Personality, posttraumatic stress and trauma type: factors contributing to posttraumatic growth and its domains in a Turkish community sample

Background: Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is conceptualized as a positive transformation resulting from coping with and processing traumatic life events. This study examined the contributory roles of personality traits, posttraumatic stress (PTS) severity and their interactions on PTG and its domains, as assessed with the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory Turkish form (PTGI-T). The study also examined the differences in PTG domains between survivors of accidents, natural disasters and unexpected loss of a loved one. Methods: The Basic Personality Traits Inventory, Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale, and PTGI-T were administered to a large stratified cluster community sample of 969 Turkish adults in their home settings. Results: The results showed that conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness to experience significantly related to the total PTG and most of the domains. The effects of extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience were moderated by the PTS severity for some domains. PTG in relating to others and appreciation of life domains was lower for the bereaved group. Conclusion: Further research should examine the mediating role of coping between personality and PTG using a longitudinal design

The distinctive associations of interpersonal problems with personality beliefs within the framework of cognitive theory of personality disorders

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between interpersonal prob- lems and dysfunctional beliefs associated with personality disorders, within the framework of cognitive theory of personality disorders. Based on the proposition of cognitive theory, diferent dimensions of interpersonal problems which were assessed through the coordinates of interpersonal circumplex model were expected to be associated with specifc categories of personality beliefs namely, deprecating, infated, and ambivalent personality beliefs. Participants were 997 volunteer adults (304 males and 693 females) from Turkey, between the ages of 18 and 61. They completed the personality belief questionnaire, basic personality traits inventory, and inventory of interpersonal problems measures. Considering the well-established rep- resentations of personality disorders in Big Five space, and correspondence between fve-factor model of personality and interpersonal circumplex model, the present study examined the hypothesized associations via a robust analysis where strongly relevant personality factors were statistically controlled for in each analysis. Results revealed that diferent dimensions of interpersonal problems distinctively associated with three personality belief categories; deprecating beliefs were associated with over-friendly submissiveness, infated beliefs were associated with dominance, and ambivalent beliefs were associated with hostile/cold dominance. Findings supported the validity of cognitive formulations (view of self and view of others) of the per- sonality disorders proposed by the cognitive theory, also highlighted the priority of interpersonal problems in personality psychopathology

Warm and harsh parenting as mediators of the relation between maternal and adolescent emotion regulation

Maternal hostility/rejection and warmth were considered as potential mediators of the relation between mothers' and adolescents' emotion regulation. Participants were first-year high school students living in Ankara, Turkey and their mothers (N=365). Scales assessing emotion regulation difficulties and maternal hostility/rejection and warmth were administered to both the adolescents and their mothers. Maternal hostility/rejection, but not warmth, mediated the relation between maternal and adolescent emotion regulation. For girls there was, additionally, a direct effect of maternal emotion regulation. The different roles played by parental rejection and parental warmth in the development of adolescents' emotion regulation accord with arguments that socialization occurs in different domains and that rejection and warmth are not aspects of the same domain. © 2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents.110K333This study was conducted using the data of the first author's phd dissertation. It is the part of a larger project on emotion regulation of adolescents and their psychological well-being, supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) (Project no: 110K333)

Analytic thought training promotes liberalism on contextualized (but not stable) political opinions

Yılmaz, Onurcan (Dogus Author)Previous research revealed that inducing an intuitive thinking style led people to adopt more conservative social and economic attitudes. No prior study, however, has shown a causal effect of analytic cognitive style (ACS) on political conservatism. It is also not clear whether these cognitive-style manipulations influence stable or contextualized (less stable) political attitudes differentially. The current research investigated the causal effect of ACS on both stable and contextualized political opinions. In Experiment 1, we briefly trained participants to think analytically (or not) and assessed their contextualized and stable political attitudes. Those in the analytic thinking group responded more positively to liberal (but not conservative) arguments on contextualized opinions. However, no significant change occurred in stable opinions. In Experiment 2, we replicated this basic finding with a larger sample. Thus, the results demonstrate that inducing ACS causally influences contextualized liberal attitudes, but not stable ones

Role of Positive and Negative Affect on Coping Strategies of Turkish Drivers

Driving is a complex and demanding activity, thus, is mostly accompanied with stress, which is found to influence psychological and physiological health of driver, resulting with increased probability of fatal accidents. Matthews developed first driver stress model, which is a demonstration of interactions between environmental stressors, driver cognitive stress processes, personality traits related with stress vulnerability and stress outcome experiencing by driver. Dispositional affect characteristics are one of the most notable elements of coping strategies. Many studies prove that affects can predict coping strategies. This study is conducted to understand the relationship between dispositional affect characteristics of Turkish drivers and their coping strategies. Results indicate that dispositional affect of drivers are able to predict their coping strategies. Possible implications of these findings are discussed