The ease of lying

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that (1) the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of the truth response and that (2) habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant.     

Emotional Health and the Big Five Personality Factors at the American State Level

Relations between the emotional health domain of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and the Big Five personality factors were determined at the American state level. State emotional health scores were based on the aggregated results of 353,039 phone interviews conducted throughout 2008 with a representative sample of US adults (Gallup 2009a). State z scores (Rentfrow et al. in Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 339–386, 2008) on neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness were based on 619,397 nationally representative respondents to an internet survey between 1999 and 2005. State socioeconomic status (SES), urban percent, and white percent based on 2000 and 2005 data served as demographic controls. Alaska and Hawaii were excluded. When the controls entered a hierarchical multiple regression equation as a block and were followed by the Big Five selected stepwise, the controls accounted for 27.5% of the emotional health variance and neuroticism accounted for another 35.3%. With stepwise selection of controls and then Big Five variables, SES entered first (24.1%) and neuroticism entered second (32.4%). With stepwise selection from the combined control and Big Five pool, neuroticism entered first (47.5%), SES entered second (9.1%), and urban percent entered third (4.9%). Clearly, neuroticism and SES are the key contributors to emotional health variance and neuroticism makes the largest contribution. States with higher proportions of neurotic individuals and lower SES tended to have populations with poorer emotional health. Theoretical foundations for the link between neuroticism and emotional health at the state level and implications for changes in state emotional health are discussed.     

Maternal depressive history, teen 5HTTLPR genotype, and the processing of emotional faces: Exploring mechanisms of risk

Variations in the serotonin transporter gene (5HTTLPR) and biased processing of face-emotion displays both have been implicated in the transmission of depression risk, but little is known about developmental influences on these relationships. Within a community sample of adolescents, we examine whether 5HTTLPR genotype moderates the link between maternal depressive history and errors in face-emotion labeling. When controlling for current levels of depression and anxiety among youth, a two-way interaction between maternal depressive history and 5HTTLPR genotype was detected. Specifically, adolescents whose mothers reported a depressive history and who had a low expressing genotype made more errors in classifying emotional faces when compared with adolescents with an intermediate or high expressing genotype, with or without maternal depression history. These findings highlight the complex manner in which maternal depression and genetic risk may interact to predict individual differences in social information processing.     

The Consequences of Completion: How Level of Completion Influences Information Concealment by Decision Makers

Numerous studies have demonstrated that decision makers will allocate additional resources to failing projects if those projects are close to completion, as opposed to far from completion. The present work considers whether high project completion leads to other effects; namely, decision‐maker willingness to conceal negative information about a project. Three studies (1 at the group level, 2 at the individual level; 1 using qualitative data, 2 using quantitative data) established a link between project completion, incremental investment behavior, and the tendency to conceal negative information.     

SKINNER AS MISSIONARY AND PROPHET: A REVIEW OF BURRHUS F. SKINNER: SHAPER OF BEHAVIOUR

Do we need another book about B. F. Skinner? According to Frederick Toates, the answer is “yes” because “there is still much to be said” (p. vii) about Skinner. In his recent biography, Burrhus F. Skinner: Shaper of Behaviour (2009), Toates attempts to integrate Skinner into the mainstream of psychology by showing areas of commonality between Skinner''s radical behaviorism and subdisciplines within psychology such as cognitive, social, and biological psychology. Admirably, although in some instances understandably naively, Toates attempts to demonstrate the power of positive reinforcement to explain myriad complex behaviors, including a fairly lengthy interpretation of religious behavior. In addition, Toates credits Skinner for being ahead of his time on both social and environmental issues. Toates falters, however, in his insistence that behavior analysis still needs and can benefit from cognitive concepts. He nevertheless provides an otherwise objective and sympathetic view of Skinner the person and the behavioral science he helped to create in a book that should be informative for both behavior analysts and those outside the field.