Course of Antisocial Behavior during Emerging Adulthood: Developmental Differences in Personality

Despite similar normative changes in antisocial behavior (AB) and traits of disinhibition and negative emotionality during "emerging adulthood," few studies have tested if there are developmental differences in personality over this period for distinct courses of AB. In a college cohort assessed at ages 18 and 25, we examined if mean-level changes on traits from the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire varied by course of AB. Compared to persisters, those who desisted in AB from 18 to 25 exhibited a larger decrease on novelty seeking and larger increase on reward dependence. A significant mean-level decline was observed for harm avoidance, but was unrelated to AB course. Findings support theories of the co-development of personality and AB during emerging adulthood.     

Level of stress and sleep duration

30 subjects kept daily diaries of sleep-duration and stress levels for 4 mo. From these data, it was determined that during periods of high stress, sleep was reduced by about one standard deviation while during periods of low stress, sleep increased by about one-half a standard deviation. The relationship of these results to the relevant sleep-stress literature was briefly discussed.     

Consistency of hand use and sleep problems.

In this study, we measured the relationship between the consistency of hand use and three symptoms of insomnia, i.e., delayed sleep onset, frequent awakenings during sleep, and trouble returning to sleep after an awakening. For each of these insomnia-related symptoms, university students who were classified as inconsistent in the use of their hands (n = 30) were significantly more likely to report problems than their consistent hand-use peers (n = 30). These data were discussed both in relation to the literature on handedness classification and sleep problems and the emerging literature on consistency of hand use and health-related problems.     

Moral Hedging and Responding to Reasons

In this paper, I argue that the fetishism objection to moral hedging fails. The objection rests on a reasons‐responsiveness account of moral worth, according to which an action has moral worth only if the agent is responsive to moral reasons. However, by adopting a plausible theory of non‐ideal moral reasons, one can endorse a reasons‐responsiveness account of moral worth while maintaining that moral hedging is sometimes an appropriate response to moral uncertainty. Thus, the theory of moral worth upon which the fetishism objection relies does not, in fact, support that objection.     

Factor structure of the psychopathic personality inventory: validity and implications for clinical assessment

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by impulsive antisocial deviance in the context of emotional and interpersonal detachment. A factor analysis of the subscales of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) yielded evidence for 2 factors. One factor showed relations with external criteria mirroring those of the emotional-interpersonal facet of psychopathy, including high dominance, low anxiety, and venturesomeness. The other factor showed relations paralleling those of the social deviance facet of psychopathy, including positive correlations with antisocial behavior and substance abuse, negative correlations with socioeconomic status and verbal ability, and personality characteristics including high negative emotionally and low behavioral constraint. Findings support using the PPI to assess these facets of psychopathy in community samples and to explore their behavioral correlates and genetic-neurobiological underpinnings.     

Gender and orientation stereotypes bias source-monitoring attributions

Four experiments were conducted to determine whether gender stereotypes influence source-monitoring decision processes. Statements that were consistent with a male were more often correctly attributed to a male source and less frequently correctly attributed to a female. The reverse was true for items traditionally associated with a female. Both of these biases were reversed if participants believed the speaker was either a gay male or a lesbian female. These effects persisted under divided attention during test, suggesting that they are caused by automatic influences. But these biases were partially attenuated when participants first considered the detrimental impact of stereotypes. Because these biases were absent for gender-neutral statements, the results from this study show that the content of a memory can influence judgements about the context in which something was learned. The authors argue that the data are most consistent with a heuristic, early selection process that can be influenced by a conscious, late correction process (e.g., Jacoby, Kelly, & McElree, 1999).     

Fan effects in event-based prospective memory

Three experiments investigated whether event-based prospective memory was affected by the associative fan of the cues to be detected. The associative fan was operationally defined as the number of associates paired with event-based cues in a paired associate learning phase. Subsequent to the paired associate learning, participants were given a lexical decision task in which event-based cues were embedded. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that a larger associative fan significantly reduced event-based cue detection. The third experiment confirmed that the absolute strength of an association does not affect performance, rather the number of associations does. As an ancillary issue, the authors tested whether cue detection was affected by the familiarity of the background words used in the lexical decision task. No consistent evidence for a discrepancy plus search model of prospective memory was found.     

Arousability and stress-related physical symptoms: a validation study of Coren's arousal predisposition scale.

Coren's Arousal Predisposition Scale was validated against 249 college students' self-ratings of stress-related physical symptoms and an item that assessed general level of health. As we predicted, the 126 high-arousability subjects were substantially higher in mean stress-related symptoms score and lower in general health than the 123 peers low in arousability. These data suggest that the Arousal Predisposition Scale may be a useful instrument in the study of human stress.