Searching for Prosociality in Qualitative Data: Comparing Manual, Closed–Vocabulary, and Open–Vocabulary Methods

Although most people present themselves as possessing prosocial traits, people differ in the extent to which they actually act prosocially in everyday life. Qualitative data that were not ostensibly collected to measure prosociality might contain information about prosocial dispositions that is not distorted by self–presentation concerns. This paper seeks to characterise charitable donors from qualitative data. We compared a manual approach of extracting predictors from participants’ self–described personal strivings to two automated approaches: A summation of words predefined as prosocial and a support vector machine classifier. Although variables extracted by the support vector machine predicted donation behaviour well in the training sample ( N = 984), virtually, no variables from any method significantly predicted donations in a holdout sample ( N = 496). Raters’ attempts to predict donations to charity based on reading participants’ personal strivings were also unsuccessful. However, raters’ predictions were associated with past charitable involvement. In sum, predictors derived from personal strivings did not robustly explain variation in charitable behaviour, but personal strivings may nevertheless contain some information about trait prosociality. The sparseness of personal strivings data, rather than the irrelevance of open–ended text or individual differences in goal pursuit, likely explains their limited value in predicting prosocial behaviour. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

The Six Ways to Well-Being (6W-WeB): Assessing the Frequency of and Motivation for Six Behaviours Linked to Well-Being

Contextual Behavioural Science (CBS) interventions focus on activating value-consistent behaviours, yet the outcomes measured in these interventions often focus on internal states. Building on past CBS work, personal strivings research, and self-determination theory, we developed a new behaviour-focused measure of valued action, the Six Ways to Well-Being (6W-WeB). This measure captures both the specific actions individuals engage in as well as why they do so (i.e., underlying values). Participants in Study 1 (American sample; N1 = 1800, 60.3% female, Age: M = 40.9, SD = 13.21), Study 2 (Australian sample; N2 = 855, 47.3% female, Age: M = 38.16, SD = 13.35), and Study 3 (Australian adolescent sample; N3 = 518, 100% female, Age: M = 14.29, SD = 1.46) completed the 6W-WeB and theoretically-relevant criterion measures of flourishing, psychological distress, experiential avoidance, and nonattachment. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a bifactor model, with three global factors (behaviour engagement, activity importance, and activity pressure), and six behaviour-specific factors (connecting with others, challenging oneself, giving to others, engaging in physical activity, embracing the moment, and caring for oneself), that was invariant across gender, age, and country of sampling. The subscales of the 6W-WeB were linked to the theoretically-relevant variables in meaningful and expected ways. Additionally, in a test of known-groups validity, the 6W-WeB successfully differentiated between participants who met criteria for high psychological distress and those who did not. The results suggest that the new measure can be a clinically relevant tool, helping CBS practitioners identify the specific behaviour domains that can promote their clients’ value-consistent living.

Searching For Prosociality in Qualitative Data: Comparing Manual, Closed-Vocabulary, and Open-Vocabulary Methods

Though most people present themselves as possessing prosocial traits, people differ in the extent to which they actually act prosocially in everyday life. Qualitative data that was not ostensibly collected to measure prosociality might contain information about prosocial dispositions that is not distorted by self-presentation concerns. This paper seeks to characterise charitable donors from qualitative data. We compared a manual approach of extracting predictors from participants’ self-described personal strivings to two automated approaches: A summation of words predefined as prosocial and a support vector machine classifier. Although variables extracted by the support vector machine predicted donation behaviour well in the training sample (N = 984), virtually no variables from any method significantly predicted donations in a holdout sample (N = 496). Raters’ attempts to predict donations to charity based on reading participants’ personal strivings were also unsuccessful. However, raters’ predictions were associated with past charitable involvement. In sum, predictors derived from personal strivings did not robustly explain variation in charitable behaviour, but personal strivings may nevertheless contain some information about trait prosociality. The sparseness of personal strivings data, rather than the irrelevance of open-ended text or individual differences in goal pursuit, likely explains their limited value in predicting prosocial behaviour.

Personal Strivings to Understand Anxiety Disorders: Social Anxiety as an Exemplar

People with anxiety disorders tend to make decisions on the basis of avoiding threat rather than obtaining rewards. Despite a robust literature examining approach-avoidance motivation, less is known about goal pursuit. The present study examined the content, motives, consequences, and daily correlates of strivings among adults diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and healthy controls. Participants generated six strivings along with the motives and consequences of their pursuit. Compared with controls, people with social anxiety disorder were less strongly driven by autonomous motives and reported greater difficulty pursuing strivings. Coders analyzed strivings for the presence of 10 themes: achievement, affiliation, avoidance, emotion regulation, generativity, interpersonal, intimacy, power, self-presentation, and self-sufficiency. People with social anxiety disorder constructed more emotion regulation strivings than did controls, but they did not differ across other themes. This research illustrates how studying personality at different levels of analysis (traits, strivings) can yield novel information for understanding anxiety disorders.

The Signs and Significance of Personality Coherence in Personal Stories and Strivings

The concept of personality coherence refers to the extent of psychological unity and wholeness embodied within each individual. In the present research, we examined the extent to which the narrative, functional, and organismic conceptualizations of personality coherence interrelate, as well as their associations with psychological abilities and personal adjustment. College students ( N = 391) narrated accounts of three personal memories; listed five personal strivings that they subsequently compared and evaluated; completed performance measures of their intelligence, wisdom, and creativity; and rated their hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Individuals who coherently organized their autobiographical memories were protected against feeling pressured or compelled in their personal strivings and against being steered toward need-detracting futures. Narrative indicators of coherence were otherwise independent of the functional and organismic indicators, although all indicators of personality coherence correlated with personal adjustment. Wisdom and creativity predicted narrative coherence, which partially mediated the associations they demonstrated with eudaimonic well-being.