David C. Funder

Psychology as the Science of Self-Reports and Finger Movements: Whatever Happened to Actual Behavior?

Psychology calls itself the science of behavior, and the American Psychological Associations current “Decade of Behavior” was intended to increase awareness and appreciation of this aspect of the science. Yet some psychological subdisciplines have never directly studied behavior, and studies on behavior are dwindling rapidly in other subdisciplines. We discuss the eclipse of behavior in personality and social psychology, in which direct observation of behavior has been increasingly supplanted by introspective self-reports, hypothetical scenarios, and questionnaire ratings. We advocate a renewed commitment to including direct observation of behavior whenever possible and in at least a healthy minority of research projects.

Overly positive self-evaluations and personality: negative implications for mental health.

The relation between overly positive self-evaluations and psychological adjustment was examined. Three studies, two based on longitudinal data and another on laboratory data, contrasted self-descriptions of personality with observer ratings (trained examiners or friends) to index self-enhancement. In the longitudinal studies, self-enhancement was associated with poor social skills and psychological maladjustment 5 years before and 5 years after the assessment of self-enhancement. In the laboratory study, individuals who exhibited a tendency to self-enhance displayed behaviors, independently judged, that seemed detrimental to positive social interaction. These results indicate there are negative short-term and long-term consequences for individuals who self-enhance and, contrary to some prior formulations, imply that accurate appraisals of self and of the social environment may be essential elements of mental health.

Recommendations for increasing replicability in psychology

Replicability of findings is at the heart of any empirical science. The aim of this article is to move the current replicability debate in psychology towards concrete recommendations for improvement. We focus on research practices but also offer guidelines for reviewers, editors, journal management, teachers, granting institutions, and university promotion committees, highlighting some of the emerging and existing practical solutions that can facilitate implementation of these recommendations. The challenges for improving replicability in psychological science are systemic. Improvement can occur only if changes are made at many levels of practice, evaluation, and reward. Copyright

Global Traits: A Neo-Allportian Approach to Personality

This paper outlines a theory of global traits based on the seminal writings of Gordon Allport and 50 years of subsequent empirical research. Personality research needs to refocus on global traits because such traits are an important part of everyday social discourse, because they embody a good deal of folk wisdom and common sense, because understanding and evaluating trait judgments can provide an important route toward the improvement of social judgment, and because global traits offer legitimate, if necessarily incomplete, explanations of behavior. A substantial body of evidence supporting the existence of global traits includes personality correlates of behavior, interjudge agreement in personality ratings, and the longitudinal stability of personality over time. Future research should clarify the origins of global traits, the dynamic mechanisms though which they influence behavior, and the behavioral cues through which they can most accurately be judged.

Explorations in behavioral consistency: properties of persons, situations, and behaviors.

In a study exploring the cross-situational consistency of behavior, 140 undergraduate Ss were video-taped in each of 3 laboratory settings, and personality descriptions of these Ss were obtained from friends and acquaintances. Analyses focused on the degree to which Ss maintained consistent patterns of behavior across laboratory settings and between these settings and daily life. The following conclusions were reached: (a) Behavior can exhibit impressive consistency at the level of psychological meaning, (b) psychological properties of situations can be detected from their behavioral effects, (c) cross-situational consistency and discriminativeness are independent, and (d) some behaviors are more consistent than others.

Agreement among judges of personality : interpersonal relations, similarity, and acquaintanceship

Personality judgments of 184 targets were provided by the self, college acquaintances, hometown acquaintances, parents, and strangers. Study 1 found that knowing the target in the same context enhanced but was not necessary for interjudge agreement and that acquaintances who had never met agreed with each other as well as those who had met. Study 2 found that personality judgements by acquaintances manifested much better interjudge and self-other agreement than did judgments by strangers. Acquaintances were not more similar to their targets than were strangers, and their accuracy derived more from their distinctive judgment of the target than from assumed similarity. These results rule out overlap, communication, and assumed similarity as necessary bases of interjudge agreement and thereby support the simpler hypothesis that interjudge agreement stems from mutual accuracy.

Personality and Life Satisfaction: A Facet-Level Analysis

At the global level of the Big Five, Extraversion and Neuroticism are the strongest predictors of life satisfaction. However, Extraversion and Neuroticism are multifaceted constructs that combine more specific traits. This article examined the contribution of facets of Extraversion and Neuroticism to life satisfaction in four studies. The depression facet of Neuroticism and the positive emotions/cheerfulness facet of Extraversion were the strongest and most consistent predictors of life satisfaction. These two facets often accounted for more variance in life satisfaction than Neuroticism and Extraversion. The findings suggest that measures of depression and positive emotions/cheerfulness are necessary and sufficient to predict life satisfaction from personality traits. The results also lead to a more refined understanding of the specific personality traits that influence life satisfaction: Depression is more important than anxiety or anger and a cheerful temperament is more important than being active or sociable.

Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition

Mainstream social psychology focuses on how people characteristically violate norms of action through social misbehaviors such as conformity with false majority judgments, destructive obedience, and failures to help those in need. Likewise, they are seen to violate norms of reasoning through cognitive errors such as misuse of social information, self-enhancement, and an over-readiness to attribute dispositional characteristics. The causes of this negative research emphasis include the apparent informativeness of norm violation, the status of good behavior and judgment as unconfirmable null hypotheses, and the allure of counter-intuitive findings. The shortcomings of this orientation include frequently erroneous imputations of error, findings of mutually contradictory errors, incoherent interpretations of error, an inability to explain the sources of behavioral or cognitive achievement, and the inhibition of generalized theory. Possible remedies include increased attention to the complete range of behavior and judgmental accomplishment, analytic reforms emphasizing effect sizes and Bayesian inference, and a theoretical paradigm able to account for both the sources of accomplishment and of error. A more balanced social psychology would yield not only a more positive view of human nature, but also an improved understanding of the bases of good behavior and accurate judgment, coherent explanations of occasional lapses, and theoretically grounded suggestions for improvement.

The Riverside Behavioral Q‐sort: A Tool for the Description of Social Behavior

The Riverside Behavioral Q-sort (RBQ) is a flexible technique for gathering a wide-ranging description of the behavior of individuals in dyadic social interaction. Ratings of RBQ items can attain adequate reliability to reflect behavioral effects of experimental manipulations and to manifest meaningful correlations with a variety of personality characteristics. The RBQs flexibility, validity, and relative ease of use may facilitate the more frequent inclusion of behavioral data in personality and social psychology.

Personality as Manifest in Word Use : Correlations With Self-Report, Acquaintance Report, and Behavior

The use of words is one of the most direct means of expressing thoughts and feelings. However, past studies have had limited success in correlating word use with personality. The purpose of the present study was to identify categories of word use relevant to personality using a broad range of personality data. Using data from 181 participants, the present study correlated word use within a 1-hr life history interview with self-judgments of personality, judgments of personality provided by close acquaintances (who were not exposed to the language sample), and behavioral ratings based on direct observation from a context entirely separate from that from which the language sample was derived. Several categories of word use yielded a large number of correlates with self- and acquaintance personality ratings and behavior. It is suggested that word use is related to personality to a larger degree than previously observed and deserves increased attention as a source of data in personality assessment.