Many years ago the first author (Colvin) had a "real job" working for the phone company in the information systems division. He enjoyed working with the latest IBM computers and hard drives the size of washing machines, and liked his coworkers. He did not like his boss, John. John was a first-line manager who wore crooked ties and half-tucked-in shirts, was in his early 40s, and regularly exhibited scary Jack Nicholson-like expressions. John could be an unpleasant person. To new employees, John beamed selfconfidence and touted his clout with upper management, indicating that they relied on his expert judgment. John bragged about his expertise with computers and with managing people. One easily got the impression that John single-handedly ran the phone company. John's superior manner quickly gave way to condescending and hostile behavior if he was questioned about a decision. Once he regained the upper hand, he quickly returned to his cocky and overconfident ways. Twenty years later, the first author heard that John had retired from the phone company. It was interesting to learn that John had been repeatedly passed over for promotion, no doubt a serious blow for someone who professed to play such a crucial role in a large corporation.

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Previous work on implicit personality theory and the college student culture suggests that thinking about college student types should include academic involvement and social involvement dimensions. Further, positive and negative social, positive academic, and oppositional clusters of types were predicted based on studies of high school crowds. Using 85 college student type labels as stimuli, a free‐sorting method coupled with multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering analyses provided support for these hypotheses. Also, the results suggest convergence in the cognitive structure underlying perception of college student types across major demographic categories.

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My Multiple Selves (MMS) is an open-ended self-concept measure that leads respondents to systematically explore who they are before selecting and rank-ordering their most important selves. A sample of college students ( n = 204) completed either the MMS or the frequently used Twenty Statements Test (TST). As predicted, results demonstrated that MMS responses included elements underdetected by the TST: other people, school crowd labels, aspirations for the future, and undesirable selves. Furthermore, the MMS revealed that when other people are included in self, they are rank ordered by participants as the most important element. Shortcomings of the MMS are discussed, and directions for future research outlined.