<p> Relationship conflict in groups has been shown to be detrimental to group outcomes, and research notes that emotion or affect plays a significant part in its development. The Need for Affect (NFA) is a construct that reflects an individual&rsquo;s attitude toward emotion and their level of desire to either approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations This study examined the relationship between NFA and relationship conflict in groups, then sought to determine whether the neuroticism personality trait was a moderator to that relationship. Members of 14 small workgroups (N = 68) in various organizations were administered a 67-question survey designed to (1) measure their individual need for affect level, (2) score their Big Five personality traits, and (3) measure intragroup conflict in their respective groups. Neuroticism was one of the five personality traits of interest because it has been shown to have a negative correlation with NFA. Pearson&rsquo;s correlational analysis was run to test the neuroticism &ndash; NFA relationship, as well as the NFA &ndash; relationship conflict relationship. PROCESS moderation analysis was also conducted to test the moderation effect of neuroticism on the NFA &ndash; Conflict relationship. There was a significant negative correlation between neuroticism and NFA. However, no significant relationship existed between NFA and relationship conflict, and neuroticism did not significantly moderate that relationship.</p><p>

<p> Many people with a history of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) report lingering symptoms that cause difficulties in everyday functioning as well as interpersonal communication. These changes are likely due to cognitive and emotional processing changes following injury. The association between personality and executive functioning (EF) is an emerging field with a small but growing body of research. Overall, that research has suggested that there is some relationship between personality, cognition, and emotional factors. Existing research exploring the interaction of personality and EF has tended to sample populations without executive dysfunction. Not all individuals with mild TBI are reported to have enduing cognitive and other impairments, but a recognized proportion report ongoing problems&mdash;i.e., the so-called &ldquo;miserable minority&rdquo; described by Ruff et al. (1996). </p><p> A sample of 19 veterans with a history of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) was recruited from Sierra Nevada Healthcare System. Consistent with past research, veterans were tested for personality using the NEO-Five Factor Inventory-3 and executive functioning using three measures: DKEFS Color-Word, DKEFS Verbal Fluency and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. </p><p> Significant associations were found between Neuroticism and Inhibition, Agreeableness and Inhibition as well as Openness and Updating. Findings are consistent with common persistent symptoms following TBI: decreased energy reserve, headache and increased sensory overstimulation. Findings support using NEO assessment measures in clinical assessment to describe daily functioning in common language to make targeted recommendations. Future research in different TBI populations (moderate, severe, polytrauma) could strengthen findings. It is also recommended that the NEO measures are used to measure response to treatment.</p><p>

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People feel in control when they effectively alter an external environment, their own behavior, or their own mental state. Past research on control emphasizes the psychological benefits of having environmental control, in which people bring the environment in line with their own wishes. The present research explores self-directed control, in which people adapt to the surrounding environmental context. Environmental control affirms the traditional Western cultural emphasis on an independent, agentic self that separates positively from others. But self-directed control assists an interdependent, contextual self-concept that values merging with and depending on other people. Guided by culturally informed views of the interdependent self and by initial theories on self-directed control (originally "secondary" control; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984), the present research develops an individual difference measure of self-directed control. Unlike past views that consider self-directed control a passive alternative to failed environmental control, this report considers how positive, active styles of self-directed control enable people to maintain social bonds. Initial items on the individual difference measure of self-directed control (SDC) reflect field work and re-interpretations of four categories outlined in Weisz, et al. (1984). Exploratory factor analysis, internal consistency analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis reduced the item pool to 21 items that comprise five correlated factors: trusting a higher power: allowing other people to fulfill persona needs; anticipating and adjusting to other people's needs; merging goals with others; and accepting that bad times will improve on their own. Over 2,300 participants in seven diverse samples completed the SDC scale. The scale meets traditional psychometric standards. It correlates with measures of interdependence and collectivism and is orthogonal to measures of environmental control, as predicted. The scale is uncorrelated with self-esteem. Women and Hispanics, two groups for whom role requirements and cultural background emphasize interdependence, score higher than men and Anglos, respectively. A diary study confirmed that the SDC scale predicts daily reports of self-directed control, and demonstrated that social situations support self-directed control. The results support the social nature of self-directed control, reveal the importance of trust in this type of control, and suggest that self-directed control may not engage conscious self-efficacy.

Modernists theorists propose that one's self is fragmented, invisible, or false when one shows different versions of one's self in various situations. Believing this, Modernists further suppose that with respect to one's gender or sexual orientation identity, one is either appropriately representing one's biological gender and earliest understandings of one's sexual orientation (usually presumed to be heterosexual), or else one is pathological and needs clinical treatment. Poststructuralists look instead at context, and offer a view of the self which takes contextual factors into account, avoiding the pathologizing of anyone's social identity variations. Since identities such as gender and sexual orientation are lived in contexts which include social pressures and restrictions and one's reactions to and actions towards these pressures, emphases also must be placed upon analyzing gender roles and privileges, and the impact these have on one's expectations, apparent choices, and decisions for the living of these social identities. This two-year ethnographic study investigated how gender and sexual orientation identities were continually socially negotiated in two small groups. These groups met as part of a program whose purpose is to offer theatre training, counseling, and performance opportunities for volunteer adolescents. Also investigated were the ways the members' changing perceptions of levels of group and interpersonal connection and safety affected these social identity negotiations, and how the variations in gender and sexual orientation identities were perceived and received by members. Members described the program Norms, of confidentiality, respect, punctuality, commitment, and sobriety, as the main factors which positively guided the members' favorable interactions and created the safe atmosphere. Despite wider cultural backlashes and restrictions, variability in identities occurred frequently among these adolescents; negative attitudes about social identities, with rigidity and intolerance, characterized many of their early group interactions. Most research on social identities usually presents development as consisting of "stages," with clashes among those at different stages offered as the cause for most identity-based social problems. The participants co-created the theory that liberational, and authentic gender and sexual orientation identities may be co-constructed. Differential Authenticity describes the ways program participants flexibly lived these social identities.

Emotional reasoning is emotionally-based cognition operating on subjective terms, independent of rationality, and using feelings as criteria. In Study 1, 113 participants, 29 men and 84 women, focussed either on their feelings or on the reasons for their choices as they made a series of decisions in a card-playing game. Contrary to predictions, participants who focussed on their feelings were less likely to make optimal decisions in the game. This study thus provided no evidence that emotional reasoning can reach optimal conclusions. In a second study, 96 participants, 35 men and 61 women, made a series of decisions to cooperate or compete with an unseen partner in a Prisoner's Dilemma game. Participants who focussed on their feelings were less likely to compete than participants who focussed on reasons for making each decision, so that they did less well in the short term, but significantly better over the long term, than participants in the Reasons condition. Participants who described themselves as highly rational were also less likely to do well in the game. This study demonstrates that emotional reasoning can be more effective than rational decision-making.