In this article, the authors review research showing the different roles that the self-concept can play in affecting prime-to-behavior effects. As an organizing framework, an Active-Self account of stereotype, trait, and exemplar prime-to-behavior effects is presented. According to this view, such primes can influence people's behavior by creating changes in the active self-concept, either by invoking a biased subset of chronic self-content or by introducing new material into the active self-concept. The authors show how involvement of the active self-concept can increase, decrease, or reverse the effects of primes and describe how individual differences in responsiveness of the self to change and usage of the self in guiding behavior (e.g., self-monitoring) can moderate prime-to-behavior effects. The Active-Self account is proposed as an integrative framework that explains how the self is involved in prime-to-behavior effects and helps predict how changes in the self determine which motivational and behavioral representations will guide behavior.

These studies investigate whether individuals with high narcissism scores would be more likely to emerge as leaders during leaderless group discussions. The authors hypothesized that narcissists would emerge as group leaders. In three studies, participants completed personality questionnaires and engaged in four-person leaderless group discussions. Results from all three studies reveal a link between narcissism and leader emergence. Studies 1 and 2 further reveal that the power dimension of narcissism predicted reported leader emergence while controlling for sex, self-esteem, and the Big Five personality traits. Study 3 demonstrates an association between narcissism and expert ratings of leader emergence in a group of executives. The implications of the propensity of narcissists to emerge as leaders are discussed.

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When a construct is primed, people often act in construct-consistent ways. Several accounts for this effect have been offered, including ideomotor theory and a social functional perspective. The authors tested an additional perspective, the Active-Self account, whereby primes can temporarily alter self-perceptions. In Study 1, non-African American participants reported feeling more aggressive on an implicit measure following an African American prime. In Study 2, participants reported feeling luckier on an implicit measure following a number 7 (vs. 13) prime. In both studies, these effects were obtained only for low self-monitors, who are more likely to change self-conceptions in response to diagnostic self-information and to use their internal states in guiding behavior. Study 3 showed that low self-monitors also show larger behavioral effects of primes.

Defusion and decentering are related constructs that describe an objective, distanced, and open approach toward one's internal experiences. These constructs are thought to play important protective roles in models of psychopathology, and several common therapeutic interventions include techniques to increase levels of defusion and decentering. However, little research has examined the construct validity or the underlying structure of measures of these constructs. Across 4 samples-3 unselected student samples and 1 clinical sample-we examined 5 self-report measures of defusion/decentering. We found that measures of decentering and defusion were only weakly to modestly associated with each other. Item-level analyses revealed a 2-factor structure, consisting of "Observer Perspective" and "Reduced Struggle with Inner Experience," which generally showed expected and distinct patterns of convergent and discriminant validity, although the latter factor had questionable discriminant validity namely a-namely indices of psychological distress (e.g., neuroticism, negative affect, internalizing symptoms, rumination). The factors also related differently to believability of positive versus negative thoughts, which was partially explained by the overrepresentation of negative items in the measures. Implications for the structure and validity of these constructs, as well as for their assessment and use in clinical settings, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record