What friends are for! The use of routine standards in social comparison

Social comparisons are frequently used for self-evaluation. As a consequence, judges have to be efficient in each comparison step. Standard selection, however, is traditionally seen as an elaborate process in which judges deliberately select similar standards. We propose that often judges do not engage in such deliberate selection processes. Instead, they use routine standards--standards that have frequently been used for self-evaluation. Consistent with this assumption, Studies 1-3 demonstrate that student participants activate knowledge about their best friend--a likely routine standard--during self-evaluation. In Study 1, lexical decisions for the best friend's name are facilitated after self-evaluation. In Study 2, participants judge their best friend faster after evaluating themselves on the same dimension. In Study 3, this is even the case if the best friend is dissimilar and consequently undiagnostic. Finally, in Study 4, self-evaluations are primarily influenced by comparison information about an experimentally created routine standard.     

Effects of mineralocorticoid receptor blockade on empathy in patients with major depressive disorder

Background

The mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) is highly expressed in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex and is involved in social cognition. We recently found that pharmacological stimulation of the MR enhances emotional empathy but does not affect cognitive empathy. In the current study, we examined whether blockade of the MR impairs empathy in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy individuals.

Methods

In a placebo-controlled study, we randomized 28 patients with MDD without psychotropic medication and 43 healthy individuals to either placebo or 300 mg spironolactone, a MR antagonist. Subsequently, all participants underwent two tests of social cognition, the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET) and the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC), measuring cognitive and emotional facets of empathy.

Results

In the MET, we found no significant main effect of treatment or main effect of group for cognitive empathy but a highly significant treatment by group interaction (p < 0.01). Patients had higher cognitive empathy scores compared to controls in the placebo condition but not after spironolactone. Furthermore, in the spironolactone condition reduced cognitive empathy was seen in MDD patients but not in controls. Emotional empathy was not affected by MR blockade. In the MASC, no effect of spironolactone could be revealed.

Conclusion

Depressed patients appear to exhibit greater cognitive empathy compared to healthy individuals. Blockade of MR reduced cognitive empathy in MDD patients to the level of healthy individuals. Future studies should further clarify the impact of MR functioning on different domains of social cognition in psychiatric patients.

     

Are Asian cultures really less ageist than Western ones? It depends on the questions asked

Ageism is an increasing concern in ageing populations such as Asia and Europe. A prevalent assumption in psychology is that Eastern cultures may be less prone to ageism because of norms and values that honour and respect elders. Yet, evidence for this culture hypothesis is inconclusive. The current study examines this issue by comparing attitudes towards older people in an Eastern and Western samples of 184 young people from the UK and 249 from Taiwan. Attitudes to old age were measured both as meta‐perceptions (the perceived normative context) and personal attitudes in regard to the cognitive, affective and behavioural components of ageism. Consistent with the culture hypothesis, meta‐perceptions about competence and admiration were more positive in Taiwan than in the UK, yet other meta‐perceptions were more negative pointing to the existence of old age subtypes. Personal attitudes about older people in regard to the affective and behavioural, but not the cognitive component, were more negative in Taiwan than in the UK. Thus, cultural differences in ageism are more nuanced than suggested by previous research. The importance of distinguishing between the normative context and personal attitudes as well as the different components of ageism is highlighted by the present findings.     

‘No Man is an Island’: Effects of social seclusion on social dream content and REM sleep

Based on the Social Simulation Theory of dreaming (SST), we studied the effects of voluntary social seclusion on dream content and sleep structure. Specifically, we studied the Compensation Hypothesis, which predicts social dream contents to increase during social seclusion, the Sociality Bias – a ratio between dream and wake interactions – and the Strengthening Hypothesis, which predicts an increase in familiar dream characters during seclusion. Additionally, we assessed changes in the proportion of REM sleep. Sleep data and dream reports from 18 participants were collected preceding (n = 94), during (n = 90) and after (n = 119) a seclusion retreat. Data were analysed using linear mixed-effects models. We failed to support the Compensation Hypothesis, with dreams evidencing fewer social interactions during seclusion. The Strengthening Hypothesis was supported, with more familiar characters present in seclusion dreams. Dream social interactions maintained the Sociality Bias even under seclusion. Additionally, REM sleep increased during seclusion, coinciding with previous literature and tentatively supporting the proposed attachment function for social REM sleep.     

Emotional Stroop task: effect of word arousal and subject anxiety on emotional interference

Inconsistent findings regarding the emotional Stroop effect in healthy subjects may be explained by confounding effects of stimulus valence and arousal, as well as individual differences in anxiety. We examined reaction time data in a healthy sample using the emotional Stroop task while carefully matching arousal level of positive and negative words. Independent of valence, emotional relative to neutral words elicited emotional interference, indicating that arousal determines emotional interference. Independent of valence, emotional words were better re-called and recognized than neutral words. Individual differences in state anxiety were associated with emotional interference, that is, emotional interference was enhanced in subjects with high state anxiety. There was no influence of trait anxiety. These findings indicate that word arousal produces emotional interference independent of valence. State anxiety exacerbates interference of emotional words by further biasing attention towards emotionally salient stimuli. Thomas Dresler and Katja Mériau have contributed equally.     

The Neurobiological Underpinnings of Coping With Pain

ABSTRACT— The biopsychosocial model treats pain as resulting from a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. Individual differences in approaches to coping with pain-related symptoms are important determinants of pain-related outcomes, and are often classified under the "psychological" category within the biopsychosocial model. However, engagement in various cognitive, affective, and behavioral pain-coping strategies appears to exert biological effects, which we review here. Pain-coping activities such as catastrophizing, distracting oneself from pain sensations, or reappraisal of pain may exert effects on activity in a variety of pain-processing and pain-modulatory circuits within the brain, as well affect the functioning of neuromuscular, immune, and neuroendocrine systems. The interface between pain-related neurobiology and the use of specific pain-coping techniques represents an important avenue for future pain research.     

A tool for thought! When comparative thinking reduces stereotyping effects

Stereotypes have pervasive, robust, and often unwanted effects on how people see and behave towards others. Undoing these effects has proven to be a daunting task. Two studies demonstrate that procedurally priming participants to engage in comparative thinking with a generalized focus on differences reduces behavioral and judgmental stereotyping effects. In Study 1, participants who were procedurally primed to focus on differences sat closer to a skinhead - a member of a negatively stereotyped group. In Study 2, participants primed on differences ascribed less gender stereotypic characteristics to a male and female target person. This suggests that comparative thinking with a focus on differences may be a simple cognitive tool to reduce the behavioral and judgmental effects of stereotyping.     

The appraisal of facial beauty is rapid but not mandatory

Facial attractiveness is an important source of social affective information. Here, we studied the time course and task dependence of evaluating attractive faces from a viewer’s perspective. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants classified color portraits of unfamiliar persons according to gender and facial attractiveness. During attractiveness classification, enhanced ERP amplitudes for attractive and nonattractive faces relative to faces of intermediate attractiveness were found for an early component around 150 msec and for the late positive complex (LPC). Whereas LPC enhancement conforms to previous studies employing various types of affective stimuli, the finding of an early effect extends earlier research on rapid emotion processing to the dimension of facial attractiveness. Dipole source localization of this early ERP effect revealed a scalp distribution suggesting activation of posterior extrastriate areas. Importantly, attractiveness-related modulations of brain responses were only marginal during the gender decision task, arguing against the automaticity of attractiveness appraisal.