Day: February 11, 2019

By Christian Jarrett

While psychology has been mired in a “replication crisis” recently – based on the failure of contemporary researchers to recreate some of its most cherished findings – there have been pockets of good news for certain sub-disciplines in the field. For instance, some replication efforts in cognitive psychology and experimental philosophy or X-phi have been more successful, suggesting that results in these areas are more robust.

To this more optimistic list we may now add personality psychology, or at least the specific area of research linking the Big Five personality trait scores with various personal and life outcomes, such as higher Neuroticism being associated with poorer mental health and reduced relationship satisfaction; higher trait Conscientiousness being associated with less risk of substance abuse; and stronger Extraversion correlating with leadership roles.

In his new paper that is in press at Psychological Science (and available as a preprint at the Open Science Framework), Christopher Soto at Colby College speculates that perhaps it is the tendency for researchers in personality to use large samples of participants, numbering in the hundreds or thousands, and to use reliable, standardised tests, that is to some extent responsible for the relatively robust results in this area. The new findings “leave us cautiously optimistic about the current state and future prospects of the personality-outcome literature,” Soto writes.

Soto sourced 78 previously published trait-outcome associations from a major review published in 2006 “Personality and the Prediction of Consequential Outcomes“. To see if these effects replicated, he recruited four online samples totalling over 6,000 younger and older participants, and asked them to complete an established 60-item measure of the Big Five personality traits, and then to complete various measures of other life outcomes, covering everything from career to relationship success, to political orientation to criminality (to manage the length of the new surveys some of these were abridged versions of the measures used in the original research).

The vast majority (around 87 per cent) of the previously published trait-outcome associations replicated. This is not a perfect result, obviously, but it is far more impressive than the average 36 per cent replication rate achieved in 2015 by the Reproducibility Project’s attempt to replicate findings across social and cognitive psychology, and the less than 50 per cent success rate reported late last year by the Many Labs 2 project after its attempt to replicate various social psychology findings.

A couple of original trait-outcome effects that did not replicate this time included lower Agreeableness not correlating with heart disease and higher Conscientiousness not correlating with greater family satisfaction.

Despite the overall impressive replication success rate, between 63 to 71 per cent of the time the replicated effects were weaker than in the original research, and between 30 to 42 per cent of the time the replicated effect was substantially weaker (the precise figures depended on whether the analyses corrected for the use of abridged outcome measures). This indicates that the existing trait-outcome literature contains at least some false-positive results (i.e. null findings erroneously reported as positive). Overall, the new personality trait-outcome associations were about 80 per cent as large as in the original research. On a positive note, the weakening of significant effect sizes seen here is not as dramatic as in the Reproducibility Project in 2015.

Original results with a larger effect size replicated more often, and it helped if the replication had more statistical power and if it used the same data source and format (for example, if both the original and the replication used self-report questionnaires). The bigger picture, though, is that most results did replicate even though the new research was obviously conducted in a different era (some of the original results date as far back as the 1980s), sometimes in a different geographical locale, and using a different personality measure. This echoes the message from the recent Many Labs 2 Project that found that those psychology results that do replicate tend to be relatively robust in the face of such contextual differences.

Soto’s new replication effort, dubbed “the Life Outcomes Of Personality Replication (LOOPR) project”, meets the highest research standards, with its methods and hypotheses being pre-registered (to avoid the possibility for post-hoc data tweaking and mining) and with all the materials and data made available online at the Open Science Framework. However, as Soto acknowledges, the study is not perfect – for instance, it involved a cross-sectional design with trait scores and life outcomes measured at the same time point, whereas it is advantageous to use a longitudinal design with outcomes measured later; and only a single replication attempt was made for each trait-outcome finding, whereas in future it may be revealing for multiple attempts of the same findings to be attempted, allowing for the influence of moderating contextual factors to be explored.

Despite these limitations, this is surely a welcome news story for the field of personality psychology.  Soto is cautiously upbeat in his conclusion, writing that: “… the extant literature provides a reasonably accurate map of how the Big Five personality traits relate with consequential life outcomes, but that personality psychology still stands to gain from ongoing efforts to improve the replicability of behavioral science.”

—How replicable are links between personality traits and consequential life
outcomes? The Life Outcomes Of Personality Replication Project

Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer) is Editor of BPS Research Digest and the author of a forthcoming book for the general public on personality change.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BpsResearchDigest/~3/LojrSCmhL_U/

By Emma Young

Feeling good in an emotional sense helps to foster better physical health – at least that’s what’s been found in studies in the West. But “feeling good” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing in all cultures. In the US, people tend to report that being excited and experiencing other so-called “high arousal positive (HAP) states” is what makes them feel good. Many people in Japan, however, place greater value on the opposite extreme, viewing calm, quiet “low arousal positive (LAP) states” as more pleasant and desirable. So, does this mean that engaging more often in stimulating activities – like a fitness work-out or a party – will make for better health in US citizens, while for people in Japan, engaging in more calming activities – like taking frequent baths – will have more of a beneficial effect? A new paper, published in Emotion, which explores this question, reveals some clear cultural variations – though not all of them are as the researchers predicted.  

Magali Clobert at Stanford University and her colleagues analysed survey data collected at two time points from 640 Americans and 382 Japanese people. The sample from the US was slightly more educated and slightly older than the Japanese, but as the authors note, “both samples come from an industrialized and modern society, are well-educated, and are middle-aged.” 

The researchers looked at the participants’ initial scores on a variety of surveys measuring their experience of HAP and LAP emotional states, as well as how often the participants engaged in behaviours or practices that could feasibly generate these states, such as going to a party, having a good fitness work-out or amusing people (all of which should lead to HAP feelings) and reading, taking a relaxing bath, praying, meditating or seeing beautiful scenery (which should lead to LAP feelings). They also reported on how psychologically and physically well they felt. Clobert and her colleagues then looked at biological data (including blood cholesterol levels, body mass index, and the inflammatory marker IL-6), which had been collected several months later. At this second time point, the participants also gave ratings for aspects of life satisfaction, sleep, subjective physical health, HAP and LAP behaviours, and psychological wellbeing. 

The results showed that HAP feelings predicted better physical health more in the United States than they did in Japan. For example, experiencing more HAP feelings at the first time point predicted both a subsequently lower BMI and lower inflammation in the US – but not in Japan. Engaging in more HAP-related activities also predicted fewer later ill-health symptoms and conditions, fewer sleep problems and less pain in the US – but not in Japan. “Among Japanese, HAP feelings did not predict most of the health outcomes, and this was particularly evident for biological and physical health,” the researchers note. 

Also consistent with the researchers’ predictions, engaging in more LAP-related behaviours was associated with subsequent better health for people in Japan more than in the US – such as fewer sleep problems and less pain. However, against expectations, experiencing more LAP feelings was actually a stronger predictor of better psychological well-being in the US than in Japan (though paradoxically more LAP feelings also marginally predicted greater inflammation in the US participants). 

The researchers titled their paper: ‘Feeling excited or taking a bath: do distinct pathways underlie the positive affect-health link in the US and Japan?’ As they themselves note, their work suggests that the answer is “a partial ‘yes’” – the findings suggest that cultural attitudes to what is and is not a desirable emotional state, and related behaviours, can influence health, and deserve more attention.

Clobert and her colleagues conclude, “Positive feelings may be more beneficial to health in cultural contexts that value those states, especially for feeling HAP states. By comparing cultures that differ systematically in terms of how they understand, value, and construe emotion, we may be able to determine why positive affect is so important for health in many U.S. settings, and determine to what extent positive affect matters for physical, biological, and mental functioning in other settings.”

—Feeling excited or taking a bath: Do distinct pathways underlie the positive affect–health link in the U.S. and Japan?

Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is Staff Writer at BPS Research Digest

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BpsResearchDigest/~3/wWrImEG9MCw/