Critically reviews characteristics thought to be associated with "difficult clients" in light of research findings emerging from psychiatric and psychological literature pertaining to Borderline Personality Disorder. Reviews recent developments for brief treatment strategies and describes development of short-term interpersonal therapy…

Levels of hostility and type of crime were compared in 94 male offenders with 3-4 or 4-3 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) high point pairs and in randomly selected offenders without these pairs. Results do not support these codes as evidence of a proclivity for violence. (SLD)

Observed 193 children at 4.5 years who had been classified at 4 months as high or low reactive to stimulation for signs of inhibited or uninhibited behavior. Children classified as high reactive were less spontaneous and less sociable than low-reactive children, but only a small proportion maintained a consistently inhibited or uninhibited…

Explored the backgrounds and personal motives of 70 families who adopted Indian children in the late 1970s and 1980s. Focused on what kind of people seek to adopt children of another ethnic group and with a higher likelihood of chronic disabilities. Found strong resemblance to altruists and rescuers of Holocaust victims. (Author/DLH)

Investigates the relationship between White racial identity development and the personality constructs Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. White college students (N=105) were administered the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale, the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, and the New Racism Scale. Results indicate that…

Outlines J. L. Holland's (1985) typology of persons and environments, and summarizes the support for this theory in explaining stability and change in careers and work satisfaction. Recent research that strengthens the explanatory power of Holland's typology and links it to the Big Five personality factors is described. Speculations about using…

Suggests that the heterogeneity of human personality characteristics increases with age. Examines reasons for this phenomenon in terms of individual differentiation, social structure/allocation, and behavioral genetics. Develops a model synthesizing various study designs that prevent variation and covariation errors from occurring in life course…

The psychometric properties of the "Almost Perfect Scale-Revised," a test of adaptive and maladaptive aspects of perfectionist qualities, were examined with 342 academically talented middle school students. Findings indicated reliability estimates in the moderate to high range but goodness-of-fit indices were just below the criteria for…

Examined role of infant and toddler temperament in predicting 2-year olds' empathy. Found that children showed relatively more concern for mother's distress, but were also responsive to unfamiliar victims. Unreacting infants showing little affect also showed less empathy toward the unfamiliar adult almost two years later. Inhibition toward…

Evaluated gender differences in infant and maternal emotional expressivity and regulation with 6-month-old infants and their mothers, using Tronick's face-to-face still-face model. Found that maternal affect, matching, rate of change between matching and mismatching states, and synchrony in the play preceding the still face differentially mediated…

Three studies involving Chinese respondents from China and Hong Kong and diverse respondents from Hawaii compared the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory factor structure with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO-Five Factor Inventory. Results supported the universality of the five-factor model, the validity of NEO-PI-R,…

The nature of early adolescent social cognition as characterized by the theory of adolescent egocentrism was investigated, through three studies, by examining age differences in judgments of hypothetical peer conversations. Findings do not support the notion that adolescents believe others are attentive to and critical of their every move, or that…

This article addresses the question of how to build human relations in web-based collaborative learning. Although the field of web-based education/training (WBE/T) has grown rapidly in the last few years, there has been little systematic research on the issue of group formation in such environments. It is the difficult to build human relations in…

The efficiency of a new strategy to identify back random responding (BRR) on the Personality Assessment Inventory (L. C. Morey, 1991) was studied using random manipulations of item responses from community (904 adult nonpatients) and clinical (1,079 adult patients) respondents. The strategy involved a comparison of short-form and full-instrument T…

Educators do not refute that excellent teachers possess particular dispositions that make them stand out or be recognized among their peers. Kindness, caring, having high expectations for students and themselves, teaching students to think critically, having a strong work ethic, and to be aware of, and having an appreciation of cultural diversity…