Trait adjectives which people use to describe themselves will have features both unique to the individual and shared with or common to many people. To examine the uniqueness of descriptors of one's self, and how unique descriptors might be organized in memory, subjects (N=40) made self-descriptiveness and other-descriptiveness ratings for the same…

Investigated the role of memory development, especially the developmental change in reported general and specific memories, in children's and adults' concepts of themselves. The proportion of general responses was found to be high and stable across all ages; the proportion of specific responses increased with age. (PCB)

Much research on masculinity and femininity has relied on the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and similar androgyny inventories. Recently, investigators have questioned whether self ratings on androgyny inventories reflect salient dimensions of the self. The relations between spontaneous self descriptions and the respondent's gender and gender role…

Examined how an unstable rather than stable view of dispositions--that is, personality traits and abilities--affected the motivational consequences of 7- and 8-year-old children's success and failure experiences, and their self-confidence and impressions of other persons. (SKC)

Partially replicates Elkind and Bowen's (1979) investigation of adolescent egocentrism. Studies the relations between imaginary audience and operational thought by testing children and adolescents on a Piagetian-based written test of operational thought and the Imaginary Audience Scale. (Author/AS)

Assesses the generalizability of structure of temperament across culture. Responses of 304 Japanese college students (59.5 male) to the Dimensions of Temperament Survey (DOTS) were compared to those of the American sample studied by Lerner, Palermo, Spiro and Nesselroade (1982) through the use of confirmatory factor analytic procedures. (Author/BE)

Research on self-concept has usually focused on neutral or positive personality characteristics. To determine if negative beliefs about the self have schematic properities, 55 college students, assigned to one of four groups (shy schematics, shy aschematics, independent schematics, independent aschematics), based on a prescreening self-rating on…

Research on the female offender has produced two explanations of the female criminal personality: the female offender either as a masculinated women or as an anguished woman possessing low self-esteem and poor self-control. To investigate the applicability of each position, 144 black male and female criminals and noncriminals completed the Bem Sex…

Earlier research investigating the relationship between physical attractiveness and assertiveness found that physically attractive females were more assertive than other females. To investigate this relationship further and to broaden the scope of the study, 69 students were videotaped in groups of five to ten while responding to open-ended…

While Holland's (1973) theory of personality types and vocational identity is widely used, the theory does not specify the developmental antecedents of the six personality types. To examine the relationship between membership in adolescent social cliques and vocational identity in early adulthood, four groups of college students (N=192)…

Although much is being written about the sociological aspects of the battering syndrome, little has been done to investigate the personality characteristics of battered women. To investigate the personality characteristics which relate to the life styles of battered women, 60 women (30 battered women, 30 non-battered women), ranging in age from 19…

Four major formulations of the relationship between sex role orientation and successful adaptation have found support in the literature: a traditional sex role, androgyny, masculinity, and androgyny for females. The adaptive implications of sex role orientation were examined on constructs reflecting intrapersonal functioning, i.e., ego identity…

Recent studies of self-referent cognition have demonstrated that people process information about themselves more efficiently than other kinds of information. To investigate latency effects in self-referent decision-making, 60 college students participated in a three phase study. In phase one, each subject chose the trait within a pair that best…

The relation of moral reasoning to moral behavior has been the subject of a substantial number of empirical studies; it may be more productive to employ a configuration of characteristics to predict moral behavior. To investigate the relation of moral reasoning and personality variables to moral behavior, 74 undergraduates, 30 males and 44…

Previous research on the personality traits and needs of professional women has found that women in nontraditional roles possess traits that are more characteristic of the male sex role, and that in many instances they are higher on those traits. To determine sex and occupational differences in the self-perceptions of male and female psychologists…