The Problem of Personality in Social Psychology

The development of any science, including psychology, is determined today by two opposing but intimately interrelated tendencies: differentiation and integration.     

Building a Science of Animal Minds: Lloyd Morgan,Experimentation, and Morgan’s Canon

Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) is widely regarded as the father of modern comparative psychology. Yet, Morgan initially had significant doubts about whether a genuine science of comparative psychology was even possible, only later becoming more optimistic about our ability to make reliable inferences about the mental capacities of non-human animals. There has been a fair amount of disagreement amongst scholars of Morgan’s work about the nature, timing, and causes of this shift in Morgan’s thinking. We argue that Morgan underwent two quite different shifts of attitude towards the proper practice of comparative psychology. The first was a qualified acceptance of the Romanesian approach to comparative psychology that he had initially criticized. The second was a shift away from Romanes’ reliance on systematizing anecdotal evidence of animal intelligence towards an experimental approach, focused on studying the development of behaviour. We emphasize the role of Morgan’s evolving epistemological views in bringing about the first shift – in particular, his philosophy of science. We emphasize the role of an intriguing but overlooked figure in the history of comparative psychology in explaining the second shift, T. Mann Jones, whose correspondence with Morgan provided an important catalyst for Morgan’s experimental turn, particularly the special focus on development. We also shed light on the intended function of Morgan’s Canon, the methodological principle for which Morgan is now mostly known. The Canon can only be properly understood by seeing it in the context of Morgan’s own unique experimental vision for comparative psychology.     

Sexual ornaments as animal signals

Workers in both animal communication and behavioral ecology have long been interested in animal signals. Animal-communication researchers often have a background in ethology or comparative psychology, and place priority on signal analysis, whereas modern behavioral ecologists are concerned with the effects of natural selection on the exaggeration or development of a trait. Although the two fields examine the same problems, this division has hindered the solution of the problems themselves. Recent theoretical and empirical work has started to bridge the gap, but several important questions, particularly regarding sexual selection, have remained unanswered. Here I examine the differences in these two approaches to the study of animal signals, and suggest additional areas that would benefit by combining the two viewpoints.     

Wundt contested: The first crisis declaration in psychology

When reflecting on the history and the present situation of their field, psychologists have often seen their discipline as being in a critical state. The first author to warn of a crisis was, in 1897, the now scarcely known philosopher Rudolf Willy. He saw a crisis in psychology resulting, firstly, from a profuse branching out of psychology. Adopting a radical empiriocriticist point of view, he, secondly, made the metaphysical stance of scholars like Wilhelm Wundt responsible for the crisis. Meanwhile, the priest Constantin Gutberlet responded to the claim of crisis arguing, on the contrary, that the crisis resulted from research that was empirical only. Throughout the discipline psychologists felt troubled by a widespread sense of fragmentation in the field. I will argue that this is due to psychology's early social success and popularization in modern society. Moreover the paper shows that the first declaration of crisis emerged at a time when a discussion of fundamentals was already underway between Wundt and the empiriocriticist Richard Avenarius. The present historical research reveals the depth of the confrontation between Wundt and Willy, entailing a clash of two worldviews that embrace psychological, epistemological, and political aspects.     

常识性: 心理学另一种文化品格

今天心理学在科学化道路上已经越走越远,渐渐远离了人类日常生活,彰显着浓郁的自然科学品性：成为心理学家孤芳自赏的一种标签。事实上,心理学不仅仅是“心理学家”的心理学,也应该是人民大众的心理学,这便是心理学另一重要品质——常识性。常识性心理学可使人的心灵活动得到素朴、直观理解,是常识心理学而非心理科学使得人们日常心理生活成为可能。毛为科技理性和逻辑语言所支配下的科学心理学抹上浓郁的文化色彩,使其流露出文化品性,也为重新理解和诠释心理学学科性质提供视角。     

Herding,social influence and economic decision-making: socio-psychological and neuroscientific analyses

Typically, modern economics has steered away from the analysis of sociological and psychological factors and has focused on narrow behavioural assumptions in which expectations are formed on the basis of mathematical algorithms. Blending together ideas from the social and behavioural sciences, this paper argues that the behavioural approach adopted in most economic analysis, in its neglect of sociological and psychological forces and its simplistically dichotomous categorization of behaviour as either rational or not rational, is too narrow and stark. Behaviour may reflect an interaction of cognitive and emotional factors and this can be captured more effectively using an approach that focuses on the interplay of different decision-making systems. In understanding the mechanisms affecting economic and financial decision-making, an interdisciplinary approach is needed which incorporates ideas from a range of disciplines including sociology, economic psychology, evolutionary biology and neuroeconomics.     

Typologies of attentional networks

Attention is a central theme in cognitive science - it exemplifies the links between the brain and behaviour, and binds psychology to the techniques of neuroscience. A visionary model suggested by Michael Posner described attention as a set of independent control networks. This challenged the previously held view of attention as a uniform concept. The idea that disparate attentional networks correlate with discrete neural circuitry and can be influenced by focal brain injuries, mental state and specific drugs has since been supported by converging data from several modern methodologies. Given the recent explosion in empirical data, attentional typologies provide powerful conceptual tools with which to contextualize and integrate these findings.     

Physically strong men are more militant: A test across four countries

There is substantial evidence from archaeology, anthropology, primatology, and psychology indicating that humans have a long evolutionary history of war. Natural selection, therefore, should have designed mental adaptations for making decisions about war. These adaptations evolved in past environments, and so they may respond to variables that were ancestrally relevant but not relevant in modern war. For example, ancestrally in small-scale combat, a skilled fighter would be more likely to survive a war and bring his side to victory. This ancestral regularity would have left its mark on modern men's intergroup psychology: more formidable men should still be more supportive of war. We test this hypothesis in four countries: Argentina, Denmark, Israel, and Romania. In three, physically strong men (but not strong women) were significantly more supportive of military action. These findings support the hypothesis that modern warfare is influenced by a psychology designed for ancestral war.     

The Psychology of the Self-Actualizing Personality in the Work of Abraham Maslow

The second and third quarters of this century saw the appearance of a number of different concepts of personality in foreign psychology. Most of these were spawned by pathopsychology as a result of attempts to understand the personality of the neurotic and as a practical offshoot of psychotherapy. Although these theories were generalizations based on studies of the psychopathological personality, they began to be propagated by their creators as general theories of personality. Material gathered from the investigation of mental patients was used as the foundation for what are now standard personality tests — the Rorschach test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) — used chiefly to discover neurotic tendencies in the individual. An extremely exaggerated evaluation of the significance of the pathopsychological method has been the hallmark of personality theory in foreign psychology. Yet the neurotic and, even more so, the pathological personality are qualitatively, not quantitatively, distinct from the personality of a normal human being. We must therefore concur with Maslow, who shows how the "study of mutilated, sickly, immature and unhealthy subjects will also give rise to a mutilated psychology and philosophy" (9, p. 234).     

Collateral relatives of American Indians among the Bronze Age populations of Siberia?

Nonmetric and metric traits were studied in cranial series representing prehistoric and modern populations of America and Siberia. Frequencies of the infraorbital pattern type II (longitudinal infraorbital suture overlaid by the zygomatic bone) are universally lower in Amerindians than in Siberians. The os japonicum posterior trace, too, is much less frequent in America than in Siberia. The only two Siberian groups with an almost Amerindian combination are late third to early second millennium bc populations from Okunev and Sopka, southern Siberia. The multivariate analysis of five nonmetric facial traits and ten facial measurements in 15 cranial series reveals two independent tendencies. One of them shows a contrast between prehistoric Siberian Caucasoids and modern Siberian Mongoloids; the second one sets Amerindians apart from others. Prehistoric people who lived west of Lake Baikal and modern Uralic speakers are intermediate between Siberian Caucasoids and Siberian Mongoloids; Eskimos, Aleuts, and Chukchi are intermediate between Siberian Mongoloids and Amerindians; and Okunev and Sopka are intermediate between Siberian Caucasoids and Amerindians. Our results suggest that people of Okunev and Sopka are collateral relatives of Amerindians with some Caucasoid admixture. Am J Phys Anthropol 108:193–204, 1999. © 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Changes in the rhesus mother-infant relationship through the first four months of life

Measurements of the course of interactions between rhesus monkey infants (Macaca mulatta) and their mothers during the infant's first 16 weeks showed changes in the tendencies of both partners to be together and apart. Referring only to the partner who was primarily responsible for an age-related change, by using a single index of responsibility for contact or proximity, was found to be an oversimplification. Maternal rejecting behaviour may have been primarily responsible for changes in the time spent apart only during the first 6 weeks. After the infants' sixth week, both partners' tendencies to be apart increased together. Infants then began to spend longer away partly to interact with social companions other than their mother. Mothers restricted and followed their infants more up to week 4, but after week 8 decreases in these measures allowed infants to spend longer away. Similarities between the time courses of the time spent apart from their mothers by rhesus infants in this study and in field studies are pointed out. The similarities seem striking partly because differences between studies that do not use confidence intervals (or standard errors) cannot be shown easily. Conflict between parent and infant occurred, but how it appears, and how significant it is in each species at each infant age, remains to be discovered.     

Effects of anger on dominance-seeking and aggressive behaviors

Anger may have evolved to orchestrate social bargaining behaviors, which ultimately can lead to establishment of dominance hierarchies. Although the relationship between anger and dominance has strong empirical support, most studies have focused on visual cues of dominance. Across two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that anger increases dominance-seeking and agonistic behaviors in those who feel it. In the first experiment (n?=?82), we induced anger through a hostile mock debate and measured corrugator electromyographic activity, testosterone and cortisol levels, status-seeking tendency, and aggression using behavioral tasks. Compared with the control group, the anger group showed higher levels of aggression and status seeking, with the moderator effect of anger intensity. In the second experiment (n?=?162), anger, fear, sadness, and neutral state were induced by film clips, after which dominance-related behavioral tendencies were assessed. The anger group showed higher dominance scores, differing significantly from the fear, sadness, and/or control groups. These findings reinforce the notion that feelings of anger can cause an increase in status-seeking and agonistic behaviors, leading to possible action tendencies for the establishment of dominance hierarchies.     

The limits to 'transnationalism': Bosnian and Eritrean refugees in Europe as emerging transnational communities

This article explores limitations on the concept of transnationalism, through examination of two empirical case studies of communities characterized by emerging transnational practices. Mirroring recent shifts of attention in studies of transnational migration away from US-based examples of established migrant workers, the article focuses on Bosnian refugees in the UK and The Netherlands, and Eritrean refugees in the UK and Germany. It stresses the importance of historical context, and the interconnection of social, political and institutional factors in producing highly uneven patterns of transnational activities both within and between these two groups.     

Selective constraints on amino acids estimated by a mechanistic codon substitution model with multiple nucleotide changes

Background

Empirical substitution matrices represent the average tendencies of substitutions over various protein families by sacrificing gene-level resolution. We develop a codon-based model, in which mutational tendencies of codon, a genetic code, and the strength of selective constraints against amino acid replacements can be tailored to a given gene. First, selective constraints averaged over proteins are estimated by maximizing the likelihood of each 1-PAM matrix of empirical amino acid (JTT, WAG, and LG) and codon (KHG) substitution matrices. Then, selective constraints specific to given proteins are approximated as a linear function of those estimated from the empirical substitution matrices.

Results

Akaike information criterion (AIC) values indicate that a model allowing multiple nucleotide changes fits the empirical substitution matrices significantly better. Also, the ML estimates of transition-transversion bias obtained from these empirical matrices are not so large as previously estimated. The selective constraints are characteristic of proteins rather than species. However, their relative strengths among amino acid pairs can be approximated not to depend very much on protein families but amino acid pairs, because the present model, in which selective constraints are approximated to be a linear function of those estimated from the JTT/WAG/LG/KHG matrices, can provide a good fit to other empirical substitution matrices including cpREV for chloroplast proteins and mtREV for vertebrate mitochondrial proteins.

Conclusions/Significance

The present codon-based model with the ML estimates of selective constraints and with adjustable mutation rates of nucleotide would be useful as a simple substitution model in ML and Bayesian inferences of molecular phylogenetic trees, and enables us to obtain biologically meaningful information at both nucleotide and amino acid levels from codon and protein sequences.     

Root interactions and tomato growth in tomato/potato onion companion-cropping system under different phosphorus levels

When two plants interact, changes in plant growth are usually related to variations in root distribution and phosphorus (P) levels. However, root distributions and root tendencies are difficult to study because root systems grow beneath the soil surface. In this study, a transparent root box was used to observe interactions between root systems in situ, and the relation between tomato growth and root proliferation at different depths and distance from the rows at no P added and 120?mg kg^-1 P added levels were also tested. We found that tomato shoot and total biomass increased and roots grew deeper when companion cropped with potato onion under both P levels. Moreover, tomato roots tended to grow away from the potato onion roots. Our results suggest that a deeper and more evasive root distribution may be related to the increased plant growth of tomato when companion cropped with potato onion.     

Assessing Pavlov's impact on the American conditioning enterprise

In this article, the visibility of Pavlov and of Watson in American psychology are compared, and the periods of their respective influence are specified with greater precision than is afforded by merely impressionistic methods. The author also critically examines the possibility that the early history of the American classic-conditioning enterprise involved a succession of two phases: a Watsonian/speculative phase and a Pavlovian/empirical phase. In conclusion, the author assesses the possibility that the publication of Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes (1927) "stimulated" scholarly work on Pavlovian conditioning, and finds this proposition lacking empirical support.     

Neuropsychology: A New Branch of Psychological Science

The achievements of modern psychology in analyzing the structure of human mental activity, as well as the achievements of modern neurophysiology, paved the way for the investigation of the cerebral mechanisms of various mental processes and led to the creation of a new branch of psychological science — neuropsychology [neyropsikhologiya]. This branch of psychology has begun to grow in the past few decades in diverse countries, but has had an especially flourishing development in the USSR.     

Dopamine transporter polymorphisms affect social approach-avoidance tendencies

There is increasing interest in the role of striatal dopaminergic activity in social approach-avoidance motivation. The 9-repeat allele of the dopamine transporter (DAT) gene, associated with increased striatal dopamine levels, has been found to be related to increased sensitivity to reward. However, it remains unexplored whether this polymorphism influences automatic action tendencies in the social domain. We set out to test experimentally whether human carriers of the 9-repeat allele show increased approach-avoidance tendencies compared to non-9-repeat carriers. One hundred and one healthy adults, genotyped for the DAT gene, performed the social Approach-Avoidance Task, a reaction time task requiring participants to approach or avoid visually presented emotional (happy and angry) faces, by pulling a joystick towards them or pushing the joystick away from themselves, respectively. In accordance with expectations, 9-repeat carriers showed stronger approach-avoidance effects compared to non-9-repeat carriers. These results suggest a role for striatal dopaminergic polymorphisms in motivational responses to social-emotional cues. Our findings may be relevant in the selection of candidate genes in future studies involving social behavior.     

The history of psychological categories

Psychological terms, such as 'mind', 'memory', 'emotion' and indeed 'psychology' itself, have a history. This history, I argue, supports the view that basic psychological categories refer to historical and social entities, and not to 'natural kinds'. The case is argued through a wide ranging review of the historiography of western psychology, first, in connection with the field's extreme modern diversity; second, in relation to the possible antecedents of the field in the early modern period; and lastly, through a brief introduction to usage of the words 'soul', 'mind', 'memory' and 'emotion'. The discussion situates the history of psychology within a large historical context, questions assumptions about the continuity of meaning, and draws out implications for the philosophical and social constitution of 'psychology' and 'the psychological' from the existing literature. The historical evidence, this paper concludes, does not support the conventional presumption that modern psychological terms describe 'natural kinds'.