Altogether, 1448 individuals from six neighbouring countries of Russia in the Baltic Sea region (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Belarus) described a 'typical' member of their own nation and a 'typical' Russian, as well as rated their own personality, using the National Character Survey (NCS). Results suggest that national character stereotypes are widely shared, temporally stable and moderately related to assessed personality traits, if all assessments are made using the same measurement instrument. In all studied countries, agreement between national auto-stereotypes and assessed personality was positive and in half of the samples statistically significant. Although members of the six nations studied had a relatively similar view of the Russian national character, this view was not related with self-rated personality traits of Russians but moderately with the Russian auto-stereotype.

Rankings of countries on mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness continue to puzzle researchers. Based on the hypothesis that cross-cultural differences in the tendency to prefer extreme response categories of ordinal rating scales over moderate categories can influence the comparability of self-reports, this study investigated possible effects of response style on the mean levels of self-reported Conscientiousness in 22 samples from 20 countries. Extreme and neutral responding were estimated based on respondents' ratings of 30 hypothetical people described in short vignettes. In the vignette ratings, clear cross-sample differences in extreme and neutral responding emerged. These responding style differences were correlated with mean self-reported Conscientiousness scores. Correcting self-reports for extreme and neutral responding changed sample rankings of Conscientiousness, as well as the predictive validities of these rankings for external criteria. The findings suggest that the puzzling country rankings of self-reported Conscientiousness may to some extent result from differences in response styles.

In cross‐national studies, mean levels of self‐reported phenomena are often not congruent with more objective criteria. One prominent explanation for such findings is that people make self‐report judgements in relation to culture‐specific standards (often called the reference group effect), thereby undermining the cross‐cultural comparability of the judgements. We employed a simple method called anchoring vignettes in order to test whether people from 21 different countries have varying standards for Conscientiousness, a Big Five personality trait that has repeatedly shown unexpected nation‐level relationships with external criteria. Participants rated their own Conscientiousness and that of 30 hypothetical persons portrayed in short vignettes. The latter type of ratings was expected to reveal individual differences in standards of Conscientiousness. The vignettes were rated relatively similarly in all countries, suggesting no substantial culture‐related differences in standards for Conscientiousness. Controlling for the small differences in standards did not substantially change the rankings of countries on mean self‐ratings or the predictive validities of these rankings for objective criteria. These findings are not consistent with mean self‐rated Conscientiousness scores being influenced by culture‐specific standards. The technique of anchoring vignettes can be used in various types of studies to assess the potentially confounding effects of reference levels. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Production of hot mix asphalt (HMA) requires a lot of consumption of energy, exhaustion of CO 2 and other environment unfriendly materials. The fumes of HMA are injurious for roadmen and asphalt plant workers. The use of warm mix asphalt (WMA) allows reducing the HMA production temperatures at which the material is mixed and laid on the road. WMA helps to reduce the working temperature of asphalt up to 30 °C. This article presents the overview of different technologies of WMA production, advantages and disadvantages of these technologies. The laboratory research includes research of physical and mechanical properties of WMA produced with different technologies and different amount of additives for temperature lowering. Two different kinds of asphalt where tested in the laboratory. The chemical additives and chemical and natural zeolite were used for WMA production in the laboratory.

The goal of the current investigation was to evaluate the Lithuanian translation of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick, 2010) as well as more broadly extend the construct validity of this psychopathy measurement model to forensic and correctional criteria. Two samples derived from male Lithuanian correctional facilities were merged for this study. The TriPM Meanness and Disinhibition scales evinced acceptable internal reliability coefficients, whereas that for the TriPM Boldness scale was in the questionable range. All three TriPM scales were generally associated with external criteria reflecting psychopathy, aggression, and transdiagnostic clinical and personality constructs in ways consistent with the extant literature, though TriPM Boldness evinced surprisingly small negative correlations with measures of negative emotionality and fear. Furthermore, TriPM Disinhibition was associated with the largest correlations with two risk assessment measures. Implications of these findings in the context of the broader literature are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record