Kenneth H. Craik

Do People Know How They Behave? Self-Reported Act Frequencies Compared With On-Line Codings by Observers

Behavioral acts constitute the building blocks of interpersonal perception and the basis for inferences about personality traits. How reliably can observers code the acts individuals perform in a specific situation? How valid are retrospective self-reports of these acts? Participants interacted in a group-discussion task and then reported their act frequencies, which were later coded by observers from videotapes. For each act, observer-observer agreement, self-observer agreement, and self-enhancement bias were examined. Findings show that (a) agreement varied greatly across acts; (b) much of this variation was predictable from properties of the acts (observability, base rate, desirability, Big Five domain); (c) on average, self-reports were positively distorted; and (d) this was particularly true for narcissistic individuals. Discussion focuses on implications for research on acts, traits, social perception, and the act frequency approach.

An empirical analysis of trends in psychology.

The present research examined trends in the prominence of 4 widely recognized schools in scientific psychology: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. The results, which replicated across 3 measures of prominence, showed the following trends: (a) psychoanalytic research has been virtually ignored by mainstream scientific psychology over the past several decades; (b) behavioral psychology has declined in prominence and gave way to the ascension of cognitive psychology during the 1970s; (c) cognitive psychology has sustained a steady upward trajectory and continues to be the most prominent school; and (d) neuroscience has seen only a modest increase in prominence in mainstream psychology, despite evidence for its conspicuous growth in general. The authors use these findings as a springboard for discussing different views of scientific prominence and conclude that psychologists should evaluate trends in the field empirically, not intuitively.

Acts, Dispositions, and Personality

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview on the act frequency approach and discusses the empirical and conceptual issues. Dispositional concepts have been viewed from three basic perspectives. The first and most prevalent is the purposive–cognitive concept of disposition, in which needs, beliefs, or desires constitute the focal attributes. A second concept of disposition is a hypothetical proposition, which invokes situational specifications in the explication of dispositions. The third basic form of dispositional concept is as a categorical summary statement. The act frequency approach modifies and extends the summary view of dispositions and fashions a general research program for personality psychology. The frequency analysis of dispositional constructs focuses on specifying the occurrence of acts within circumscribed categories over specified periods of observation. From a frequency perspective, no single act serves as a measure or index from which dispositional inferences can be drawn. Instead, multiple-act criteria consisting of composites of observed acts within each dispositional category over a specified period of observation, serve as the fundamental measures of an individuals dispositions. A fundamental division occurs in personality psychology in regard to the explanatory status of dispositions. Relations among three elements have been considered in philosophical treatments of this issue: (1) the disposition, (2) manifestations of the disposition, and (3) a causal account of dispositional manifestations.

Why not measure that trait? Alternative criteria for identifying important dispositions.

Identifying important dispositional concepts from among a potential array of thousands remains a crucial theoretical task for personality psychology. This analysis examines previous approaches to the reduction process (e.g., lexical, statistical) and suggests an alternative set of criteria based on the act frequency approach to personality. These alternative criteria include reference to the domains of acts encompassed by dispositional constructs, the uniqueness or nonredundancy of those domains, agreement about act-disposition linkages, agreement about within-category prototypicality status, degree of temporal stability, and magnitude of manifested performance base rate. It is argued that previous, more stringent, exclusion criteria have tended to remove from consideration important classes of acts about which the field is centrally concerned. Five empirical studies illustrate the application of these new criteria to a previouslY neglected dispositional construct: calculating. Discussion focuses on the implications of a more expansive view of the taxonomic task that faces personality psychology.

Multiple scientific paradigms in environmental psychology

Abstract The developmental-historical pattern of environmental psychology is analyzed. It is seen to reflect primarily the discovery of engaging puzzles within the man-environment context by several mature research paradigms currently viable within scientific psychology. This invasion of the paradigms is illustrated by brief accounts of: 1) ecological psychology; 2) environmental perception; 3) environmental assessment; 4) personality and the environment; 5) environmental cognition, and 6) analysis of functional adaptations. The implications of this perspective are noted for the new fielďs pure and applied research potential; for communication between researchers and environmental decisionmakers; for the prospects of a common conceptual framework, and for advanced research training in the field.

Explorations of construct validity in a combined managerial and personality assessment programme

A combined programme entailing separate managerial and personality assessment staffs was employed to explore the construct validity of managerial performance dimensions. For a sample of 119 MBA (Master of Business Administration) candidates, principal components analysis of mean ratings on 14 managerial performance dimensions identified a Strategic Managerial Style (SMS) (e.g. decision making, fact-finding) and an Interpersonal Managerial Style (IMS) (e.g. oral communication, initiative). Among independent scorings for the managerial assessment procedures, performance on the in-basket exercise best predicted SMS while performance in the leaderless group discussion best predicted IMS. Trait rankings, Adjective Check List impressions, and Q sort portraits recorded by the personality assessment staff were related to the SMS and IMS as well as to the managerial assessment staffs overall judgments of Managerial Potential (MP). Of the domains of the five-factor model of personality dimensions, the SMS trait descriptors were most characterized by Conscientiousness and Openness, the IMS by Extraversion, Openness and low Agreeableness, and the MP by Extraversion and Openness. Implications were drawn for the relation of managerial assessment centre measures to concurrent personality measures and for alternative predictive models of career outcome criteria.

Contemporary Worldviews and Perception of the Technological System

Perhaps one of the most central public policy issues in the past two decades has been focused on explorations of the ways in which appropriate relations may be fostered between modern industrial societies and their environments. Two general strategies may be followed in this exploration, one tightly focused, the other wider-ranging. The narrow-gauge strategy typically examines in depth the details of a specific environmental variable. In contrast, the broad-gauge strategy seeks to identify the major systems and to examine the interplay and linkages among them. Our investigation of the perception and management of technological hazards has been guided by the broader strategy, involving a conceptual framework that examines the interplay among personal, societal, and environmental systems (Figure l)(Craik, 1972).

The Environmental Dispositions of Environmental Decision-Makers

A new interdisciplinary field of research has recently emerged which studies how persons comprehend the everyday physical environment, how they use it, how they shape it and how they are shaped by it. In seeking an objective understanding of the behavioral aspects of the total personal-societal-environmental system, professional environ mental decision-makers, such as architects, urban planners and natural-resources managers, are strategic choices for psy chological study. Within this context of environmental design and management, research is being directed toward clarifying the implicit assumptions about environmental behavior held by decision-makers, overcoming social and administrative distances from clients, and conducting systematic follow-up evaluations of the behavioral consequences of planning and design decisions. However, subtle and precise study of man-environment relations will require the development of psychological techniques providing a comprehensive and dif ferentiated description of any persons orientation to the everyday physical environment. Methods for measuring indi vidual differences in environmental dispositions are reviewed and their potential usefulness for advancing knowledge of the interplay between human behavior and the physical envi ronment is illustrated.

The Personal Living Space Cue Inventory An Analysis and Evaluation

The authors introduce the Personal Living Space Cue Inventory (PLSCI), designed to document comprehensively features of personal living spaces (PLSs); common examples of PLSs include rooms in family households, dormitories, or residential centers. The article describes the PLSCI’s development and provides evidence for its reliability and sensitivity. Next, the authors employ case-study comparisons to illustrate and evaluate the perspectives provided by global descriptors and specific-content codings. It is concluded that global ratings and specific codings provide complementary yet distinct characterizations of PLSs.

An Ecological Perspective on Environmental Decision-Making

Current research on environmental decision-makers at the professional and nonprofessional levels is reviewed. The potential utility of this research for achieving more adaptive man-environment relations in modern industrial societies is examined. A broader framework of research is suggested for viewing the antecedents and consequences of environmental decision-making from an ecological perspective. Mechanisms for promoting research on man-environment relations are considered. In particular, issues in the training of scientific man-power in this interdisciplinary field are discussed.