Interfering with activity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex via TMS affects social impressions updating

In our everyday social interactions we often need to deal with others’ unpredictable behaviors. Integrating unexpected information in a consistent representation of another agent is a cognitively demanding process. Several neuroimaging studies point to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) as a critical structure in mediating social evaluations. Our aim here was to shed light on the possible causal role of the mPFC in the dynamic process of forming and updating social impressions about others. We addressed this issue by suppressing activity in the mPFC by means of 1 Hz offline transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) prior to a task requiring participants to evaluate other agents’ trustworthiness after reading about their social behavior. In two different experiments, we found that inhibiting activity in the mPFC increased perceived trustworthiness when inconsistent information about one agent’s behavior was provided. In turn, when only negative or positive behaviors of a person were described, TMS over the mPFC did not affect judgments. Our results indicate that the mPFC is causally involved in mediating social impressions updating—at least in cases in which judgment is uncertain due to conflicting information to be processed.     

Cohort Differences in Personal Goals and Life Satisfaction in Young Adulthood: Evidence for Historical Shifts in Developmental Tasks

This study investigated the influence of changing socio-historical conditions on personal goals in young adulthood. It was hypothesized that socio-historical changes related to individualization have resulted in shifts in goal pursuit. Participants from three birth cohorts reconstructed their important goals when they were 20 years old. Members of the oldest cohort were born between 1920 and 1925. Members of the middle cohort were born between 1945 and 1950. Members of the youngest cohort were born between 1970 and 1975. Goal content, the degree to which goals were perceived as being shared by members of the same cohort (social sharedness), perceived control over goal attainment, success in attainment, and life satisfaction at age 25 were measured in a retrospective study. Results show consistent shifts over time. Whereas members of older cohorts mentioned goals related to classical developmental tasks, members of younger cohorts mentioned more individualistic, self-related goals and goals related to education. The processes through which goal pursuit influenced life satisfaction also changed. Perceived social sharedness of goals was a direct predictor of life satisfaction for the oldest cohort. For the younger cohorts, perceived control over goal attainment influenced success which in turn influenced life satisfaction. These changes support the contention that developmental tasks and processes are historically variant.     

Impulsivity and emotion dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder

This study examined the association of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and negative emotional states with impulsivity in the laboratory. Undergraduate participants who were high in BPD features (high-BPD; n = 39) and controls who were low in BPD features (low-BPD; n = 56) completed measures of negative emotional state before a laboratory measure of impulsivity--a passive avoidance learning task. Controlling for psychopathology, high-BPD participants committed a greater number of impulsive responses than did low-BPD participants. Negative emotional state moderated the effect of BPD on impulsive responses. High-BPD participants who were in a negative emotional state committed fewer impulsive responses than high-BPD participants who were low in negative emotional state. Fear, nervousness, and shame negatively correlated with impulsivity among high-BPD participants but not among low-BPD participants. In addition, high-BPD participants reported greater emotion dysregulation in a variety of domains, compared with low-BPD participants.     

Configural Frequency Analysis in Applied Psychological Research

L'Analyse de Fréquence des Configurations (AFC) est une méthode de recherche des classes et anticlasses dans les classifications croisées de catégories de variables. Les classes sont des modèles de catégories de variables qui apparaissent plus souvent que le hasard ne le laisse supposes. Les anticlasses sont des modèles de catégorie de variables qui apparaissent moins souvent que le hasard ne le laisse supposes. On présente quatre applications d'AFC: l'AFC de premier ordre, l'AFC prédictive, l'AFC de symétrie axiale, et un modèle d'AFC longitudinale. On examine les caractéristiques de l'AFC en insistant sur les contraintes et l'applicabilité. On compare aussi l'AFC avec d'autres méthodes permettant l'analyse multivariée de catégories de données, en particulier la modèlisation log-linéaire. Des sorties informatiques sont traitées.
Configural Frequency Analysis (CFA) is a method for the search for types and antitypes in cross-classifications of categorical variables. Types are patterns of variable categories that occur more often than expected from chance. Antitypes are patterns of variable categories that occur less often than expected from chance. Four applications of CFA are reviewed: the First Order CFA, the Prediction CFA, Axial Symmetry CFA, and one model of Longitudinal CFA. Characteristics of CFA are discussed, focusing on constraints posed and applicability. Comparisons are made of CFA with other methods for multivariate analysis of categorical data, in particular, log-linear modelling. Computational issues are discussed.