Romantic Attachment,Empathy, and the Broader Autism Phenotype among College Students

Recent research suggests that mild autistic-like characteristics can be measured among relatives of individuals with autism and in the general population. These characteristics have been referred to as the broader autism phenotype (BAP), and include pragmatic language difficulties, aloofness, and rigidity. Evidence is growing to suggest that individuals with BAP encounter difficulties in their social interactions. Recent work demonstrates that college students scoring high on the BAP report more loneliness (Jobe & Williams White, 2007) and more interpersonal problems (Wainer, Ingersoll, & Hopwood, 2012). Because intimate relationships are important in development and are very salient in emerging adulthood, the authors examined the relation of the BAP to romantic attachment and empathy among young adults. Higher BAP scores were associated with lower empathy and higher attachment anxiety and avoidance. Specifically, pragmatic language difficulties were related to higher rates of avoidant attachment and this relationship was mediated by empathy. In contrast, pragmatic language deficits were directly related to anxious attachment.     

Encouraging Prosocial Decisions: The Role of Fairness Salience and Uncertainty

Although the decision to engage in prosocial behavior has received research attention, the literature offers a limited understanding of fairness and uncertainty as antecedents. We propose that one can encourage prosocial decision making simply by invoking the notion of fairness because of its effects on the perceived trustworthiness of the invoking party. We also elucidate the complex role of uncertainty in prosocial decisions in that it has a negative effect while also serving to strengthen the positive effect of fairness salience. Our ideas are tested in two prosocial decision contexts, including participative pricing (i.e., “pay what you want”) and charitable giving. Data from an archival study of a naturally occurring event and two controlled experiments offer support for our arguments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Child and adolescent conduct disorder substantially shares genetic influences with three socioemotional dispositions

In a representative sample of twin children and adolescents, we tested the hypothesis that a substantial proportion of the genetic and environmental influences underlying conduct disorder (CD) are shared with three socioemotional dispositions: Prosociality, Negative Emotionality, and Daring. Caretaker ratings of each dispositional dimension were uniquely associated with a latent CD dimension that included both caretaker- and youth-reports of CD as indicators. Behavior genetic analyses indicated that moderate-to-high additive genetic and moderate nonshared environmental influences underlie all three dispositions and CD, with modest shared environmental influences on Prosociality. Forty percent of the additive genetic influences and all of the nonshared environmental influences on the latent CD dimension were shared in common with the three socioemotional dispositions. The finding that CD shares a substantial proportion of its genetic influences with three distinct socioemotional dispositions suggests new perspectives on the heterogeneous etiology of CD and new approaches to exploring its specific etiological mechanisms.     

The personality traits of liked people

There is surprisingly little understanding of how personality traits are associated with being generally liked by others after adolescence (Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006). We examined the relationship between self-reported personality traits and being generally liked in young adulthood in Greek organizations and freshman dormitories. We found a high level of consistency in which traits were associated with being liked. We examined the relationship between liked and socially desirable traits, using a recent theory on agency and communion (Wojciszke, Abele, & Baryla, 2009). Results help to create a personality profile of the person who is more liked by others, especially pointing to the importance of communal characteristics that are associated with behavior benefiting others.     

What do conscientious people do? Development and validation of the Behavioral Indicators of Conscientiousness (BIC)

Typical assessments of personality traits collapse behaviors, thoughts, and feelings into a single measure without distinguishing between these different manifestations. To address this lack of specification, the current study develops and validates a measure that assesses a number of broad behaviors associated with the personality trait of conscientiousness (the Behavioral Indicators of Conscientiousness; BIC). Findings suggest that the lower-order structure of conscientious behaviors is mostly similar to the lower-order structure in extant trait measures. Furthermore, a daily diary method was used to validate the BIC against frequency counts of conscientious behavior. Overall, the results identify specific behaviors that conscientious individuals tend to perform and highlight possible advantages of this approach over broad trait assessment.     

Developmental changes in dopamine neurotransmission in adolescence: Behavioral implications and issues in assessment

Adolescence is characterized by increased risk-taking, novelty-seeking, and locomotor activity, all of which suggest a heightened appetitive drive. The neurotransmitter dopamine is typically associated with behavioral activation and heightened forms of appetitive behavior in mammalian species, and this pattern of activation has been described in terms of a neurobehavioral system that underlies incentive-motivated behavior. Adolescence may be a time of elevated activity within this system. This review provides a summary of changes within cortical and subcortical dopaminergic systems that may account for changes in cognition and affect that characterize adolescent behavior. Because there is a dearth of information regarding neurochemical changes in human adolescents, models for assessing links between neurochemical activity and behavior in human adolescents will be described using molecular genetic techniques. Furthermore, we will suggest how these techniques can be combined with other methods such as pharmacology to measure the impact of dopamine activity on behavior and how this relation changes through the lifespan.     

Do monkeys think in metaphors? Representations of space and time in monkeys and humans

Research on the relationship between the representation of space and time has produced two contrasting proposals. ATOM posits that space and time are represented via a common magnitude system, suggesting a symmetrical relationship between space and time. According to metaphor theory, however, representations of time depend on representations of space asymmetrically. Previous findings in humans have supported metaphor theory. Here, we investigate the relationship between time and space in a nonverbal species, by testing whether non-human primates show space–time interactions consistent with metaphor theory or with ATOM. We tested two rhesus monkeys and 16 adult humans in a nonverbal task that assessed the influence of an irrelevant dimension (time or space) on a relevant dimension (space or time). In humans, spatial extent had a large effect on time judgments whereas time had a small effect on spatial judgments. In monkeys, both spatial and temporal manipulations showed large bi-directional effects on judgments. In contrast to humans, spatial manipulations in monkeys did not produce a larger effect on temporal judgments than the reverse. Thus, consistent with previous findings, human adults showed asymmetrical space–time interactions that were predicted by metaphor theory. In contrast, monkeys showed patterns that were more consistent with ATOM.     

Do lateral eye movements increase susceptibility to misinformation? A registered replication

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review -     

The Influence of Attentional Focus on Balance Control over Seven Days of Training

This study examined the training effect of attentional focus (external focus, internal focus, or no focus instructions) on a dynamic balance task. Participants completed baseline balance testing, seven consecutive days of dynamic balance board training, and retention testing 24 hours after the last session. The novel finding of this study was the presence of a training effect on balance control when adopting an external focus relative to an internal focus or no focus instructions. Further, we report the unique observation that more patterned behavior was adopted regardless of the focus instructions. These findings provide insight into how instructions can be altered to enhance human balance control and complement the constrained-action hypothesis.