Seymour Rosenberg

Structural Representations of Implicit Personality Theory1

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the traits that a person perceives as characteristic of himself (or herself) and of others, and the beliefs that he or she holds about which traits tend to go together and which do not. Parsimonious ways of representing this type of complex and loosely organized system of perceived traits and relations have been discussed. The perception of stable physical and psychological characteristics and the beliefs about their co-occurrences are important objects of research for social psychologists, not only because of the ubiquity with which a person thinks and talks about himself and others but also because of the central role that personality perception plays in everyday social interaction and social decisions. The chapter describes laboratory analogs of the trait inference and personality and summarizes a number of findings that have resulted from their use, particularly studies involving the application of multidimensional scaling and, to some extent, clustering and factor analysis. Naturalistic personality and individual differences have been described. The chapter highlights the personality perception in children and some future directions for the study of personality perception.

The method of sorting as a data-gathering procedure in multivariate research.

This study compares two basic variants of the sorting method: single-sort in which each respondent is given only one opportunity to sort the items; and multiple-sort in which the respondent is given several opportunities to sort, each time on a different basis. Kinship terms serve as stimulus materials. Multidimensional scaling solutions show large differences between the two methods with respect to the degree to which the kinship dimensions are used as a basis for sorting. In particular, most respondents ignore the most obvious dimension (sex of the terms) when they believe they have only one opportunity to indicate the dimensions in the set. Similar observations of pairwise judgments in another stimulus domain (consonant phonemes) suggest the same bias may be present in such judgments. Moreover, in both instances hierarchical clustering completely fails to represent the minority of judges who do not ignore the given dimension. These results indicate that a multiple set of judgments from each set of respondents may be superior to a single set of judgments for certain stimulus domains. Finally, the kinship data also indicate that male and female respondents emphasize different kinship dimensions but that aggregated multiple-sort data do appear to reflect the cognitive dimensions present in any given individual.

Hierarchical classes: Model and data analysis.

A discrete, categorical model and a corresponding data-analysis method are presented for two-way two-mode (objects × attributes) data arrays with 0, 1 entries. The model contains the following two basic components: a set-theoretical formulation of the relations among objects and attributes; a Boolean decomposition of the matrix. The set-theoretical formulation defines a subset of the possible decompositions as consistent with it. A general method for graphically representing the set-theoretical decomposition is described. The data-analysis algorithm, dubbed HICLAS, aims at recovering the underlying structure in a data matrix by minimizing the discrepancies between the data and the recovered structure. HICLAS is evaluated with a simulation study and two empirical applications.

Self and others: studies in social personality and autobiography

Publisher Summary This chapter is concerned primarily with the content and organization of habitual self. The significant components of this content are the characteristics that a person perceives as relatively enduring aspects of self and other. These characteristics include perceived physical traits and attractiveness, personality traits, attitudes, competencies, and so on. This overview of the antecedents of social personality, although necessarily brief, is not intended simply as a historical exegesis. The resurgence of interest in self in social psychology is reflected in the chapter. It provides a new zeitgeist for reclaiming the conceptual links to an American past in which the study of self in personality and in social psychology was unified in a mutually enlightening way. A new set-theoretical model is described in the chapter for representing the organization of the socius of an individual; new data-analytic tools are described that are tailored to this model. The chapter discusses recent empirical applications of this set-theoretical model, using both laboratory data and naturalistic materials, particularly autobiography. These empirical applications, although idiographically based, are detailed information for fleshing out nomothetic principles about the content and organization of the socius.

The Conjunctive Model of Hierarchical Classes.

This paper describes the conjunctive counterpart of De Boeck and Rosenbergs hierarchical classes model. Both the original model and its conjunctive counterpart represent the set-theoretical structure of a two-way two-mode binary matrix. However, unlike the original model, the new model represents the row-column association as a conjunctive function of a set of hypothetical binary variables. The conjunctive nature of the new model further implies that it may represent some conjunctive higher order dependencies among rows and columns. The substantive significance of the conjunctive model is illustrated with empirical applications. Finally, it is shown how conjunctive and disjunctive hierarchical classes models relate to Galois lattices, and how hierarchical classes analysis can be useful to construct lattice models of empirical data.

INDCLAS: A THREE-WAY HIERARCHICAL CLASSES MODEL

A three-way three-mode extension of De Boeck and Rosenbergs (1988) two-way two-mode hierarchical classes model is presented for the analysis of individual differences in binary object × attribute arrays. In line with the two-way hierarchical classes model, the three-way extension represents both the association relation among the three modes and the set-theoretical relations among the elements of each model. An algorithm for fitting the model is presented and evaluated in a simulation study. The model is illustrated with data on psychiatric diagnosis. Finally, the relation between the model and extant models for three-way data is discussed.

Personal Identity and the Schizophrenic Process: An Integration

In this paper we explore the relation between theories of self, particularly identity theory, and the schizophrenic process. A fundamental assumption in identity theory is that a persons self includes a hierarchically organized set of identities. When an individuals set of identities is limited in range and/or diffusely organized he/she is thought to be at risk for schizophrenia. The onset and relapse of schizophrenic episodes are assumed to occur when important identities are negated. Implications of identity theory for integrating extant conceptions of schizophrenia are discussed. Also discussed are the effects of medication in establishing a patient identity and the role of the patient identity in preventing psychotic relapse.

The Abused Child as Parent.

Free-response memories and current descriptions of self, parents, babies, and significant others generated by 55 mothers who were physically abused as children were compared with memories and descriptions by 46 mothers who were not physically abused. The two groups of mothers were matched for age of baby, race, and socioeconomic status. It was found that clusters of negative attributes pervaded the memories and perceptions that abused mothers had of others, particularly parents. Moreover, the degree of negative elaboration (i.e., the number of negative clusters attributed to others) discriminated the abused and control groups almost perfectly. It was also found for both groups that the more elaborated the positive view of self and others, the more secure the attachment of infant to mother. In addition, patterns of identification and description were dramatically different between the two groups: Unlike the comparison mothers, abused mothers tended to disidentify with their own mothers and to be inconsistent in their characterization of them.

A Study of Personality in Literary Autobiography: An Analysis of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel

Analyzed physical and psychological traits used by Thomas Wolfe to describe self and others in Look Homeward, Angel as a method for studying personality. Set-theoretical comparisons (HICLAS algorithm) of the traits he attributed to self during 5 successive age periods revealed that Wolfe viewed his development as the accumulation over time of core family traits, particularly those of father. Multidimensional scaling revealed sharp differences between trait content Wolfe attributed to self and family and trait content he attributed to nonfamily. Interpretable differences were also found between family and nonfamily in the proportion of unique traits attributed to a person. In addition, differences were found in the proportion of unique traits attributed to self during the 5 different age periods. Implications of the findings for personality are discussed. Look Homeward, Angel (LHA) is a fictionalized autobiography of Thomas Wolfes life from his infancy to his early 20s. Most of the people and places described in the book are readily identifiable despite their fictional aliases. The elements selected from LHA for analysis are all the characteristics, physical and psychological, that Wolfe attributed to himself and to others in the novel. The focus of this study is on personality organization as reflected in these views that Wolfe held of himself and others. Although the subject of this study is Wolfe, its basic purpose is to demonstrate the value of an in-depth analysis of an individuals view of self and others in autobiography (particularly one as articulate and personal as Wolfes) as a way of studying personality organization in general. The psychology of autobiography, the use of literary materials to study personality, and a social psychological conception of personality and personality development—all provide the orientation and certain general assumptions underlying this study of Thomas Wolfes fictionalized autobiography as a study of personality. The introductory remarks that follow are intended to make explicit how this study is rooted in each of these

DSM-III-R as a taxonomy. A cluster analysis of diagnoses and symptoms.

While there have been many applications of cluster analysis in psychiatric classification research, there are no studies in which cluster analysis is used to discover the taxonomic structure implicit in the DSM-III itself. In order to do so, the symptom index in the DSM-III-R manual was summarized in a two-way matrix of disorders by symptoms and then analyzed using a hierarchical classes model and companion algorithm (HICLAS) that permits overlap among classes. A novel feature of this model is that superordinate-subordinate relationships among diagnostic and symptom classes are explicitly represented. The HICLAS analysis revealed that there are several discrete symptom classes in DSM-III-R and that many psychiatric disorders can be modeled as combinations of one or more of these classes. The disorders associated with these symptom classes tend to fit the hierarchical classes model relatively well, particularly the mood disorders and the psychotic disorders. However, disorders such as adjustment, personality, and sexual disorder fit the model poorly or not at all. The results are in line with the conjecture that the taxonomic model implicit in DSM-III-R is a hybrid of discrete symptom classes and some other structure, perhaps a dimensional one.