|
American Psychologist - Vol 65, Iss 6
|
The American Psychologist is the official journal of the American Psychological Association. As such, the journal contains archival documents and articles covering current issues in psychology, the science and practice of psychology, and psychology's contribution to public policy. Archival and Association documents include, but are not limited to, the annual report of the Association, Council minutes, the Presidential Address, editorials, other reports of the Association, ethics information, surveys of the membership, employment data, obituaries, calendars of events, announcements, and selected award addresses. Articles published cover all aspects of psychology.
|
|
-
Jack Block (1924 –2010).
Born Jacob Block in Brooklyn, New York, on April 28, 1924, Jack received his bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College. Block is one of the most influential personality and developmental psychologists of his generation and of the 20th century; at the same time, he established himself as a pioneer and authority on applications of multivariate statistics to psychological data. Block became involved with an existing longitudinal research project at Berkeley, found insightful ways to bring order out of previously unused anecdotal and informal data, and used it to publish the influential Lives through time (1971, Bancroft). Equally important were Block’s contributions to statistical methodology and personality assessment. The challenge of response sets (1965, Appleton-Century-Crofts) nearly single-handedly restored confidence in substantive interpretations of self-report measures of personality; and his demonstrations of the utility of observer evaluations and elaboration of the Q-sort method (The Q-sort method in personality assessment and psychiatric research, 1961, Thomas) helped establish the knowledgeable observer as a valuable source of psychological information. Block was ahead of his time on two other major analytic issues: latent variable modeling and empirical sampling distributions for statistical inference. Block also became well-known for his energetic participation in research controversies. As a key participant in the “person–situation debate,” he argued for the lifelong coherence of personality. After decades of health challenges, he insisted on being taken home, where he could be surrounded by his music, his art, and his family and where he died on January 13, 2010. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
-
Statewide differences in personality: Toward a psychological geography of the United States.
There is overwhelming evidence from research in the regional sciences that the attitudes, values, and behaviors of Americans are geographically clustered. Psychologists, however, have historically had little to say about regional differences. This article aims to redress that neglect. In so doing, I provide evidence that there are statewide personality differences across the United States, offer potential explanations for those differences, and show that regional personality differences are linked to a variety of important social indicators. I also explain how a regional perspective can inform research in a variety of areas in psychology and suggest ways in which researchers can study regional differences in their own work. Ultimately, this work is intended to raise awareness in psychology about the value that a regional perspective can add to theory and research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
-
Does it matter where we live?: The urban psychology of character strengths.
Psychology has neglected the study of variation across cities. An urban psychology is needed that takes seriously such variation and focuses on strengths and assets contributing to the good life as much as on problems of urbanization. To illustrate the value of an urban psychology, we describe studies of character strengths among residents in the 50 largest U.S. cities (N = 47,369). Differences in character strengths were found to exist across cities, were robustly related to important city-level outcomes such as entrepreneurship and 2008 presidential election voting, and were associated in theoretically predicted ways with city-level features. We propose a framework that distinguishes between strengths of the “head,” which are intellectual and self-oriented, and strengths of the “heart,” which are emotional and interpersonal. Cities whose residents had higher levels of head strengths were those rated as creative and innovative. Head strengths predicted the likelihood of a city voting for Barack Obama, whereas heart strengths predicted voting for John McCain. More than half of the world's population now resides in cities, and urban psychology deserves greater attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
|
