West Meets East in a New Two-Polarities Model of Personality: Combining Self-Relatedness Structure With Independent-Interdependent Functions

Self and relatedness are the two most essential dimensions of personality, as indicated in many personality theories, and have been supported by numerous empirical studies conducted in the western (individualistic) and eastern (collectivist) contexts. However, because of a confusion or failure to distinguish the structure and function of personality, popular theories (e.g., the Big Five model) do not make logic distinctions between these two basic personality dimensions. In terms of the cultural-relevant feature, both self and relatedness and their specific aspects may be variously highlighted in different cultural settings. On the basis of a re-examination of several crucial two-dimension (namely, self and relatedness) personality theories derived from the east and west, we reconstruct a new two polarities personality model to include not only self and relatedness but also the independent and interdependent functions in terms of some popular personality theories from western and eastern cultures. Theoretically and empirically, self and relatedness should be the basic structures of personality, whereas independence and interdependence should be the basic functions of personality. Self and relatedness have independent and interdependent functions; however, due to the cultural relevance of personality, the functions should be variously emphasized in different contexts. Several possible future research directions are discussed.

Helplessness among University Students: An Empirical Study Based on a Modified Framework of Implicit Personality Theories

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and within a very short period of time, teaching in the 2020 summer term changed from predominantly on-site to online instruction. Students suddenly faced having to adapt their learning process to new demands for which they may have had both insufficient digital skills and a lack of learning resources. Such a situation carries the risk that a substantial number of students become helpless. The aim of our empirical study was to test a hybrid framework of helplessness that includes both objective causes of helplessness and students’ subjective interpretations of them. Before lectures or courses began, students of a full-scale university were invited to participate in an online survey. The final sample consists of 1690 students. Results indicate that objective factors as well as their subjective interpretations contributed to the formation of helplessness.

Social and Personality Perspectives on Parenting in an Evolutionary Context

This chapter evaluates the dominant social-personality theories of parenting. It highlights the limitations inherent in the literature, particularly the lack of integration between the domains of parenting and attachment as well as the inability to make claims about the specific causes and effects of parent–child dynamics. The chapter then explains how an evolutionary life history perspective allows for a better understanding of parenting and attachment patterns and overcomes these limitations by grounding parent–child dynamics in a functional context. An evolutionary perspective stresses that different parenting styles and attachment types represent facultative responses to environmental demands, thereby facilitating adaptive responses to anticipated interpersonal interactions in the interest of individual fitness. Ultimately, parenting and attachment behaviors reflect life strategies on a fast–slow continuum that aim to maximize ancestral reproductive success in response to environmental harshness and unpredictability.

Assessing the Unacquainted: Inferred Reviewer Personality and Review Helpfulness

This work examines the question of who is more likely to provide future helpful reviews in the context of online product reviews by synergistically using personality theories and data analytics. It trains a deep learning model to infer a reviewer’s personality traits. This enables analyses to reveal the role of personality traits in review helpfulness among a large population of reviewers. We develop hypotheses on how personality traits are associated with review helpfulness, followed by hypotheses testing that confirms that higher review helpfulness is related to higher openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness and to lower emotional stability. These results suggest the appropriateness of using these five personality traits as inputs for developing a model for predicting future review helpfulness. Based on an ensemble model using supervised classification algorithms, we develop a predictive model and demonstrate its superior performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The ROCK Tool: A Novel Method for the Structural Exploration of Schemata

Information stored in the human memory is organized in the form of mental schemata. In this paper we report on the Reproduction of Categorical Knowledge (ROCK) tool, a novel method for uncovering the structure of mental schemata of memorized information. The tool applies serial reproduction and hierarchical clustering to magnify memory bias and uncover inner configurations of fragmented information, using strength of association. We conducted behavioral experiments to test the validity of the tool. Experiment 1a demonstrated that the schematic structure of personality traits uncovered by the ROCK tool highly matched those described by the Big Five theory. This finding was replicated in Experiment 1b, focusing on a lower-level personality dimension extroversion with results aligned with personality theories. Experiment 2 assessed the ROCK tool using artificial stimuli with a pre-defined structure, created using a Markov chain model. Participants acquired the structure of the stimuli through an implicit learning procedure, and the ROCK tool was used to assess their level of recall. The results showed that the learned structure was identical to the designed structure of the stimuli. The results from both studies suggest that the ROCK tool could effectively reveal the structure of mental schemata.

Contextual Personality-Aware Recommender System Versus Big Data Recommender System

Many personality theories suggest that personality influences customer shopping preference. Thus, this research analyses the potential ability to improve the accuracy of the collaborative filtering recommender system by incorporating the Five-Factor Model personality traits data obtained from customer text reviews. The study uses a large Amazon dataset with customer reviews and information about verified customer product purchases. However, evaluation results show that the model leveraging big data by using the whole Amazon dataset provides better recommendations than the recommender systems trained in the contexts of the customer personality traits.

15. Personality theories

This chapter discusses the term ‘personality’, which is used to describe an individual’s temperamental and emotional attributes that are relatively consistent and that will influence behaviour. It also considers the extent to which the leading psychological explanations of personality development can be related to criminal behaviour. Psychologists use different classifications—some might include considerations of biological factors or aspects of mental disorder such as psychopathy within the category of personality—and refer to a persistent or stable personality characteristic as a trait. For many years, they have devised tests aimed at measuring personality traits in an attempt to test the hypothesis that people who are prone to act in an antisocial way are distinguishable from ‘normal’ people.

Theoretical Analysis of Foreign Cognitive Personality Theories

The article provides a theoretical analysis of cognitive personality theories and describes how to apply the modern cognitive theory of personality. Cognitive personality theories have made important contributions to psychology by explaining complex human interactions and situations. The studies revealed the powerful role of attributive belief systems and delineated many cognitive aspects that are critical to understanding individual differences. Cognitive personality theories focus on the processes of encoding and extracting information as well as on the role of expectations, motivations, goals, and beliefs in the development of stable personality characteristics. The works of foreign researchers mentioned in the article have become the basis of the modern cognitive personality theory, which is widely applied in psychological counseling.