So far in this course we have dealt entirely with the evolution of characters that are controlled by simple Mendelian inheritance at a single locus. There are notes on the course website about gametic disequilibrium and how allele frequencies change at two loci simultaneously, but we didn’t discuss them. In every example we’ve considered we’ve imagined that we could understand something about evolution by examining the evolution of a single gene. That’s the domain of classical population genetics. For the next few weeks we’re going to be exploring a field that’s actually older than classical population genetics, although the approach we’ll be taking to it involves the use of population genetic machinery. If you know a little about the history of evolutionary biology, you may know that after the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 there was a heated debate between the “biometricians” (e.g., Galton and Pearson) and the “Mendelians” (e.g., de Vries, Correns, Bateson, and Morgan). Biometricians asserted that the really important variation in evolution didn’t follow Mendelian rules. Height, weight, skin color, and similar traits seemed to

Human biochemical genetics

Attachment--and loss.

Secret History: Return of the Black Death Channel 4, 7-8pm In 1348 the Black Death swept through London, killing people within days of the appearance of their first symptoms. Exactly how many died, and why, has long been a mystery. This Secret History documentary follows experts as they pick through the evidence and reveal why the plague killed on such a scale. And they ask, what might be coming next?

Medscape

Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review.

Policy-makers are considering large-scale programs aimed at self-control to improve citizens’ health and wealth and reduce crime. Experimental and economic studies suggest such programs could reap benefits. Yet, is self-control important for the health, wealth, and public safety of the population? Following a cohort of 1,000 children from birth to the age of 32 y, we show that childhood self-control predicts physical health, substance dependence, personal finances, and criminal offending outcomes, following a gradient of self-control. Effects of children's self-control could be disentangled from their intelligence and social class as well as from mistakes they made as adolescents. In another cohort of 500 sibling-pairs, the sibling with lower self-control had poorer outcomes, despite shared family background. Interventions addressing self-control might reduce a panoply of societal costs, save taxpayers money, and promote prosperity.

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A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety

Self-report measures of adult attachment are typically scored in ways (e.g., averaging or summing items) that can lead to erroneous inferences about important theoretical issues, such as the degree of continuity in attachment security and the differential stability of insecure attachment patterns. To determine whether existing attachment scales suffer from scaling problems, the authors conducted an item response theory (IRT) analysis of 4 commonly used self-report inventories: Experiences in Close Relationships scales (K. A. Brennan, C. L. Clark, & P. R. Shaver, 1998), Adult Attachment Scales (N. L. Collins & S. J. Read, 1990), Relationship Styles Questionnaire (D. W. Griffin & K. Bartholomew, 1994) and J. Simpson's (1990) attachment scales. Data from 1,085 individuals were analyzed using F. Samejima's (1969) graded response model. The authors' findings indicate that commonly used attachment scales can be improved in a number of important ways. Accordingly, the authors show how IRT techniques can be used to develop new attachment scales with desirable psychometric properties.

An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment.

The authors review the theory of romantic, or pair-bond, attachment as it was originally formulated by C. Hazan and P. R. Shaver in 1987 and describe how it has evolved over more than a decade. In ...

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Adult Romantic Attachment: Theoretical Developments, Emerging Controversies, and Unanswered Questions

A central tenet of attachment theory is that a person's attachment pattern in adulthood is a reflection of his or her attachment history—-beginning with the person's earliest attachment relationships. However, the precise way in which early representations might shape adult attachment patterns is ambiguous, and different perspectives on this issue have evolved in the literature. According to the prototype perspective, representations of early experiences are retained over time and continue to play an influential role in attachment behavior throughout the life course. In contrast, the revisionist perspective holds that early representations are subject to modification on the basis of new experiences and therefore may or may not reflect patterns of attachment later in life. In this article, I explore and test mathematical models of each of these theoretical processes on the basis of longitudinal data obtained from meta-analysis. Results indicate that attachment security is moderately stable across the first...

Attachment Stability From Infancy to Adulthood: Meta-Analysis and Dynamic Modeling of Developmental Mechanisms

Part 1. Designing a Personality Study. D.P. McAdams, J.L. Pals, The Role of Theory in Personality Assessment. M.B. Donnellan, R.D. Conger, Designing and Implementing Longitudinal Studies. W. Revelle, Experimental Approaches to the Study of Personality. R.F. Krueger, J.L. Tackett, Behavior Genetic Designs. T.S. Conner, L. Feldman Barrett, M.M. Tugade, H. Tennen, Idiographic Personality: The Theory and Practice of Experience Sampling. A.C. Elms, Psychobiography and Case Study Methods. P. Cramer, Mining Archival Data. R.C. Fraley, Using the Internet for Personality Research: What Can Be Done, How to Do It, and Some Concerns. R.C. Fraley, M.J. Marks, The Null Hypothesis Significance-Testing Debate and Its Implications for Personality Research. V. Benet-Martinez, Cross-Cultural Personality Research: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. S. Vazire, S.D. Gosling, A.S. Dickey, S.J. Schapiro, Measuring Personality in Nonhuman Animals. Part 2. Methods for Assessing Personality at Different Levels of Analysis. K.H. Craik, Taxonomies, Trends, and Integrations. D.L. Paulhus, S. Vazire, The Self-Report Method. L.J. Simms, D. Watson, The Construct Validation Approach to Personality Scale Construction. R.R. McCrae, A. Weiss, Observer Ratings of Personality. R.M. Furr, D.C. Funder, Behavior Observation. B.A. Woike, Content Coding of Open-Ended Responses. A.V. Song, D.K. Simonton, Personality Assessment at a Distance. O.C. Schultheiss, J.S. Pang, Measuring Implicit Motives. M.D. Robinson, Lives Lived in Milliseconds: Using Cognitive Methods in Personality Research. J.S. Beer, M.V. Lombardo, Patient and Neuroimaging Methodologies. L.M. Diamond, K. Otter-Henderson, Physiological Measures. R.P. Ebstein, R. Bachner-Melman, S. Israel, L. Nemanov, I. Gritsenko, The Human Genome Project and Personality: What We Can Learn about Our Inner and Outer Selves through Our Genes. Part 3. Analyzing and Interpreting Personality Data. J. Morizot, A.T. Ainsworth, S.P. Reise, Toward Modern Psychometrics: Application of Item Response Theory Models in Personality Research. K. Lee, M.C. Ashton, Factor Analysis in Personality Research. R.H. Hoyle, Applications of Structural Equation Modeling in Personality Research. O.P. John, C.J. Soto, The Importance of Being Valid: Reliability and the Process of Construct Validation. D.J. Ozer, Evaluating Effect Size in Personality Research. J.B. Nezlek, Multilevel Modeling in Personality Research. W. Fleeson, Studying Personality Processes: Explaining Change in Between-persons Longitudinal and Within-Person Multilevel Models. D.K. Mroczek, The Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Personality Research. J.W. Grice, Person-Centered Structural Analyses. S.G. West, L.S. Aiken, W. Wu, A.B. Taylor, Multiple Regression: Applications of the Basics and Beyond in Personality Research. W.F. Chaplin, Moderator and Mediator Models in Personality Research: A Basic Introduction. Y. Shoda, Computational Modeling of Personality as a Dynamical System. B.W. Roberts, N.R. Kuncel, W. Viechtbauer, T. Bogg, Meta-Analysis in Personality Psychology: A Primer. R.W. Robins, J.L. Tracy, J.W. Sherman, What Kinds of Methods Do Personality Psychologists Use? A Survey of Journal Editors and Editorial Board Members.

Handbook of research methods in personality psychology

Most research on adult attachment is based on the assumption that working models are relatively general and trait-like. Recent research, however, suggests that people develop attachment representations that are relationship-specific, leading people to hold distinct working models in different relationships. The authors report a measure, the Relationship Structures questionnaire of the Experiences in Close Relationships—Revised (ECR-RS; R. C. Fraley, N. G. Waller, & K. A. Brennan, 2000), that is designed to assess attachment dimensions in multiple contexts. Based on a sample of over 21,000 individuals studied online, it is shown that ECR-RS scores are reliable and have a structure similar to those produced by other measures. In Study 2 (N 388), it is shown that relationship-specific measures of attachment generally predict intra- and interpersonal outcomes better than broader attachment measures but that broader measures predict personality traits better than relationship-specific measures. Moreover, it is demonstrated that differentiation in working models is not related to psychological outcomes independently of mean levels of security.

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R. Chris Fraley

Papers

An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment.

Adult Romantic Attachment: Theoretical Developments, Emerging Controversies, and Unanswered Questions

Attachment Stability From Infancy to Adulthood: Meta-Analysis and Dynamic Modeling of Developmental Mechanisms

Handbook of research methods in personality psychology

The Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures questionnaire: a method for assessing attachment orientations across relationships.