experience) in relation to social cognitive processes by examining how they influence people's perceptions and interpretations of social information when deciding to initiate working relationships. METHOD: Using a policy-capturing design, 681 adult participants were asked to rate their similarity to and preference to work with potential work partners characterized by varying nationalities and levels of work-related competence. Multilevel moderated mediation was conducted to simultaneously evaluate whether the indirect effects of potential work partners' characteristics (i.e., nationalities and levels of work-related competence) on work partner preference through perceived similarity were moderated by cultural and intellectual openness. RESULTS: Perceived similarity mediated the relationships between work partner nationality and work-related competence and participants' work partner preferences. Furthermore, the negative indirect effect of work partner nationality on work partner preference via perceived similarity was attenuated by cultural openness, and the positive indirect effect of work partner work-related competence on work partner preference via perceived similarity was strengthened by intellectual openness. CONCLUSIONS: Cultural and intellectual openness may have distinct functions that influence how people perceive, evaluate, and appreciate social information when making social judgments.

CAPTION-ing the situation: A lexically-derived taxonomy of psychological situation characteristics.

In comparison with personality taxonomic research, there has been much less advancement toward establishing an integrative taxonomy of psychological situation characteristics (similar to personality characteristics for persons). One of the main concerns has been the limited content coverage of the characteristics being used. To address this issue, we present a collection of 4 lexically based studies using the largest-to-date number of situation characteristics to identify the major dimensions of the psychological situation. These studies each implemented a unique sampling and analytic methodology-namely, a qualitative dimensional exploration; the factor analyses of 2, independent samples of large-scale in situ ratings of situations; and the use of lexical-vector representations from neural-network-based models derived from millions of sources of natural-language usage with a total of 146.7 billion words. Across these studies, a clear 7-dimensional structure emerged: Complexity, Adversity, Positive Valence, Typicality, Importance, Humor, and Negative Valence-collectively referred to as the "CAPTION" model, which parsimoniously integrates the diversity of dimensions found in the extant literature. We then introduce both full- and short-form measures of these CAPTION. Data from 2 additional diverse samples of native English speakers suggest that the measures have good psychometric properties, and are able to predict a broad range of important psychological outcomes (e.g., behaviors, affect, motivation, and need satisfaction), even when pitted against extant situation taxonomic frameworks. We conclude by discussing how the CAPTION framework may serve as a useful tool for conceptualizing and measuring a broad range of psychological situations across all areas of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record

Graphical Descriptives: A Way to Improve Data Transparency and Methodological Rigor in Psychology.

Several calls have recently been issued to the social sciences for enhanced transparency of research processes and enhanced rigor in the methodological treatment of data and data analytics. We propose the use of graphical descriptives (GDs) as one mechanism for responding to both of these calls. GDs provide a way to visually examine data. They serve as quick and efficient tools for checking data distributions, variable relations, and the potential appropriateness of different statistical analyses (e.g., do data meet the minimum assumptions for a particular analytic method). Consequently, we believe that GDs can promote increased transparency in the journal review process, encourage best practices for data analysis, and promote a more inductive approach to understanding psychological data. We illustrate the value of potentially including GDs as a step in the peer-review process and provide a user-friendly online resource (www.graphicaldescriptives.org) for researchers interested in including data visualizations in their research. We conclude with suggestions on how GDs can be expanded and developed to enhance transparency.