PcTwll. irlllrlnl. Difl. Vol. 3. p, 349. 19x2

Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain

SPECIAL REVIEW

J. FAHRENBERG. P. WALSCHBURGER. F. FOERSTER. M. MYRTEK and W. MUELLER: P.s~~l~opA~.sioloyis~hu Akricier- ungsfi~rsdwny. Ein Beirruy x den Grundloyen t/u mdrirtrritrrcw Emorions- untl Sfrr.sse-T/work. Minerva Publika- tion: Munchen (1979). 436 pp. DM 48.

This is an important contribution to the literature on the psychophysiological study of personality. It should be read as a companion volume to M. Myrtek’s Ps~choph~sio/ogis~/le Konsriturionsforscltuny (1980, Hogrefe. Gottingen). a book reporting research from the same laboratory. and touching on similar problems. The extensive studies reported in the book under review were undertaken on 125 male students who were adminis- tered many different psychophysiological tests. as well as personality and other questionnaire tests. who were given interviews. and who were also asked concerning their individual reactions to the various tests. The main purpose of the investigation was to look at individual differences in psychophysiological reactivity to various stress tests, with a view to discovering the dimensionality of these reactions (in particular, is it possible to postulate one or two major activation processes’!). and the possibility of relating the resulting dimensions to personality characteristics.

The stress tests used included mental arithmetic under noisy conditions. free-speech, interview reactions and the taking of blood samples. Ten separate psychophysiological measures were recorded; electrodermal activity. electrocardiogram, blood pressure. pulse frequency and amplitude. skin temperature. pneumogram. electromyo- gram from forehead and arm. eye movement and eyelid movement and the electroencephalogram. The resulting relationships are presented in many detailed tables, and a number of different types of statistical analyses are reported, including correlational analysis. factor analysis. item analysis. multitrait-multimethod analysis etc. It is difficult to fault either the experimental or the analytic methods used, although it must be said that there is too little explanation of the rotation methods used for the factor analysis to make judgement of the results possible: one has to guess that Varimax rotation was used. whereas some form of oblique rotation would have been more appropriate. (An index would have been of great help in locating results and discussions. and its absence in a book of 436 pages must be regarded as a black mark against the publishers.)

Essentially the findings of the study are negative. in the sense that all the different modalities. in relation to the different stresses. give results which are not compatible with the assumption of a single activation factor, or even a small number of activation factors. Nor is there much evidence of any relationship between personality factors and the activation indices derived from all the different types of investigation. Something like eight independent psychophysiological activation factors have to be posited. although it might have been possible with the aid of oblique factor analysis to arrive at some form of higher order activation and/or arousal factor(s). The results essentially confirm Lacey’s specificity hypotheses. both with respect to autonomic innervation and stress reaction. They are also in agreement with Myrtek’s work already referred to. As such. this study being on a large scale and much more carefully controlled than most of the existing ones, must be taken very seriously by any theorist of the ,activation hypothesis, or the relationship between activation and personality. The amount of information contained in the book is truly phenomenal. and it will remain for many years a source of reference for students of this field.

The largely negative results reported in this book present us with an important paradox. There is good evidence in the literature. reviewed recently by R. M. Stelmack (In H. J. Eysenck: A Modrl,fiw Persontrlir~. Springer, New York) indicating replicable relationships between personality factors such as neuroticism and extraversion, on the one hand, and many different types of activation and arousal measures of a psychophysio- logical kind, on the other. There is clearly some contradiction between these two sets of findings. but Fahren- berg and his colleagues do not refer to these. or discuss the possible reasons for the contradictions involved. It could be that the stresses used in the different investigations produced this lack of agreement; clearly one of the things urgently needed for research in that field would be a typology of stresses. related to a typology of persons. Another possibility is that the actual measures used by Fahrenberg and his colleagues were in many ways different from those used by others who have reported more positive results. One would have welcomed a discussion of these possibilities by Fahrenberg.

Fahrenberg also looked at the question of cognitive factors. using differential instructions for the purpose. He found little evidence of cognitive factors affecting psychophysiological reactions. although effects were found on verbal responding. This and other findings are clearly related to Rachman’s conception of desynchrony: again it seems a pity that Fahrenberg does not mention the concept. or the literature relating to it. and does not integrate it with his own findings. However. these are minor quibbles; this is clearly a monumental study which deserves a much more extensive readership than it is likely to obtain. by virtue of its being published in German.

H. J. EYSENCK

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