Recent Research in Psychology

Recent Research in Psychology

Gerhard Stemmler Differential Psychophysiology: Persons in Situations L z.~.s;-----, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest

Author Gerhard Stemmler Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat, Psychologisches Institut Belfortstr. 20, W-7800 Freiburg i. Brsg., FRG ISBN-13:978-3-540-54800-3 DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-84655-7 e-isbn-13:978-3-642-84655-7 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part ofthe material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9,1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer-Verlag. Violations are liable for prosecution under the German Copyright Law. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1992 Typesetting: Camera ready by author 26/3140-543210 - Printed on acid-free paper

To Judith and Nelly

Foreword Those interested in the relationships between psychological and physiological functions will again and again be impressed by the fact that great individual differences and large situational variability are manifested in psychophysiological data. Psychophysiology from a differential perspective has been an enduring theme throughout the history of personality and temperament research. However, the present book is the first to bear the word differential in its title. Actually, this monography is not only concerned with psychophysiological personality research, but with a much broader program of systematic investigation. Multivariate research methodology permits one to operationalize physiological response profiles, both with regard to lasting differences between persons and the discrimination of situations. In order to determine functional relationships between person characteristics and situational demands, that is, to determine the processes of stimulus-response mediation, one first needs to systemize these various sources of variance in assessment models and subsequently partition the observed covariance. A series of the author's own investigations in the Hamburg and Freiburg laboratories shows just how fruitful this research approach can be. What is fundamentally new in the author's psychophysiological research is the combination of the multivariate approach with a pharmacological autonomic blockade strategy. This makes possible the generation of a model of cardiovascular activation components, which provides an alignment of empirical data and theoretically anticipated structures. The three main system components of vegetative regulation, which can be distinguished by partial dual blockades of autonomic receptors, allow both an advanced descriptive and an explanatory characterization of activation processes. This approach functions as a construct validation (a) for the interpretation of individual cardiovascular and other autonomic parameters and (b) - in a theoretical respect - for the more precise formulation and testing of hypotheses on psychophysiological concepts, for example, emotionality or anger reactions.

VIII Foreword This book is a compelling and comprehensive research report presenting crucial results employing this new approach and providing a heuristic for future studies. The monograph also is an excellent textbook of psychophysiological methodology, dealing with various aspects of scientific theory and research logic. Dr. Stemmler has developed and formalized a differential psychophysiology which will likely be a standard for comparison in this area for many years. lochen Fahrenberg

Acknowledgements Although the delivery of this book is in my sole responsibility, many persons joined me in the labor. Without their help the result would have looked different. Experiments 1 to 3 were conducted at the Forschungsgruppe Klinische Psychophysiologie at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Hamburg University Hospital. I am indebted to Dr. B. Andresen, E. Irrgang, G. Sternkopf, and E. Thom for their assistance and support. Dr. W. Spehr was the medical coordinator and experimenter in Experiment 2, as was PD Dr. Dr. R. Dittmann in Experiment 3. I am indebted to both of these highly competent clinical researchers, and it was a great pleasure to collaborate with them. Experiment 4 was conducted at the Forschungsgruppe Psychophysiologie at the Psychology Department of Freiburg University. I wish to thank I. Burgdorf, V. Hoppner, W. Miiller, and A. Sondhauss for their assistance and support. I am indebted to Prof. Dr. M. Myrtek for lively discussions about many topics of the present treatise. lowe special thanks to Dipl. Math. Friedrich Foerster, who adapted the biosignal analysis programs for the needs of Experiment 4 and who invested his inspiration and effort into the estimation of catdiovascular activation component parameters, especially the development of the multistage linear estimation algorithm described in Chapter 5.3.2. Dr. P. Grossman amicably shared his expertise in cardiovascular psychophysiology with me and influenced the final formulation of the Model of Cardiovascular Activation Components. I greatly appreciate the work of these two colleagues, as well as the efforts of my students M. Henschen, E. Meinhardt, H. Schafer, and H. Schmid. Much of what is written in this book bears the stamp of Prof. Dr. J. Fahrenberg's scientific influence, which has been of great importance in my academic life. Only through his continued support and encouragement could my thinking about psychophysiology and differential psychology cristallize in this book. My wife Judith sustained me effectively not only in proof-reading the entire book, especially with regard to the English, but also in maintaining our curtailed family life so well.

Contents Part A 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.3.1 1.3.2 1.4 1.5 1.5.1 1.5.2 2 2.1 2.2 3 3.1 3.2 3.2.1 3.2.2 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 Concepts, Models, and Methods... 1 Psychophysiology... 1 Definitions and Mind-Body Positions... 1 Place in Psychology... 8 Explanations in Psychology and Psychophysiology... 12 Explaining the Physical by the Psychological. The Right Program for Psychology?... 12 Levels of Explanation... 19 Constructs... 21 Assessment Models... 26 Assessment in the Construction Stage of Constructs... 27 Assessment in the Validation Stage of Constructs... 33 Situation and Person... 37 Epistemology and Defmitions of "The Situation... 37 Determinants of Behavior: Notions in Personality Psychology... 42 Stimulus-Response Mediation in Psychophysiology... 53 A Model of Stimulus-Response Mediation in Psychophysiology... 53 Notions of Stimulus-Response Mediation in Psychophysiology... 58 Comparison of the Proposed with Other Stimulus Response Models... 58 Stimulus-Response Mediation in Selected Psychophysiological Research Programs... 62 Activation... 71 Activation and Psychological Constructs... 71 Activation as a Physiological Descriptor.... 73 The Covariation Problem in Psychophysiology... 79

XII 5 5.1 5.1.1 5.1.2 5.1.3 5.2 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.2.4 5.2.5 5.3 5.3.1 5.3.2 6 6.1 6.1.1 6.1.2 6.2 6.2.1 6.2.2 6.3 7 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.3.1 7.3.2 7.3.3 Contents Autonomic Cardiovascular Activation Components... 87 Foundations for a Conceptualization of Autonomic Cardiovascular Activation Components... 87 Autonomic Receptors... 87 Autonomic Receptor Agonists and Antagonists... 93 Cardiovascular Activation Components... 102 A Model of Autonomic Cardiovascular Activation Components... 107 The Unrestricted Model of Cardiovascular Activation Components... 107 Two Restricted Models of Cardiovascular Activation Components... 109 Consequences of Model Misspecifications... 113 Uses of the Cardiovascular Activation Component Model: Towards a Quantitative Evaluation of Task Effects... 115 Limitations of the Unrestricted Model of Cardiovascular Activation Components... 118 Estimation of the Parameters in the Model of Cardiovascular Activation Components... 120 Estimation of Parameters Given Complete Autonomic Receptor Blockades... 120 Estimation of Parameters Given Incomplete Autonomic Receptor Blockades... 125 Implications and Interpretations of Psychophysiological Data Treatments... 133 Psychophysiological Response Measures and Measurement Models... 134 Response Measures and Their Implied Transfer Functions... 134 Estimation of Actual Transfer Functions... 138 Partitioning Psychophysiological Variance... 139 Effect Estimates and Measurement Models... 139 Specificity of Physiological Responses... 143 Partitioning Psychophysiological Covariance... 147 The Analysis of Profiles... 155 The Similarity of Profiles... 155 Dimensional Representation of Profiles... 157 Discriminant Analysis of Profiles... 159 Discriminant functions... 159 Standard Profile Tests in Discriminant Analysis... 159 The Visual Interpretation of Profile Vectors in Discriminant Space... 162

Contents XIII Part B Selected Research Areas... 165 8 Overview of Experimental Studies... 165 8.1 Experiment 1... 165 8.1.1 Subjects... 165 8.1. 2 Setting and Apparatus... 166 8.1.3 Procedure... 166 8.1.4 Physiological Variables... 167 8.1.5 Response Scaling... 170 8.2 Experiment 2... 170 8.2.1 Subjects... 170 8.2.2 Setting and Apparatus... 171 8.2.3 Procedure... 171 8.2.4 Physiological Variables... 173 8.2.5 Response Scaling... 173 8.3 Experiment 3... 174 8.3.1 Subjects... 174 8.3.2 Setting and Apparatus... 174 8.3.3 Procedure... 174 8.3.4 Physiological Variables... 176 8.3.5 Response Scaling... 176 8.4 Experiment 4... 178 8.4.1 Subjects... 178 8.4.2 Setting and Apparatus... 178 8.4.3 Procedure... 179 8.4.4 Physiological Variables... 183 8.4.5 Response Scaling... 185 9 The Analysis of Activation... 187 9.1 Variation and Covariation of Physiological Variables... 187 9.1.1 Effect Sizes of Sources of Variation... 187 9.1.2 Situational Discriminability... 190 9.1.3 Correlations among Physiological Variables within Separate Sources of Variation... 193 9.2 Physiological Maps of Situations... 216 9.2.1 Situational Maps of Experiment 1... 217 9.2.2 Situational Maps of Experiment 2... 229 9.2.3 Situational Maps of Experiment 3... 232 9.2.4 Situational Maps of Experiment 4... 236 9.3 Cardiovascular Autonomic Activation Components... 241 9.3.1 Component description... 242 9.3.2 Redundancy Analysis... 246 9.3.3 Discriminant Analysis... 252 9.3.4 Multistage Linear Estimation... 260

XIV Contents 9.3.5 10 10.1 10.1.1 10.1.2 10.1.3 10.1.4 10.1.5 10.1.6 10.1. 7 10.2 10.2.1 10.2.2 10.2.3 11 11.1 11.2 11.2.1 11.2.2 12 12.1 12.2 12.2.1 12.2.2 12.2.3 13 The Identification of Autonomic Cardiovascular Activation Components: A Summing-Up... 274 Laboratory Tasks in Cardiovascular Research... 279 A Review of Task Characterizations: Non-Formalized Approaches... 280 Mental Arithmetic... 280 Cold Pressor... 282 Reaction Time Task... 283 Loud Noise... 283 Speech Activity... 284 Handgrip... 284 Conclusions... 285 Task Characterization with Putative Cardiovascular Activation Components... 287 Analyses by Physiological Variables... 287 Componential Task Description... 305 Intertask Comparisons... 312 Research on the Psychophysiology of Personality... 319 Situational Variation and Personality Effects on Activation... 319 Results... 323 Experiment 1... 323 Experiment 4... 325 Research on the Psychophysiology of Anger... 339 Research Issues... 339 Results... 342 Self-Reports of Emotion... 342 Physiological Specificity of Anger... 347 Relationship between Feelings and Physiological Activation during Anger Induction... 357 Looking Back... 365 References... 369 Subject Index... 395