Stability and change in personality and personality disorders

In this paper, we review recent findings related to stability and change in personality and personality disorder. Estimates of stability vary depending on a number of methodological and substantive factors. These factors include the type of stability being examined, the type of construct being assessed, the method being used to assess personality, how participants are sampled, and developmental trends in personality stability and change. We describe current evidence about personality stability with respect to each of these factors. We conclude that current gaps in the literature can be filled by more carefully attending to factors that impact estimates of stability and change, and provide recommendations about how future research can fill those gaps

Assessing Personality Change: Introduction to the Special Section

Both clinical and personality psychologists are interested in assessing personality change, although they have tended to approach the issue in different ways. In this paper we argue that both sub-fields should focus more on basic issues in the assessment of personality change, and that they would make more progress on this issue together than alone. This Special Section on the Assessment of Personality Change includes four papers by researchers working primarily in basic personality science. Each paper addresses specific ways to advance the assessment of personality change that have both basic and applied clinical relevance, but collectively they show how far the field still has to go

Personality and Compassion for Animals

People vary in their compassion for animals, likely due in part to more variation in more basic personality and interpersonal behavior attributes. Previous research has generally suggested that more communal and agreeable people also tend to be more compassionate to animals. However, this research is limited regarding the range and depth of individual differences used to examine this issue. The goal of this preregistered study was to extend previous research by examining associations between compassion for animals and a wider range of variables than has been previously examined. In a representative sample of American adults (n = 992), we tested associations between compassion for animals and (a) Big Five personality trait domains, (b) Big Five trait aspects, (c) maladaptive Big Five trait domains, (d) interpersonal values, and (e) interpersonal problems. Results supported our hypothesis that compassion for animals is related to communion/agreeableness and openness to experience. Consistent with our hypotheses, the compassionate aspect of agreeableness drove correlations with that trait. Contrary to our hypotheses, maladaptive antagonism was not more strongly related to compassion for animals than normal-range agreeableness. The results provide a fuller portrait of the personological foundation of compassion for animals. Specifically, people who are more communal/agreeable and open tend to be more compassionate toward animals. This suggests that personality-related patterns of behavior among humans extend to human-animal interactions. Results also provide a basis for future work examining the mechanisms underlying human compassion for animals

Stress Evaluation of Welded Steel Bridges on Coal-Haul Routes

This report describes the procedure developed and being employed to determine and assess live-load stresses in structural members of welded steel bridges on extended· weight coal haul routes. Those bridges are routinely subjected to loads from coal trucks in excess of those permitted on other routes. Those elevated loads may result in high stresses in bridge members. Of principal concern are certain weld details on steel bridges that are susceptible to fatigue cracking when subject to high live-load stresses. Seventeen welded steel bridges on extended-weight coal haul routes have been identified for investigation under this study. The study test procedure consists of 1) a review of coal-haul data and plans to identify lanes of a bridge subject to greatest coal-truck loading, 2) identification of weld details of interest for analysis on portions of the bridge superstructure subject to high live-load stresses, 3) field application of strain gages to measure live-load stresses at locations of interest on a bridge, 4) continuous monitoring of live stresses from routine traffic for an extended period and 5) data retrieval and reduction and fatigue analysis. Fatigue analysis is based on the number of stress cycles measured during the field test and the equivalent resolved live-load stress. That is compared to the 1992 AASHTO fatigue performance data for applicable structural details (e.g. welded connections). An exemplary use of the study test procedure is given for the KY 15 bridge over the North Fork of the Kentucky River and KY SO in Perry Co. This report describes the test locations, test procedures and results of the derived test data. The field tests will indicate the level of live-load stresses to which the bridges are exposed. Additionally, the fatigue analyses may indicate whether welded steel bridges on extended-weight coal haul routes are susceptible to fatigue damage

Summary of Stress Evaluations of Welded Steel Bridges on Coal-Haul Routes

Stress analyses were performed on continuous girder welded steel bridges on extended weights coal-haul routes. The tests were intended to determine whether extended weight coal trucks pose fatigue problems to those bridges. Measurements were performed by strain gaging selected bridges subject to high coal transport tonnages. Stress measurements were conducted on fatigue-prone weld details or test sites where high tensile stresses were anticipated. Test sites on the bridges were instrumented with strain gages. Strains induced by routine traffic including coal trucks were monitored for periods of one to two weeks. Unattended monitoring of the variable amplitude strain data was performed using rainflow counting. Eighteen successful tests were performed on 15 coal-haul route bridges and one interstate bridge. The derived strain data are provided as stress histograms. Fatigue analyses were performed by expressing the stress histogram data as single-value equivalent stresses. The accumulated number of stress cycles was estimated using 3 different assumptions based upon variations in traffic. Accumulated stress cycles were determined over the current age of each weld detail and a projected service life of 75 years. Susceptibility to fatigue was determined by superimposing the equivalent resolved stresses and total number of cycles as accumulated damage on AASHTO fatigue design curves for the applicable structural details. The fatigue analyses indicate that none of the test bridges with fatigue-prone weld details is susceptible to fatigue cracking either at their current age or over their project 75-year service lives. While coal trucks may induce high live stresses on those bridges, the number of those stress applications was not sufficient to pose fatigue problems. The equivalent resolved stresses measured on the interstate bridge were similar in magnitude to those measured on coal-haul routes. However, the number of stress cycles was greater for the interstate bridge than most of the coal-haul route bridges

Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory: Integrating Structure, Dynamics, Temporal Scale, and Levels of Analysis

Theoretical accounts of psychopathology often emphasize social context as etiologically centralto psychological dysfunction, and interpersonal impairments are widely implicated for many legacy diagnostic categories that span domains of psychopathology (e.g., affective, personality, thought disorders). Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory (CIIT) seeks to explain the emergence, expression, and maintenance of socio-affective functioning and dysfunction across levels and timescales of analysis. We emphasize the importance of cohesively addressing the often-segregated challenges of establishing empirically supported structure, functional accounts of dynamic processes, and how together these facilitate theoretical and methodological consistency across levels of analysis ranging from biology to behavior. We illustrate CIIT’s potential to serve as an integrative theory for generating falsifiable hypotheses that support strong inference investigations into the nature of psychological dysfunction across a range of traditional diagnostic constructs and superordinate spectra of psychopathology

Health, environmental, and animal rights motives for vegetarian eating.

Health, the environment, and animal rights represent the three main reasons people cite for vegetarian diet in Western societies. However, it has not been shown that these motives can be distinguished empirically, and little is known about what kind of people are likely to be compelled by these different motives. This study had three goals. First, we aimed to use construct validation to test whether develop health, environmental, and animal rights motives for a vegetarian diet could be distinguished. Second, we evaluated whether these motivations were associated with different demographic, behavioral, and personality profiles in three diverse samples. Third, we examined whether peoples' motivations were related to responses to vegetarian advocacy materials. We created the Vegetarian Eating Motives Inventory, a 15-item measure whose structure was invariant across three samples (N = 1006, 1004, 5478) and two languages (English and Dutch). Using this measure, we found that health was the most common motive for non-vegetarians to consider vegetarian diets and it had the broadest array of correlates, which primarily involved communal and agentic values. Correlates of environmental and animal rights motives were limited, but these motives were strong and specific predictors of advocacy materials in a fourth sample (N = 739). These results provide researchers with a useful tool for identifying vegetarian motives among both vegetarian and non-vegetarian respondents, offer useful insights into the nomological net of vegetarian motivations, and provide advocates with guidance about how to best target campaigns promoting a vegetarian diet

Charting self‐esteem during marital dissolution

Objective: The purpose of this study was to chart changes in self-esteem before and after marital dissolution to identify the factors that shape individuals' self-esteem during this life transition. Method: We analyzed 10 annual waves of self-esteem data from 291 divorcees from a nationally representative panel study of the Netherlands (N ~ 13,000). We charted the course of self-esteem before and after marital dissolution and tested a broad set of moderator variables that may shape individuals' self-esteem trajectories. Results: The average divorcee experienced significant decrease in self-esteem preceding marital dissolution and remained stable afterward. There were substantial individual differences in self-esteem trajectories, both before and after marital separation. Divorcees who experienced financial hardship, were affiliated with a church or religion, or scored low in Conscientiousness showed the most pronounced decrease in self-esteem during the years approaching marital dissolution. Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of assessing people multiple times before and after marital dissolution to dissect how people approach and respond to this life event. Results are consistent with perspectives that view divorce as an opportunity to abate the strains of an unhappy marriage

The Development of a Bi-Lingual Assessment Instrument to Measure Agentic and Communal Consumer Motives in English and French

Consumer behavior is driven, in part, by the degree to which goods and services appeal to underlying motives for agency and communion. The purpose of this research was to develop a brief individual differences measure of these motivations for use in behavioral research and theoretical and applied consumer psychology and marketing studies. We employed a bi-lingual scale development procedure to create the 10-item Agentic and Communal Consumer Motivation Inventory (ACCMI) in English and French. Two studies show that the ACCMI is language invariant, demonstrates convergent and discriminant validity with consumer, motivational, and interpersonal constructs, and predicts evaluations of products described in agentic and communal terms, respectively, in both languages. The general conclusion of this research is that agency and communion provide a useful framework for understanding and studying consumer buying motivations. Discussion focuses on the relevance of motivational factors for studying human behavior and the applied utility of the ACCMI