Development and initial validation of validity scales for the NEO-Five Factor Inventory

Based upon the methodology established by Schinka, Kinder, and Kremer (Schinka, J. A., Kinder, B. N., & Kremer, T. (1997). Research validity scales for the NEO-PI-R: Development and initial validation. Journal of Personality Assessment, 68, 127–138), a set of validity scales were developed for the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI, Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory and NEO Five Factor Inventory Professional Manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources). In Study 1, 111 undergraduates completed the NEO-FFI and item means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations were used to construct measures of Positive Impression Management, Negative Impression Management, and Inconsistent Responding. In Study 2, 146 participants completed the NEO-FFI under one of five instructional sets (control, fake good, fake bad, graduate psychology and police academy admissions). A set of randomly produced NEO-FFI profiles were added to this data set. ANOVA results provided support for the utility of the validity scales, as they were differentially sensitive to random responding, positive and negative impression management in hypothesized ways.     

The fading affect bias across alcohol consumption frequency for alcohol-related and non-alcohol-related events

The Fading Affect Bias (FAB) is the tendency for unpleasant emotions to fade more over time than pleasant emotions (Walker, Vogl, & Thompson, 1997). The FAB is negatively related to dysphoria (Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003), which led researchers to suggest that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism that improves the overall positivity of life (Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson, 2003). The FAB may also reinforce certain maladaptive behaviors, such as drinking alcohol, as the unpleasant emotions associated with those behaviors quickly fade from memory, and increase the likelihood of those behaviors in the future. If the FAB increases the likelihood of maladaptive alcohol consumption, the FAB should be greatest for ordinary events at low alcohol consumption levels, whereas the FAB should be greatest for alcohol events at high alcohol consumption levels. The results of two studies provided support for the hypotheses. The implications are discussed.     

Do young and old preschoolers exhibit response bias due to different mechanisms? Investigating children's response time

Previous studies have suggested that younger preschoolers exhibit a yes bias due to underdeveloped cognitive abilities, whereas older preschoolers exhibit a response bias due to other factors. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the response latency to yes-no questions pertaining to familiar and unfamiliar objects in 3- to 6-year-olds. The 3-year-olds exhibited a strong yes bias for both objects, and their response latency was significantly shorter than that of the 6-year-olds. The 4- and 5-year-olds did not exhibit any response bias, whereas the 6-year-olds exhibited a nay-saying bias (a response bias to say “no”) for unfamiliar objects. Overall, children’s response bias scores were stronger for familiar objects than for unfamiliar objects. The results suggest that 3-year-olds exhibit a yes bias automatically, but 5- and 6-year-olds are sensitive to question context.     

Biased processing of emotional information in sub-clinical anxiety: Evidence from Simon effects

We tested the idea that in high trait-anxiety, behavioural responses are influenced by spatial correspondence to emotional information. It is suggested that if an emotional stimulus is preferentially processed, it may act as if presented alone and yield a Simon effect: faster responses when stimulus and response spatially correspond than when not. High-trait-anxious undergraduates indeed showed a content-specific Simon effect for social-threat (not physical-threat) words that were presented together with a neutral word for 14 ms; they showed the reverse response pattern for positive words. Low-anxious undergraduates had no bias. When presentation time was lengthened to 500 ms, the response pattern for social-threat and positive words shown by high-anxious undergraduates reversed as compared to the pattern with 14 ms, but there were no significant group differences. These results can be taken to suggest that in high trait-anxiety, the processing of social-threat is specifically prioritized; social-threat and positive information may elicit an immediate response, counteracted by mood-regulation strategies. We argue that the present approach opens up interesting avenues for investigating biased information processing and response tendencies.     

Identifying facial emotions: valence specific effects and an exploration of the effects of viewer gender

The valence hypothesis suggests that the right hemisphere is specialised for negative emotions and the left hemisphere is specialised for positive emotions (Silberman & Weingartner, 1986). It is unclear to what extent valence-specific effects in facial emotion perception depend upon the gender of the perceiver. To explore this question 46 participants completed a free view lateralised emotion perception task which involved judging which of two faces expressed a particular emotion. Eye fixations of 24 of the participants were recorded using an eye tracker. A significant valence-specific laterality effect was obtained, with positive emotions more accurately identified when presented to the right of centre, and negative emotions more accurately identified when presented to the left of centre. The valence-specific laterality effect did not depend on the gender of the perceiver. Analysis of the eye tracking data showed that males made more fixations while recognising the emotions and that the left-eye was fixated substantially more than the right-eye during emotion perception. Finally, in a control condition where both faces were identical, but expressed a faint emotion, the participants were significantly more likely to select the right side when the emotion label was positive. This finding adds to evidence suggesting that valence effects in facial emotion perception are not only caused by the perception of the emotion but by other processes.     

A Cross-Cultural Study of Response Biases in Personality Measures

The purposes of this study were to (a) compare the response bias tendencies of U.S. and Philippine college students and men and women in each culture when responding to personality measures, (b) examine the comparability of different measures of the same response biases, (c) examine the stability or consistency of response biases across instruments, (d) examine the extent to which controlling for response biases affects cultural mean comparisons in personality variables, and (e) test hypothesized personality correlates of response biases. The results did not support the presence of large cross-cultural or gender differences in response biases. Moderate to high agreement was found between different indexes of the same biases. Participants' response bias tendencies were moderately stable across instruments. Controlling for response biases led to trivial changes in effect sizes; in most cases, conclusions about cultural differences in personality constructs did not change. Most hypotheses relating personality variables to response biases were not supported.     

Anchoring in sequential judgments

Building on the scale distortion theory (Frederick & Mochon, 2012), we explore the boundary conditions of anchoring outside of the standard paradigm. We argue that the conditions needed for anchoring effects are much more restrictive than those suggested by some theories, but much less restrictive than those suggested by others. Our findings illuminate both the scope and limits of this well-known effect and provide a framework for predicting its occurrence in novel settings.     

The valence-specific laterality effect in free viewing conditions: The influence of sex, handedness, and response bias

The right hemisphere has often been viewed as having a dominant role in the processing of emotional information. Other evidence indicates that both hemispheres process emotional information but their involvement is valence specific, with the right hemisphere dealing with negative emotions and the left hemisphere preferentially processing positive emotions. This has been found under both restricted (Reuter-Lorenz & Davidson, 1981) and free viewing conditions (Jansari, Tranel, & Adophs, 2000). It remains unclear whether the valence-specific laterality effect is also sex specific or is influenced by the handedness of participants. To explore this issue we repeated Jansari et al.'s free-viewing laterality task with 78 participants. We found a valence-specific laterality effect in women but not men, with women discriminating negative emotional expressions more accurately when the face was presented on the left-hand side and discriminating positive emotions more accurately when those faces were presented on the right-hand side. These results indicate that under free viewing conditions women are more lateralised for the processing of facial emotion than are men. Handedness did not affect the lateralised processing of facial emotion. Finally, participants demonstrated a response bias on control trials, where facial emotion did not differ between the faces. Participants selected the left-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was negative and the right-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was positive. This response bias can cause a spurious valence-specific laterality effect which might have contributed to the conflicting findings within the literature.     

The clock as a focus of selective attention in those with primary insomnia: An experimental study using a modified Posner paradigm

Espie and colleagues [(2006). The attention-intention-effort pathway in the development of psychophysiological insomnia: a theoretical review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10, 215-245] propose a route into psychophysiological insomnia along the attention-intention-effort pathway which focuses on the inhibition of sleep-wake automaticity. A contributing factor to this is selective attention to sleep (alongside explicit intention to sleep and effort in the sleep engagement process). Following on from previous work on selective attention to sleep [Marchetti, L. M., Biello, S. M., Broomfield, N. M., MacMahon, K. M. A., & Espie, C. A. (2006). Who is pre-occupied with sleep?. A comparison of attention bias in people with psychphysiological insomnia, delayed sleep phase syndrome and good sleepers using the induced change blindness paradigm. Journal of Sleep Research, 15, 212-221; MacMahon, K., Broomfield, N., Macphee, L., & Espie, C. A. (2006). Attention bias for sleep related stimuli in primary insomnia and delayed sleep phase syndrome using the dot-probe task. Sleep, 29, 11] and considering the importance of monitoring both internal and external cues in the maintenance of insomnia, as highlighted in the cognitive model of insomnia [Harvey, A. G. (2002). A cognitive model of insomnia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 869-893], a cognitive probe task was employed to investigate further the role of the clock as a focus of selective attention in those with primary insomnia.A 2 × 2 between participants design comparing reaction time of individuals with primary insomnia (n = 22) and normal sleepers (n = 22) on a modified Posner paradigm. Responses obtained from a computer task presenting times which fall within a normal sleep period were analysed.Individuals with primary insomnia demonstrated delayed disengagement to the clock (F(1,84) = 6.9, p < 0.05) which is taken as further support for previous research demonstrating that individuals with primary insomnia exhibit an attentional bias to sleep related stimuli.These results lend support to the attention-intention-effort model (Espie et al., 2006) and the cognitive model (Harvey, 2002) both of which recognise the importance of selective attention towards salient stimuli in the maintenance of insomnia. Possible clinical implications of attentional bias to sleep as a marker of psychopathology progression and treatment efficacy are discussed.     

Effects of threat cues on attentional shifting, disengagement and response slowing in anxious individuals

According to cognitive models of anxiety, attentional biases for threat may cause or maintain anxiety states. Previous research using spatial cueing tasks has been interpreted in terms of difficulty in disengaging attention from threat in anxious individuals, as indicated by contrasts of response times (RTs) from threat cue versus neutral cue trials. However, on spatial cueing tasks, differences in RT between threat cue and neutral cue trials may stem from a slowing effect of threat on RT, as well as effects on allocation of visuospatial attention. The present study examined the effects of threat cues on both attentional cueing and response slowing. High and low anxious individuals completed a central cue task, which assessed threat-related response slowing, and a spatial cueing task, which assessed attentional biases for angry, happy and neutral faces. Results indicated that interpretation of the anxiety-related bias for threat depended on whether the effect of response slowing was taken into account. The study illustrates an important problem in using the modified spatial cueing task to assess components of threat-related attentional bias. As this experimental method may reflect both threat-related attentional cueing and response slowing effects, it cannot be assumed to provide pure measures of shift or disengagement components of attention bias.     

Preserved metamemorial ability in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease: shifting response bias

Patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) display a greater tendency to endorse unstudied items as "old" on memory tests than healthy older adults. This liberal response bias may result in mistaken beliefs about the completion of common tasks. This research attempted to determine whether it was possible to shift the response bias of mild AD patients to be more conservative on a recognition memory test through behavioral intervention. Patients with mild AD and matched controls were evaluated with two almost identical paradigms, separated by about one week. For each session, 30 words were studied and 60 words (half studied, half novel) were shown at test. During one session participants were told that 30% of words were old, and at the other session that 70% were old. We found that both groups were able to shift their response bias between the two conditions. That patients with mild AD were able to successfully shift their response bias demonstrates that--despite their overall liberal response bias and poor memory relative to controls--one component of metamemorial ability is preserved in patients with mild AD.