Renée M. Tobin

Agreeableness, empathy, and helping: a person x situation perspective.

This research program explored links among prosocial motives, empathy, and helping behavior. Preliminary work found significant relations among components of self-reported empathy and personality (N = 223). In Study 1, the authors examined the generality of prosocial behavior across situations and group memberships of victims (N = 622). In Study 2, empathic focus and the victims outgroup status were experimentally manipulated (N = 87). Study 3 (N = 245) replicated and extended Study 2 by collecting measures of prosocial emotions before helping. In Study 4 (N = 244), empathic focus and cost of helping as predictors of helping behavior were experimentally manipulated. Overall, prosocial motivation is linked to (a) Agreeableness as a dimension of personality, (b) proximal prosocial cognition and motives, and (c) helping behavior across a range of situations and victims. In persons low in prosocial motivation, when costs of helping are high, efforts to induce empathy situationally can undermine prosocial behavior.

You Can't Always Get What You Want Effortful Control and Children's Responses to Undesirable Gifts

This study examined individual differences in childrens regulation of emotional expression after receiving desirable and undesirable gifts. Effortful control, the ability to suppress a dominant response in favor of a subdominant one, was measured using a battery of behavioral tasks. Reactions to the gifts were videotaped, and emotional expression was coded. Age predicted effortful control, but not emotional displays. Effortful control predicted similarity of childrens displays of positive affect after receiving the two gifts. Specifically, children high in effortful control showed similar amounts of positive affect after receiving the desirable and undesirable gifts, whereas children low in effortful control showed less positive affect after receiving the undesirable gift than after receiving the desirable gift. Results are discussed in terms of temperament and the development of socially appropriate expressive behavior.

Attraction, personality, and prejudice: liking none of the people most of the time.

Unfavorable evaluations of others reflect both specific prejudice and generalized negativity. Study 1 examined self-reported norms and personal endorsement of prejudices to various social groups. Study 2 used judgments of overweight persons to examine links among prejudice, personality, and prosocial motives. Study 3 examined negative evaluations and social distancing during interpersonal interaction. Study 4 observed the translation of negative evaluations into overt discrimination. Study 5 experimentally manipulated the behavior of the target and observed its interactive effects with weight, personality, and prosocial motives. Results suggest that prejudice can emerge from otherwise unprejudiced persons when situations permit justification. Patterns in negative evaluations are linked distinctively to (a) the Big Five dimension of Agreeableness, (b) proximal social cognition and motives, and (c) discrimination.

The Disappointing Gift: Dispositional and Situational Moderators of Emotional Expressions

Inferences about emotions in children are limited by studies that rely on only one research method. Convergence across methods provides a stronger basis for inference by identifying method variance. This multimethod study of 116 children (mean age=8.21 years) examined emotional displays during social exchange. Each child received a desirable gift and later an undesirable gift after performing tasks, with or without mother present. Childrens reactions were observed and coded. Children displayed more positive affect with mother present than with mother absent. Independent ratings of children by adults revealed that children lower in the personality dimension of Agreeableness displayed more negative emotion than their peers following the receipt of an undesirable gift. A curvilinear interaction between Agreeableness and mother condition predicted negative affect displays. Emotional assessment is discussed in terms of links to social exchange and the development of expressive behavior.

Preservice teacher attitudes toward gay and lesbian parents.

Gay and lesbian parents are raising an increasing number of children, but little is known about how these parents are viewed by school personnel. In this study, preservice teacher attitudes toward gay and lesbian parents were assessed using implicit, explicit, behavioral, and behavioroid measures. Implicit measures indicate that participants rated same-gender targets more negatively than they rated heterosexual targets, and they rated targets of gay men more negatively than they rated lesbians; however, response patterns varied by participant sex. Furthermore, implicit measures of sexual prejudice generally correlated with explicit and behavioroid measures. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Developing Emotional Competence in Preschoolers: A Review of Regulation Research and Recommendations for Practice

Regulation has been implicated in the development of emotional and behavioral disorders in childhood. Indeed, emotion dysregulation is one of the most common reasons families seek psychological services and behavioral supports. Interventions to support children with regulatory difficulties may be enhanced if they are informed by basic psychological research on the topic. This paper includes a review of basic regulation research conducted over the last 20 years. This research base about the positive development of regulatory skills is then related to the treatment of emotion regulation deficits, emphasizing the role that school psychologists and school-based interventions may play in supporting appropriate regulatory strategies for young children.

Overcoming barriers to rural children’s mental health: an interconnected systems public health model

Abstract A large, Midwestern county implemented a four-tiered public health model of children’s mental health with an interconnected systems approach involving education, health care, juvenile justice and community mental health sectors. The community sought to promote protective factors in the lives of all youth, while improving the capacity, accessibility and coordination of the continuum of care available to children and families. This article describes efforts to improve services for children in rural communities by connecting traditionally separated sectors and engaging doctoral psychology interns in the continuum of care. This article articulates lessons learned in practice, provides a case study and community outcomes; universal screening data, graduation rates and juvenile arrest rates suggest efforts are yielding positive results. Considerations for implementation in other rural communities are discussed.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration Supporting Social-Emotional Learning in Rural School Systems.

In this article we illustrate the roles of school psychologists, administrators, social workers, teachers, and parents in school reform by describing the adoption, initial implementation, and formative evaluation of an evidence-based social and emotional learning (SEL) program within several rural Midwestern school districts in a geographically large county. As part of a countywide initiative aimed at improving childrens mental health services, an interdisciplinary team collaborated to select and implement a universal school-based curriculum addressing SEL objectives. Professionals in the countys special education cooperative lead the reform effort, general education teachers deliver the curriculum, and school psychologists and school social workers have served as trainers and consultants to educators and building administrators. An ecological model of organizational consultation informs these efforts. We illustrate this model by describing its application to the collaborative school-based initiative addressing SEL objectives. We also discuss implications for future consultation research, training, and practice.

An Introduction to the Wechsler Intelligence Tests Revisiting Theory and Practice

This special issue focuses on two lead articles examining the factor structure of the fourth editions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales (WAIS-IV; Wechsler, 2003) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC-IV; Wechsler, 2008). These articles are followed by 9 commentaries and a final response by the authors of the lead articles. These diverse approaches critically assess the theoretical and practice implications of the structure of intelligence measured by the Wechsler scales.