M.Phil. (Industrial Psychology) / The equivalent cross-cultural assessment of personality has long been a debatable subject in psychological research. Personologists remain divided as to the universality of personality traits, and as such, their cross-cultural applicability. This argument remains valid within the South African multicultural and multilingual context. In addition to the applicability of various imported personality measures, South Africa’s past misuse of psychological assessments for unfair discriminatory purposes has created many negative perceptions of their utility. This was further corroborated with the promulgation of the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 that stipulates that all psychological assessments used in South Africa need to meet the criteria of: a) being scientifically shown to be valid and reliable; b) can be applied fairly to all employees; and c) not biased against any employee or group (Government Gazette, 1998). Currently no validated indigenous model and measure of personality exists in South Africa. Psychological assessments are mainly imported from the United States of America (US) and United Kingdom (UK) and normed to the South African population. Foxcroft, Roodt and Abrahams (2005) acknowledge that many of these assessments, in addition to many locally developed measures, have not been tested for bias nor have they been cross-culturally validated. Furthermore, the theories, models and taxonomies on which these measures are based were developed within a Western context and as such, have not incorporated the unique intricacies of the South African context and its array of cultures and languages. Therefore, the accurate and appropriate measure of personality within South Africa has been impeded.

M.A. / The purpose of Personal and Professional Leadership (PPL) facilitating is to bring about intrapersonal, interpersonal and professional change and development in trainees. In order to ensure that these changes occur, trainees should be addressed on emotional as well as rational level -whether by means of PPL counselling and I or a PPL course. Personal and Professional Leadership development therefore focuses on constant growth and change. Growth is a prerequisite for change, which in turn necessitates learning. A common problem that hinders change and growth is that participants in a training group normally hail from heterogeneous backgrounds. This implies different personality traits, values, perceptions and belief systems, which influence directly how a person learns and processes information during a course. Consequently, the need exists to gain insight into the personality types and learning styles of groups in order to make adjustments in the activities of the course package. The preliminary literature study revealed that insightful similarities exist between different temperament, learning and personality styles on the one hand and brain dominance on the other hand. The need arose to research a suitable instrument within the PPL field with a rich interpretation, being simple, quick to complete and easy to interpret. The preliminary literature study confirmed that this could be achieved by using the Neethling Brain Instrument (NBI) as a brain dominance assessment instrument. The following research question was asked: Should brain dominance be used as an assessment instrument, would an enriched interpretation be possible by means of investigating temperament, learning and personality styles? The central objective of the research is to investigate the potential link between brain dominance and temperament, learning and personality styles, in order to facilitate the compilation of a personal portrayal profile of the group through interpretation from literature. This personal portrayal profile will give the facilitator insight into the different learning, personality and thinking styles of the group that will ensure a better understanding of the training group before training commences. This insight will help the facilitator to initiate change and growth. The research design for this study may be regarded as an exploratory and descriptive literature research study. The phenomenological method of research was applied. By means of logical deduction (i.e. logical arguing about the acceptability of certain essential characteristics), the different temperament, learning and personality styles were evaluated (inter-subjective evaluation) for the applicability on brain dominance, in order to draft the personal portrayal profile.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MSc (Medical Applied Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Psychiatry / unrestricted

Personality, situational and behavioural theories of political leadership fall short of explaining the interaction among the leader, the followers and the environment. In contrast, the transactional approach emphasizes this reciprocal process of social, cognitive and situational influences. Integrative complexity theory provides a framework and a methodology for studying this interaction and its effect on how people process information. This study focuses on the Canadian Prime Ministers as a population of political leaders worthy of investigation. In addition to studying their integrative complexity level, other aspects of value in understanding great leaders were examined. Based on items found in studies of American Presidents (Maranell, 1970; Schlesinger, 1962) the following dimensions were studied: difficulty, activeness, motivation, strength, effectiveness, prestige, innovativeness, flexibility, honesty and overall> accomplishments. Two sets of complexity scores (on prepared and spontaneous materials) were obtained in order to test the question: Whose complexity is being rated in prepared speeches — the writer's or the speaker's? Prepared speech scores came from the Response to the Speech from the Throne texts in Hansard, while spontaneous speech scores were based on extemporaneous responses to informal questions in the House of Commons. Two groups of experts (historians and political scientists) on Canadian leaders were approached for their opinions about the 16 Prime Ministers along the ten dimensions mentioned. An eleventh item was included as a check on the experts' knowledge of each leader. There was no difference between the prepared and spontaneous integrative complexity scores. Except for honesty, there were no correlations between complexity and the 11 dimensions rated by experts. The experts' ratings did not differ as a function of their discipline on 10 of the 11 scales. Only on the amount of information they had about each Prime Minister did the two groups differ. The difficulty of the political issues facing a Prime Minister had an effect on how he was rated on five dimensions: activeness, strength, effectiveness, innovativeness and accomplishments. Based on the four items found to be most predictive of greatness in American Presidents (i.e., strength, prestige, activeness and accomplishments), Canada's five greatest Prime Ministers are: Macdonald, Laurier, Borden, King and Trudeau. Both primacy and recency effects can be seen in these choices. The difficulty of the issues facing a Prime Minister had an impact on 3 of the 4 components contributing to greatness. The 5 Prime Ministers selected as great tended to rate high on the items which correspond to the 3 major dimensions (evaluative, activity, potency) of the semantic differential. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Are there aspects of affect that can be generalized across different languages? Are there consistent patterns of associations between self-reported affect and personality across groups speaking different languages? In the present dissertation, I explore these two questions in five different language samples. Studies of current self-reported affect in English suggest that Russell's (1980), Thayer's (1989), Larsen and Diener's (1992), and Watson and Tellegen's (1985) models of affect variables can be integrated and summarized by a two-dimensional space defined by Pleasant vs Unpleasant and Activated vs Deactivated axes. To assess the cross-language generalizability of this integrated structure, data on translations of the English affect scales (N for Spanish = 233, N for Chinese = 487, N for Japanese = 450, N for Korean = 365) were compared with the structure in English ON = 535). Systematic and random errors were controlled through multi-format measurements (Green, Goldman, & Salovey, 1993) and structural equation modeling. Individual measurement models as defined in English received support in all five languages, although revisions of these scales in non-English samples provided an even closer approximation to the two-dimensional structure in English. In all five languages, the two dimensions explained most, but not all, of the reliable variance in other affect variables (mean = 88%). The four structural models fit comfortably within the integrated two-dimensional space. In fact, the variables fell at different angles on the integrated space, suggesting a new circumplex structure. In prior studies conducted in English, the personality traits of Neuroticism and Extraversion were most predictive of affect and they aligned with the Pleasant Activated and Unpleasant Activated states. To clarify and extend the previous findings, participants in all five samples also completed NEO FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992), a measure for the Five Factor Model of personality (FFM). Again, Neuroticism and Extraversion were most predictive of affect, accounting for, on average, 10% of the variance. The remaining three factors of the FFM contributed, on average, 2%. In all five languages, the FFM dimensions did not align with the two predicted affective dimensions. Rather, they fell all around the upper half of the twodimensional space. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to develop an effective formal instrument to assess the Adlerian personality priorities. The development of the Allen Assessment for Adlerian Personality Priorities, AAAPP, seeks to provide a strong comparability to assessing the Adlerian construct of personality priorities as the counselor interview. One hundred and seven participants were given the 1st administration of the AAAPP, Social Interest Scale and a demographic survey. Sixty-four participants completed a 2nd administration of the AAAPP two weeks later. Twenty participants experienced a counseling interview following the 2nd administration. The methods used to evaluate the validity and effectiveness of the AAAPP included: face validity, predictive validity, construct validity, test-retest reliability, multiple regression, Guttman split-half reliability and the Spearman Brown reliability.

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An historical introduction is made tying authoritarianism with ambiguity tolerance. Ambiguity tolerance is a personality variable in its own right, often associated with authoritarianism yet remaining separate from it. Ambiguity intolerance is defined as the tendency to perceive and interpret information that is marked by vague, fragmented, incomplete, inconsistent, contradictory, or unclear meaning as actual or potential sources of psychological threat. Ambiguity tolerance is defined as the tendency to perceive ambiguous situations as challenging and desirable. Efforts to measure ambiguity tolerance have met with varied success, however, it was not until Norton (197S) developed the Measurement of Ambiguity Tolerance (MAT-50) that accurate measurement became a possibility. The present study presents data that provides some construct validity to the MAT-SO. College students were administered the MAT-SO and divided into two groups: tolerants and intolerants. It was hypothesized that individuals who were in the intolerant group would produce more anxiety (as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) when presented with an ambiguous situation (the Rorschach inkblot test) than individuals in the tolerant group. The hypothesis was confirmed, individuals in the intolerant group displayed more state as well as trait anxiety than those in the tolerant group. Recommendations are made suggesting that future research use subjects from a less homogenous group.

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