Helpful but insufficient: Incremental theory on challenge-confronting tendencies for students who fear being laughed at

Previous studies have demonstrated that endorsing an incremental theory of intelligence is helpful in motivating students to confront challenges. We used a survey to examine whether this theory could predict greater challenge-confronting tendencies for students with relatively high gelotophobia (i.e., the fear of being laughed at) and explore the possible underlying processes. A total of 264 senior high school students completed the measures of gelotophobia, implicit theories of intelligence, challenge-confronting tendencies, perceived value and feelings of being threatened in confronting challenges, and their self-perceived general ability. The results showed that endorsing an incremental theory predicted greater perceived value in confronting challenges and stronger challenge-confronting tendencies for students with relatively low gelotophobia. However, for those with relatively high gelotophobia, although this theory also predicted greater perceived value in confronting challenges, it was unrelated to challenge-confronting tendencies. Thus, endorsing an incremental theory is helpful but insufficient in motivating high gelotophobia students to exhibit stronger challenge-confronting tendencies.     

Individual differences in cortisol responses to fear and frustration during middle childhood

The purpose of this study was to examine individual differences in the activation and regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in prepubertal children after exposure to two different stress modalities and to evaluate the utility of an individual differences approach to the examination of HPA axis functioning. After a 30-min controlled baseline period, 73 7-year-olds (40 boys and 33 girls) were randomly assigned to a validity check condition or one of two experimental tasks designed to elicit fear or frustration. This was followed by a 60-min controlled regulation phase. A total of 17 saliva samples were collected, including 12 poststress samples at 5-min intervals. There was a significant stress modality effect, with children exposed to the fear condition reaching peak cortisol levels at 25 min poststress and those exposed to the frustration condition reaching peak levels at 45 min poststress. There was no difference in peak cortisol levels between the stress modalities. Individual variability across conditions was significant, with participants reaching peak levels as early as 10 min poststress and as late as 60 min poststress. Our data suggest that analysis of individual curves prior to making group-level comparisons may improve the explanatory power of HPA axis behavior models.     

The subjective assessment of the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia): French adaptation of the GELOPH<15> questionnaire

This paper describes the adaptation of the French version of the GELOPH<15>, a short questionnaire (15 items) that measures the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia). The first empirical studies revealed that gelotophobia is a valid and useful new concept that should be interpreted as an individual differences phenomenon within the range of normality. Prior studies suggested that the GELOPH<15> is reliable, and showed a one-dimensional factor solution. In order to test psychometric properties of the French version, N = 218 participants from the French part of Switzerland and N = 245 participants from Quebec (French Canada) took the test. One item that yielded a particularly high endorsement pertained to the interpretation of others’ laughter as being laughter at oneself (Switzerland); another item with the same result reflected how unease experienced while dancing is due to the conviction that one is being assessed negatively by others (Quebec). The fear of being laughed at was independent of the participants’ age, sex or marital status. Additionally, the mean gelotophobia scores in the French Canadian and Swiss samples did not differ from each other. The French version of the GELOPH<15> provides a useful and reliable instrument for the subjective assessment of gelotophobia in French-speaking countries.     

Sex,stress, and fear: Individual differences in conditioned learning

It has long been recognized that humans vary in their conditionability, yet the factors that contribute to individual variation in emotional learning remain to be delineated. The goal of the present study was to investigate the relationship among sex, stress hormones, and fear conditioning in humans. Forty-five healthy adults (22 females) underwent differential delay conditioning, using fear-relevant conditioned stimuli and a shock unconditioned stimulus. Salivary cortisol samples were taken at baseline and after acquisition training and a 24-h-delayed retention test. The results showed that acquisition of conditioning significantly correlated with postacquisition cortisol levels in males, but not in females. This sex-specific relationship was found despite similar overall levels of conditioning, unconditioned responding, and cortisol. There was no effect of postacquisition cortisol on consolidation of fear learning in either sex. These findings have implications for the understanding of individual differences in fear acquisition and risk factors for the development of affective disorders.     

Authoritarianism and fear responses to pictures: The role of social differences

Authoritarianism can be defined as the covariation of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1981). All three of these tendencies involve adherence to specific standards of behavior: standards that could be exposed to threat and disruption. This study is an investigation of the self‐reported fear of authoritarians in response to threats. A sample of 126 university students was exposed to a series of pictures of potentially threatening people and situations. In general, participants with high scores on authoritarianism were more fearful than participants with low scores. This result was found for both social threats (i.e., social differences, social disorder) and personal threats (i.e., animals, dangerous situations). The strongest association between authoritarianism and fear involved cases of social differences, defined as elements of a person's appearance or behavior that involve diversity or deviance from common social norms. Regression analyses also indicated that variation in authoritarianism could be best predicted by fear of social differences. Thus, these data suggest that authoritarians are relatively sensitive to threat, and particularly to threats involving the “outsider” who does not fit authoritarian standards of uniformity and order. The data are also consistent with recent research and theory that right‐wing ideology is at least partly motivated by threat and fear.     

Fearing shades of grey: individual differences in fear responding towards generalisation stimuli

Individual differences in fear generalisation have been proposed to play a role in the aetiology and/or maintenance of anxiety disorders, but few data are available to directly support that claim. The research that is available has focused mostly on generalisation of peripheral and central physiological fear responses. Far less is known about the generalisation of avoidance, the behavioural component of fear. In two experiments, we evaluated how neuroticism, a known vulnerability factor for anxiety, modulates an array of fear responses, including avoidance tendencies, towards generalisation stimuli (GS). Participants underwent differential fear conditioning, in which one conditioned stimulus (CS+) was repeatedly paired with an aversive outcome (shock; unconditioned stimulus, US), whereas another was not (CS?). Fear generalisation was observed across measures in Experiment 1 (US expectancy and evaluative ratings) and Experiment 2 (US expectancy, evaluative ratings, skin conductance, startle responses, safety behaviours), with overall highest responding to the CS+, lowest to the CS? and intermediate responding to the GSs. Neuroticism had very little impact on fear generalisation (but did affect GS recognition rates in Experiment 1), in line with the idea that fear generalisation is largely an adaptive process.     

Beyond the big five as predictors of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at: The HEXACO model and the dark triad

We aimed to extend research on dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at by testing the localization of the fear of (gelotophobia) and the joy in (gelotophilia) being laughed at, and the joy in laughing at others (katagelasticism) in the HEXACO model and the Dark Triad traits (both have not been examined so far). Study 1 (HEXACO model: N = 216) showed that gelotophobia was related to low extraversion, high emotionality, and low honesty‐humility; gelotophilia to high extraversion and high openness to experience; and katagelasticism to low agreeableness and low honesty‐humility. These results were similar to prior findings based on the Five‐Factor model, and supported the notion that the honesty‐humility trait contributes to the prediction of individual differences in gelotophobia and katagelasticism. Study 2 (Dark Triad: N = 204) showed that gelotophobia was related to high Machiavellianism and low narcissism; gelotophilia to high narcissism; and katagelasticism to high psychopathy and high Machiavellianism. These data helped to clarify our findings on the honesty‐humility trait, showing that gelotophobes and katagelasticists differ in their socially aversive characteristics. Overall, this research provides empirical evidence that dark (but subclinical) traits can be seen as relevant personality predictors of how people deal with laughter and ridicule.     

Ridicule and being laughed at in the family: Gelotophobia,gelotophilia, and katagelasticism in young children and their parents

The fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), the joy of being laughed at (gelotophilia), and the joy of laughing at others (katagelasticism) were tested in a sample of 189 7‐ and 8‐year‐olds and their parents (185 mothers, 160 fathers). The dispositions were widely unrelated in the full sample. There was a positive relation between girls' and mothers' katagelasticism as well as between the 7‐year‐old boys' katagelasticism and their parents' gelotophilia. Furthermore, the 8‐year‐old boys' fear of being laughed at correlated robustly positively with their parents' gelotophobia and their gelotophilia with their parents' katagelasticism. Similarities/dissimilarities in the parental expression in the dispositions had no impact on the scores in the children. The findings are different from relations reported for parents and their adult children. The study provides ground for further studies on how families deal with ridicule and being laughed at.     

Individual differences at high perceptual load: the relation between trait anxiety and selective attention

Attentional control theory (Eysenck et al., 2007) posits that taxing attentional resources impairs performance efficiency in anxious individuals. This theory, however, does not explicitly address if or how the relation between anxiety and attentional control depends upon the perceptual demands of the task at hand. Consequently, the present study examined the relation between trait anxiety and task performance using a perceptual load task (Maylor & Lavie, 1998). Sixty-eight male college students completed a visual search task that indexed processing of irrelevant distractors systematically across four levels of perceptual load. Results indicated that anxiety was related to difficulty suppressing the behavioural effects of irrelevant distractors (i.e., decreased reaction time efficiency) under high, but not low, perceptual loads. In contrast, anxiety was not associated with error rates on the task. These findings are consistent with the prediction that anxiety is associated with impairments in performance efficiency under conditions that tax attentional resources.     

Individual differences in cognition: Some relationships between personality and memory

Individual differences in cognition were studied in the form of the hypothesis that arousal, as indexed by personality measures of extraversion and neuroticism, affects the way in which verbal material is organized in memory. Subjects pretested on measures of these personality variables participated in either a paired-associates learning or a free-recall experiment. On the paired-associates task, subjects who were thought to be high on arousal made fewer errors when response terms were semantically similar than low arousal subjects. On the other hand, subjects thought low on arousal made fewer errors when response words were phonetically similar than high arousal subjects. On the free-recall task, low arousal subjects were found to cluster words together on the basis of semantic category at a higher rate than high arousal subjects. These results were taken to support the view that high arousal (as indexed by personality measures) leads to a focus on the physical aspects of verbal material, whereas low arousal leads to a memory organized around semantic aspects. The implications of these findings for other views of memory are discussed.     

Ambiguity between self and other: Individual differences in action attribution

Individuals differ in their ability to attribute actions to self or other. This variance is thought to explain, in part, the experience of voice-hearing. Misattribution can also be context-driven. For example, causal ambiguity can arise when the actions of two or more individuals are coordinated and produce similar effects (e.g., music-making). Experience in such challenging contexts may refine skills of action attribution. Forty participants completed a novel finger-tapping task which parametrically manipulated the proportion of control that ‘self’ versus ‘other’ possessed over resulting auditory tones. Results showed that action misattribution peaked in the middle of the self-to-other continuum and was biased towards other. This pattern was related to both high hallucination-proneness and to low musical-experience. Findings suggest not only that causal ambiguity plays a key role in agency but also that action attribution abilities may improve with practice, potentially providing an avenue for remediation of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.     

Individual differences in responses to workplace stress: the contribution of attachment theory

Work stress is a major cause of physical and psychological distress, and both theory and research highlight the importance of individual differences in coping efforts. The present research clarifies the mechanisms linking attachment insecurities (anxiety and avoidance) to maladaptive coping; specifically, we tested an integrative model assessing stress appraisals as a mediator between attachment insecurities and coping strategies, together with mediating and moderating effects of coping resources (perceived self‐efficacy and social support). A community sample of 113 men and 115 women completed an online survey which incorporated a standardized vignette depicting workplace stress. The results supported stress appraisal as a mediator between attachment anxiety and less adaptive coping, and established both mediating and moderating effects of perceived coping resources. The effects support the relevance of attachment theory to the study of workplace stress.     

Individual differences in emotional reactivity moderate the strength of the relationship between attentional and implicit-memory biases towards threat-related stimuli

The study investigated whether the strength of the relationship between attentional and implicit-memory biases for threat-related material can be moderated by individual differences in temperament and personality. A spatial cueing task, where task-irrelevant angry, happy, and neutral faces acted as spatial cues preceding a target, was immediately followed by an unexpected “old/new” task involving previously presented faces. Temperament-based emotional reactivity (ER; one's typical response strength to emotional stimuli) predicted improved memory performance for angry faces in the “old/new” task. Critically, the relationship between the attentional bias towards threat (indexed by a cue validity index, i.e., a difference in response times on trials where cues with angry expression were presented in the same versus different location to the subsequent target) and enhanced implicit-memory for previously presented task-irrelevant threat-related information was found to be moderated by ER. The current findings provide the first evidence that temperament traits can offer novel insights into the mechanisms enhancing cognitive biases towards threat in the typical population.     

Emotion regulation during social remembering: differences between emotions elicited during an event and emotions elicited when talking about it

This paper examines emotion regulation as a function of autobiographical remembering in social contexts. Two studies (n = 38 and 123, respectively) are presented that provide evidence that autobiographical remembering in social settings can result in changes in the emotions associated with an experience. However, the results also suggest that whether changes occur depends on features of the recall context, including the gender of participants, and the responses of their listeners. Across both studies, men showed greater emotional benefits from talking about events than women. Moreover, greater listener agreement was associated with greater benefits for emotion. The results are discussed in terms of functions of autobiographical remembering, gender, social support, and emotion regulation.     

Individual differences in aggressive responses to attack: Internal-external locus of control and field dependence-independence

Two experiments assessed the effect of individual differences on aggression. In both studies subjects were exposed to opponents in the competitive reaction time task who decreased the intensity of their attack from high to low, remained constantly moderate in their attack, or increased the intensity of their attack from low to high. In the first experiment Internal Locus of Control subjects consistently set high intensity shocks in response to high intensity attack and low shocks in response to mild attack. External subjects showed relatively minor variations in their aggressive responses to varying intensities of attack. In the second experiment field-independent subjects set more intense shocks than field-dependent subjects only in the Decreasing attack condition.     

Return of the Candy Witch: Individual differences in acceptance and stability of belief in a novel fantastical being

Recent research indicates that preschoolers make sophisticated choices in accepting testimony as a source of knowledge. Nonetheless, many children accept fantastical beings as real based on misleading testimony. The present study probes factors associated with belief in a novel fantastical figure, the Candy Witch, that 3‐ to 7‐year‐olds heard about at school. Short‐term belief was predicted by an interaction of age, existing beliefs in fantastical figures, and whether the child was ‘visited’ by the Candy Witch. Stability of belief was assessed over the course of 3 weeks and again 1‐year later. First year results revealed three patterns of belief: stable belief, wavering belief and stable non‐belief. First year belief status was not related to age, but older children from the stable belief group were more likely than younger children to disbelieve 1‐year later. The discussion presents a new proposal for the trajectory from belief to disbelief and an updated perspective on the role of individual differences in belief.