Condon, David

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27223

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Open Access
Estimating ability for two samples
(2022-07-13) Revelle, William; Condon, David M.
Using IRT to estimate ability is easy, but how accurate are the estimate and what about multiple samples?
Open Access
The SAPA Personality Inventory: An empirically-derived, hierarchically-organized self-report personality assessment model
(2022-07-07) Condon, David M
The influence of personality on important life outcomes has been widely recognized for thousands of years (Condon, 2014), and the difficulty of its measurement has been vexing for many decades (Galton, 1884; Cattell, 1945; Goldberg, 1981; Ackerman, 2018). The challenge with objective measurement stems from the need for massive amounts of data to account for dynamic interplay between variations in thousands of narrow dispositional traits (aka individual differences in behavior) and the ever-evolving contextual factors inherent to modern living. It is a prototypical “big data” problem. Despite this, dozens of ambitious social scientists have posited a diverse array of personality assessment models. Many of these are heavily imbued with theory, nearly all are focused solely on one domain of personality (e.g., very broad dispositional traits or vocational interests) to the exclusion of others (e.g., cognitive abilities, values, or less generalizable maladaptive behaviors), and most have been derived based on surprisingly small samples drawn from populations that have come to be known as "WEIRD" (Henrich et al., 2010). Simply put, there is widespread need for models that are empirically-grounded in more (and more representative) data. In this manuscript, I demonstrate that it is possible to address the shortcomings of extant theory-driven approaches by combining recent innovations from outside of personality research to empirically derive personality assessment models. This is done by administering a large pool of widely-used public domain items from the International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 1999) to three large online samples (N > 125,000) using a planned missingness design (Revelle et al., 2016). While the existing "best practices" for developing personality assessment models tends towards several iterative rounds of data collection and analysis guided by theory culminating in publication of only the final product, I have endeavored to make a highly detailed record of all steps followed during the development of the SAPA Personality Inventory in order to encourage feedback regarding critical analytic decisions. This has unfortunately resulted in the production of a book-length manuscript but I hope that this transparency will serve to minimize (even if it does not eliminate) the influence of bias.
Open Access
Leveraging a more nuanced view of personality: Narrow characteristics predict and explain variance in life outcomes
(2022-07-07) Mõttus, René; Bates, Timothy C.; Condon, David M.; Mroczek, Daniel K.; Revelle, William
Among the main topics of individual differences research is the associations of personality traits with life outcomes. Relying on recent advances of personality conceptualizations and drawing parallels with genetics, we propose that representing these associations with individual questionnaire items (markers of personality “nuances”) can provide incremental value for predicting and explaining them—often even without further data collection. For illustration, we show that item-based models trained to predict ten outcomes out-predicted models based on Five-Factor Model (FFM) domains or facets in independent participants, with median proportions of explained variance being 9.7% (item-based models), 4.2% (domain-based models) and 5.9% (facet-based models). This was not due to item-outcome overlap. Instead, personality-outcome associations are often driven by dozens of specific characteristics, nuances. Outlining item-level correlations helps to better understand why personality is linked with particular outcomes and opens entirely new research avenues—at almost no additional cost.
Open Access
Frequency of use metrics for American English person descriptors: Extensions of Roivainen's internet search methodology
(PsyArXiv, 2022-05-02) McDougald, Sarah; Condon, David M.
Personality traits are often measured using person-descriptive terms, but data are limited regarding the frequency of usage for these terms in everyday language. This project reports on the relative frequency of usage for a large pool of American English terms (N = 18,240) using count estimates from search engine results and in books cataloged by Google. These estimates are based on the ngrams formed when each descriptor is combined with a common person-related noun (person, woman, man, girl, boy). Results are reported for each noun form and a frequency index in an online database that can be sorted, searched, and downloaded. We report on associations among the different noun forms and data types, and propose recommendations for the use of these data in conjunction with other resources. In particular, we encourage collaborative approaches among research teams using large language models in psycholexical research related to personality structure.
Open Access
Deep Lexical Hypothesis: Identifying personality structure in natural language
(Cornell University, 2022-03-04) Cutler, Andrew; Condon, David M.
Recent advances in natural language processing (NLP) have produced general models that can perform complex tasks such as summarizing long passages and translating across languages. Here, we introduce a method to extract adjective similarities from language models as done with survey-based ratings in traditional psycholexical studies but using millions of times more text in a natural setting. The correlational structure produced through this method is highly similar to that of self- and other-ratings of 435 terms reported by Saucier and Goldberg (1996a). The first three unrotated factors produced using NLP are congruent with those in survey data, with coefficients of 0.89, 0.79, and 0.79. This structure is robust to many modeling decisions: adjective set, including those with 1,710 terms (Goldberg, 1982) and 18,000 terms (Allport & Odbert, 1936); the query used to extract correlations; and language model. Notably, Neuroticism and Openness are only weakly and inconsistently recovered. This is a new source of signal that is closer to the original (semantic) vision of the Lexical Hypothesis. The method can be applied where surveys cannot: in dozens of languages simultaneously, with tens of thousands of items, on historical text, and at extremely large scale for little cost. The code is made public to facilitate reproduction and fast iteration in new directions of research.
Open Access
Imagination as a facet of Openness/Intellect: A new scale differentiating experiential simulation and conceptual innovation
(PsyArXiv, 2022-02-09) Sassenberg, Tyler A.; Condon, David M.; DeYoung, Colin G.
Previous research has investigated the nature of imagination as a construct related to multiple forms of higher-order cognition. Despite the emergence of various conceptualizations of imagination, few attempts have been made to explore the structure of imagination as a trait in the context of existing hierarchically-nested personality dimensions. We present a scale for measuring trait imagination that distinguishes between experiential simulation and conceptual innovation, aligned with the two major subfactors (aspects) of the Big Five dimension Openness/Intellect. Across two large samples, we provide evidence of a consistent factor structure distinguishing experiential, conceptual, and general descriptions of imagination, as well as validity as measures of facets of Openness and Intellect. Our findings provide a measure of major forms of imagination in line with mainstream models of the hierarchical structure of personality.
Open Access
Personality Trait Descriptors: 2,818 Trait Descriptive Adjectives Characterized by Familiarity, Frequency of Use, and Prior Use in Psycholexical Research
(Ubiquity Press, 2022) Condon, David M.; Coughlin, Joshua; Weston, Sara J.
This dataset contains 2,818 trait descriptive adjectives in English and information about the extent to which each term is known among a large and approximately representative sample of U.S. adults. The list of personality-related terms includes all 1,710 adjectives previously studied by Goldberg (1982) and draws on prior work by Allport and Odbert (1936) and Norman (1967). The extent to which terms were known by respondents was based on the administration of vocabulary questions about each term-definition pair online to a sample of English-speaking U.S. residents with approximately average literacy levels. The open data are accompanied by an online database that allows the terms to be searched and filtered.
Open Access
Age Differences in Personality Structure
(Oxford University Press, 2021-12-17) Jackson, Joshua; Condon, David M.; Beck, Emorie
Most investigations in the structure of personality traits do not adequately address age, as few studies look at the structure of personality traits a-theoretically, instead presupposing a theoretical structure e.g., Big Five. As a result, the relationship among indicators within a trait (coherence) are often highlighted but relationships across traits (differentiation) are not thoroughly examined. Using a large-scale sample of 369,151 individuals ranging in age from 14 to 90, the present study examines whether personality indicators show differential relationships as a function of age. Results indicate that coherence shows few changes across the lifespan, while differentiation weakens across adulthood into old age. These finding suggest that Big Five indicators only parallel the Big Five structure among young but not older adults. Thus, using standard Big Five personality trait assessments in older adults may, at best, not reflect reality and, at worse, undermine the predictive utility of personality traits.
Open Access
Personality Predictors of Emergency Department Post-Discharge Outcomes
(PsychOpen, 2021-11-22) Atherton, Olivia E.; Willroth, Emily C.; Schwaba, Ted; Goktan, Ayla J.; Graham, Eileen K.; Condon, David M.; Rao, Mitesh B.; Mroczek, Daniel K.
Personality traits are important predictors of health behaviors, healthcare utilization, and health outcomes. However, we know little about the role of personality traits for emergency department outcomes. The present study used data from 200 patients (effective Ns range from 84 to 191), who were being discharged from the emergency department at an urban hospital, to investigate whether the Big Five personality traits were associated with post-discharge outcomes (i.e., filling prescriptions, following up with primary care physician, making an unscheduled return to the emergency department). Using logistic regression, we found few associations among the broad Big Five domains and post-discharge outcomes. However, results showed statistically significant associations between specific Big Five items (e.g., “responsible”) and the three post-discharge outcomes. This study demonstrates the feasibility of assessing personality traits in an emergency medicine setting and highlights the utility of having information about patients’ personality tendencies for predicting post-discharge compliance.
Open Access
Why Has Personality Psychology Played an Outsized Role in the Credibility Revolution?
(PsychOpen, 2021-08-12) Atherton, Olivia E.; Chung, Joanne M.; Harris, Kelci; Rohrer, Julia M.; Condon, David M.; Cheung, Felix; Vazire, Simine; Lucas, Richard E.; Donnellan, M. Brent; Mroczek, Daniel K.; Soto, Christopher J.; Antonoplis, Stephen; Damian, Rodica Ioana; Funder, David C.; Srivastava, Sanjay; Fraley, R. Chris; Jach, Hayley; Roberts, Brent W.; Smillie, Luke D.; Sun, Jessie; Tackett, Jennifer L.; Weston, Sara J.; Harden, K. Paige; Corker, Katherine S.
Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing “credibility revolution” in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field’s practices and norms have now become models for other fields to emulate (or, for those who share Baumeister’s (2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.02.003) skeptical view of the consequences of increasing rigor, a model for what to avoid). In this article we discuss some unique features of our field that may have placed us in an ideal position to be leaders in this movement. We do so from a subjective perspective, describing our impressions and opinions about possible explanations for personality psychology’s disproportionate role in the credibility revolution. We also discuss some ways in which personality psychology remains less-than-optimal, and how we can address these flaws.
Open Access
The Personality of American Nations: An Exploratory Study
(PsychOpen, 2021-01-14) Lanning, Kevin; Warfel, Evan A.; Wetherell, Geoffrey; Perez, Marina; Boyd, Ryan; Condon, David M.
Some scholars have presented models of the United States as a set of “nations” with distinct settlement histories and contemporary cultures. We examined personality differences in one such model, that of Colin Woodard, using data from over 75,000 respondents. Four nations were particularly distinct: The Deep South, Left Coast, New Netherland, and the Spanish Caribbean. Differences between nations at the level of the individual person were typically small, but were larger at the level of community, revealing how aggregation can contribute to differences in the lived experience of places in nations such as Yankeedom or Greater Appalachia. We represented effects in a three-dimensional model defined by Authoritarian conventionalism (which differentiated ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ nations) as well as Cognitive resilience and Competitiveness (which differentiated among the Blue nations). Finally, we adjusted Woodard’s model to better fit the data, and found that nations largely maintained their boundaries, with the most drastic changes occurring on the East Coast.
Open Access
The Convergence of Self and Informant Reports in a Large Online Sample
(University of California Press, 2021-01-04) Zola, Anne; Condon, David M.; Revelle, William
Despite their added benefits, informant-reports are largely underutilized in personality research. We demonstrate the feasibility of collecting informant-reports online, where researchers have unprecedented access to large, global populations. Using an entirely free, opt-in procedure tied to an existing personality survey, we collected 1,554 informant-reports for 921 unique targets, in conjunction with over 158,000 self-reports. Informant-reports showed a strong correspondence to self-reported traits at three levels of analysis: among the Big Five domains, the lower-level SPI-27 factors (Condon, 2018), and at the item-scale level. Among the Big Five, self-informant agreement ranged between .63 and .72, except for Openness (.42). Higher informant-ratings of Extraversion were positively associated with all Big Five self-ratings in the direction of social desirability. Across the Big Five and the 27 lower-order traits, agreement was strongest between self-reports of compassion and informant-reports of agreeableness (.74) and weakest between self-reported emotional expressiveness and informant-reported emotional stability (.02). Agreement between informants was roughly equivalent for all of the Big Five traits (.29 to .35) and attractiveness (.37), though agreement between informants for perceived intelligence was non-significant. In addition, we empirically identified the self-report items that best predict what informants say about targets, highlighting the features of self-reported personality that are most readily confirmed by informants. Finally, we discuss group level differences of participants who interacted with the informant-report system at various levels. In general, participants who sought and provided informant reports are more open and agreeable than the general sample, though targets’ personality did not affect whether or not invited informants provided ratings.
Open Access
Personality States of the Union
(University of California Press, 2021-01-04) Weston, Sara J.; Condon, David M.
Fluctuations in the average daily personality of the United States capture both meaningful affective responses to world events (e.g., changes in anxiety or well-being) and broader psychological responses. We estimate the change in national personality in the months following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and investigate fluctuations in personality states during the year 2020 using data from an ongoing personality assessment project. We find significant and meaningful change in personality traits since the beginning of the pandemic, as well as evidence of instability in personality states. When evaluating changes from the first few months of 2020 to the period of social distancing related to COVID-19 restrictions, the social traits reflected an unexpected “deprivation” effect such that mean self-ratings increased in the wake of restricted opportunities for social interaction. Changes in mean levels of the affective traits were not significant over the same months, but they did differ significantly from the average levels of prior years when looking at shorter time intervals (rolling 7-day averages) around prominent national events. This instability may reflect meaningful fluctuations in national personality, as we find that daily personality states are associated with other indices of national health, including daily COVID-19 cases and the S&P index. Overall, the use of personality measures to capture responses to global events offers a more holistic picture of the U.S. psyche and of personality change at the national level.
Open Access
Supplementary materials to: Personality predictors of emergency department post-discharge outcomes
(PsychOpen, 2021) Atherton, Olivia E.; Willroth, Emily C.; Schwaba, Ted; Goktan, Ayla J.; Graham, Eileen K.; Condon, David M.; Rao, Mitesh B.; Mroczek, Daniel K.
Supplementary materials to: Atherton, O. E., Willroth, E. C., Schwaba, T., Goktan, A. J., Graham, E. K., Condon, D. M., Rao, M. B., & Mroczek, D. K. (2021). Personality predictors of emergency department post-discharge outcomes. Personality Science, 2, Article e7193. https://doi.org/10.5964/ps.7193
Open Access
Laying personality BARE: Behavioral frequencies strengthen personality-criterion relationships
(PsyArXiv, 2020-08-24) Elleman, Lorien G.; Condon, David M.; Revelle, William
Personality consists of stable patterns of cognitions, emotions, and behaviors, yet personality psychologists rarely study behaviors. Even when examined, behaviors typically are considered to be validation criteria for traditional personality items. In the current study (N = 332,489), we conceptualize (self-reported, yearlong) behavioral frequencies as measures of personality. We investigate whether behavioral frequencies have incremental validity over traditional personality items in correlating personality with six outcome criteria. We use BISCUIT, a statistical learning technique, to find the optimal number of items for each criterion’s model, across three pools of items: traditional personality items (k = 696), behavioral frequencies (k = 425), and a combined pool. Compared to models using only traditional personality items, models using the combined pool are more strongly correlated to four criteria. We find mixed evidence of congruence between the type of criterion and the type of personality items that are most strongly correlated with it (e.g., behavioral criteria are most strongly correlated to behavioral frequencies). Findings suggest that behavioral frequencies are measures of personality that offer a unique effect in describing personality-criterion relationships beyond traditional personality items. We provide an updated, public-domain item pool of behavioral frequencies: the BARE (Behavioral Acts, Revised and Expanded) Inventory.
Open Access
Guest Editorial—“Green Open Access is ‘Just’ Publishing”
(University of Oregon, 2020-08) Condon, David M
A shared experience among many graduate students is the dawning realization that the vaunted privilege of having one's scholarly work accepted for publication is also a fleecing. The exact terms of this fleecing depend on a number of different factors – so many, in fact, that it can get a bit confusing – but it's quite common for researchers to pay several thousand dollars to make their work available for others to read. And these are not the expenses incurred to complete their scholarly work. It's merely the cost of having one's work posted on the website of an academic publisher!
Open Access
Examining Validity of MTurk Workers Responses Based on Monetary Reward
(University of Oregon, 2020) Murphy, Maggie; Murphy, Margret; Condon, David; Condon, David M.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk is an online crowdsourcing marketplace (OCM) that has become widely used for data collection in scientific research, especially in the social sciences. In psychology research, a common use of the platform is to pay MTurk workers (aka "MTurkers") to complete surveys and online behavioral tasks. The MTurkers are then paid for their contribution to the survey; however, little research has considered the effect of payment on data quality (Chmielewski & Kucker, 2019). We hypothesize that the accuracy of responses are partially dependent on the amount the MTurk Workers are paid for their responses. In this study, we sought to evaluate the effect of compensation on the care that MTurkers displayed in their responses to the survey. We look to explore the validity of MTurk responses using an SPI norming survey created by Professor Condon, and delineating it by three factors: one that compensated workers at a rate equal to the U.S. federal minimum wage, one paying minimum wage plus 25%, and a third paying 25% less than minimum wage with an unannounced bonus (up to minimum wage) after the work was completed. We compare their responses based on the time spent responding to the survey, inter-item correlations, and evidence of “patterned responding” (e.g., choosing the same response option for several questions in a row). The findings from our research will be beneficial to researchers using MTurk and other OCMs for data collection.
Open Access
Smaller Is Better: Associations Between Personality and Demographics Are Improved by Examining Narrower Traits and Regions
(University of California Press, 2020) Elleman, Lorien G.; Condon, David M.; Holtzman, Nicholas S.; Revelle, William; Allen, Victoria R.
The personality of individuals is clustered by geographic regions; a resident of a region is more similar to another resident than to a random non-resident. Research in geographical psychology often has focused on this clustering effect in broad regions, such as countries and states, using broad domains of personality, such as the Big Five. We examined the extent to which (a) a narrower geographic unit, the U.S. ZIP Code, accounted for more variance explained in aggregating personality than a broader region, the U.S. state; and (b) progressively narrower personality traits (domains, facets, and nuances, respectively) provided more specificity in describing personality-demographic relationships. Results from this study (nparticipants = 39,886, nzipcodes = 2,074) indicated that the variance explained by aggregating personality was multiple times as large for U.S. ZIP Codes than for states (median = 4.4). At the level of personality domains, ZIP Code population density and income disparity were positively correlated with Openness and negatively correlated with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. Facets within each domain were differentially correlated with each demographic, which demonstrated that facets added specificity to the personality-demographic relationships beyond that of domains. Item-level analysis revealed the most specific finding: higher population density and income disparity were associated with politically liberal attitudes and beliefs of self-exceptionalism, while lower density and income disparity were associated with authoritarian attitudes and concern for abiding by rules and laws. Findings suggest that future studies in geographical and personality psychology could benefit from using the narrowest feasible unit of analysis.
Open Access
Descriptive, predictive and explanatory personality research: Different goals, different approaches, but a shared need to move beyond the Big Few traits
(SAGE Publications, 2020) MÕTTUS, RENÉ; Wood, Dustin; Condon, David M.; Back, Mitja D.; Baumert, Anna; Costantini, Giulio; Epskamp, Sacha; Greiff, Samuel; Johnson, Wendy; Lukaszewski, Aaron; Murray, Aja; Revelle, William; Wright, Aidan G. C.; Yarkoni, Tal; Ziegler, Matthias; Zimmermann, Johannes
We argue that it is useful to distinguish between three key goals of personality science – description, prediction and explanation – and that attaining them often requires different priorities and methodological approaches. We put forward specific recommendations such as publishing findings with minimum a priori aggregation and exploring the limits of predictive models without being constrained by parsimony and intuitiveness but instead maximising out-of-sample predictive accuracy. We argue that naturally-occurring variance in many decontextualized and multi-determined constructs that interest personality scientists may not have individual causes, at least as this term is generally understood and in ways that are human-interpretable, never mind intervenable. If so, useful explanations are narratives that summarize many pieces of descriptive findings rather than models that target individual cause-effect associations. By meticulously studying specific and contextualized behaviours, thoughts, feelings and goals, however, individual causes of variance may ultimately be identifiable, although such causal explanations will likely be far more complex, phenomenon-specific and person-specific than anticipated thus far. Progress in all three areas – description, prediction, and explanation – requires higher-dimensional models than the currently-dominant “Big Few” and supplementing subjective trait-ratings with alternative sources of information such as informant-reports and behavioural measurements. Developing a new generation of psychometric tools thus provides many immediate research opportunities.
Open Access
Development of the Initial Surveys for the All of Us Research Program
(Epidemiology, 2019-07) Cronin, Robert M.; Jerome, Rebecca N.; Mapes, Brandy; Andrade, Regina; Johnston, Rebecca; Ayala, Jennifer; Schlundt, David; Bonnet, Kemberlee; Kripalani, Sunil; Goggins, Kathryn; Wallston, Kenneth A.; Couper, Mick P.; Ellitt, Michael R.; Harris, Paul; Begale, Mark; Munoz, Fatima; Lopez-Class, Maria; Cella, David; Condon, David; AuYoung, Mona; Mazor, Kathleen M.; Mikita, Steve; Manganiello, Michael; Borselli, Nicholas; Fowler, Stephanie; Rutter, Joni L.; Denny, Joshua C.; Karlson, Elizabeth W.; Ahmedani, Brian K.; O'Donnell, Chris
Background: The All of Us Research Program is building a national longitudinal cohort and collecting data from multiple information sources (e.g., biospecimens, electronic health records, and mobile/wearable technologies) to advance precision medicine. Participant-provided information, collected via surveys, will complement and augment these information sources. We report the process used to develop and refine the initial three surveys for this program. Methods: The All of Us survey development process included: (1) prioritization of domains for scientific needs, (2) examination of existing validated instruments, (3) content creation, (4) evaluation and refinement via cognitive interviews and online testing, (5) content review by key stakeholders, and (6) launch in the All of Us electronic participant portal. All content was translated into Spanish. Results: We conducted cognitive interviews in English and Spanish with 169 participants, and 573 individuals completed online testing. Feedback led to over 40 item content changes. Lessons learned included: (1) validated survey instruments performed well in diverse populations reflective of All of Us; (2) parallel evaluation of multiple languages can ensure optimal survey deployment; (3) recruitment challenges in diverse populations required multiple strategies; and (4) key stakeholders improved integration of surveys into larger Program context. Conclusions: This efficient, iterative process led to successful testing, refinement, and launch of three All of Us surveys. Reuse of All of Us surveys, available at http://researchallofus.org, may facilitate large consortia targeting diverse populations in English and Spanish to capture participant-provided information to supplement other data, such as genetic, physical measurements, or data from electronic health records.

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