Impulsive choice and altruistic punishment are correlated and increase in tandem with serotonin depletion

Human cooperation may partly depend on the presence of individuals willing to incur personal costs to punish noncooperators. The psychological factors that motivate such 'altruistic punishment' are not fully understood; some have argued that altruistic punishment is a deliberate act of norm enforcement that requires self-control, while others claim that it is an impulsive act driven primarily by emotion. In the current study, we addressed this question by examining the relationship between impulsive choice and altruistic punishment in the ultimatum game. As the neurotransmitter serotonin has been implicated in both impulsive choice and altruistic punishment, we investigated the effects of manipulating serotonin on both measures. Across individuals, impulsive choice and altruistic punishment were correlated and increased following serotonin depletion. These findings imply that altruistic punishment reflects the absence rather than the presence of self control, and suggest that impulsive choice and altruistic punishment share common neural mechanisms.     

BIS,BAS, and response conflict: Testing predictions of the revised reinforcement sensitivity theory

Gray’s (1970) reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) was recently updated (Gray & McNaughton, 2000), but the changes have not received extensive empirical validation. The study tests three novel predictions of the revised RST. First, the behavioral activation system (BAS) is expected to be sensitive to both conditioned and unconditioned incentives. Second, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) is expected to be sensitive to conflicting incentives such as between unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, and not to avoidance responses or aversive stimuli alone. Third, during approach-avoidance conflicts only, BAS is expected to moderate BIS responses to conflict such that individuals with high BAS show the strongest effect of BIS. In order to test these hypotheses, we developed a novel incentive task that crosses approach/avoidance conditioned responses to appetitive/aversive unconditioned stimuli. Conflict between unconditioned and conditioned stimuli occurred on the approach-aversive and avoid-appetitive trials. Results confirm the predictions and provide support for the revised RST.     

Anorexia nervosa: the tyranny of appearances

This paper explores the possibility that many families of anorexics are overly preoccupied with appearances, valuing what other people think of them more than healthier families do, and that this influences the origin and maintenance of anorexia. This‘rule’is simple and should be open to testing more widely through research.     

In Memoriam

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Group properties and outcomes: a study of group norms in self-help groups for widows and widowers

Despite the nearly universally shared agreement among group therapists about the importance of group norms, empirical studies have rarely demonstrated a positive relationship between specific norms in psychotherapy groups and patient benefit. The study explored this relationship by examining the linkages between norms, a specific therapeutic process, and patient outcome. Examined were seventy-two spousal bereavement groups. Subjects' responses to a thirty-one item behavioral inventory were used to define norms; outcomes were based upon Time 1/Time 2 differences on a series of eleven measures indexing depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, abuse of psychotropic medication, coping mastery, well-being, self-esteem, target problem rating, several measures of role stress and strain, and stigma. The findings suggest that normative characteristics were linked to a process, reciprocal social exchange, that influences positive outcomes. The results are preliminary, since they only serve to demonstrate such a relationship can exist.     

Attributional inference across cultures: similar automatic attributions and different controlled corrections

Five studies examined the automatic and controlled components of attributional inference in U.S. and East Asian (EA) samples. Studies 1 through 3 used variations of the "anxious woman" paradigm, manipulating the inferential goal (dispositional or situational) and the normative impact of situational constraint information (discounting or augmenting). In each study, U.S. and EA participants under cognitive load produced strong automatic attributions to the focus of their inferential goal (dispositional or situational). Compared with the U.S. cognitive load participants, U.S. no load participants corrected their attributions according to the normative rules of inference. In contrast, EA no load participants corrected in the direction of situational causality, even when the specific content of the situational information provided should have promoted stronger dispositional inferences. Studies 4 and 5 examined and ruled out alternative accounts. Results are discussed in terms of a situational causality heuristic present in EA individuals.