Most of the girls are alright, but some aren't: Personality trajectory groups from ages 14 to 24 and some associations with outcomes

Personality traits show normative patterns of development toward maturity during adolescence. Yet individuals follow these normative patterns to differing degrees. This study used growth mixture modeling to characterize personality development patterns and their associations with outcomes in a population-based sample of 1,537 girls aged 14 to 24. The authors used latent class analysis to identify 3 trajectory groups labeled alright (47%), growing up (42%), and trouble (11%). Alright group members were more likely at age 24 to have completed college, remained involved with their families, and obtained good jobs. Trouble group members were more likely to be involved with drugs and alcohol, to display interpersonal problems, and to behave antisocially. Growing up group members fell in between.     

Toward a psychopathology of self-control theory: the importance of narcissistic traits

Research on self-control and related constructs is central to individual-level explanations of antisocial behavior. However, less research attention has been paid to the psychopathological underpinnings of self-control. The current study explores relationships between self-control and psychiatric symptoms, head injury, trauma history, substance use, guiltlessness and narcissistic traits in a statewide population of juvenile offenders. Results support the importance of these variables, in particular narcissistic traits, in better explicating theories of self-control. Implications for research on the psychopathological underpinnings of self-control are highlighted.     

Locating Gunky Water and Wine

Can material objects be weakly located at regions of spacetime and yet fail to be exactly located anywhere? In this paper, I discuss a case which, at least according to one interpretation, answers affirmatively: the case of blending gunky water and wine, in gunky space. Perhaps after such a blend, the water and wine aren't exactly located anywhere while being weakly located at the location of the blend and any region which overlaps it. I show that the case is interesting and complicated, and has consequences for some ideas found in papers by Daniel Nolan and Josh Parsons. 1 1 Many thanks to Kyle Dickey, Peter Fritz, Cody Gilmore, Jeremy Goodman, John Hawthorne, Shieva Kleinschmidt, Anna Marmodoro, Bernard Molyneux, Daniel Nolan, Josh Parsons, Ted Shear, Adam Sennet, Nat Tabris, Andy Yu, Gabriel Uzquiano, Diego Tajer, an anonymous referee at Ratio, and an audience at the University of Oxford for helpful comments and discussion.
     

Affectively Driven Perception: Toward a Non-representational Phenomenology

While classical phenomenology, as represented by Edmund Husserl’s work, resists certain forms of representationalism about perception, I argue that in its theory of horizons, it posits representations in the sense of content-bearing vehicles. As part of a phenomenological theory, this means that on the Husserlian view such representations are part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I believe that, although the intuitions supporting this idea are correct, it is a mistake to maintain that there are such representations defining the phenomenal character of low-level perception. What these representations are called on to explain, i.e., the phenomenal character of perceiving objects in their full presence, can be more parsimoniously explained by appealing to certain affective states or affect schemas that shape the intentional directedness of low-level perceptual experience and define its phenomenal character in a non-representational way. This revision of the Husserlian view, it is shown, also helps us understand the normative character of perception.     

Influence of Culture on Ethical Decision Making in Psychology

This study focused on the influence of American and Chinese cultures on consequentialism orientation in decision-making within the broader context of psychologists’ academic roles and responsibilities. In addition, this study hypothesized that educational level would affect culturally influenced ethical decision making in both cultures. Based on the American Psychological Association Ethics Code, 20 ethical scenarios in 5 domains in psychology were created and used to examine the influence of culturally ethical beliefs on psychologists’ decision making among 181 participants. The results indicated that significant cultural differences in consequentialism orientation differentiated Chinese and American participants and influenced their resolution of ethical issues.     

Does the courage measure really measure courage? A theoretical and empirical evaluation

Courage has seen an explosion of research in all branches of psychology, and the most popular measure is Norton and Weiss’s the courage measure (CM). Despite widespread use, limited investigations into its psychometric properties and validity have been performed. To ensure the strength of findings drawn from the scale, the current study performs a theoretical, psychometric, and empirical analysis of the CM. The results demonstrate that the CM has theoretical concerns stemming from the operational definition of courage used during its creation, and may not actually measure courage. Also, the CM was shown to consist of two dimensions separated by regular and reverse coding. Next, the scale demonstrated slight concerns with method effects, and its construct validity was analyzed. Together, the results demonstrate that the CM would benefit from the removal of reverse coded items, and may actually gage persistence despite fear rather than courage.     

Precipitating Circumstances of Suicide among Active Duty U.S. Army Personnel Versus U.S. Civilians, 2005–2010

To help understand suicide among soldiers, we compared suicide events between active duty U.S. Army versus civilian decedents to identify differences and inform military prevention efforts. We linked 141 Army suicide records from 2005 to 2010 to National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) data. We described the decedents’ military background and compared their precipitators of death captured in NVDRS to those of demographically matched civilian suicide decedents. Both groups commonly had mental health and intimate partner precipitating circumstances, but soldier decedents less commonly disclosed suicide intent.     

I Think,Therefore I Persist

Suppose that you're lying in bed. You just woke up. But you're alert. Your mind is clear and you have no distractions. As you lie there, you think to yourself, ‘2?+?2 = 4.’ The thought just pops into your head. But, wanting to be sure of your mathematical insight, you once again think ‘2?+?2 = 4’, this time really meditating on your thought. Now suppose that you're sitting in an empty movie theatre. The lighting is normal and the screen in front of you is blank. Then at some point an image of a peach is flashed on the screen. The image isn't up there for long. In fact, it's only on the screen for what seems like an instant—just long enough for you to see it. These two scenarios are a bit mundane. But, as I will show, reflection on them can yield significant results concerning the nature of persons and their persistence through time. First I will show that thought and perception have temporal constraints whereby your thinking or perceiving in the above scenarios implies that you exist through a temporally extended interval. Then I will argue that this allows us to rule out several prominent theories of personal identity.     

Trait anxiety and attenuated negative affect differentiation: a vulnerability factor to consider?

Background and Objectives: Describing emotional experiences using distinct terms, or affect differentiation, has been associated with emotion regulation and adaptive behavior under stress. There is little data, however, examining the association between differentiation and dispositional factors underlying psychopathology. The current study examines the association between differentiation and trait anxiety (TA) given prior evidence of cognitive biases in TA relevant to higher order processing of emotional experiences.

Design: We examined cross-sectionally, via lab-based repeated assessment, the association between differentiation of negative and positive experiences and TA.

Methods: Two hundred twenty-two adults completed an emotion reactivity task including repeated assessments of affect. We hypothesized that individuals higher in trait anxiety (HTA) would have greater difficulty differentiating their experiences.

Results: HTA individuals exhibited lower levels of negative affect (NA) differentiation even when controlling for depression. Although negative emotion intensity was consistently associated with lower differentiation, this did not account for the influence of HTA on differentiation.

Conclusions: These data suggest that HTA individuals have greater difficulty differentiating negative emotions, regardless of negative emotion intensity and depression. As HTA is common to many emotional disorders; this evidence suggests that poor differentiation may also be an important transdiagnostic consideration in models of risk and of affective disease.