The Two Dimensions of Narcissistic Personality and Support for the Radical Right: The Role of Right-wing Authoritarianism,Social Dominance Orientation and Anti-immigrant Sentiment

This paper offers an explanation of the link between grandiose narcissism and support for radical right parties. Drawing on representative data of the GESIS Panel (N = 2827), focusing on support for the German radical right populist party Alternative for Germany in 2016 and treating grandiose narcissism as a two-dimensional concept, it is shown that the effects of grandiose narcissism are indirect rather than direct. The paper also reveals that it is mainly narcissistic rivalry that accounts for radical right party support, whereas narcissistic admiration has a protecting relationship. Finally, our results indicate that the indirect effects of narcissistic rivalry on radical right party support via right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, respectively, are mediated by anti-immigrant sentiment. All in all, our results suggest that in studies on ideological orientations and voting behaviour, both dimensions of grandiose narcissism should be considered due to their contradictory relationship. Moreover, our findings indicate that the success of radical right parties might be the expression of personality dispositions of some parts of the electorate. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

Does Integrity Require Moral Goodness?

Most accounts of integrity agree that the person of integrity must have a relatively stable sense of who he is, what is important to him, and the ability to stand by what is most important to him in the face of pressure to do otherwise. But does integrity place any constraints on the kind of principles that the person of integrity stands for? In response to several recent accounts of integrity, I argue that it is not enough that a person stand for what he believes in, nor even that he is committed to and stands for what, in his best judgement, is morally right. In our web of moral concepts integrity is internally related to a host of virtues which exclude weakness of will and dogmatism, and presuppose trustworthiness. Integrity requires that the principles stood for must be those that a morally good, morally trustworthy agent would stand for, and that the agent himself is morally trustworthy.     

If you suffer from a headache, then you have a brain tumour: domain-specific reasoning 'bias' and hypochondriasis

We explored whether hypochondriacal patients selectively search for threat-confirming information when asked to judge the validity of conditional rules in the context of general and health threats. We also explored several factors that may underly participants' information selection (e.g., believability of the rule). Hypochondriacal patients (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 20) were presented with modified Wason Selection Tasks (WSTs). The WSTs contained safety rules and danger rules. In the context of general threat, both groups of participants adopted a verificationistic strategy in the case of danger rules and a Popperian strategy in the case of safety rules. Importantly, only hypochondriacal persons showed a similar threat-confirming reasoning pattern in the context of health threat. The latter finding contrasts with the earlier study of de Jong et al. (1998) [de Jong, P. J., Haenen, M.-A., Schmidt, A., & Mayer, B. (1998a). Hypochondriasis: the role of fear-confirming reasoning. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 65-74; de Jong, P. J., Mayer, B., van der Hijden, B., B?gels, S., & van den Hout, M. (1998b). Better safe than sorry: reasoning with conditionals in the context of threat. Submitted for publication.] in which both hypochondriacs and healthy controls showed a threat-confirming strategy in the domain of health threat. The WSTs in that study however, contained a (unintended) worry manipulation ("after hearing this, you get worried"), which might have induced a reasoning strategy in controls that is normally restricted to hypochondriacs. Taken together, the present results sustain the idea that the perception of threat activates a better safe than sorry strategy. In the case of phobic threats, such a reasoning strategy immunizes against refutation of phobic convictions.     

How serious are common childhood fears?

OBJECTIVE: The present study examined the clinical status of common childhood fears. METHOD: Fears of the 290 children aged 8 to 13 years were assessed and then their severity was explored by means of a structured diagnostic interview measuring anxiety disorders according to the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). RESULTS: Childhood fears reflect significant anxiety disorders in a substantial minority (i.e. 22.8%) of the children. CONCLUSIONS: In most children, childhood fears are part of the normal development. However, in some children, these fears reflect serious anxiety problems which interfere with daily routine.     

Verbal transformation: habituation or spreading activation?

Experiment 1 tested the habituation hypothesis of the Verbal Transformation Effect, an auditory illusion in which a repeating verbal stimulus undergoes perceptual transformation, by varying stimulus dimensions which might be expected to retard habituation. Transformations were found to increase as a function of imagery value and word length, failing to support the habituation hypothesis. Experiment 2, in which transformations were found to vary as a function of number of activated semantic representations of a physically invariant homophone stimulus, provided support for a new dual-process explanation of the Transformation effect, based on spreading activation between cognitive representations.     

Cognitive involvement in the mood response system

There is currently common agreement that moods are organized responses that affect many psychological subsystems, including the cognitive subsystem. The pleasant versus unpleasant quality of an individual's mood was the dependent measure in this study, which examined cognitive correlates of mood level. A set of tasks hypothesized to change with mood, an adjective scale measuring present mood state, and four personality scales were administered to 194 students. Results indicate that three tasks—giving advice to others, estimating the probability of events, and subjective ratings of associations to words—are correlated with mood state and mood-related traits (e.g., emotional distress). Because of the measurement of mood along a pleasant-unpleasant continuum, the present findings of cognitive change can be generalized to any mood that is mostly pleasant or unpleasant. Results also indicate that individuals low in neuroticism had greater correspondence between self-reported mood and performance on affect-sensitive tasks. The changes in cognition are discussed in the context of a spreading-activation view of mood effects and a depressive-schema theory of information processing. More generally, the results suggest that moods lead to broad influences on cognitive responses over considerable portions of an individual's life-span.Preparation of this article was supported in part by an Individual National Research Service Award, MH08978, from the National Institute of Mental Health to the first author. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Phoebe Ellsworth, Steven Tublin, Daniel Weinberger, and the reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this article.     

PROMOTING LOW-FAT ENTREE CHOICES IN A PUBLIC CAFETERIA

Reductions in dietary fat have been recommended in the prevention of coronary heart disease. Because entrees contribute substantially to total meal fat content, we evaluated a cafeteria-based intervention for increasing the purchase rate of low-fat entrees (M = 6.83 g) relative to nonlowfat entrees (M = 25.59 g). The intervention included a poster listing the benefits of a LF diet and the daily LF entrees (i.e., broiled or baked chicken and fish dishes). During 6 days per phase, food selections (N = 3,264) were monitored by trained observers. The intervention, which cost $80.00, produced significant increases (i.e., from 20% to 35%) in the purchase rate of LF entrees.     

The personality characteristics of adolescents who use and misuse alcohol

The relationship between alcohol use and misuse and personality was investigated using 347 high school students. Students were tested with a battery which included measures of alcohol involvement (AAIS) and personality (CPI). The results demonstrated that as adolescents increasingly became involved in alcohol, the more their personality characteristics differed from those adolescents not involved or minimally involved with alcohol. The implications are discussed in light of past theories of alcohol misuse in adolescence.     

Cognitive Domains of the Mood System

One possible outline of the interrelationship between mood and cognition makes use of a fourfold framework: mood-state introspections yield a report of the mood, mood-sensitive judgments are influenced by mood, metamood experiences include thoughts about the mood, and mood-related traits predict the likelihood of being in a mood. Three studies were conducted to investigate the relation between mood introspection and mood-sensitive judgment (e.g., mood-related changes in judgments about "objective" events such as belief in the probability of a nuclear war). These same studies also examined the metamood experiences and mood-related traits occurring simultaneously with the above moods and judgments. Judgment was mood-sensitive across all studies. Factor analysis of the various measures was supportive of the partial independence of the four domains. Mood introspection, mood-sensitive judgment, and mood-related traits appeared on separate factors. Metamood experience was factorially complex and was distributed across factors. Interrelations among the domains were described. The relevance of the framework for representing personality and psychopathology was discussed, as was the influence of mood on everyday judgments.     

The experience and meta-experience of mood

Mood experience is comprised of at least two elements: the direct experience of the mood and a meta-level of experience that consists of thoughts and feelings about the mood. In Study 1, a two-dimensional structure for the direct experience of mood (Watson & Tellegen, 1985) was tested for its fit to the responses of 1,572 subjects who each completed one of three different mood scales, including a brief scale developed to assist future research. The Watson and Tellegen structure was supported across all three scales. In Study 2, meta-mood experience was conceptualized as the product of a mood regulatory process that monitors, evaluates, and at times changes mood. A scale to measure meta-mood experience was administered to 160 participants along with the brief mood scale. People's levels on the meta-mood dimensions were found to differ across moods. Meta-mood experiences may also constitute an important part of the phenomenology of the personal experience of mood.