Dreams and Desires of Preschoolers

AbstractThe research presented in this article is part of the “Children in a Changing World” project, a cross-sectional study that explores the influence of social changes on the world views of children. The project was launched in 1992, at a time when socioeconomic reforms began to unfold in Russia. Six cross sections have been conducted to date, each including interviews with older preschoolers in the age range of 5.6-7.0 years. The children were asked about their life today and how they imagine it in the future. This article analyzes the way that the dreams and desires of older preschoolers have changed over the past two decades (comparing the dreams and desires children expressed in the 1990s with those voiced by children of the same age in 2015). The main results obtained through qualitative analysis suggest certain changes in the structure of the preschooler's desires (in particular, an increase in “magical,” non-realistic wishes) and a decrease in the negative influence of the distant environment on the children

The Dark Triad Traits from a Life History Perspective in Six Countries

Work on the Dark Triad traits has benefited from the use of a life history framework but it has been limited to primarily Western samples and indirect assessments of life history strategies. Here, we examine how the Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism) relate to two measures of individual differences in life history strategies. In Study 1 (N = 937), we replicated prior observed links between life history strategies, as measured by the Mini-K, and the Dark Triad traits using samples recruited from three countries. In Study 2 (N = 1032), we measured life history strategies using the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale and correlated it with the Dark Triad traits in samples recruited from three additional countries. While there was some variability across participants’ sex and country, the results were generally consistent in that psychopathy and (to a lesser extent) Machiavellianism were related to faster life history strategies and narcissism was related to slower life history strategies. These results add cross-cultural data and the use of two measures of life history speed to understand the Dark Triad traits from a life history perspective

The HEXACO-100 across 16 languages: a large-scale test of measurement invariance

The HEXACO Personality Inventory–Revised (HEXACO–PI–R) has become one of the most heavily applied measurement tools for the assessment of basic personality traits. Correspondingly, the inventory has been translated to many languages for use in cross-cultural research. However, formal tests examining whether the different language versions of the HEXACO–PI–R provide equivalent measures of the 6 personality dimensions are missing. We provide a large-scale test of measurement invariance of the 100-item version of the HEXACO–PI–R across 16 languages spoken in European and Asian countries (N = 30,484). Multigroup exploratory structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses revealed consistent support for configural and metric invariance, thus implying that the factor structure of the HEXACO dimensions as well as the meaning of the latent HEXACO factors is comparable across languages. However, analyses did not show overall support for scalar invariance; that is, equivalence of facet intercepts. A complementary alignment analysis supported this pattern, but also revealed substantial heterogeneity in the level of (non)invariance across facets and factors. Overall, results imply that the HEXACO–PI–R provides largely comparable measurement of the HEXACO dimensions, although the lack of scalar invariance highlights the necessity for future research clarifying the interpretation of mean-level trait differences across countries