Individual behavioral phenotypes: An integrative meta-theoretical framework. Why “behavioral syndromes” are not analogs of “personality”

Animal researchers are increasingly interested in individual differences in behavior. Their interpretation as meaningful differences in behavioral strategies stable over time and across contexts, adaptive, heritable, and acted upon by natural selection has triggered new theoretical developments. However, the analytical approaches used to explore behavioral data still address population-level phenomena, and statistical methods suitable to analyze individual behavior are rarely applied. I discuss fundamental investigative principles and analytical approaches to explore whether, in what ways, and under which conditions individual behavioral differences are actually meaningful. I elaborate the meta-theoretical ideas underlying common theoretical concepts and integrate them into an overarching meta-theoretical and methodological framework. This unravels commonalities and differences, and shows that assumptions of analogy to concepts of human personality are not always warranted and that some theoretical developments may be based on methodological artifacts. Yet, my results also highlight possible directions for new theoretical developments in animal behavior research

Personality psychology: Lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts reveal only half of the story—Why it is time for a paradigm shift

This article develops a comprehensive philosophy-of-science for personality psychology that goes far beyond the scope of the lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts that currently prevail. One of the field’s most important guiding scientific assumptions, the lexical hypothesis, is analysed from meta-theoretical viewpoints to reveal that it explicitly describes two sets of phenomena that must be clearly differentiated: 1) lexical repertoires and the representations that they encode and 2) the kinds of phenomena that are represented. Thus far, personality psychologists largely explored only the former, but have seriously neglected studying the latter. Meta-theoretical analyses of these different kinds of phenomena and their distinct natures, commonalities, differences, and interrelations reveal that personality psychology’s focus on lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts entails a) erroneous meta-theoretical assumptions about what the phenomena being studied actually are, and thus how they can be analysed and interpreted, b) that contemporary personality psychology is largely based on everyday psychological knowledge, and c) a fundamental circularity in the scientific explanations used in trait psychology. These findings seriously challenge the widespread assumptions about the causal and universal status of the phenomena described by prominent personality models. The current state of knowledge about the lexical hypothesis is reviewed, and implications for personality psychology are discussed. Ten desiderata for future research are outlined to overcome the current paradigmatic fixations that are substantially hampering intellectual innovation and progress in the field

Introduction to sociology/ Biesanz

xiv, 651 hal.: ill.; 24 cm

Introduction to sociology/ Biesanz

xiv, 651 hal.: ill.; 24 cm

The people of Panama /

Includes bibliography.Mode of access: Internet

Understanding short-term variability in life satisfaction: The Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model.

Daily life is full of emotional ups and downs. In contrast, the objective conditions of our lives usually remain relatively stable from day to day. The degree to which emotional ups and downs influence life satisfaction-which prima facie should be relatively stable-remains a puzzle. In the present article, we propose the Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model to address this puzzle. The IDELS model posits that people differ in the processes by which they evaluate their life satisfaction: Some people's life satisfaction is more strongly associated with their current emotions (i.e., "emotion globalizing") whereas other people maintain a filter between their life satisfaction and current emotions. These individual differences should have important implications for the degree of short-term variability in life satisfaction and, in turn, for psychological health. In 3 diverse samples of women (total N = 536), we assessed life satisfaction and emotions daily or multiple times per day for 2 weeks. We tested 4 hypotheses derived from the IDELS model. First, participants differed substantially in the degree of short-term variability in life satisfaction, and these individual differences were moderately stable. Second, participants differed substantially in emotion globalizing, and these individual differences were moderately stable. Third, higher emotion globalizing predicted greater short-term variability in life satisfaction. Fourth, greater short-term variability in life satisfaction was associated with a maladaptive profile of greater neuroticism and worse psychological health. We discuss implications for life satisfaction theory and measurement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)