Donald A. Loffredo

Insight, Rumination, and Self-Reflection as Predictors of Well-Being

ABSTRACT Dispositional private self-focused attention variables such as insight, internal self-awareness (ISA), and self-reflectiveness (SR) have been found to relate to well-being. The present study sought to determine which dispositional private self-focused attention variables have the most predictive power for subjective well-being as measured by the Satisfaction With Life Scale (E. Diener, R. A. Emmons, R. J. Larsen, & S. Griffin, 1985) and for a eudaemonic form of well-being as measured by the Psychological Well-Being Scale (C. D. Ryff, 1989). A total of 121 college student participants completed an online version of the Self-Consciousness Scale–Revised, the Rumination–Reflection Questionnaire, the Self-Reflection and Insight Scale, the Satisfaction With Life Scale, and the Psychological Well-Being Scale. Results of a multivariate regression analysis using the Self-Consciousness Scale–Reviseds (M. F. Scheier & C. S. Carver, 1985) subfactors of SR and ISA, the Rumination–Reflection Questionnaires (P. D. Trapnell & J. D. Campbell, 1999) subscales of Rumination and Reflection, and the Self-Reflection and Insight Scales (A. M. Grant, J. Franklin, & P. Langford, 2002) Self-Reflection and Insight subscales revealed that the Insight subscale was the only statistically significant predictor (a positive predictor) for all 6 dimensions of psychological well-being. Insight was also the only significant positive predictor for satisfaction with life. The Rumination subscale was a significant negative predictor for 3 dimensions of psychological well-being, and the Reflection subscale was a significant positive predictor for 1 dimension. Implications of dispositional self-awareness variables and their relation to dimensions of well-being are discussed.

Rethinking communication apprehension: a Myers-Briggs perspective.

Abstract This study is an examination of relationships between Myers-Briggs personality type preferences, based on Jungian theory, and communication apprehension. Results showed that participants who preferred introversion or sensing reported significantly higher levels of communication apprehension in general and across the group, dyadic, meeting, and public contexts than did participants who preferred extraversion or intuition. In addition, participants who preferred feeling reported higher levels of communication anxiety in the public context than those who preferred thinking. Findings support the assumption that communication apprehension is biologically based, suggest that the Myers-Briggs type preference framework offers an alternative way of understanding communication apprehension, and point out the need for new approaches to understanding the phenomenon of communication apprehension.

The Relationship Between Life Satisfaction, Self-Consciousness, and the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory Dimensions

Abstract The study was an investigation of the relationship between psychological well-being, life satisfaction, self-consciousness, and the four Myers-Briggs Type Indicator dimensions (MBTI; I. B. Myers & M. H. McCaulley, 1985). The participants were 97 college students (79 women and 18 men whose mean age was 31.4 years). All the students were administered four instruments, the Psychological Well-Being Inventory (C. D. Ryff, 1989), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (E. Diener, R. A. Emmons, R. J. Larsen, & S. Griffin, 1985), the Self-Consciousness Scale-Revised (M. F. Scheier & C. S. Carver, 1985), and the MBTI (Form G Self-Scoring). MANOVAs revealed significant differences on three of the four dimensions of the MBTI with extraverts showing higher psychological well-being and life satisfaction and lower self-consciousness than introverts. Intuition types scored higher in psychological well-being and lower in self-consciousness than Sensing types. Judging types scored higher in psychological well-being than Perceiving types. Correlational analyses showed that most dimensions of psychological well-being were negatively related to self-consciousness. The relationship between life satisfaction and personality variables is discussed.

Communicator Image and Myers—Briggs Type Indicator Extraversion—Introversion

Abstract This study is an examination of the relationship between communicator image and Myers—Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) dimensions of extraversion—introversion. The authors found that individuals who prefer extraversion tend to have a more positive communicator image than those who prefer introversion. The results of this study support other research results showing that personality preferences differ in communication behaviors and traits, which could have implications for the individuals comfort and success in society. Results of this research also support the contention that communication behavior has biological aspects.

Factor Analysis of the Ego State Questionnaire

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate construct validity for the Ego State Questionnaire (ESQ) using factor analysis. The ESQ is a 40-item experimenter-constructed instrument that measures the strength of functional ego states. Two hundred students were asked to complete the ESQ in class. A VARIMAX rotation factor analysis of the 200 Ego State Questionnaires revealed five primary factors corresponding to the five functional ego states. Thus, factor analysis of the ESQ revealed that it does measure five functional ego states (factors), although with varying accuracy.

An Integrated Cyber-Physical Immersive Virtual Reality Framework with Applications to Telerobotics

This paper presents an architecture to integrate a number of robotic platforms in interactive immersive virtual environments. The architecture, termed ArVETO (Aria Virtual Environment for Tele- Operation), is a client-server framework that communicates directly with a state-of-the-art game engine to utilize a virtual environment in support of tele-robotics and tele-presence. The strength of the proposed architecture is that it allows for the integration of heterogeneous robotic systems in an intelligent immersive environment for intuitive interaction between the robot and its operators. By utilizing an immersive virtual reality medium, an operator can more naturally interact with the robot; as buttons and joysticks can be replaced with hand gestures and interactions with the virtual environment. This provides a higher degree of immersion and interactivity for the operator when compared to more traditional control schemes.

A Robust and intuitive 3D interface for teleoperation of autonomous robotic agents through immersive virtual reality environments

In this paper an intuitive human interface is presented which allows for an operator immersed in a virtual environment to remotely control a teleoperated agent with minimal cognitive overload and minimal risk of accidental input. Additionally, a cursor-based interface is presented allowing for the placement of navigation nodes for the agent, thus facilitating robots autonomous navigation functions to be executed.

Automatic Environment Map Construction for Mixed Reality Robotic Applications

As Virtual Reality technologies proliferate to traditional multimedia application areas, there is a need to create systemic and automated processes to establish the main building blocks of the virtual environments in support of such applications. In this paper, we propose a unified framework for procedurally creating a virtual reality replica of a remotely situated robot’s physical environment. The proposed approach utilizes only robot’s onboard camera and automatically generates the environment map for the final VR environment. The main contributions of this paper are in the hierarchical generation of the epirectangular panorama, the efficient diffuse filling of missing pixel values and the use of the developed virtual environment in improving telepresence for remote social robotics applications.

Age-Related Grade Inflation Expectancies in a University Environment

Grade inflation is a recognized problem in higher education in the United States. Age, gender, and ethnic differences in discrepancies between student reports of their expected grade in each course and their expectations for general university grading practices were explored in a survey of 166 (mostly female) participants at a small upper-division university. Results revealed that while a small minority of students agreed that grading systems in college should only include A or B grades, a large majority of students expected A or B grades. Thus, student discrepancies between their expectations for grading systems and their expected class grades were in line with expectations that they should receive inflated grades. Results also revealed statistically significant age differences in grade expectation with students older than the age of 55 expecting lower grades relative to their younger counterparts.