Wednesday 26 August 2015

STAFF TALK ON PERSONALITY by Dr MIles Bore, UON School of Psychology

 

Please join us for a research presentation on the 1th of September by Dr Miles Bore. This talk is sponsored by the school’s Social and Organisational Psychology research group. Details of talk and speaker below.


WHO/WHAT FOR: Dr Miles Bore, School of Psychology, UON will deliver a research presentation entitled “Four streams of personality research: resilient well-being, measuring childhood personality, cultural differences in moral types, and individual differences in sexuality”
WHEN: Tuesday 1st September, 12-1pm,
WHERE: Keats room, Aviation building, Callaghan
WHERELSE:  video conferenced to: Meeting room, Science Offices, Ourimbah (please advise Stefania if you plan to be at the Ourimbah end)

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this presentation is to give an overview of research in personality which I have focussed on during my recent study leave. This covers four on-going research streams. 


Resilient Well-being: utilises a three-trait model develop by Bore, Munro and Powis through their research since 1997 on the selection of medical students. The three traits are Involvement (with others), Emotional Resilience and Self-Control. I will present the results of two studies that provide evidence of the validity of the model in predicting psychological distress and well-being. 


Childhood personality: I will present the findings of a pilot study (n = 642) in which a cohort of 11 and 12 year old children completed a self-report measure of the Big Five personality traits. Reliability and evidence of construct validity were found as well as clear developmental differences in the degree of trait differentiation between males and females at this age. 


Cultural difference in moral types: I will outline research being conducted by Houlcroft, Bore, Munro and Powis exploring cross-cultural differences in moral orientation using Personal Qualities Assessment data gathered from 13 countries, n = 56,686.


Personality and sexuality: The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale is based on Jaak Panksepp’s theory of seven emotional systems: fear, anger, sadness, play, seeking, care and lust. However, the authors of the ANPS did not include items to measure lust. Bore and Boer developed items to measure lust which we defined as Trait 

Subjective Sexual Arousal (TSSA). A sample of n = 349 psychology completed a battery of questionnaires including the ANPS (with TSSA items) and rated images from the International Affective Picture System. The findings of note were that the TSSA scores produced a meaningful three component structure that was differentially related to other personality traits and, for female participants, significantly predicted arousal and valence ratings of sexual image stimuli.

BIO: Miles completed his PhD in Psychology in 2002 and is a Senior Lecture in the School of Psychology at the University of Newcastle. He is a founding member of the Personal Qualities Assessment research and consultancy group (www.pqa.net.au) and is an Associate Investigator on multiple grants with the NSW Child Development Study based at the University of NSW (http://nsw-cds.com.au ). He has published 1 book, 3 book chapters, 26 journal articles and has 5 articles currently under review. Miles has been the Deputy Chair of the Human Research Ethics Committee, the Bachelor of Psychology Program Convenor, Head of the School of Psychology and is currently the Chair of the Australian Conference on Personality and Individual Differences (www.acpid.org ). He is a registered Psychologist and member of the Australian Psychological Society.

Publications in the Pipeline:
Bore, M., Pittolo, C., Kirby, D., Dluzewska, T., & Marlin, S. Predictors of psychological distress and well-being in a sample of Australian undergraduate students. Submitted to Higher Education Research and Development. Accepted for publication subject to minor changes.

Bore, M., Kelly, B., and Nair, B. Personality and other predictors of psychological distress and well-being in medical students. Submitted for review to Personality and Individual Differences.

Bore, M., Laurens, K.R., Raudino, A., Green, M.J., Tzoumakis, S., Harris, F., & Carr, V. Piloting a short-form self-report measure of the Big Five with a sample of Australian children: evidence of sex-based differences in personality development. Submitted for review to Personality and Individual Differences.