Open Peer Commentary and Author'S Response

Abstract

Hopwood (2018) has returned to what occupied Cattell from the 1940s: integrating intra-and interindividual personality 'structures'. As Hopwood observed, personality psychology still suffers the 'divide' Cattell bemoaned, between quantitatively/experimentally oriented empiricists and philosophical/clinical theorists. Despite types' many limitations, Hopwood proposed a model to articulate classic 'normal' personality 'types' analogous to 'disorders'. This will be harder because there are many ways for

Motives and Laterality: Exploring the Links

“…Building on work by McGilchrist (2009), who held that the hemispheres do not so much differ in what they do but in how they do it, Schultheiss (2018) suggested a third possibility, namely that motives may not be lateralized per se but that their behavioral manifestations may differ depending on which hemisphere is more involved in their expression. Reviewing the available literature on nPower and nAffiliation, he suggested that if these motives are expressed predominantly through LH-related functions, they tend to be more egoistically oriented towards dominance over others and relationship safeguarding, respectively, whereas if they are expressed via RH-related functions, they tend to manifest themselves in more context-sensitive and adaptive social behavior (for review of hemispheric differences in cognitive and social functions, McGilchrist, 2009).…”

“…Reviewing the available literature on nPower and nAffiliation, he suggested that if these motives are expressed predominantly through LH-related functions, they tend to be more egoistically oriented towards dominance over others and relationship safeguarding, respectively, whereas if they are expressed via RH-related functions, they tend to manifest themselves in more context-sensitive and adaptive social behavior (for review of hemispheric differences in cognitive and social functions, McGilchrist, 2009). Moreover, Schultheiss (2018) argued that activity inhibition (AI), a frequent moderator of motive effects on behavior in past research, is critical for whether motives are predominantly expressed via LH or RH functions. AI is measured by counting the frequency of the negation not (including its abbreviated forms; e.g., isn't) in PSE stories and has been shown to predict higher attentional sensitivity to stimuli presented in the LVF relative to stimuli presented in the RVF, particularly in emotionally engaging situations (Schultheiss et al, 2009).…”

“…AI is measured by counting the frequency of the negation not (including its abbreviated forms; e.g., isn't) in PSE stories and has been shown to predict higher attentional sensitivity to stimuli presented in the LVF relative to stimuli presented in the RVF, particularly in emotionally engaging situations (Schultheiss et al, 2009). According to Schultheiss (2018), high AI makes motives more likely to engage the RH, whereas low AI makes them more likely to become expressed through the LH. As a case in point, he refers to robust evidence showing that high nPower, combined with high AI, is associated with success in managers, both by objective measures of management performance and by the subjective judgment of their teams.…”

Commentary: Contextualizing Neuroticism in the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology

“…I wholeheartedly agree with Brandes and Tackett that we must untangle which aspects of the multifaceted neuroticism construct predict what outcomes in more detail [cf. Hill et al (25)], via the study of "personality nuances" [e.g., Mõttus et al (47)] and the inclusion of individual dynamics [e.g., Jayawickreme et al (48) and Jeronimus and Reitsema (49)], and we have only started to explore such questions. For example, the concurrent and prospective associations between neuroticism and somatic distress [as mentioned by Brandes and Tackett (1), p. 241; see Cuijpers et al (17), Costa and McCrae (50), and Rosmalen et al (51)] might primarily reflect vigilance (24) and overlap in semantics and negative affect [e.g., De Gucht et al (52,53) and van Diest et al (54)].…”

Prospective associations between neuroticism and the common mental disorders: A comment on Brandes and Tackett (2019)

“…I wholeheartedly agree with Brandes and Tackett that we must untangle which aspects of the multifaceted neuroticism construct predict what outcomes in more detail (cf. Hill et al, 2009), via the study of "personality nuances" (e.g., Mõttus et al, 2018) and the inclusion of individual dynamics (e.g., Jayawickreme et al, 2019;Jeronimus & Reitsema, 2018), and we have only started to explore such questions. For example, the concurrent and prospective associations between neuroticism and somatic distress (as mentioned by Brandes on page 241; see Costa & McCrae, 1987;Cuijpers et al, 2010;Rosmalen et al, 2007) might primarily reflect vigilance (Tamir et al, 2006) and overlap in semantics and negative affect (e.g., De Gucht et al, 2004a, 2004bvan Diest et al, 2005).…”