Pilot study of personality traits assessed by the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) in asthma, atopy, and rhinitis

Asthma and atopy are common diseases. To study associations between personality and asthma, atopy, rhinitis, and personality traits were measured on the Karolinska Scales of Personality for 193 persons working in 19 buildings with suspected indoor air problems. In addition, information on history of atopy, asthma, and rhinitis was collected by postal questionnaire. In analyses, asthma was associated with higher impulsiveness scores, and atopy in non-asthmatics was associated with higher social desirability scores and lower irritability, guilt, and impulsiveness scores. Non-atopic rhinitis was associated with scores on several anxiety-related scales, while atopic rhinitis was not associated with scores on the Karolinska Scales of Personality. This exploration implies that asthma, atopy, and rhinitis may be associated with various but different personality trait scores. The finding of such personality trait associations in persons with non-asthmatic atopy raises the question of a potential role of an emotional conflict in atopy and the role of personality in asthma, atopy, and rhinitis.     

Reliability of informant ratings and spouse similarity based on the Temperament and Character Inventory

A cohort of 136 Swedish spouse pairs rated themselves and each other with the Temperament and Character Inventory. The data allowed assessment of the reliability of ratings by knowledgeable informants compared to self-rating for this personality test. The reliability of the informant rating was in the expected range, with an average correlation of .58. Agreement was slightly higher for the Temperament dimensions than for the Character dimensions. Additionally, the design allowed evaluation of the similarity between husbands and wives across the seven dimensions measured by the TCI. Correlations between spouses in self-reports were very low for Temperament, with only Harm Avoidance having a statistically significant correlation (.22, p < .05). On the other hand, all three Character dimensions were significantly correlated. These results support the conceptualization of Temperament and Character as separate components of personality. The results are consistent with previous reports on the personality of spouse pairs.     

Models and the locus of their truth

If models can be true, where is their truth located? Giere (Explaining science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998) has suggested an account of theoretical models on which models themselves are not truth-valued. The paper suggests modifying Giere’s account without going all the way to purely pragmatic conceptions of truth—while giving pragmatics a prominent role in modeling and truth-acquisition. The strategy of the paper is to ask: if I want to relocate truth inside models, how do I get it, what else do I need to accept and reject? In particular, what ideas about model and truth do I need? The case used as an illustration is the world’s first economic model, that of von Thünen (1826/1842) on agricultural land use in the highly idealized Isolated State.     

Investigators under influence: How social norms activate goal‐directed processing of criminal evidence

Previous research has shown that exposure to social information can influence behaviour through the automatic activation of goals. In the first study to examine such influences in a legal setting, an experiment with 104 experienced criminal investigators tested the idea that exposure to occupational norms can activate distinct information‐processing goals. As predicted, exposure to norms associated with efficiency (vs. thoroughness) sped up and reduced the depth of investigators' processing of criminal evidence, thus reducing their openness to sequentially late witness evidence. In addition, the goal activation operated outside investigators' awareness, illustrating the insidious cognitive influence of occupational norms. The results are discussed in terms of practical significance and contributions to the goal activation literature and the applied study of criminal investigations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neural correlates of adaptation to voice identity

Apart from speech content, the human voice also carries paralinguistic information about speaker identity. Voice identification and its neural correlates have received little scientific attention up to now. Here we use event-related potentials (ERPs) in an adaptation paradigm, in order to investigate the neural representation and the time course of vocal identity processing. Participants adapted to repeated utterances of vowel-consonant-vowel (VCV) of one personally familiar speaker (either A or B), before classifying a subsequent test voice varying on an identity continuum between these two speakers. Following adaptation to speaker A, test voices were more likely perceived as speaker B and vice versa, and these contrastive voice identity aftereffects (VIAEs) were much more pronounced when the same syllable, rather than a different syllable, was used as adaptor. Adaptation induced amplitude reductions of the frontocentral N1-P2 complex and a prominent reduction of the parietal P3 component, for test voices preceded by identity-corresponding adaptors. Importantly, only the P3 modulation remained clear for across-syllable combinations of adaptor and test stimuli. Our results suggest that voice identity is contrastively processed by specialized neurons in auditory cortex within ～250 ms after stimulus onset, with identity processing becoming less dependent on speech content after ～300 ms.     

The role of cognitive appraisal in media-induced presence and emotions

In the present study, we applied Valins' (1966) bogus bodily feedback paradigm to investigate the roles of cognitive appraisal (tele)presence, and emotion in the context of media usage. Participants (N=30) viewed short sequences of a TV show, whereby false heart rate feedback was provided. In line with Valins' paradigm, the manipulation we used in this study included two levels: high vs. low false heart rate feedback. We assessed presence, enjoyment, and the real heart rate. Participants reported stronger experiences of presence and enjoyed the clips more when they wrongly believed that they had been aroused. Since bogus feedback increases the sensation of presence, the results indicate that presence-like emotions-can be influenced by cognitive appraisals. It is likely that the false heart rate feedback was attributed to the stimulus, which in turn enhanced the sensation of presence.     

Predictors of improvement in an open-trial multisite evaluation of emotion regulation group therapy

Emotion regulation group therapy (ERGT) is a novel treatment specifically targeting deliberate non-suicidal self-harm (DSH) in individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Identifying robust predictors of positive response to ERGT could aid clinicians in treatment selection; however, to date, only one such study has been conducted. Thus, we aimed to replicate previously identified predictors of treatment response to ERGT by investigating demographic, clinical, and diagnostic predictors in 95 women with BPD or subclinical BPD who had participated in an open-trial evaluation of ERGT. Outcomes evaluated were frequency of DSH and emotion dysregulation. Assessments were conducted at pretreatment, post-treatment, and 6-month follow-up. Multilevel mixed linear models and multilevel negative binomial generalized estimated equations were used to identify significant interactions between the predictors and outcomes.

We found that greater pretreatment DSH frequency was associated with greater improvements in DSH during treatment (b = 0.998, SE = 0.00, p = 0.03) and follow-up (b = 0.997, SE = 0.00, p < 0.01) and that greater BPD severity was associated with greater improvements in DSH during treatment (b = 0.84, SE = 0.06, p = 0.02) and in emotion dysregulation at follow-up (b = ?3.05, SE = 1.47, p = 0.04). Co-occurring disorders were associated with poorer treatment response during follow-up. Results were generally consistent with a previous study of the predictors of response to ERGT. The findings provide further support for the utility of this treatment across a range of BPD patients, including patients with severe DSH and BPD.