I am interested in explicit motivation, with a specific focus on taxonomic and measurement issues, the relation between goals and personality traits, and how goals shape everyday behavior.
Well-being science has largely focused on subjective well-being, defined in terms of life satisfa... more Well-being science has largely focused on subjective well-being, defined in terms of life satisfaction and positive and negative emotions. However, some philosophical accounts of well-being, like “eudaimonia” accounts, emphasize the attainment of goods, such as having deep social relationships and achieving one’s creative potential. We supplement psychological measures of eudaimonia by developing two self-report measures of well-being informed by the philosophical literature. The Riverside Eudaimonia Scale (RES) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their eudaimonic well-being along several dimensions emphasized in the philosophical literature on eudaimonia. The Rich & Sexy Well-Being Scale (RSWBS) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their attainment of other commonly valued goods that have received less attention in the literature on eudaimonic well-being: sex life, wealth, personal physical beauty, and social status. In three studies, we develop and validate ...
Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted – the most common mistakes being to de... more Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted – the most common mistakes being to describe them in ways that are uninformative (e.g., using arbitrary standards) or misleading (e.g., squaring effect size r’s). We propose that effect sizes can be usefully evaluated in comparison with well-understood benchmarks or in terms of concrete consequences. In that light, we conclude that, when reliably estimated (a critical consideration), an effect of r =.05 is “very small” for the explanation of single events but potentially consequential in the not-very long run, r = .10 is still “small” at the level of single events but potentially more ultimately consequential; r = .20 is “medium” and of some use even in the short run and therefore even more important; and an effect size of r = .30 is “large” and potentially powerful in the short and long run. A “very large” effect size (r = .40 or greater) in the context of psychological research is likely to be a gross overestimate rarely f...
European Journal of Psychological Assessment, May 26, 2021
. The Day Evaluation Q-sort (DEQ) is a measure designed to describe the day as it is experienced.... more . The Day Evaluation Q-sort (DEQ) is a measure designed to describe the day as it is experienced. In two undergraduate samples ( Ns = 472 and 302), this research explores how the day is described, and how the evaluation of the day relates to personality attributes and to time spent in various daily activities. We find that individuals tend to describe their days as generally positive and productive, and that day evaluations are related to psychological attributes (Big Five traits, affect, and well-being) and time use. Day evaluations are not simply a reflection of the activities that make up the day. Two people spending their time similarly may evaluate the day differently. The DEQ is presented as a measure of day evaluations that captures variation in the way the day is experienced. These differences relate meaningfully to individual differences and how time is spent throughout the day.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992
Do spouses become more similar over time? What processes contribute to enduring similarities betw... more Do spouses become more similar over time? What processes contribute to enduring similarities between them? Using the 20-year Kelly Longitudinal Study of couples, no support for the hypothesis that couples increasingly resemble each other with time was found. Rather, couples maintain the same degree of similarity across 20 years. Structural equation analyses suggest that the shared environmental experiences of couples play a significant role in maintaining these similarities over time. We distinguish the shared marital environment from the shared rearing environment and consider developmental and dynamic-relational factors that moderate the relative importance of nonshared and shared environmental experiences in life-span personality development. Whereas nonshared influences in one's family of origin contribute to development in childhood and adolescence, shared influences in one's family of destination may contribute a great deal to development in adulthood.
This article describes the development and validation of the Intrapersonal Problems Rating Scales... more This article describes the development and validation of the Intrapersonal Problems Rating Scales (IPRS), a multidimensional measure of self-related problems in personality functioning. Results from a series of factor analyses performed on self-ratings of over 200 problems revealed seven distinct but interrelated domains of intrapersonal problems: Emotion Dysregulation, Internalizing, Lack of Will, Externalizing, Scrupulousness, Fantasy Proneness, and Apathy. Items were selected and scales built for an efficient assessment of each problem area. The psychometric properties of the resulting scales were then evaluated in an independent sample. Convergent and discriminant validity support for the IPRS was obtained via correlations with respect to three measures of social, emotional, and behavioral problems. The scales associated with a range of personal styles and dispositions and predicted diverse self-reported attitudinal and behavioral criteria even after the effects of normal and ma...
The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) has been the dominant ... more The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) has been the dominant measure of life satisfaction since its creation more than 30 years ago. We sought to develop an improved measure that includes indirect indicators of life satisfaction (e.g., wishing to change one's life) to increase the bandwidth of the measure and account for acquiescence bias. In 3 studies, we developed a 6-item measure of life satisfaction, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale, and obtained reliability and validity evidence. Importantly, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale retained the high internal consistency, test-retest stability, and unidimensionality of the Satisfaction With Life Scale. In addition, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale correlated with other well-being measures, Big Five personality traits, values, and demographic information in expected ways. Although the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale correlated highly with the Satisfaction With Life Scale, we belie...
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
The Five Factor Model (FFM) is a hierarchical taxonomy of personality traits. At the superordinat... more The Five Factor Model (FFM) is a hierarchical taxonomy of personality traits. At the superordinate level are five factors labeled Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (vs Neuroticism), and Intellect (or Openness). Below this level are several more specific personality traits that are summarized by these five higher-order dimensions. In this article, we briefly describe the lexical and questionnaire approaches that led to the development of the FFM, and review measures that derive from these two traditions, measuring both higher- and lower-order traits. In addition, we discuss abbreviated instruments, measures that assess variants of the FFM, an open source personality item pool, and a structured interview. Future research will improve upon FFM assessment by examining the five factor structure across languages and developmental periods, and detailing the structure of personality traits at lower levels of the trait hierarchy.
The interpersonal circumplex (IPC) is a well-established model of social behavior that spans basi... more The interpersonal circumplex (IPC) is a well-established model of social behavior that spans basic personality and clinical science. Although several measures are available to assess interpersonal functioning (e.g., motives, traits) within an IPC framework, researchers studying interpersonal difficulties have relied primarily on a single measure, the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-Circumplex Scales (IIP-C; Horowitz, Alden, Wiggins, & Pincus, 2000). Although the IIP-C is a widely used measure, it is currently the only measure specifically designed to assess maladaptive interpersonal behavior using the IPC framework. The purpose of the current study is to describe a new 64-item measure of interpersonal problems, called the Circumplex Scales of Interpersonal Problems (CSIP). Interpersonal problems derived from a pool of 400 personality-related problems were assessed in two large university samples. In the scale development sample (N = 1,197), items that best characterized each sec...
Page 1. COMMENTARIES extent that one would have to say that their stories are being told for them... more Page 1. COMMENTARIES extent that one would have to say that their stories are being told for them by others-is made in a new collec-tion of the work of Martin-Baro (1994). Writing from the perspective of a social psychologist ...
Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relatio... more Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relations to a variety of important outcomes. Using the Big Five factors as heuristics for organizing the research literature, numerous consequential relations are identified. Personality dispositions are associated with happiness, physical and psychological health, spirituality, and identity at an individual level; associated with the quality of relationships with peers, family, and romantic others at an interpersonal level; and associated with occupational choice, satisfaction, and performance, as well as community involvement, criminal activity, and political ideology at a social institutional level.
INTRODUCTION 357 THE OBJECT OF ASSESSMENT 358 Personality Structure 358 The Concept of a Personal... more INTRODUCTION 357 THE OBJECT OF ASSESSMENT 358 Personality Structure 358 The Concept of a Personality Variable 363 Theory and Assessment 366 METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION 368 Developments in Personality Scale Construction 368 Accuracy in Observers' Ratings ...
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted—the most common mistakes being to desc... more Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted—the most common mistakes being to describe them in ways that are uninformative (e.g., using arbitrary standards) or misleading (e.g., squaring effect-size rs). We propose that effect sizes can be usefully evaluated by comparing them with well-understood benchmarks or by considering them in terms of concrete consequences. In that light, we conclude that when reliably estimated (a critical consideration), an effect-size r of .05 indicates an effect that is very small for the explanation of single events but potentially consequential in the not-very-long run, an effect-size r of .10 indicates an effect that is still small at the level of single events but potentially more ultimately consequential, an effect-size r of .20 indicates a medium effect that is of some explanatory and practical use even in the short run and therefore even more important, and an effect-size r of .30 indicates a large effect that is potentially powerful...
Well-being science has largely focused on subjective well-being, defined in terms of life satisfa... more Well-being science has largely focused on subjective well-being, defined in terms of life satisfaction and positive and negative emotions. However, some philosophical accounts of well-being, like “eudaimonia” accounts, emphasize the attainment of goods, such as having deep social relationships and achieving one’s creative potential. We supplement psychological measures of eudaimonia by developing two self-report measures of well-being informed by the philosophical literature. The Riverside Eudaimonia Scale (RES) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their eudaimonic well-being along several dimensions emphasized in the philosophical literature on eudaimonia. The Rich & Sexy Well-Being Scale (RSWBS) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their attainment of other commonly valued goods that have received less attention in the literature on eudaimonic well-being: sex life, wealth, personal physical beauty, and social status. In three studies, we develop and validate ...
Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted – the most common mistakes being to de... more Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted – the most common mistakes being to describe them in ways that are uninformative (e.g., using arbitrary standards) or misleading (e.g., squaring effect size r’s). We propose that effect sizes can be usefully evaluated in comparison with well-understood benchmarks or in terms of concrete consequences. In that light, we conclude that, when reliably estimated (a critical consideration), an effect of r =.05 is “very small” for the explanation of single events but potentially consequential in the not-very long run, r = .10 is still “small” at the level of single events but potentially more ultimately consequential; r = .20 is “medium” and of some use even in the short run and therefore even more important; and an effect size of r = .30 is “large” and potentially powerful in the short and long run. A “very large” effect size (r = .40 or greater) in the context of psychological research is likely to be a gross overestimate rarely f...
European Journal of Psychological Assessment, May 26, 2021
. The Day Evaluation Q-sort (DEQ) is a measure designed to describe the day as it is experienced.... more . The Day Evaluation Q-sort (DEQ) is a measure designed to describe the day as it is experienced. In two undergraduate samples ( Ns = 472 and 302), this research explores how the day is described, and how the evaluation of the day relates to personality attributes and to time spent in various daily activities. We find that individuals tend to describe their days as generally positive and productive, and that day evaluations are related to psychological attributes (Big Five traits, affect, and well-being) and time use. Day evaluations are not simply a reflection of the activities that make up the day. Two people spending their time similarly may evaluate the day differently. The DEQ is presented as a measure of day evaluations that captures variation in the way the day is experienced. These differences relate meaningfully to individual differences and how time is spent throughout the day.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992
Do spouses become more similar over time? What processes contribute to enduring similarities betw... more Do spouses become more similar over time? What processes contribute to enduring similarities between them? Using the 20-year Kelly Longitudinal Study of couples, no support for the hypothesis that couples increasingly resemble each other with time was found. Rather, couples maintain the same degree of similarity across 20 years. Structural equation analyses suggest that the shared environmental experiences of couples play a significant role in maintaining these similarities over time. We distinguish the shared marital environment from the shared rearing environment and consider developmental and dynamic-relational factors that moderate the relative importance of nonshared and shared environmental experiences in life-span personality development. Whereas nonshared influences in one's family of origin contribute to development in childhood and adolescence, shared influences in one's family of destination may contribute a great deal to development in adulthood.
This article describes the development and validation of the Intrapersonal Problems Rating Scales... more This article describes the development and validation of the Intrapersonal Problems Rating Scales (IPRS), a multidimensional measure of self-related problems in personality functioning. Results from a series of factor analyses performed on self-ratings of over 200 problems revealed seven distinct but interrelated domains of intrapersonal problems: Emotion Dysregulation, Internalizing, Lack of Will, Externalizing, Scrupulousness, Fantasy Proneness, and Apathy. Items were selected and scales built for an efficient assessment of each problem area. The psychometric properties of the resulting scales were then evaluated in an independent sample. Convergent and discriminant validity support for the IPRS was obtained via correlations with respect to three measures of social, emotional, and behavioral problems. The scales associated with a range of personal styles and dispositions and predicted diverse self-reported attitudinal and behavioral criteria even after the effects of normal and ma...
The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) has been the dominant ... more The Satisfaction With Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) has been the dominant measure of life satisfaction since its creation more than 30 years ago. We sought to develop an improved measure that includes indirect indicators of life satisfaction (e.g., wishing to change one's life) to increase the bandwidth of the measure and account for acquiescence bias. In 3 studies, we developed a 6-item measure of life satisfaction, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale, and obtained reliability and validity evidence. Importantly, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale retained the high internal consistency, test-retest stability, and unidimensionality of the Satisfaction With Life Scale. In addition, the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale correlated with other well-being measures, Big Five personality traits, values, and demographic information in expected ways. Although the Riverside Life Satisfaction Scale correlated highly with the Satisfaction With Life Scale, we belie...
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
The Five Factor Model (FFM) is a hierarchical taxonomy of personality traits. At the superordinat... more The Five Factor Model (FFM) is a hierarchical taxonomy of personality traits. At the superordinate level are five factors labeled Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability (vs Neuroticism), and Intellect (or Openness). Below this level are several more specific personality traits that are summarized by these five higher-order dimensions. In this article, we briefly describe the lexical and questionnaire approaches that led to the development of the FFM, and review measures that derive from these two traditions, measuring both higher- and lower-order traits. In addition, we discuss abbreviated instruments, measures that assess variants of the FFM, an open source personality item pool, and a structured interview. Future research will improve upon FFM assessment by examining the five factor structure across languages and developmental periods, and detailing the structure of personality traits at lower levels of the trait hierarchy.
The interpersonal circumplex (IPC) is a well-established model of social behavior that spans basi... more The interpersonal circumplex (IPC) is a well-established model of social behavior that spans basic personality and clinical science. Although several measures are available to assess interpersonal functioning (e.g., motives, traits) within an IPC framework, researchers studying interpersonal difficulties have relied primarily on a single measure, the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-Circumplex Scales (IIP-C; Horowitz, Alden, Wiggins, & Pincus, 2000). Although the IIP-C is a widely used measure, it is currently the only measure specifically designed to assess maladaptive interpersonal behavior using the IPC framework. The purpose of the current study is to describe a new 64-item measure of interpersonal problems, called the Circumplex Scales of Interpersonal Problems (CSIP). Interpersonal problems derived from a pool of 400 personality-related problems were assessed in two large university samples. In the scale development sample (N = 1,197), items that best characterized each sec...
Page 1. COMMENTARIES extent that one would have to say that their stories are being told for them... more Page 1. COMMENTARIES extent that one would have to say that their stories are being told for them by others-is made in a new collec-tion of the work of Martin-Baro (1994). Writing from the perspective of a social psychologist ...
Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relatio... more Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relations to a variety of important outcomes. Using the Big Five factors as heuristics for organizing the research literature, numerous consequential relations are identified. Personality dispositions are associated with happiness, physical and psychological health, spirituality, and identity at an individual level; associated with the quality of relationships with peers, family, and romantic others at an interpersonal level; and associated with occupational choice, satisfaction, and performance, as well as community involvement, criminal activity, and political ideology at a social institutional level.
INTRODUCTION 357 THE OBJECT OF ASSESSMENT 358 Personality Structure 358 The Concept of a Personal... more INTRODUCTION 357 THE OBJECT OF ASSESSMENT 358 Personality Structure 358 The Concept of a Personality Variable 363 Theory and Assessment 366 METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION 368 Developments in Personality Scale Construction 368 Accuracy in Observers' Ratings ...
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted—the most common mistakes being to desc... more Effect sizes are underappreciated and often misinterpreted—the most common mistakes being to describe them in ways that are uninformative (e.g., using arbitrary standards) or misleading (e.g., squaring effect-size rs). We propose that effect sizes can be usefully evaluated by comparing them with well-understood benchmarks or by considering them in terms of concrete consequences. In that light, we conclude that when reliably estimated (a critical consideration), an effect-size r of .05 indicates an effect that is very small for the explanation of single events but potentially consequential in the not-very-long run, an effect-size r of .10 indicates an effect that is still small at the level of single events but potentially more ultimately consequential, an effect-size r of .20 indicates a medium effect that is of some explanatory and practical use even in the short run and therefore even more important, and an effect-size r of .30 indicates a large effect that is potentially powerful...
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Papers by Daniel Ozer