Constructing and validating a scale of inquisitive curiosity

We advance the understanding of the philosophy and psychology of curiosity by operationalizing and constructing an empirical measure of Nietzsche’s conception of inquisitive curiosity, expressed by the German term Wissbegier, (“thirst for knowledge” or “need/impetus to know”) and Neugier (“curiosity” or “inquisitiveness”). First, we show that existing empirical measures of curiosity do not tap the construct of inquisitive curiosity, though they may tap related constructs such as idle curiosity and phenomenological curiosity. Next, we map the concept of inquisitive curiosity and connect it to related concepts, such as open-mindedness and intellectual humility. The bulk of the paper reports four studies: an Anglophone exploratory factor analysis, an Anglophone confirmatory factor analysis, an informant study, and a Germanophone exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis

Development and validation of a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humility

This paper presents five studies on the development and validation of a scale of intellectual humility. This scale captures cognitive, affective, behavioral, and motivational components of the construct that have been identified by various philosophers in their conceptual analyses of intellectual humility. We find that intellectual humility has four core dimensions: Open-mindedness (versus Arrogance), Intellectual Modesty (versus Vanity), Corrigibility (versus Fragility), and Engagement (versus Boredom). These dimensions display adequate self-informant agreement, and adequate convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity. In particular, Open-mindedness adds predictive power beyond the Big Six for an objective behavioral measure of intellectual humility, and Intellectual Modesty is uniquely related to Narcissism. We find that a similar factor structure emerges in Germanophone participants, giving initial evidence for the model’s cross-cultural generalizability

Comparative and Cross-Cultural Validity of the Moral Actions Questionnaire, a Measure for Ethical Virtue

Though current personality models provide a starting point for measuring ethical virtues, ethical content may not be fully captured in existing personality inventories due in part to the systematic elimination of morally-relevant trait-adjectives in early lexical studies. Further, personality dimensions relevant to measuring the ethical domain include both ethical and non-ethical content. The Moral Actions Questionnaire was designed to assess seven conceptually-distinct ethical virtues that are emphasized across cultures and philosophies. This dissertation investigates the performance of the Moral Actions Questionnaire, relative to other candidate models of ethical virtue from personality inventories. Psychometric quality, structural validity, and predictive validity for these models are evaluated in samples from five countries: Kenya, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. Findings suggest that the Moral Actions Questionnaire aids in prediction of altruistic bravery, guilt proneness, satisfaction with life, and meaning with life across most countries. Patterns in psychometric quality and structure across countries and methods (self- and informant-report) are discussed

Comparing predictive validity in a community sample: High–dimensionality and traditional domain–and–facet structures of personality variation

Prediction of outcomes is an important way of distinguishing, among personality models, the best from the rest. Prominent previous models have tended to emphasize multiple internally consistent “facet” scales subordinate to a few broad domains. But such an organization of measurement may not be optimal for prediction. Here, we compare the predictive capacity and efficiency of assessments across two types of personality-structure model: conventional structures of facets as found in multiple platforms, and new high-dimensionality structures emphasizing those based on natural-language adjectives, in particular lexicon-based structures of 20, 23, and 28 dimensions. Predictions targeted 12 criterion variables related to health and psychopathology, in a sizeable American community sample. Results tended to favor personality-assessment platforms with (at least) a dozen or two well-selected variables having minimal intercorrelations, without sculpting of these to make them function as indicators of a few broad domains. Unsurprisingly, shorter scales, especially when derived from factor analyses of the personality lexicon, were shown to take a more efficient route to given levels of predictive capacity. Popular 20 -century personality-assessment models set out influential but suboptimal templates, including one that first identifies domains and then facets, which compromise the efficiency of measurement models, at least from a comparative-prediction standpoint

Comparing predictive validity in a community sample: High–dimensionality and traditional domain–and–facet structures of personality variation

Prediction of outcomes is an important way of distinguishing, among personality models, the best from the rest. Prominent previous models have tended to emphasize multiple internally consistent “facet” scales subordinate to a few broad domains. But such an organization of measurement may not be optimal for prediction. Here, we compare the predictive capacity and efficiency of assessments across two types of personality–structure model: conventional structures of facets as found in multiple platforms, and new high–dimensionality structures emphasizing those based on natural–language adjectives, in particular lexicon–based structures of 20, 23, and 28 dimensions. Predictions targeted 12 criterion variables related to health and psychopathology, in a sizeable American community sample. Results tended to favor personality–assessment platforms with (at least) a dozen or two well–selected variables having minimal intercorrelations, without sculpting of these to make them function as indicators of a few broad domains. Unsurprisingly, shorter scales, especially when derived from factor analyses of the personality lexicon, were shown to take a more efficient route to given levels of predictive capacity. Popular 20$^{th}$–century personality–assessment models set out influential but suboptimal templates, including one that first identifies domains and then facets, which compromise the efficiency of measurement models, at least from a comparative–prediction standpoint. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psycholog

Cross-Cultural Differences in a Global “Survey of World Views"

We know that there are cross-cultural differences in psychological variables, such as individualism/collectivism. But it has not been clear which of these variables show relatively the greatest differences. The Survey of World Views project operated from the premise that such issues are best addressed in a diverse sampling of countries representing a majority of the world’s population, with a very large range of item-content. Data were collected online from 8,883 individuals (almost entirely college students based on local publicizing efforts) in 33 countries that constitute more than two third of the world’s population, using items drawn from measures of nearly 50 variables. This report focuses on the broadest patterns evident in item data. The largest differences were not in those contents most frequently emphasized in cross-cultural psychology (e.g., values, social axioms, cultural tightness), but instead in contents involving religion, regularity-norm behaviors, family roles and living arrangements, and ethnonationalism. Content not often studied cross-culturally (e.g., materialism, Machiavellianism, isms dimensions, moral foundations) demonstrated moderate-magnitude differences. Further studies are needed to refine such conclusions, but indications are that cross-cultural psychology may benefit from casting a wider net in terms of the psychological variables of focus

Engagement item response analysis.

<p>Item information functions for Engagement items.</p

Correlations between IH scales and Big Six scales.

<p>Correlations between IH scales and Big Six scales.</p