The Benefits of Believing in Chance or Fate: External Locus of Control as a Protective Factor for Coping with the Death of a Spouse

The death of a spouse is an extremely stressful life event that consequently causes a large drop in life satisfaction. Reactivity to the loss, however, varies markedly, a phenomenon that is currently not well understood. Because lack of controllability essentially contributes to the stressful nature of this incident, we analyzed whether individual differences in the belief in external control influence the coping process. To examine this issue, widowed individuals (N = 414) from a large-scaled panel study were followed for the 4 years before and after the loss by using a latent growth model. Results showed that belief in external control led to a considerably smaller decline in life satisfaction and higher scores in the year of the loss. Thus, although usually regarded as a risk factor, belief in external control acts as a protective factor for coping with the death of a spouse.Locus of control, life satisfaction, latent growth model, subjective well-being, subjective indicators, family and networks

Stability and Change of Personality across the Life Course: The Impact of Age and Major Life Events on Mean-Level and Rank-Order Stability of the Big Five

Does personality change across the entire life course, and are those changes due to intrinsic maturation or major life experiences? This longitudinal study investigated changes in the mean levels and rank order of the Big Five personality traits in a heterogeneous sample of 14,718 Germans across all of adulthood. Latent change and latent moderated regression models provided four main findings: First, age had a complex curvilinear influence on mean levels of personality. Second, the rank-order stability of Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, and Agreeableness all followed an inverted U-shaped function, reaching a peak between the ages of 40 and 60, and decreasing afterwards, whereas Conscientiousness showed a continuously increasing rank-order stability across adulthood. Third, personality predicted the occurrence of several objective major life events (selection effects) and changed in reaction to experiencing these events (socialization effects), suggesting that personality can change due to factors other than intrinsic maturation.. - Fourth, when events were clustered according to their valence, as is commonly done,. - effects of the environment on changes in personality were either overlooked or. - overgeneralized. In sum, our analyses show that personality changes throughout the life. - span, but with more pronounced changes in young and old ages, and that this change is. - partly attributable to social demands and experiences.personality development, Big Five, life events, stability, adulthood

Characterisation of SHARPIN as a third component of the linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex (LUBAC)

Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) is an important cytokine with great physiological relevance and effects ranging from pro-inflammatory to immuno-regulatory functions. On a cellular level, it induces signalling processes by crosslinking its receptors and by initiating the formation of an intracellular, multi-protein receptor-signalling complex (RSC). Investigation of the TNF-RSC by modified tandem affinity purification (moTAP) and mass spectrometry revealed the presence of three novel components in this complex: heme-oxidised IRP2 ubiquitin ligase-1 (HOIL-1), HOIL-1-interacting protein (HOIP) and SHANK-associated RH-domain-interacting protein (SHARPIN). Previous studies showed that HOIL-1 and HOIP form an E3-complex that mediates the generation of linearly linked ubiquitin chains and is hence referred to as linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex (LUBAC). Identification of peptides specific for SHARPIN in the mass spectrometric analysis of the native TNF-RSC together with its sequence similarity to HOIL-1 raised the questions whether SHARPIN contributes functionally to TNF-signalling and/or the E3-activity of LUBAC. In this thesis, it could be shown that all three proteins are specifically recruited to the TNF-RSC in a cIAP1/2-dependent manner. As SHARPIN, HOIL-1 and HOIP can bind ubiquitin chains this suggests that the three proteins are recruited via cIAP1/2-generated ubiquitin chains. In addition, HOIP is required for presence of SHARPIN and HOIL-1 in the TNF-RSC. This, together with the finding that these three factors form a stimulation-independent protein complex in the cytosol, indicates that LUBAC is recruited to the TNF-RSC as a tripartite complex via its central component HOIP. In-vitro ubiquitination assays showed that SHARPIN is not only a physical but also a functional component of LUBAC. HOIP can generate ubiquitin chains when combined with either SHARPIN, HOIL-1 or both and was shown to exclusively generate linear linkages via a HECT-like mechanism. NEMO was identified as a common target of all possible LUBAC-combinations in vitro and, in line with this, the activity of LUBAC is required for full activation of NF-B following TNF stimulation. The results obtained in this thesis identify SHARPIN as a third component of LUBAC, an E3-complex that is specifically recruited to the TNF-RSC and regulates TNF signalling by modifying specific target proteins with linearly linked ubiquitin chains

Investigating contributors to performance evaluations in small groups: Task competence, speaking time, physical expressiveness, and likability

This study compared the impacts of actual individual task competence, speaking time and physical expressiveness as indicators of verbal and nonverbal communication behavior, and likability on performance evaluations in a group task. 164 participants who were assigned to 41 groups first solved a problem individually and later solved it as a team. After the group interaction, participants' performance was evaluated by both their team members and qualified external observers. We found that these performance evaluations were significantly affected not only by task competence but even more by speaking time and nonverbal physical expressiveness. Likability also explained additional variance in performance evaluations. The implications of these findings are discussed for both the people being evaluated and the people doing the evaluating

In your eyes only? Discrepancies and agreement between self- and other-reports of personality from age 14 to 29

Do others perceive the personality changes that take place between the ages of 14 and 29 in a similar fashion as the aging person him- or herself? This cross-sectional study analyzed age trajectories in self- versus other-reported Big Five personality traits and in self-other agreement in a sample of more than 10,000 individuals from the myPersonality Project. Results for self-reported personality showed maturation effects (increases in extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability), and this pattern was generally also reflected in other-reports, albeit with discrepancies regarding timing and magnitude. Age differences found for extraversion were similar between the self- and other-reports, but the increase found in self-reported conscientiousness was delayed in other-reports, and the curvilinear increase found in self-reported openness was slightly steeper in other-reports. Only emotional stability showed a distinct mismatch with an increase in self-reports, but no significant age effect in other-reports. Both the self- and other-reports of agreeableness showed no significant age trends. The trait correlations between the self- and other-reports increased with age for emotional stability, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness; by contrast, agreement regarding extraversion remained stable. The profile correlations confirmed increases in self-other agreement with age. We suggest that these gains in agreement are a further manifestation of maturation. Taken together, our analyses generally show commonalities but also some divergences in age-associated mean level changes between self- and other-reports of the Big Five, as well as an age trend towards increasing self-other agreement

Does smile intensity in photographs really predict longevity?:A replication and extension of Abel and Kruger (2010)

Abel and Kruger (2010) found that the smile intensity of professional baseball players who were active in 1952, as coded from photographs, predicted these players' longevity. In the current investigation, we sought to replicate this result and to extend the initial analyses. We analyzed (a) a sample that was almost identical to the one from Abel and Kruger's study using the same database and inclusion criteria (N = 224), (b) a considerably larger nonoverlapping sample consisting of other players from the same cohort (N = 527), and (c) all players in the database (N = 13,530 valid cases). Like Abel and Kruger, we relied on categorical smile codings as indicators of positive affectivity, yet we supplemented these codings with subjective ratings of joy intensity and automatic codings of positive affectivity made by computer programs. In both samples and for all three indicators, we found that positive affectivity did not predict mortality once birth year was controlled as a covariate

The implicit relational assessment procedure: emerging reliability and validity data

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is a measure of ‘implicit cognition' developed on the basis of a contemporary behavioural analysis of language and cognition. The IRAP has now been applied to a range of foci over five years of published research. A frequently-cited caveat in publications to date is the need for further research to gauge the reliability and validity of the IRAP as an implicit measure. This review paper will provide a critical synthesis of available evidence for reliability and validity. The review applies a multifaceted test-theory approach to validity, and reliability is assessed through meta-analysis of published data. The discussion critically considers reviewed IRAP evidence with reference to the extant literature on alternative implicit measures, limitations of studies to date, and consideration of broader conceptual issues