Structural models have been developed in both cognitive and conative fields of personality. Very recently, the empirical psychological research yielded the results that convincingly show the existence and importance of the General Factor of Personality (GFP or the Big One) in the Big Five domain. Consequently, the existent hierarchical models of personality strusture should be modified to the essential extent. Moreover, the question arises, whether GFP is in the essence a representative of still more general factor underlying the entire conative sphere of personality. In this study, the structural multivariate analyses of the 19 very complex psychological variables (including the Big Five, self-concept and self esteem, self-discrepancies, self-construals, gender shema, emotionalizy, well-being and psychological health) have been conducted. The results convinvingly demonstrated the existence of a distinctive general favtor at the apex of the structural hierarchy of the variables in the model. This factor has been interpreted as the Big Factor of Personality (BFP). The BFP correlated very highly with the GFP, yet encompasses some significant additional information. Thus, the results of the study corroborated the idea of a very general dimension underlying the entire non-cognitive domain of personality.
COBISS.SI-ID: 47478882
The study explored the role of childrenʼs (N = 193) individual differences and parental characteristics at the beginning of the first year of schooling in predicting studentsʼ attainment of academic standards at the end of the year. Special attention was paid to childrenʼs personality as perceived by the teachersʼ assistants. Along with parentsʼ education, parenting practices and first-gradersʼ cognitive ability, the incremental predictive power of childrenʼs higher-order (robust) personality traits was compared to the contribution of lower-order (specific) traits in explaining academic achievement. The specific traits provided a somewhat more accurate prediction than the robust traits. Unique contributions of maternal authoritative parenting, childrenʼs cognitive ability, and personality to academic achievement were established. The ratings of first-gradersʼ conscientiousness (a higher-order trait) improved the prediction of academic achievement based on parenting and cognitive ability by 12%, whereas assistant teacherʼs perceived childrenʼs intelligence and low antagonism (lower-order traits) improved the prediction by 17%.
COBISS.SI-ID: 47477090
The existing research of self-handicapping has explored only the role of interpersonal competition. The goal of the present research of self-handicapping was to determine a) the role of attitudes toward competitionand b) the role of the different motives for participation in or avoidance of competition. We also examined the role of different types of motivation for education in self-handicapping, according to the level of self-determination. The participants were 748 high school students. The results from a correlational and comparative research, including multiple regression and discriminant analysis, showed that in self-handicapping different dimensions of competitiveness play different roles. Those denoted by fear of failure proved to be more characteristic of self-handicapping than those depicted by the high importance of the quality of task accomplishment. Regarding motivation for education, the prevailing role of amotivation stood out. Intrinsic motivation predicted self-handicapping negatively, while extrinsic motivation proved to be a positive predictor. Factor analysis of the measuring instrument enabled the differentiation of the reasons for education in self-handicapping on the level of three basic types.
COBISS.SI-ID: 45458530