Do adolescents who use stimulants have a different personality?

Stimulant consumption is especially important in our context because its use has greatly increased in recent years. The aim of the present study is to analyze the differences between stimulant users and nonusers (under 18 years old) in personality characteristics assessed with the MACI. The sample comprises 398 youths between 14 and 17 years old who were selected through random sampling in their homes or in recreational night spots. Results show important differences in personality features between stimulant users and nonusers. Stimulant users are characterized by having unruly, forceful, oppositional and borderline-tendency personality prototypes.     

A Piagetian approach to infant referential behaviors

Near the end of the first year of life, infants begin producing referential behaviors that in adults indicate joint attention, or coordinating shared attention to an object with another person. These behaviors have been interpreted in the social cognitive literature as an indication that infants realize they are sharing attention to an object with another person. In this paper, we address theory and research on infant referential behaviors described as joint attention and offer an alternative explanation for the presence of these behaviors. Using Piaget's constructivist theory, we show how research in this area can be interpreted without assuming that infants have advanced social cognitive abilities. We argue that infants’ referential behaviors are motor signifiers of thought and that infants recognize humans as particularly relevant objects for their goal-directed behaviors. Finally, we describe how the field of infant joint attention research should proceed if a comprehensive understanding of infant cognitive processes is to be desired.     

When to fire: anticipatory versus postevent reconstrual of uncontrollable events

These studies examined the conditions under which people engage in anticipatory construal before an evaluative event versus reconstrual after the event. Computer software informed college students that there was a 1.5%, 12%, 88%, or 98.5% chance that an opposite-sex student would pick them for a hypothetical date. When people had extreme expectations (1.5% or 98.5%), they changed their view of the student to be consistent with their expectations before learning the outcome (anticipatory reconstrual). When people had moderate expectations (12% or 88%), they formed relatively unbiased impressions before hand but reconstrued after learning the outcome of the dating game (postevent reconstrual). Either strategy can ameliorate the pain of a negative event in ways that people do not anticipate. Forecasters predicted that loosing would make them feel worse than it did and selected a higher dose of a drug to cope with an anticipated loss than did people who actually lost.     

Frontal brain asymmetry in restrained eaters

It is well known that the eating patterns that restrain chronic dieters (restrained eaters) can be disinhibited by anxiety, which in turn has been associated with relative right frontal brain activity in independent electroencephalographic (EEG) studies. Combining these two lines of evidence, the authors tested the hypothesis that chronic restrained eating is associated with relative right frontal asymmetry. Resting anterior brain asymmetry and self-reported measures of anxiety and depression were collected in 23 restrained and 32 unrestrained eaters. As hypothesized, groups differed in tonic frontal activity, with restrained eaters showing more relative right frontal activity. Furthermore, relative right frontal activity was associated with greater self-reported restraint. Right-sided prefrontal asymmetry may thus represent a diathesis associated with increased vulnerability toward restrained eating.     

Cognitive aspects of chronic depression

Previous research on chronic depression has focused on its link with other mood disorders and Axis II personality disorders. However, there are few data examining whether the cognitive perspective applies to this condition. In this cross-sectional study, 42 outpatients with chronic depression were compared with 27 outpatients with nonchronic major depressive disorder and 24 never psychiatrically ill controls on cognitive variables thought to be related to vulnerability to depression (e.g., dysfunctional attitudes, attributional style, a ruminative response style, and maladaptive core beliefs). Both depressed groups were more elevated than a never-ill comparison group. However, chronically depressed individuals were generally more elevated on measures of cognitive variables than those with major depressive disorders even after controlling for mood state and personality disorder symptoms.     

Gender and culture differences in touching behavior

The authors used gender and culture to examine the theory that touching behavior is an expression of dominance. Participants were 120 men and women from Italy, the Czech Republic, and the United States. The authors examined both hand touches and nonhand touches. For hand touches, there was a significant gender-by-culture interaction in that Czech men as a group touched more than any of the other groups. For nonhand touches, Czech and Italian women and Italian men as groups touched significantly more than any of the other groups. Taken in cultural context, these results seem to support the dominance theory for touches with the hand but not for nonhand touches. The authors discussed implications and future directions.     

IN THE BEGINNING: THE ROLE OF MYTH IN RELATING RELIGION,BRAIN SCIENCE,AND MENTAL WELL‐BEING

Building upon the insights of scholars attuned to story, narrative, and myth, this article explores the relationship between myth, science, and religion. After clarifying the interplay of the three terms—story, narrative, and myth—and the preference for the term myth, this article will argue that myth can serve as a medium through which religion, neuroscience, and mental well‐being interact. Such an exploration will cover the role of myths in religion, the neurological basis of myth, and the practices of narrative psychology and bibliotherapy. The article will conclude with suggestions for understanding and utilizing the relationship between myth and the scholarly study of the relationship between science and religion. This article ultimately suggests that myth can operate as a methodological aid to the science‐and‐religion field.     

The Interplay Between Meaning and Sacred Awareness in Everyday Life: Evidence From a Daily Smartphone Study

People experience meaning in various ways across different secular and sacred situations. However, scholars know relatively little about the situational contexts in which meaning occurs. In this article, we first explored the daily contexts of meaning using data collected by a unique, 2-week experience sampling method through participants’ smartphones. Meaning levels were highest during religious and spiritual practices, as well as during traditional work hours. They were also higher with some activities, such as talking to other people, than other activities, such as playing video games. Second, we examined how feelings of meaningfulness were related to sacred states, parsing out which preceded the other. Sacred states, in which people were aware of God or a higher being, tended to come before feelings of meaning rather than the reverse. From these analyses, meaning emerged as richly patterned in everyday life and closely associated with—and often a consequence of—sacred awareness.     

Individual differences in dopamine D<Subscript>2</Subscript> receptor availability correlate with reward valuation

Reward valuation, which underlies all value-based decision-making, has been associated with dopamine function in many studies of nonhuman animals, but there is relatively less direct evidence for an association in humans. Here, we measured dopamine D₂ receptor (DRD2) availability in vivo in humans to examine relations between individual differences in dopamine receptor availability and neural activity associated with a measure of reward valuation, expected value (i.e., the product of reward magnitude and the probability of obtaining the reward). Fourteen healthy adult subjects underwent PET with [¹⁸F]fallypride, a radiotracer with strong affinity for DRD2, and fMRI (on a separate day) while performing a reward valuation task. [¹⁸F]fallypride binding potential, reflecting DRD2 availability, in the midbrain correlated positively with neural activity associated with expected value, specifically in the left ventral striatum/caudate. The present results provide in vivo evidence from humans showing midbrain dopamine characteristics are associated with reward valuation.