Norma Haan

As time goes by: change and stability in personality over fifty years.

Dimensions of personality, based on Q-sorted descriptions at seven points in time over a 50-year period and derived from a three-way component analysis, are described for a core sample of 118 subjects and two additional childhood samples of 99 and 108 subjects that partially overlap with the core sample. Stability and change in personality are described between adjacent periods and across a substantial segment of the life span from early childhood to late adulthood. These descriptions do not seem consistent with various explanations that personality develops either by stages or by steady gradual accumulation, or that it results from early effects. Instead, some aspects of personality shifted in level and correlational stability at particular intervals in time and according to sex of participants; other aspects were comparatively stable, irrespective of time interval and sex of participants. We suggest that the development of personality and achievement-based variables is not alike. Instead, personality development appears to be considerably more innovative and responsive-that is, more adaptive.

Sex Differences in the Eyes of Expert Personality Assessors: Blind Spots?

Summary Sex differences in rating performances with the 100-item California Q Sort are reported for 10 men and 13 women psychologists who were variously paired to assess the adult personalities of the same 48 male and 50 female Ss. Women judges ascribe more favorable characteristics to females than do men, while men judges are generally more unfavorable in their judgments of both men and women. Other qualitative differences, perhaps related to stereotypic sex-role perceptions, are discussed. The absence of empirical data on sex differences to expert judgment is noted, and the need for control of this factor in future accessment studies is indicated.

Moral Redefinition in Families as the Critical Aspect of the Generational Gap

A structural view of the family and of the late adolescent’s developing intellect suggests that generational gaps are probably inevitable, although their manifestations, in terms of content, clarity, and extent, would clearly vary at different times in history and in different societies. As a general description, this is neither a new nor a canny observation, since it has been implied by many who have noted that the adolescent’s rites of passage to adulthood involves perturbation, if not stress, and that different societies make various formal provisions for recognizing and then facilitating the transition. In fact, some societies appear to accommodate so smoothly to the adolescent becoming

Social-Psychological Aspects of Student Activism

WHEN WE EMBARKED on our study of student activism, evidence was already in hand that the activist minority, whose strident protests first attracted worldwide attention on the Berkeley campus in the fall of 1964, bears little resemblance to the marginal types, the academic dregs, that popular journalism was wont to portray and in which respectable voters-at least in California-liked to believe. It was already becoming clear that they were drawn from among the best students on the best campuses (Block et al., 1968; Peterson, 1968; Sampson, 1967). We did not set out to provide further documentation of this fact. We were interested, rather, in shedding light on the psychological basis of activism and alternative patterns of student orientation to the sociopolitical order. We have reported elsewhere on two major foci of the

An Investigation of the Relationships of Rorschach Scores, Patterns, and Behavior to Coping and Defense Mechanisms

Abstract Relationships were studied between formal Rorschach scores and a set of coping and defense mechanisms which had been rated on the basis of intensive interviews conducted with normal adult subjects. A preliminary study showed that IQ was related to a number of Rorschach scores, so that it was subsequently controlled. The character of the initial results and the attributes of coping functions suggested a second investigation which defined the Rorschach variables more globally. The results of this study very generally follow common expectancies in regard to M, M: FM, and W: M, but A, F extended, and F: Fk + Fc do not follow such trends. Global Rorschach attitudes were found to relate better to coping mechanisms than formal scores.

“… Change and Sameness …” Reconsidered

This paper acknowledges and responds to Jack Blocks statistical critique of the authors previously reported study of change and sameness in personality development. The critique was apt, and calls attention to the difficulty of working appropriately with numerous, multiply-assessed variables. A re-analysis of the data is presented here. The general pattern of findings remains consistent with the original interpretations, but the re-analysis produced some differences as well.

Personality Organizations of Well-Functioning Younger People and Older Adults

Person clustering of Q sort items for two longitudinal samples, studied at four periods from adolescence to middle adulthood, were generated for the sexes separately. After correlations between the resulting sixty-eight clusters showed that common personality organizations existed across time, sex, and samples, a second order clustering of the first sixty-eight was done which reduced the number of clusters to four. The first cluster represented a well-functioning organization, and comparisons were made of its hierarchial ordering of attributes between the longitudinal samples and a geriatric sample. Although both groups were dependable and productive, they diverged in the importance of intimate interpersonal relations and in their self concepts. The older people were more tender and intimate, but conserving of their own integrity, while the younger groups were more assertive and cognitively invested, as they must be to deal with their different life situations.

Alienated and Nonalienated Youth

Late adolescence has been viewed by Erikson (1968) and others (Keniston, 1965) as a period of search for a new definition of self in relation to society. America in the 1960s saw the emergence of two distinct types of youth whose identity seemed based on challenging conventional society: hippies and student activists. Because they reject convention and traditional authority, both can be viewed as alienated youth; yet the ways in which each group manifests its alienation are profoundly different. As paradigm examples of nonconforming youth, hippies and student activists have stimulated broad social criticism (Feuer, 1969; Rozak, 1969). However, systematic research

Alienated and Nonalienated Youth: Perceptions of Parents, Self-Evaluations, and Moral Reasoning of Hippies and College Youth

Late adolescence has been viewed by Erikson (1968) and others (Keniston, 1965) as a period of search for a new definition of self in relation to society. America in the 1960s saw the emergence of two distinct types of youth whose identity seemed based on challenging conventional society: hippies and student activists. Because they reject convention and traditional authority, both can be viewed as alienated youth; yet the ways in which each group manifests its alienation are profoundly different. As paradigm examples of nonconforming youth, hippies and student activists have stimulated broad social criticism (Feuer, 1969; Rozak, 1969). However, systematic research