Associations between informant ratings of personality disorder traits, self‐reports of personality, and directly observed behavior

How Students' Big Five personality traits manifest in perceived social loafing behavior

BACKGROUND

Social loafing (SL) has a detrimental impact on cooperative learning. SL dysfunctionalities are causing more faculty to avoid assigning group projects as part of their course work.

AIMS

This qualitative case study examines how students' personalities are expressed in social loafers' behavior during university-level group assignments at a Texas university. The case study added further depth and breadth to current literature on SL in cooperative learning by exploring the perpetrator's personality expressions.

SAMPLE(S)

Ten faculty members were interviewed, 32 students were surveyed, and 10 loafers were identified and self-assessed.

METHODS

A qualitative case study was used to provide in-depth investigation of Big Five personality in SL behavior.

RESULTS

The faculty interviews and students' surveys revealed that Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness were not expressed in SL behavior for university-level group assignments assessed by four IPIP facets. Openness to Experience (values, ideas, actions, and fantasy) was not expressed. Faculty and students indicated that loafers were not curious, barely prepared, with very short attention spans after which they get lost. Social loafers showed no originality, no active imagination, and no deep thinking. Conscientiousness (achievement striving, dutifulness, competence, and order) was not expressed. For Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, some facets were expressed, and others were withheld.

CONCLUSION

The results of this study provide faculty with a multifaceted understanding of students' personality traits to better guide their group interaction and cooperative learning.

Risk assessment tool floundering? Let's ask the client to self-predict

Self-prediction by criminal justice involved clients has not been typically implemented in risk assessment procedures, yet clients have unique self-knowledge that may add to the assessment of risk. The Transition Inventory is an eight scale self-prediction measure that addresses areas that are a precursor to antisocial and criminal activity (e.g., "Drugs or alcohol will be a problem for me"). The Transition Inventory was administered to 131 paroled clients (primary drug-related offenses), 104 of whom were of minority/ethnic status. Predictive validity was demonstrated by the Transition Inventory incrementally predicting supervision failure. Individual scale construct validity was demonstrated by predicting later assessed corresponding measures, with the Leisure scale having the most robust predictive relationship. Self-prediction may promote greater predictability and stronger client engagement in the assessment process.

The Sensitivity to Threat and Affiliative Reward (STAR) model and the development of callous-unemotional traits

Research implicates callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., lack of empathy, prosociality, and guilt, and reduced sensitivity to others' emotions) in the development of severe and persistent antisocial behavior. To improve etiological models of antisocial behavior and develop more effective treatments, we need a better understanding of the origins of CU traits. In this review, we discuss the role of two psychobiological and mechanistic precursors to CU traits: low affiliative reward (i.e., deficits in seeking out or getting pleasure from social bonding and closeness with others) and low threat sensitivity (i.e., fearlessness to social and non-social threat). We outline the Sensitivity to Threat and Affiliative Reward (STAR) model and review studies that have examined the development of affiliative reward and threat sensitivity across animal, neuroimaging, genetic, and behavioral perspectives. We next evaluate evidence for the STAR model, specifically the claim that CU traits result from deficits in both affiliative reward and threat sensitivity. We end with constructive suggestions for future research to test the hypotheses generated by the STAR model.