Who attains social status? Effects of personality and physical attractiveness in social groups.

One of the most important goals and outcomes of social life is to attain status in the groups to which we belong. Such face-to-face status is defined by the amount of respect, influence, and prominence each member enjoys in the eyes of the others. Three studies investigated personological determinants of status in social groups (fraternity, sorority, and dormitory), relating the Big Five personality traits and physical attractiveness to peer ratings of status. High Extraversion substantially predicted elevated status for both sexes. High Neuroticism, incompatible with male gender norms, predicted lower status in men. None of the other Big Five traits predicted status. These effects were independent of attractiveness, which predicted higher status only in men. Contrary to previous claims, women's status ordering was just as stable as men's but emerged later. Discussion focuses on personological pathways to attaining status and on potential mediators.

Los Cinco Grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: multitrait multimethod analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English.

Spanish-language measures of the Big Five personality dimensions are needed for research on Hispanic minority populations. Three studies were conducted to evaluate a Spanish version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI) (O. P. John et al., 1991) and explore the generalizability of the Big Five factor structure in Latin cultural groups. In Study 1, a cross-cultural design was used to compare the Spanish and English BFI in college students from Spain and the United States, to assess factor congruence across languages, and to test convergence with indigenous Spanish Big Five markers. In Study 2, a bilingual design was used to compare the Spanish and English BFI in a college-educated sample of bilingual Hispanics and to test convergent and discriminant validity across the two languages as well as with the NEO Five Factor Inventory in both English and Spanish. Study 3 replicated the BFI findings from Study 2 in a working-class Hispanic bilingual sample. Results show that (a) the Spanish BFI may serve as an efficient, reliable, and factorially valid measure of the Big Five for research on Spanish-speaking individuals and (b) there is little evidence for substantial cultural differences in personality structure at the broad level of abstraction represented by the Big Five dimensions.

Personality prototypes and ego development: conceptual similarities and relations in adult women.

Three studies investigated how three personality prototypes (K. York & O.P. John, 1992) relate to J. Loevinger's (1976) stages of ego development (ED). Study 1 examined their conceptual similarities, and Study 2 their relations in a sample of adult women. In both studies, the personality prototypes mapped onto regions defined by multiple ED stages: The Individuated prototype was most likely to reach the high region of ED (Individualistic, Autonomous, and Integrated); the Traditional prototype was most likely to function in the middle region (Conformist, Self-aware, and Conscientious); and the Conflicted prototype was more likely to remain in the low region (Impulsive and Self-protective). In addition to these between-prototype differences, Study 3 explored whether differences in life outcomes within the prototypes are also related to ED; findings suggest that personality prototype and ego development may interact in shaping the life course.

Traits and motives: toward an integration of two traditions in personality research.

After reviewing classic and current conceptions of trait (as measured by questionnaires) and motive (as measured by the Thematic Apperception Test [TAT] or other imaginative verbal behavior), the authors suggest that these 2 concepts reflect 2 fundamentally different elements of personality--conceptually distinct and empirically unrelated. The authors propose that traits and motives interact in the prediction of behavior: Traits channel the behavioral expression of motives throughout the life course. The authors illustrate this interactive hypothesis in 2 longitudinal studies, focusing on the broad trait of extraversion and the 2 social motives of affiliation and power. In interaction with extraversion, both motives show predicted and replicated relations to independently measured life outcomes in the domains of relationships and careers. Extraversion facilitates unconflicted motive expression, whereas introversion deflects social motives away from their characteristic goals and creates difficulties in goal attainment.

Do people know how they behave? Self-reported act frequencies compared with on-line codings by observers.

Behavioral acts constitute the building blocks of interpersonal perception and the basis for inferences about personality traits. How reliably can observers code the acts individuals perform in a specific situation? How valid are retrospective self-reports of these acts? Participants interacted in a group-discussion task and then reported their act frequencies, which were later coded by observers from videotapes. For each act, observer-observer agreement, self-observer agreement, and self-enhancement bias were examined. Findings show that (a) agreement varied greatly across acts; (b) much of this variation was predictable from properties of the acts (observability, base rate, desirability, Big Five domain); (c) on average, self-reports were positively distorted; and (d) this was particularly true for narcissistic individuals. Discussion focuses on implications for research on acts, traits, social perception, and the act frequency approach.

Mapping the domain of expressivity: multimethod evidence for a hierarchical model.

Increased interest in emotional expressivity has led to a proliferation of conceptions and measures. It is unclear, however, whether they all refer to the same construct and whether the domain of emotional expressivity is best conceptualized as unidimensional or multifaceted. Study 1 examined 6 common expressivity questionnaires, yielding 5 factors: Expressive Confidence, Positive Expressivity, Negative Expressivity, Impulse Intensity, and Masking. To develop a nomological network for these factors, the factors were related to broader personality taxonomies and their differential relations to sex and ethnicity were tested. Study 2 provided further evidence of discriminant validity in relation to (a) typical emotion expression in peer relationships, (b) ability to pose emotions in the laboratory, (c) likability, and (d) regulation of emotion and mood. These findings support a hierarchical model of individual differences in emotional expressivity.

A hostility scale for the California Psychological Inventory: MMPI, observer Q-sort, and big-five correlates.

Using two samples, we developed and validated a hostility scale that can be scored from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and serves as an alternate for the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (Ho; Cook & Medley, 1954). The CPI Hostility (H) scale consists of 33 items that are either duplicates or close equivalents of specific Ho items, and the two scales correlate at least .90 in samples differing in sex. The H and Ho scales show a similar pattern of correlations with conceptually relevant MMPI scales and with observer-rated personality attributes tapping Barefoot, Peterson, et al.'s (1991) five hostility categories of Hostile Affect, Cynicism, Aggressive Responding, Social Avoidance, and Hostile Attributions. These findings provide evidence for the equivalence of the two hostility scales, as well as external validation for those personality characteristics that are purported to underlie the construct of hostility as tapped by both the original Ho scale and the new CPI H scale.

Revealing feelings: facets of emotional expressivity in self-reports, peer ratings, and behavior.

Drawing on an explicit model of emotion, we propose a multifaceted approach to emotional expressivity, defined as the behavioral (e.g., facial, postural) changes associated with emotion. Study 1 shows that self-reported expressivity has 3 facets (Impulse Strength, Negative Expressivity, Positive Expressivity). Study 2 shows that the same 3 facets emerge in peer ratings and that there are robust relations between self- and peer-rated expressivity. In Study 3, emotion-expressive behavior was videotaped and related to expressivity self-reports obtained several months earlier. As expected, Negative Expressivity predicted behavioral expressions of sadness (but not amusement), whereas Positive Expressivity predicted amusement (but not sadness). These relations remained even when subjective emotional experience and physiological response were controlled. These studies demonstrate the importance of a multifaceted approach to emotional expressivity and have implications for the understanding of personality and emotion.

On the nature of self-monitoring: construct explication with Q-sort ratings.

To explicate M. Snyder's (1987) construct of self-monitoring (SM), a new Q-sort prototype is introduced. Analyses of Q-sorts by both observers and self demonstrated cross-method convergent validity for the revised 18-item Self-Monitoring Scale (SMS-R) and its Public Performing subscale; however, neither scale showed discriminant validity against measures of extraversion. The Other-Directedness items remaining on the SMS-R correlated neither with the other measures of SM nor with extraversion. These findings suggest that the scale revision led to a conceptual shift toward extraverted (and away from other-directed) features of self-presentation. To adequately assess the conceptual domain of SM phenomena, researchers should administer the original 25-item SMS (not the abbreviated 18-item SMS-R) and score Public Performing and Other-Directedness separately to examine their individual and joint effects.

Resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled boys: three replicable personality types.

Three replicable personality types were identified in a sample of 300 adolescent boys and shown to generalize across African Americans and Caucasians. The types had conceptually coherent relations with the Big Five dimensions, ego resiliency, and ego control, and converged with three of the types identified by J. Block (1971). The behavioral implications of the types were explored using several independent data sources. Resilients were intelligent, successful in school, unlikely to be delinquents, and relatively free of psychopathology; Overcontrollers shared some of these characteristics but were also prone to internalizing problems; and Undercontrollers showed a general pattern of academic, behavioral, and emotional problems. This research demonstrates that replicable and generalizable personality types can be identified empirically, and that the unique constellation of traits defining an individual has important consequences for a wide range of outcomes.

The "little five": exploring the nomological network of the five-factor model of personality in adolescent boys.

The California Child Q-set (CCQ) was used to explore the structure of personality in early adolescence and to develop scales to measure the "Big Five" dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Mothers provided Q-sorts of 350 ethnically diverse boys between 12 and 13 years old. Analyses of the construct validity of the scales provided a nomological network relating the Big Five to theoretically and socially important criterion variables, such as juvenile delinquency, Externalizing and Internalizing disorders of childhood psychopathology, school performance, IQ, SES, and race. These effects were obtained using diverse methods, including self-reports from the boys, ratings by their mothers and their teachers, and objective-test data. In addition to the Big Five, analyses also suggested 2 possibly age-specific dimensions of personality in early adolescence. Discussion is focused on the changing manifestations of personality traits throughout development.

Accuracy and bias in self-perception: individual differences in self-enhancement and the role of narcissism.

Accuracy and bias in self-perceptions of performance were studied in a managerial group-discussion task. Ss ranked their own performance and were ranked by the 5 other group members and by 11 assessment staff members. Although the self-perceptions showed convergent validity with the staff criterion, Ss were less accurate when judging themselves than when judging their peers. On average, Ss evaluated their performance slightly more positively than their performance was evaluated by either the peers or the staff; however, this general self-enhancement effect was dwarfed by substantial individual differences, which ranged from self-enhancements to self-diminishment bias and were strongly related to four measures of narcissism. Discussion focuses on issues in assessing the accuracy of self-perceptions and the implications of the findings for individual differences in self-perception bias and the role of narcissism.

Determinants of interjudge agreement on personality traits: the big five domains, observability, evaluativeness, and the unique perspective of the self.

We examined several determinants of interjudge agreement on personality traits. The findings, which were cross-validated in two samples, suggest that agreement is a function of four factors: which Big Five content domain the trait represents, how observable relevant behaviors are, how evaluative the trait is, and whether the self is one of the judges. Agreement was highest for traits related to Extraversion and lowest for traits related to Agreeableness. More observable and less evaluative traits elicited higher interjudge agreement. On average, self-peer agreement was lower than peer-peer agreement. However, this effect was limited to evaluative traits; for neutral traits, self-peer agreement was as high as peer-peer agreement. These findings suggest that self- and peer perception proceed through similar processes for neutral traits but not for highly evaluative traits, raising the possibility that self-perceptions become distorted when the trait is affectively charged.

The divided self: concurrent and longitudinal effects of psychological adjustment and social roles on self-concept differentiation.

The relation between self-concept differentiation (SCD), the tendency to see oneself as having different personality characteristics in different social roles, and psychological adjustment was examined in a sample of college students and a sample of middle-aged women. In both studies, Ss with high levels of SCD showed poor emotional adjustment (e.g., depression) and tended to reject social norms and conventions (e.g., low socialization). Longitudinal analyses demonstrated that these same characteristics measured at age 21 predicted SCD measured more than 30 years later in middle age. These findings provide strong evidence that SCD is a sign of fragmentation of the self rather than specialization of role identities. The social context was also an important determinant of SCD; both dissatisfaction with role performance and frequent role changes in relationships and jobs predicted SCD measured 9 years later.

The four faces of eve: a typological analysis of women's personality at midlife.

In an analysis of adult personality structure, types are defined as prototypes rather than as discrete categories. Using inverse factor analyses of archival Q-sort descriptions, 4 type factors were replicated in a cross-validation design. These prototypes are interpreted as Individuated, Traditional, Conflicted, and Assured and are related to Rank's (1945) theoretical analysis of different modes of adjustment. These prototypes capture particular combinations of personality dimensions, such as Ego Resiliency, Ego Control, and the Big Five, and converge with the types identified by Block (1971). Further analyses using 13 clusters of scales from 3 broad-band self-report inventories validated the Q-sort-based interpretations and showed a distinct and theoretically consistent patterning for each of the types.

An introduction to the five-factor model and its applications.

The five-factor model of personality is a hierarchical organization of personality traits in terms of five basic dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. Research using both natural language adjectives and theoretically based personality questionnaires supports the comprehensiveness of the model and its applicability across observers and cultures. This article summarizes the history of the model and its supporting evidence; discusses conceptions of the nature of the factors; and outlines an agenda for theorizing about the origins and operation of the factors. We argue that the model should prove useful both for individual assessment and for the elucidation of a number of topics of interest to personality psychologists.

Automatic vigilance: the attention-grabbing power of negative social information.

One of the functions of automatic stimulus evaluation is to direct attention toward events that may have undesirable consequences for the perceiver's well-being. To test whether attentional resources are automatically directed away from an attended task to undesirable stimuli, Ss named the colors in which desirable and undesirable traits (e.g., honest, sadistic) appeared. Across 3 experiments, color-naming latencies were consistently longer for undesirable traits but did not differ within the desirable and undesirable categories. In Experiment 2, Ss also showed more incidental learning for undesirable traits, as predicted by the automatic vigilance (but not a perceptual defense) hypothesis. In Experiment 3, a diagnosticity (or base-rate) explanation of the vigilance effect was ruled out. The implications for deliberate processing in person perception and stereotyping are discussed.

The basic level in personality-trait hierarchies: studies of trait use and accessibility in different contexts.

A person's behavior and experiences can be described at different levels of abstraction. For example, a person might be described as charitable, as generous, as kind, or as good. Is there a level in such a trait hierarchy that is particularly useful in personality descriptions? The present 4 studies show that there is indeed a general preference for a particular level; the size of this preference depends on the familiarity and likability of the target people, which included various others and the self. These findings suggest that in trait hierarchies, people prefer the highest level of abstraction that is still descriptive of behavior (e.g., kind) over more descriptive subordinate levels (e.g., charitable and generous) and over an even broader level devoid of descriptive meaning (e.g., good). This level is basic in that it represents the optimal resolution of the trade-off between bandwidth and fidelity that characterizes all hierarchies.

Conceptions of states and traits: dimensional attributes with ideals as prototypes.

Traits and states are concepts that people use to both describe and understand themselves and others. We show that people view these concepts as prototype-based categories that have a graded internal structure and fuzzy boundaries and identify a set of attributes that define the prototypical cores of two categories: traits and states. Prototypical traits are stable, long-lasting, and internally caused. Prototypical states are temporary, brief, and caused by external circumstances. These prototypes are not defined by averages, as the family-resemblance principle would suggest, but by ideal (or extreme) attribute values. Like other ideal-based categories, traits and states serve particular goals. Trait concepts permit people to predict the present from the past; state concepts identify those behaviors that can be controlled by manipulating the situation. These two complementary schemas are part of the extensive theory of psychological causality that is implicit in language. Abstract social concepts differ from object categories in their category standards, the nature of their attributes, and the interrelations among those attributes.