Jeremy C. Biesanz

The Role of Coding Time in Estimating and Interpreting Growth Curve Models.

The coding of time in growth curve models has important implications for the interpretation of the resulting model that are sometimes not transparent. The authors develop a general framework that includes predictors of growth curve components to illustrate how parameter estimates and their standard errors are exactly determined as a function of receding time in growth curve models. Linear and quadratic growth model examples are provided, and the interpretation of estimates given a particular coding of time is illustrated. How and why the precision and statistical power of predictors of lower order growth curve components changes over time is illustrated and discussed. Recommendations include coding time to produce readily interpretable estimates and graphing lower order effects across time with appropriate confidence intervals to help illustrate and understand the growth process.

The frequency, trajectories and predictors of adolescent recurrent pain: A population-based approach

&NA; Recurrent pains are a complex set of conditions that cause great discomfort and impairment in children and adults. The objectives of this study were to (a) describe the frequency of headache, stomachache, and backache in a representative Canadian adolescent sample and (b) determine whether a set of psychosocial factors, including background factors (i.e., sex, pubertal status, parent chronic pain), external events (i.e., injury, illness/hospitalization, stressful‐life events), and emotional factors (i.e., anxiety/depression, self‐esteem) were predictive of these types of recurrent pain. Statistics Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth was used to assess a cohort of 2488 10‐ to 11‐year‐old adolescents up to five times, every 2 years. Results showed that, across 12–19 years of age, weekly or more frequent rates ranged from 26.1%–31.8% for headache, 13.5–22.2% for stomachache, and 17.6–25.8% for backache. Chi‐square tests indicated that girls had higher rates of pain than boys for all types of pain, at all time points. Structural equation modeling using latent growth curves showed that sex and anxiety/depression at age 10–11 years was predictive of the start‐ and end‐point intercepts (i.e., trajectories that indicated high levels of pain across time) and/or slopes (i.e., trajectories of pain that increased over time) for all three types of pain. Although there were also other factors that predicted only certain pain types or certain trajectory types, overall the results of this study suggest that adolescent recurrent pain is very common and that psychosocial factors can predict trajectories of recurrent pain over time across adolescence.

Family Income and Its Relation to Preschool Children's Adjustment for Families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care

The current study examines relations of mean-level estimates, linear changes, and instability in income and family processes to child outcomes and addresses whether income, through its impact on family functioning, matters more for children living in poverty. Temporal changes and instability in family processes, but not income, predicted childrens adjustment. Cross-sectional mediational analyses indicated that for families living at the poverty threshold, family processes fully mediated the effect of average income over the study period on social behavior but only partially mediated its effect on cognitive-linguistic development. The strength of these associations diminished as average income exceeded the poverty threshold. That is, income had a greater impact on the family functioning and development of poor children than of nonpoor children.

What do you learn about someone over time? The relationship between length of acquaintance and consensus and self-other agreement in judgments of personality

Theory and research examining length of acquaintance and consensus among personality judgments have predominantly examined each dimension of personality separately. In L. J. Cronbachs (1955) terminology, this trait-centered approach combines consensus on elevation, differential elevation, and differential accuracy in personality judgments. The current article extends D. A. Kennys (1991, 1994) weighted average model (WAM)--a theoretical model of the factors that influence agreement among personality judgments--to separate out two of Cronbachs components of consensus: stereotype accuracy and differential accuracy. Consistent with the predictions based on the WAM, as length of acquaintance increased, self-other agreement and consensus differential accuracy increased, stereotype accuracy decreased, and trait-level or raw profile correlations generally remained unchanged. Discussion focuses on the conditions under which a relationship between length of acquaintance and consensus and self-other agreement among personality evaluations emerges and how impressions change over time.

What Is Beautiful Is Good and More Accurately Understood Physical Attractiveness and Accuracy in First Impressions of Personality

Beautiful people are seen more positively than others, but are they also seen more accurately? In a round-robin design in which previously unacquainted individuals met for 3 min, results were consistent with the “beautiful is good” stereotype: More physically attractive individuals were viewed with greater normative accuracy; that is, they were viewed more in line with the highly desirable normative profile. Notably, more physically attractive targets were viewed more in line with their unique self-reported personality traits, that is, with greater distinctive accuracy. Further analyses revealed that both positivity and accuracy were to some extent in the eye of the beholder: Perceivers’ idiosyncratic impressions of a target’s attractiveness were also positively related to the positivity and accuracy of impressions. Overall, people do judge a book by its cover, but a beautiful cover prompts a closer reading, leading more physically attractive people to be seen both more positively and more accurately.

Assessing Mediational Models: Testing and Interval Estimation for Indirect Effects

Theoretical models specifying indirect or mediated effects are common in the social sciences. An indirect effect exists when an independent variables influence on the dependent variable is mediated through an intervening variable. Classic approaches to assessing such mediational hypotheses (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Sobel, 1982) have in recent years been supplemented by computationally intensive methods such as bootstrapping, the distribution of the product methods, and hierarchical Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. These different approaches for assessing mediation are illustrated using data from Dunn, Biesanz, Human, and Finn (2007). However, little is known about how these methods perform relative to each other, particularly in more challenging situations, such as with data that are incomplete and/or nonnormal. This article presents an extensive Monte Carlo simulation evaluating a host of approaches for assessing mediation. We examine Type I error rates, power, and coverage. We study normal and nonnormal data as well as complete and incomplete data. In addition, we adapt a method, recently proposed in statistical literature, that does not rely on confidence intervals (CIs) to test the null hypothesis of no indirect effect. The results suggest that the new inferential method—the partial posterior p value—slightly outperforms existing ones in terms of maintaining Type I error rates while maximizing power, especially with incomplete data. Among confidence interval approaches, the bias-corrected accelerated (BC a ) bootstrapping approach often has inflated Type I error rates and inconsistent coverage and is not recommended; In contrast, the bootstrapped percentile confidence interval and the hierarchical Bayesian MCMC method perform best overall, maintaining Type I error rates, exhibiting reasonable power, and producing stable and accurate coverage rates.

The Social Accuracy Model of Interpersonal Perception: Assessing Individual Differences in Perceptive and Expressive Accuracy

The social accuracy model of interpersonal perception (SAM) is a componential model that estimates perceiver and target effects of different components of accuracy across traits simultaneously. For instance, Jane may be generally accurate in her perceptions of others and thus high in perceptive accuracy—the extent to which a particular perceivers impressions are more or less accurate than other perceivers on average across different targets. Just as well, Jake may be accurately perceived by others and thus high in expressive accuracy—the extent to which a particular target is accurately perceived on average across different perceivers. Perceptive and expressive accuracy can be further decomposed into their constituent components of normative and distinctive accuracy. Thus the SAM represents an integration of Cronbachs componential approach with Kennys (1994) social relations model. The SAM is illustrated using both a half-block as well as a round-robin design. Key findings include reliable individual differences in several specific aspects of interpersonal perceptions.

Personality Over Time: Methodological Approaches to the Study of Short-Term and Long-Term Development and Change

Although theories of personality emphasize the integrative, enduring, and dynamic nature of personality, the current modal research design in personality ignores the dimension of time. We consider a variety of recent methods of longitudinal data analysis to examine both short-term and long-term development and change in personality, including mean-level analyses both across and within individuals across time, variance structures across time, and cycles and dynamic models across time. These different longitudinal analyses can address classic as well as new questions in the study of personality and its development. We discuss the linkages among different longitudinal analyses, measurement issues in temporal data, the spacing of assessments, and the levels of generalization and potential insights afforded by different longitudinal analyses.

Daily Cognitive Appraisals, Daily Affect, and Long-Term Depressive Symptoms: The Role of Self-Esteem and Self-Concept Clarity in the Stress Process

The current study investigated how self-esteem and self-concept clarity are implicated in the stress process both in the short and long term. Initial and 2-year follow-up interviews were completed by 178 participants from stepfamily unions. In twice-daily structured diaries over 7 days, participants reported their main family stressor, cognitive appraisals (perceived stressor threat and stressor controllability), and negative affect. Results of multilevel modeling indicated that high self-esteem ameliorated the effect of daily negative cognitive appraisals on daily negative affect. Self-concept clarity also buffered the effect of low self-self-esteem on depressive symptoms 2 years later. Our findings point to the vulnerability of those having low self-esteem or low self-concept clarity in terms of both short- and long-term adaptation to stress. They indicate the need for the consideration of such individual differences in designing stress management interventions.

The Cost of Forming More Accurate Impressions Accuracy-Motivated Perceivers See the Personality of Others More Distinctively but Less Normatively Than Perceivers Without an Explicit Goal

Does the motivation to form accurate impressions actually improve accuracy? The present work extended Kenny’s (1991, 1994) weighted-average model (WAM)—a theoretical model of the factors that influence agreement among personality judgments—to examine two components of interpersonal perception: distinctive and normative accuracy. WAM predicts that an accuracy motivation should enhance distinctive accuracy but decrease normative accuracy. In other words, the impressions of a perceiver with an accuracy motivation will correspond more with the target person’s unique characteristics and less with the characteristics of the average person. Perceivers randomly assigned to receive the social goal of forming accurate impressions, which was communicated through a single-sentence instruction, achieved higher levels of distinctive self-other agreement but lower levels of normative agreement compared with perceivers not given an explicit impression-formation goal. The results suggest that people motivated to form accurate impressions do indeed become more accurate, but at the cost of seeing others less normatively and, in particular, less positively.