540 BOOKREVIEWS

(distinguished in one line of writing from mere Anger) another. The book also concludes that there are 8 different types of depression-thus exceeding even Cattell’s latter-day estimates. need a reviewer go on? The book is enlivened by engaging quotations from Montaigne, Shakespeare and Solzhenitsyn; and by numerous homespun examples of people ‘reversing’ from one alleged ‘mode of arousal’ into another of the same level but of different hedonic tone. Yet data (e.g. about colour preferences, or about psychophysiological indices taken from students at the University of Bergen) come in fitful starts and do little to realize the author’s grand design.

Apparently “if humanity is consistent in anything it is in its inconsistency”. That says it all; as does the author’s sole intelligible discovery that his dynamic “Telic vs Paratelic Dominance” scale is simply equivalent to Cattell’s second-order dimension of Control (alias conscientiousness). How Apter can have been allowed to avoid considering the major psychometric dimensions of personality and their relevance to his scheme must pose a major problem about academic enterprise these days. Apter evidently hopes to expand psychometric horizons by introducing the notion that we readily ‘reverse’ between one me of mind and another. His findings, however, barely carry him beyond the idea that some people are dully purposeful and that others are laid back, quite frequently, to judge by the diaries of some of the more ‘paratelic’ females.

CHRISBRAHD

STUART OSKAMP and SHIRLYNN SPACAPAN (Eds): Interpersonal Processes. (The third Claremont Symposium on Applied Social Psychology.) Sage, Newbury Park, Calif. (1987). 230 pp. f I I.

This is a collection of papers on selected areas of group and interpersonal processes, with an emphasis on ‘applications’. The papers are well-written. However, as is not uncommon with symposia collections, they do not as a whole constitute a systematic review of any particular field. In the first and last chapters, the editors do make a good attempt at summarizing the materials and classifying their practical and theoretical contributions.

The chapter of most immediate relevance to individual differences in personality is probably Sandra Starr’s ‘Theory of individual encounters with the world’. Her review notes the importance of genotype and its interaction with individual environments. (That is, she concludes that within-household similarities in environment typically do not contribute positively to personality variance, though there is a small positive effect on intelligence.)

Among the other chapters: Carol Werner emphasizes the uniqueness of each situation and provides a transactional approach to understanding neighbourhood social relationships. Alvin Zander considers important but seldom-asked questions about groups’ purposes and their alignment with individual needs. Alison Konrad and Barbara Gutek disentangle the effects of group composition (with respect to gender and ethnic-minorities) on how a group and its individuals are evaluated. Harold Kelley lays the framework for a taxonomy of interpersonal conflict by lucidly ‘clearing away some conceptual underbrush’. He emphasizes real-world personal and situational factors and their associated conflict processes. Robert Cialdini classifies the “triggers” which induce people to comply with attempts at interpersonal influence. His examples are well-selected, and he provides a good discussion of ethical considerations.

H.H. BLUMBERG