What Motives Do People Most Want to Know About When Meeting Another Person? An Investigation Into Prioritization of Information About Seven Fundamental Motives.

What information about a person's personality do people want to know? Prior research has focused on behavioral traits, but personality is also characterized in terms of motives. Four studies (N = 1,502) assessed participants' interest in information about seven fundamental social motives (self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate seeking, mate retention, kin care) across 12 experimental conditions that presented details about the person or situation. In the absence of details about specific situations, participants most highly prioritized learning about kin care and mate retention motives. There was some variability across conditions, but the kin care motive was consistently highly prioritized. Additional results from Studies 1 to 4 and Study 5 (N = 174) showed the most highly prioritized motives were perceived to be stable across time and to be especially diagnostic of a person's trustworthiness, warmth, competence, and dependability. Findings are discussed in relation to research on fundamental social motives and pragmatic perspectives on person perception.

Invalidating childhood environments and nonsuicidal self-injury in university students: Depression and mental pain as potential mediators.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential mediating effects of depression and psychache (i.e., extreme mental pain) on the relationship between parental invalidation and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in young adults. METHOD: A sample of 2474 university students responded to previously validated measures of current NSSI, childhood parental invalidation, depression, and psychache. RESULTS: Using a parallel mediation model, path analysis using structural equation modeling demonstrated full mediation by depression and psychache of the link between parental invalidation and NSSI. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that the association between invalidating childhood environments and NSSI has the potential to be mitigated by addressing issues of depression and psychache.