No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg for the Degree of Master of Arts Johannesburg, 1993 / The realization has recently been reached that personality psychology is in a state of crisis, this being even more true of the cross-cultural assessment of personality. In this dissertation traditional methods of assessing personality are critically examined 871d the appropriateness of the use of various assessment methods in South Africa is considered. Interactionism is put forward as' an alternative approach and its usefulness in assessment is evaluated. One method of operationalizing interacticnism is Kiesler's Interpersonal Circle. In the light of the limitations of existing assessment methods, it is :1ut forward that a contextual-behavioural representation of Kiesler's theory would solve many problems. An instrument was developed to allow the feasibility of this approach to be tested. In this instrument the testee interacts with a number of fictitious people with different characteristics. A study was conducted in which the 680 items were rated by 24 experts to establish if it is possible to obtain an acceptable level of agreement on the quadrant of the circle represented by the items. Overall, 16,7% of the items had to be revised. In the second study all items met the criteria set. The conclusion reached is that a contextual.. behavioural representation of Kiesler's theory is feasible. The implications for assessment are considered. / MT2017

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1976.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1976.

This thesis has explored the relationship between authoritarian personality traits and women who are members of politically active community groups. This study includes a pilot study of attitudes of Ball State University students. The thesis surveyed attitudes of a random sample of Muncie, Indiana residents as well as members of the League of Women Voters of Muncie-Delaware County and women who attended a conference on International Women’s Year.The study,, utilizing a self-administered questionnaire, found the members of the women's groups to be far less authoritarian than the random sample of Muncie residents. The study found, through factor analysis, some indications that the F-Scale was not entirely accurate. A strong "obedience-t" factor of authoritarianism was found which included both F-Scale items and the author’s own items. Further research in this area was urged.Samples of the questionnaire and cover letters were included in the appendices.

Situations are important in relation to behavior and personality (Lewin, 1946, 1951; Ross & Nisbett, 1991; Zimbardo, 2007). However, historical studies of situations have suffered from disagreement about their structure. The Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ: Wagerman & Funder, 2009) was developed as a tool to comprehensively measure situation characteristics. Because the RSQ is still relatively new, the factor structure of the RSQ has yet to be examined. Identifying the factor structure of the RSQ is important in order to provide an interpretation of the dimensions of situations and to make the first step in creating a smaller measure of situation characteristics that takes less time for participants to complete. Using a variety of factor extraction methods, 9 factors appeared consistently: Adversity, Social Negativity, Obligation, Cognitive/Intellectual, Mate Attraction, Sensuous, Positivity, and Competition. This study provides in-depth insight into the characteristics of situations based on a quantitative measure from an adult sample. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common psychiatric illness characterised by recurrent, intrusive thoughts and repetitive, stereotyped behaviours. There is converging evidence that OCD is associated with a specific cognitive deficit related to organising and manipulating information in working memory. There is also evidence that OCD is associated with certain pre-morbid personality traits. However, further research is needed to elucidate whether these cognitive deficits and personality traits are specific to OCD or are present in other anxiety disorders and/or individuals with sub-clinical levels of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. In this thesis, 20 OCD patients were compared to 20 patients with panic disorder, 20 subjects with sub-clinical OC symptoms and 20 healthy control subjects on tests of working memory and the Five-Factor Model of personality. To measure different aspects of working memory, participants completed three delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) tasks and two continuous performance working memory tasks (n-back tasks). The DMS tasks assessed the ability to actively maintain different types of information in working memory (irregular objects; geometric objects; spatial locations). The n-back tasks assessed the ability to update and temporally order verbal and spatial stimuli in working memory. The OCD patients were less accurate than the healthy control subjects on the memory trials of the spatial DMS task, the 3- back trials of the spatial n-back task, and the 2-back and 3-back trials of the verbal n-back task. The OCD patients were also less accurate than patients with panic disorder and sub-clinical OC subjects on the verbal 3-back task. The results indicated that OCD patients were impaired on cognitive tasks requiring the maintenance of spatial stimuli and the updating and temporal ordering of verbal and spatial stimuli in working memory. The OCD patients were not impaired on tasks requiring the maintenance of object information in working memory. To measure normal personality traits, subjects completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PIR). Compared to healthy controls, OCD patients reported being highly emotional and introverted, less open to new experiences, and lacking confidence in their own abilities. The OCD patients were similar to the panic disorder patients on most of the domains and facets of the NEO PI-R, however, they were distinguished by their lower openness to experiencing new activities, and being less diligent and purposeful. Compared to the sub-clinical OC subjects, OCD patients reported being more prone to feelings of depression, more vulnerable to stress, less likely to experience positive emotions, more humble and sincere and less able to carry tasks through to completion. Overall, the thesis provided further evidence that OCD patients are impaired on cognitive tasks requiring the organisation and manipulation of information in working memory. However, it is still unclear whether this deficit arises due to capacity constraints being exceeded in working memory systems, or some other executive dysfunction such as excessive error monitoring. Future research, combining neuropsychological testing with neuroimaging techniques, is required to better understand the neural mechanisms underlying the impaired performance of OCD patients on tests of working memory. The present thesis also found that normal personality traits � as measured by the NEO PI-R � were able to distinguish OCD patients from healthy controls, patients with panic disorder and individuals with sub-clinical levels of OC symptoms. The results have implications for sub-clinical OC research and the clinical management of OCD.

Thesis (doctoral)--Würzburg, 1904.