Behavioral Consistency And Individual Differences In Predictive Structure

Psychological research has frequently been directed at evaluating the predictive utility of personality assessments with respect to various behavioural criteria. Bem and Allen (1974) have advocated an approach to maximizing the convergences of various modes of personality assessment which is based on the identification of behaviourally consistent and predictable individuals along specific trait dimensions. The measured behavioural consistency for individuals was used as an independent moderator variable, influencing the correlations between predictor and criterion measures of personality. Individuals who identified themselves as being consistent for a particular behavioural domain were shown by Bem and Allen to be more predictable than less consistent subjects with regard to peer ratings and other trait measures.;Subsequent research by Kenrick and Stringfield (1980) and others (e.g., Kenrick & Braver, 1982) has provided some support for the idiographic formulations of Bem and Allen. Procedural differences among empirical studies, however, have produced generally unrecognized problems of interpretation related to the outcomes of hypothesis tests. These problems are described and evaluated in the present investigation.;The results of a peer rating study of personality, and an assimilation of data from other sources, suggest that (a) behavioural consistency is related to trait level or need strength such that the greatest degrees of consistency occur at the extremes of bipolar dimensions of behaviour, and that (b) the failure to consider this relationship in classifying subjects as predictable (consistent) and unpredictable (variable) can lead to the discovery of moderator effects that are spurious. The consistent subgroups being predominately the most extreme on personality dimensions will have inflated trait score variances that increase the likelihood of finding significant correlational indices of behavioural predictability. Accounting for the relationship between consistency scores and personality scores in this study resulted in little evidence for the pervasive belief that individual differences in trait consistency effectively moderate the validity of behavioural assessments.;Additional analyses presented and discussed are concerned with other issues relevant to the validity of personality assessments. These issues include rater confidence as a moderator of predictive validity, reliability and validity as a function of the aggregation of replicated measurements, and the stability of the measured organization of personality traits

Similarity-attraction effects in friendship formation : Honest platoon-mates prefer each other but dishonest do not

Friends tend to be similar on many characteristics, including personality traits. Yet, a real-world similarity-attraction effect based on actual personality traits is not supported by current research. One reason for this apparent contradiction could be that dark personality traits have been absent from this literature. In a sample (N = 181) of military cadet freshmen, we investigated homophily (“love of the same”) based on the traits identified by the Five-Factor Model (FFM) and two dark personality traits, Manipulativeness and Egotism. We did not find homophily based on the FFM traits. However, platoon-mate dyads with similar levels of trait Manipulativeness or Egotism were more likely to mutually like each other. Furthermore, response surface analyses revealed that homophily for these two traits occurred only at the low, or bright, end of these traits. Our results support arguments derived from evolutionary theory that argue for the importance of trait honesty in friendship formation.Peer reviewe

Taking a Person-Centered Approach to Personality: A Latent-Profile Analysis of the HEXACO Model of Personality

Our study applies a person-centered approach to the HEXACO model of personality using latent profile analysis (LPA). While the traditional variable-centered approach assumes that the relations among variables within a population are homogenous, the person-centered approach identifies subgroups within samples that have similar scores on several variables of interest, in this case, the six factors of personality. Data from two independent samples were collected at a large North American university. The results of LPA revealed five distinct and interpretable profiles that replicated and were found to be consistent across both samples. We discuss how our findings attest to the meaningfulness of personality profiles, and suggest additional ways in which a person-centered approach might be applied in personality research

A note on Cohen's profile similarity coefficientr c

Transpose factor analysis, Q-technique, Profile analysis, Bipolar variables, Direction of measurement,

Hierarchical organization of personality and prediction of behavior

Two studies evaluated personality rait measures and Big Five factor measures for their accuracy in predicting important behavior criteria. The results of both studies howed that he narrower t aits and the broader factors, thought to define 2 levels of a hierarchy of personality variables, eparately predicted most criterion variables. However, the incremental validity of the personality xait measures (the degree to which the traits increased the criterion prediction achieved by the factors) was generally much larger than the incremental v lidity of the Big Five factor measures. It was concluded that aggregating personality raits into their underlying personality factors could result in decreased predictive accuracy due to the loss of trait-specific but criterion-valid variance. There is some intuitive appeal to the conceptualization that variables of personality are organized hierarchically, arranged according to the breadth of the behavior domains represented. One such model of personality is illustrated in Figure 1, first published by Eysenck (1947) and since cited by many other