Psychology Commons^™

Personality Characteristics Of Successful Applicants To The Priesthood, Thomas G. Plante, Gerdenio Manuel, Jeannette Tandez

Psychology

This study investigated personality characteristics of successful pastoral candidates to a major Catholic religious order. Personality measures (i.e., MMPI-2 and 16PF) were administered to 21 male applicants between 1990 and 1994 who subsequently entered into religious life. Results suggest that these clergy applicants were generally well-adjusted, socially responsible, and interpersonally sensitive. However, results also suggest a tendency for defensiveness. Coping with perceived negative impulses (i.e., anger and hostility) may also be an issue for many. Implications for future research are offered.

A Comparison Of The Political Personalities Of 1996 U.S. Presidential Candidates Bill Clinton And Bob Dole, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper employs the conceptual framework of Theodore Millon to examine and compare the political personalities of President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole. Information pertaining to President Clinton and Senator Dole was gathered from published material and employed to generate a personality profile using the Millon-Type Political Personality Checklist (MPPC).

The assessment revealed that President Clinton’s primarily personality patterns were Asserting/self-promoting and Outgoing/gregarious, with secondary features of the Complaining/discontented, Controlling/forceful, and Agreeing/cooperative patterns. Senator Dole’s primarily personality patterns were Controlling/aggressive and Conforming/regimented, with secondary features of the Asserting/self-promoting and Complaining/negativistic patterns.

The personality profiles yielded by the MPPC are …

“All The Men’S President” — The Political Personality Of Bill Clinton, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This article reports the results of an exploratory political personality assessment of U.S. president Bill Clinton, derived from psychodiagnostic meta-analysis of biographical information in the public domain, and designed to place personological knowledge from diverse sources and divergent perspectives into a coherent psychodiagnostic framework.

South Africa In Transition: The Influence Of The Political Personalities Of Nelson Mandela And F.W. De Klerk, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to examine salient factors accounting for South Africa’s relatively peaceful transition from apartheid state to nonracial democracy, focusing on the political personalities of South African leaders P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk, and Nelson Mandela. Following a brief overview of situational variables, the paper describes the political personalities of Mandela and De Klerk as assessed by the Millon-Type Political Personality Checklist (MPPC). The study shows that one cannot fully account for political developments in South Africa’s transition without considering (a) the interaction between situational variables and the political personalities of Nelson Mandela and F.W. de …

The Assessment Of Political Personality: A Psychodiagnostically Relevant Conceptualization And Methodology, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to narrow the conceptual and methodological gap between existing formulations in psychodiagnostic theory and current practice in political personality. It is suggested that accurate assessment of the personalities of high-level leaders can significantly improve the prediction of political outcomes but that this endeavor has been hampered by inadequate transposition from the source disciplines of personality theory and psychodiagnostics to the target discipline of contemporary political psychology. It is proposed that Theodore Millon’s personological model offers a viable integrative framework for the study of political personality. The present article explicates Millon’s model, specifies the relevance …

Psychology, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

Although the discipline of psychology, in its contemporary form, is only a century old, psychology's historical antecedents reach back to the beginnings of civilization. Whether defined as the study of the soul or the study of human faculties, as it was in earlier times, or as the study of consciousness, mind, or behavior, as it has been over the past hundred years, psychology has dealt with some of the fundamental questions and issues pertaining to the functions, processes, and mechanisms of human and animal nature.

"A Strange Liking": Our Admiration For Criminals, Martha Grace Duncan

Faculty Articles

This article explores noncriminals' admiration for the lawbreaker. Drawing on literature, films, history, and psychoanalysis, the article seeks to delineate and explain this paradox. Each part of the article adopts a different approach to the subject of admiration for criminals. Part II, "Reluctant Admiration," sets the stage by presenting evidence that such admiration, and conflict over it, are pervasive. Parts III and IV present two quite different strategies that noncriminals employ to cope with their inner conflict over criminality. Thus, Part III, "Rationalized Admiration," depicts noncriminals who express undisguised enjoyment in, and reverence for, criminals. These noncriminals justify their attraction …

Aging And The Restructuring Of Precued Movements, Paul Amrhein, George Stelmach, Noreen Goggin

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

A precue paradigm was used to examine the time it takes to restructure a planned motor response. Two groups of subjects, a young group, and an elderly group, performed an aiming task in which 75% of the trials involved no change of movement parameters. On remaining trials, subjects had to change one or more of the movement parameters. Elderly subjects had slower reaction times (RTs), movement times, and made more errors in both conditions. Elderly subjects had proportionally longer RTs overall, independent of restructuring a movement plan. Preparation of arm and direction also exhibited a proportional increase in RT. However, …

Age Differences In Bimanual Coordination, Paul Amrhein, George Stelmach, Noreen Goggin

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

A bimanual coordination experiment was conducted in which two groups of 10 male and female participants, elderly (67 to 75 years of age) and young (21 to 25 years of age), produced unimanual, bimanual symmetrical (equal extent amplitude), and bimanual asymmetrical (unequal extent amplitude) movements. In addition to an overall increase in performance latency, the elderly group exhibited a linear increase in response initiation (RT) with increases in task complexity similar to that of the young group. However, the elderly participants showed a proportional increase over the young participants in response execution latency (MT). Further, the elderly group had a …

0482: Dr. Walter Freeman's Papers From Huntington State Hospital, 1897-1984, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Please note: this collection does not contain individual patient hospital records or records about individuals who stayed here. The items in this collection come from a specific doctor who worked here and his research.

This collection consists of historical materials from the Huntington State Hospital during the period 1897 through 1984. The collection includes correspondence of hospital personnel and patients, administrative records, newspaper clippings, and a large number of photographs. Significant to the collection are files relating to transorbital lobotomies performed by Dr. Walter Freeman in the early 1950's as part of a larger lobotomy project in West Virginia. The …

The Ecology Of Foraging Behavior: Implications For Animal Learning And Memory, Alan Kamil, Herbert L. Roitblat

Avian Cognition Papers

In his recent Annual Review of Psychology article, Snowdon (1983) discussed the synthesis of ethology and comparative psychology. A similar synthesis of behavioral ecology and animal learning is beginning to take place. This article reviews developments in the behavioral ecology and ethology of foraging behavior relevant to psychological research on animal learning. The psychological literature shows that animals possess a wide range of learning abilities, including “simple” classical and operant conditioning; they acquire spatial, nonspatial, and temporal discriminations; they exhibit various forms of rule learning (e.g. matching-to-sample and learning set), and may even in certain senses learn language. Why does …

Optimal Foraging Theory And The Psychology Of Learning, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

The development of optimization theory has made important contributions to the study of animal behavior. But the optimization approach needs to be integrated with other methods of ethology and psychology. For example, the ability to learn is an important component of efficient foraging behavior in many species, and the psychology of animal learning could contribute substantially to testing and extending the predictions of optimal foraging theory.

Spatial Learning As An Adaptation In Hummingbirds, Susan Cole, F. Reed Hainsworth, Alan Kamil, Terre Mercier, Larry L. Wolf

Avian Cognition Papers

An ecological approach based on food distribution suggests that hummingbirds should more easily learn to visit a flower in a new location than to learn to return to a flower in a position just visited, for a food reward. Experimental results support this hypothesis as well as the general view that differences in learning within and among species represent adaptations.

The Psychology Of Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843): Its Context, Nature, And Historical Significance, David E. Leary

Psychology Faculty Publications

Most German philosophers in the early nineteenth century were devoted, to the idealistic « completion » of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy. A few independent philosophers, however, were preoccupied with the elaboration of a non-idealistic, and less speculative, conclusion to Kant's thought. Among the earliest opponents of the speculative idealists was Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843), a philosopher of wide-ranging interests who might have had a much greater impact upon the course of German philosophy had his liberal political affiliations not curtailed his academic career. As it was, his influence was considerable anyway. One aspect of this influence is of particular interest: …

Empathy, Communication Skills, And Group Cohesiveness: A Systematic Approach, Michael Hass

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"This article presents an approach to the teaching of interpersonal communication skills to children from 7-11 years of age, and should be of great interest to professionals in the fields of psychology, social work, education and people involved in training such persons."

Visual Detection Of Cryptic Prey By Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata), Alexandra T. Pietrewicz, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

Blue jays learned to respond differentially to the presence or absence of Catocala moths in slides. This detection of the moths by the jays was affected by the background upon which the moth was placed and its body orientation, thus providing an objective measure of crypticity. These procedures are useful for the study of visual detection of prey.

The Effects Of Frustration And Social Desirability On Heterosexual Attraction, Donelson R. Forsyth, Russell D. Clark Iii

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Walster, Walster, Piliavin and Schmidt's (1973) finding that a selectively hard-to-get female was preferred over either an easy-to-get or a hard-to-get female was replicated for unfrustrated males. However, when males were mildly frustrated, they preferred females who had indicated attraction toward them. The implications of these results were discussed in terms of external rewards and the motivational state of individuals.

Backpacking: A Pilot Study Of Hikers, Vincent Bolduc

Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Adventitious Reinforcement In Operant Discrimination, Alan Kamil, John W. Davenport

Avian Cognition Papers

Rats were trained in 2 S^D-S^Δ discrimination experiments in which the effects of an S^D-postponement contingency during S^Δ and temporal regularity of S^Δ duration were assessed. Experiment I showed that discrimination is markedly facilitated by the presence of an S^D-postponement contingency of either fixed or variable duration. Experiment II showed that variable-duration S^Δ periods in a noncontingent schedule can also greatly enhance formation of an operant discrimination. These effects were attributed to differences in the probability of adventitious reinforcement of S^Δ behavior by S^D events.