In this target article, we argue that personality processes, personality structure, and personality development have to be understood and investigated in integrated ways in order to provide compreh...

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Integrating Personality Structure, Personality Process, and Personality Development:

Factors identified in investigations of trait structure (e.g., the Big Five) are sometimes understood as explanations or sources of the covariation of distinct behavioral traits, as when extraversion is suggested to underlie the covariation of assertiveness and sociability. Here, we detail how trait covariation can alternatively be understood as arising from units common to functionalist and process frameworks, such as self-efficacies, expectancies, values, and goals. Specifically, the expected covariation between 2 behavioral traits should be increased when a specific process variable tends to indicate the functionality of both traits simultaneously. In 2 empirical illustrations, we identify a wide array of specific process variables associated with several Big Five-related behavioral traits simultaneously, and which are thus likely sources of their covariation. Many of these, such as positive interpersonal expectancies, self-regulatory skills, and preference for order, relate similarly to a broad range of trait perceptions in both studies, and across both self- and peer-reports. We also illustrate how this understanding of trait covariation provides a somewhat novel explanation of why some traits are uncorrelated. As we discuss, a functionalist understanding of trait covariation as arising through functionalist or process variables has implications for many basic issues in personality psychology, such as how personality traits should be measured, mechanisms for personality stability and change, and the nature of personality traits more generally.

/pdf/how-functionalist-and-process-approaches-to-behavior-can-1km2uzi6hx.pdf

How functionalist and process approaches to behavior can explain trait covariation.

People presumably choose and create their daily environments according to their personality. Prior research shows that, for example, more extraverted people engage more often in social situations, and more conscientious people engage more often in work-related activities compared with less extraverted or less conscientious people, respectively. The current study examined such personality-situation transactions in people's daily life. Based on the assumption that older people know themselves and their personality better than younger people, we investigated whether momentary and proximate personality-situation associations (i.e., changing from 1 type of situation into another) increase with older age. Three-hundred and 78 people aged 14 to 82 years described their Big Five traits and took part in a 3-week experience-sampling phase. Using mobile-phone based assessments in daily life, participants reported on average 55 times on their momentary situation. Multilevel modeling results showed that personality-situation associations varied with the age of participants. Some of the "established" personality-situation associations, such as for extraversion and time spent with friends or conscientiousness and time spent with work activities, were only observed in adolescence and young adulthood. In contrast, other personality-situation associations appeared only in late adulthood, such as for openness and time spent with friends. Yet most personality-situation associations did not vary significantly with people's age. In addition, personality traits predicted maintaining or entering personality-congruent situations. The latter results point to the active role of personality in shaping one's environment. The findings imply that some personality-situation transactions may be largely similarly across the life span. (PsycINFO Database Record

Personality-situation transactions from adolescence to old age

TikTok (in Chinese: DouYin; formerly known as musical.ly) currently represents one of the most successful Chinese social media applications in the world. Since its founding in September 2016, TikTok has seen widespread distribution, in particular, attracting young users to engage in viewing, creating, and commenting on "LipSync-Videos" on the app. Despite its success in terms of user numbers, psychological studies aiming at an understanding of TikTok use are scarce. This narrative review provides a comprehensive overview on the small empirical literature available thus far. In particular, insights from uses and gratification theory in the realm of TikTok are highlighted, and we also discuss aspects of the TikTok platform design. Given the many unexplored research questions related to TikTok use, it is high time to strengthen research efforts to better understand TikTok use and whether certain aspects of its use result in detrimental behavioral effects. In light of user characteristics of the TikTok platform, this research is highly relevant because TikTok users are often adolescents and therefore from a group of potentially vulnerable individuals.

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On the Psychology of TikTok Use: A First Glimpse From Empirical Findings

In online communities, antisocial behavior such as trolling disrupts constructive discussion. While prior work suggests that trolling behavior is confined to a vocal and antisocial minority, we demonstrate that ordinary people can engage in such behavior as well. We propose two primary trigger mechanisms: the individual's mood, and the surrounding context of a discussion (e.g., exposure to prior trolling behavior). Through an experiment simulating an online discussion, we find that both negative mood and seeing troll posts by others significantly increases the probability of a user trolling, and together double this probability. To support and extend these results, we study how these same mechanisms play out in the wild via a data-driven, longitudinal analysis of a large online news discussion community. This analysis reveals temporal mood effects, and explores long range patterns of repeated exposure to trolling. A predictive model of trolling behavior shows that mood and discussion context together can explain trolling behavior better than an individual's history of trolling. These results combine to suggest that ordinary people can, under the right circumstances, behave like trolls.

/pdf/anyone-can-become-a-troll-causes-of-trolling-behavior-in-1ojxvpz3eq.pdf

Anyone Can Become a Troll: Causes of Trolling Behavior in Online Discussions

Social Media and Well-Being: Pitfalls, Progress, and Next Steps

What a _____ thing to do! Formally characterizing actions by their expected effects

Objective: This study investigates a set of variables related to the relative valuing of narrow self-interest versus the concerns of a larger community. These values likely capture stable dispositions. Additionally, because ethics-relevant values are associated with ongoing cultural and moral socialization, they may develop over time as in May’s theory of “mature” values. Method: We administered eight value-priority scales (Mature Values, Unmitigated Self-Interest, Materialism, Financial Aspirations, and Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism) to a national community sample (N = 864, 66% female, 71% White, mean age 36) on four occasions approximately one year apart (Time 4 N = 570). We examined mean-level change as cross-sectional age differences and longitudinal change, and rank-order stability. Correlations with Big Five/Big Six personality traits are reported. Results: As people grew older they increased in Mature Values and Horizontal and Vertical Collectivism, and decreased in Unmitigated Self-Interest, Materialism, and Vertical Individualism. Rank-order stability of the values was nearly as high as personality traits over three years. Stability increased with age for some scales. Discussion: The stability of values scores suggests that they capture dispositional aspects, but age differences and longitudinal trends are also consistent with the hypothesis of socialization toward more inclusive value priorities.

/pdf/ethics-relevant-values-in-adulthood-longitudinal-findings-29c8hv8fgu.pdf

Ethics-relevant values in adulthood: Longitudinal findings from the life and time study.

Cross-cultural research on personality has often led to surprising and countertheoretical findings, which have led to concerns over the validity of country-level estimates of personality (e.g., Hei...

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4094&context=soss_research

Revealed Traits: A Novel Method for Estimating Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in Personality:

The past decade has seen rapid growth in research linking stable psychological characteristics (i.e., traits) to digital records of online behavior in Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Facebook and Twitter, which has implications for basic and applied behavioral sciences. Findings indicate that a broad range of psychological characteristics can be predicted from various behavioral residue online, including language used in posts on Facebook (Park et al., 2015) and Twitter (Reece et al., 2017), and which pages a person ‘likes’ on Facebook (e.g., Kosinski, Stillwell, & Graepel, 2013). The present study examined the extent to which the accounts a user follows on Twitter can be used to predict individual differences in self-reported anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, and anger. Followed accounts on Twitter offer distinct theoretical and practical advantages for researchers; they are potentially less subject to overt impression management and may better capture passive users. Using an approach designed to minimize overfitting and provide unbiased estimates of predictive accuracy, our results indicate that each of the four constructs can be predicted with modest accuracy (out-of-sample R’s of approximately .2). Exploratory analyses revealed that anger, but not the other constructs, was distinctly reflected in followed accounts, and there was some indication of bias in predictions for women (vs. men) but not for racial/ethnic minorities (vs. majorities). We discuss our results in light of theories linking psychological traits to behavior online, applications seeking to infer psychological characteristics from records of online behavior, and ethical issues such as algorithmic bias and users’ privacy.

/pdf/predicting-mental-health-from-followed-accounts-on-twitter-4rm35mwp80.pdf

Cory Costello

Papers

Social Media and Well-Being: Pitfalls, Progress, and Next Steps

What a _____ thing to do! Formally characterizing actions by their expected effects

Ethics-relevant values in adulthood: Longitudinal findings from the life and time study.

Revealed Traits: A Novel Method for Estimating Cross-Cultural Similarities and Differences in Personality:

Predicting Mental Health From Followed Accounts on Twitter