Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Nezlek, John B.

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277001pmid: N/A

Increasingly, social and personality psychologists are conducting studies in which data are collected simultaneously at multiple levels, with hypotheses concerning effects that involve multiple levels of analysis. In studies of naturally occurring social interaction, data describing people and their social interactions are collected simultaneously. This article discuses how to analyze such data using random coefficient modeling. Analyzing data describing day-to-day social interaction is used to illustrate the analysis of event-contingent data (when specific events trigger or organize data collection), and analyzing data describing reactions to daily events is used to illustrate the analysis of interval-contingent data (when data are collected at intervals). Different analytic strategies are presented, the shortcomings of ordinary least squares analyses are described, and the use of multilevel random coefficient modeling is discussed in detail. Different modeling techniques, the specifics of formulating and testing hypotheses, and the differences between fixed and random effects are also considered.

Tracey, Terence J. G.; Ryan, Jennifer M.; Jaschik-Herman, Bruce

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277002pmid: N/A

The existence of interpersonal complementarity at a stylistic level using the Interpersonal Adjectives Scales (IAS) and the optimal definition of complementarity were the foci of the study. The IAS ratings made by three samples of college students were used: 265 rated both of their parents, 346 rated themselves and their closest friend, and 136 rated how they expected themselves and the other participant to behave in one of three very different situations. The correlation matrices between the scores of the two interactants in each sample were examined using the randomization test of hypothesized order relations to determine if complementarity existed. Results indicated support for the complementarity of traits in each sample and showed that the optimal orientation of dimensions of the IAS with respect to complementarity is 22.5 degrees greater than the orientation proposed by Leary and adopted by Wiggins.

King, Laura A.

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277003pmid: N/A

In a variation on Pennebaker’s writing paradigm, a sample of 81 undergraduates wrote about one of four topics for 20 minutes each day for 4 consecutive days. Participants were randomly assigned to write about their most traumatic life event, their best possible future self, both of these topics, or a nonemotional control topic. Mood was measured before and after writing and health center data for illness were obtained with participant consent. Three weeks later, measures of subjective well-being were obtained. Writing about life goals was significantly less upsetting than writing about trauma and was associated with a significant increase in subjective well-being. Five months after writing, a significant interaction emerged such that writing about trauma, one’s best possible self, or both were associated with decreased illness compared with controls. Results indicate that writing about self-regulatory topics can be associated with the same health benefits as writing about trauma.

Knee, C. Raymond; Nanayakkara, Aruni; Vietor, Nathaniel A.; Neighbors, Clayton; Patrick, Heather

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277004pmid: N/A

Perceived discrepancy between one’s ideal and actual partner has been shown to predict relationship satisfaction. The goal of two studies was to examine whether implicit theories of relationships moderate this association. In Study 1, data from 177 undergraduates in romantic relationships showed that the perception that one’s partner falls short of one’s ideal was generally linked to lower satisfaction, except under cultivation (high growth/low destiny). In Study 2, data from 61 couples showed (a) viewing one’s partner favorably was associated with more satisfaction but less so among those who were higher in growth belief; and (b) cultivation predicted increased positivity, whereas evaluation (high destiny/low growth) predicted increased hostility when discussing discrepancies in how they and their partner view the relationship. Results are discussed in terms of the controversy over idealization and authenticity in romantic relationships.

Cross, Susan E.; Vick, Niki V.

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277005pmid: N/A

This prospective study examined student self-esteem and persistence during the first 2 years of an undergraduate program in engineering. The authors hypothesized that individuals who define the self in terms of close relationships, termed the interdependent self-construal, will experience a sense of misfit in the competitive engineering environment but that high levels of social support will mitigate this effect. As expected, for students with a very interdependent self-construal, levels of social support were positively related to changes in self-esteem during the 1st year and predicted continued enrollment in engineering at the end of the 2nd year, controlling for previous academic performance and self-efficacy. The implications of these findings for understanding the role of the self-construal in behavior and for increasing the supply of well-trained engineers are discussed.

Schmitt, David P.; Couden, Andrea; Baker, Mark

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277006pmid: N/A

According to evolutionary theories of human mating, people should feel the most romantic desire toward potential mates who possess reproductively adaptive attributes. Across five person-perception experiments involving staged interviews, we found that men’s and women’s feelings of romantic desire can be manipulated by varying adaptive attributes in a target person. For example, during some interviews, participants were exposed to an experimental confederate exhibiting cues to easy sexual access. Because men’s short-term sexual strategy is based on obtaining high numbers of partners, it was predicted that exposure to a target person suggesting easy sexual access would especially intensify men’s short-term romantic desires. The authors found evidence that targets who exhibited cues to easy sexual access were rated the most desirable by men in the context of short-term mating. Discussion focused on limitations of the current studies and on the importance of invoking methodological pluralism when testing evolutionary theories of romantic desire.

Blanton, Hart; Stuart, Anne E.; Van den Eijnden, Regina J.J.M.

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277007pmid: N/A

The authors introduce a social judgment framework they term deviance-regulation theory. This theory proposes that people self-regulate more on the basis of the perceived social consequences of deviating from behavioral norms than on the basis of the perceived social consequences of conforming to behavioral norms. The implications of this model were explored in the context of persuasive health communication. Four studies demonstrated that health communication had its greatest effects on behavioral intention and behavioral willingness when it associated images with deviant behavioral alternatives. Thus, when participants believed their peers made healthy decisions, they were most influenced by negatively framed communication that emphasized the undesirable attributes of people who made unhealthy decisions. In contrast, when they believed their peers made unhealthy decisions, they were most influenced by positively framed communication that emphasized the desirable attributes of people who made healthy decisions.

Guadagno, Rosanna E.; Asher, Terrilee; Demaine, Linda J.; Cialdini, Robert B.

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277008pmid: N/A

A requester using the foot-in-the-door (FITD) tactic begins by gaining compliance with a small request and then advances to a related, larger request. Previous work has demonstrated that a strong preference for consistency among targets of the tactic can enhance the FITD effect. Other work has indicated that an inadequate delay between the requests can produce resistance and can significantly reduce the effect. Study 1 found that high levels of preference for consistency (PFC) were sufficient to override this resistance, provided that participants’ prior helpfulness in complying with the initial request was made salient. Study 2 replicated this finding among high-PFC participants and showed that low-PFC participants demonstrated a reverse FITD effect when their prior helpfulness was made salient. The authors conclude that high- and low-PFC individuals are likely to become more or less consistent with an action (respectively) when focused on the personal implications of that action.

Ayduk, Ozlem; Downey, Geraldine; Kim, Minji

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277009pmid: N/A

It is proposed that interpersonal loss that communicates rejection increases the risk for depression specifically in individuals who not only expect rejection but are also concerned about preventing it. Accordingly, the role of rejection sensitivity (RS)—the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact to rejection—in women’s depressive reactions to rejection by a romantic partner was examined. A 6-month longitudinal study of college women revealed that women high in RS compared with those who are low became more depressed when they experienced a partner-initiated breakup but not when they experienced a self-initiated or mutually initiated breakup. By contrast, RS was not associated with increased depression in response to failing to achieve an academic goal. These results support the view that depression in high-RS women is a reaction to a loss in a valued goal domain, that is, failure to prevent rejection in an important relationship.

Krueger, Joachim; Stanke, David

doi: 10.1177/0146167201277010pmid: N/A

Research on social projection shows that perceptions of group characteristics depend, in part, on people’s perceptions of themselves. According to the principles of inductive reasoning, however, knowledge of other individual group members should also predict perceptions of the group. The present studies directly compared the use of self- and other-referent knowledge. In Study 1, self-judgments predicted group judgments better than judgments about a familiar other person did. When differences in the accessibility and stability of self-referent and other-referent knowledge were controlled, the predictive advantage of self-referent knowledge disappeared. In Study 2, the other person was present during assessment (i.e., visually salient) and other judgments predicted group judgments as well as self-judgments did. Changes in social categorization, however, instead of increases in the individuation of the other person accounted for this finding. It is concluded that projection is best understood as an egocentric bias rather than a form of inductive reasoning.