Autonomic conditioning to monetary and social stimuli and aggression in children

Poor conditioning to punishment, such as loud tones or electric shock, has been proposed as an important factor involved in the etiology of aggressive and psychopathic behavior. However, it is not known whether the association holds when monetary or social stimulus is used as the unconditioned stimulus, and if aggressive individuals also have impaired conditioning to rewards. In this study, skin conductance responses in a conditioning task involving both monetary/social reward and punishment as unconditioned stimuli were assessed in 340 male and female 8‐ to 9‐year‐old children from the community. Children reported their reactive and proactive aggression using the Reactive and Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ; Raine et al., 2006). Results showed that monetary/social reward and punishment were effective in eliciting physiological classical conditioning in children, and that reduced reward conditioning was associated with high levels of proactive aggression in particular. Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between reactive and proactive aggression when examining antisocial behavior in children, and suggest that reward‐oriented treatment programs may not be effective for children with more proactive, instrumental aggressive behavior.

     

What makes a meaningful life? Examining the effects of interpersonal harmony,dialectical coping,and nonattachment

Past cross‐cultural research on well‐being has tended to base Eastern construction of well‐being on the interdependent self‐construal, mainly as an offshoot of Confucius relationalism. However, other influential philosophical traditions in East Asian societies (i.e., Taoism and Buddhism) that portray a different picture of well‐being have received scant scholarly attention. We aim to foreground the distinctiveness of three well‐being constructs salient to Chinese culture, namely, interpersonal harmony, dialectical coping, and nonattachment, by providing experimental evidence on their differential effects on perceived meaning in life. Participants were 173 Taiwanese college students. Using priming procedures, participants primed with interpersonal harmony and dialectical coping reported higher levels of meaning in life as compared to those in the nonattachment and neutral control conditions. In addition, comparisons among the three well‐being constructs revealed that although the effects of interpersonal harmony and dialectical coping on meaning in life were similar in strength, they were both significantly stronger than that of nonattachment. The findings attest to the importance of recognizing within‐culture differences when conducting research on well‐being. Results were considered in terms of their methodological and theoretical implications.