Threatened by the unexpected: physiological responses during social interactions with expectancy-violating partners

Individuals who violate expectations increase uncertainty during social interactions. Three experiments explored whether expectancy-violating partners engender "threat" responses in perceivers. Participants interacted with confederates who violated or confirmed expectations while multiple measures were assessed, including cardiovascular reactivity, task performance, appraisals, and behavior. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants interacted with White or Latino confederates who described their family backgrounds as either high or low socioeconomic status. In Experiment 3, participants interacted with Asian or White confederates who spoke with expected accents or southern accents. Participants interacting with expectancy-violating partners (e.g., Asians with southern accents) exhibited cardiovascular responses consistent with threat, poorer task performance, and manifested negative and defeat-related behavior. Implications for decreasing prejudicial responses via uncertainty reduction are discussed.     

Associations between childhood adversity and daily suppression and avoidance in response to stress in adulthood: can neurobiological sensitivity help explain this relationship?

Background and objectives: Although it has been postulated that psychological responses to stress in adulthood are grounded in childhood experiences in the family environment, evidence has been inconsistent. This study tested whether two putative measures of neurobiological sensitivity (vagal flexibility and attentional capacity) moderated the relation between women’s reported exposure to a risky childhood environment and current engagement in suppressive or avoidant coping in response to daily stress.

Design and methods: Adult women (N?=?158) recruited for a study of stress, coping, and aging reported on early adversity (EA) in their childhood family environment and completed a week-long daily diary in which they described their most stressful event of the day and indicated the degree to which they used suppression or avoidance in response to that event. In addition, women completed a visual tracking task during which heart rate variability and attentional capacity were assessed.

Results: Multilevel mixed modeling analyses revealed that greater EA predicted greater suppression and avoidance only among women with higher attentional capacity. Similarly, greater EA predicted greater use of suppression, but only among women with greater vagal flexibility.

Conclusion: Childhood adversity may predispose individuals with high neurobiological sensitivity to a lifetime of maladaptive coping.     

The dark side of creativity: biological vulnerability and negative emotions lead to greater artistic creativity

Historical and empirical data have linked artistic creativity to depression and other affective disorders. This study examined how vulnerability to experiencing negative affect, measured with biological products, and intense negative emotions influenced artistic creativity. The authors assessed participants' baseline levels of an adrenal steroid (dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate, or DHEAS), previously linked to depression, as a measure of affective vulnerability. They then manipulated emotional responses by randomly assigning participants to receive social rejection or social approval or to a nonsocial situation. Participants then completed artistic collages, which were later evaluated by artists. Results confirmed a person-by-situation interaction. Social rejection was associated with greater artistic creativity; however, the interaction between affective vulnerability (lower baseline DHEAS) and condition was significant, suggesting that situational triggers of negative affect were especially influential among those lower in DHEAS, which resulted in the most creative products. These data provide evidence of possible biological and social pathways to artistic creativity.     

A Bayesian-Network Approach to Lexical Disambiguation

Lexical ambiguity can be syntactic if it involves more than one grammatical category for a single word, or semantic if more than one meaning can be associated with a word. In this article we discuss the application of a Bayesian-network model in the resolution of lexical ambiguities of both types. The network we propose comprises a parsing subnetwork, which can be constructed automatically for any context-free grammar, and a subnetwork for semantic analysis, which, in the spirit of Fillmore's (1968) case grammars, seeks to fulfill the required cases of all candidates for verb of the sentence. Solving for the highest joint probability of the variables conditioned upon the evidences to the network yields the most likely candidate with its meaning, along with its cases and respective meanings. This is achieved by fixing the values of all evidence nodes concurrently, and then performing a stochastic simulation in which the remaining nodes are updated probabilistically with a high degree of parallelism. The process of disambiguation is directed neither by the syntax nor the semantics, but rather by the interrelation between the two subnetworks. The use of a Bayesian-network model allows us to express this interrelation between the two subnetworks and among their constituents in a rather direct and rigorous way that, in connection with the convergence properties of the stochastic simulation, reveals a very robust model.     

Multifamily interventions in the context of inherited genetic conditions: A scoping review

This scoping review sought to examine the existing literature on multifamily interventions with families dealing with inherited genetic conditions. It also seeks to identify gaps in the evidence to help guide future research and intervention development. Four databases (PubMed, Web of Sciences, Scopus and PsycInfo) were systematically searched and analysed, resulting in five publications for inclusion. The main findings evidence two main themes: characteristics of multifamily interventions, and evaluation of the intervention and impact on participants. These findings suggest that multifamily interventions can provide families with extended support beyond the care usually offered by genetic healthcare services and contribute to enhancing positive change in key aspects of adaptation and coping with an inherited genetic conditions. Multifamily discussion groups are a methodology that is particularly suitable when working with families in this context. Collaboration between genetic healthcare services and accredited systemic family therapists is required to sustain the implementation of multifamily discussion groups and their feasibility. Research on the effectiveness, feasibility and economic viability of multifamily interventions is also needed.     

Backlash for high self-promotion at hiring depends on candidates' gender and age

Previous research has shown that evaluators react negatively to intense, high levels of self-promotion during the interview, in particular when displayed by female candidates, presumably because these behaviors violate the female gender stereotype of being modest and putting others first. We expand this focus on a single social category and examine the joint effects of gender and age on reactions to high self-promotion/low modesty, as both gender and age stereotypes contain normative expectations regarding assertiveness and humility. Results of our experimental study point out two groups at risk of backlash, older women and younger men. While both older female and younger male candidates engaging in high self-promotion were seen as competent, they were regarded as less interpersonally warm, received lower interview performance ratings, and were less likely to be hired. These results provide evidence for the importance of applying an intersectional lens on the effects of self-promotion at hiring. Their implications for theory and practice as well as recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Big tales and cool heads: academic exaggeration is related to cardiac vagal reactivity

Students who exaggerate their current grade point averages (GPAs) report positive emotional and motivational orientations toward academics (Gramzow & Willard, 2006; Willard & Gramzow, 2007). It is conceivable, however, that these self-reports mask underlying anxieties. The current study examined cardiovascular reactivity during an academic interview in order to determine whether exaggerators respond with a pattern suggestive of anxiety or, alternatively, equanimity. Sixty-two undergraduates were interviewed about their academic performance. Participants evidenced increased sympathetic activation (indexed with preejection period) during the interview, suggesting active task engagement. Academic exaggeration predicted parasympathetic coactivation (increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia). Observer ratings indicated that academic exaggeration was coordinated with a composed demeanor during the interview. Together, these patterns suggest that academic exaggeration is associated with emotional equanimity, rather than anxiety. The capacity for adaptive emotion regulation--to keep a cool head when focusing on academic performance--offers one explanation for why exaggerators also tend to improve academically. These findings have implications for the broader literature on self-evaluation, emotion, and cardiovascular reactivity.     

Ape metaphysics: object individuation without language

Developmental research suggests that whereas very young infants individuate objects purely on spatiotemporal grounds, from (at latest) around 1 year of age children are capable of individuating objects according to the kind they belong to and the properties they instantiate. As the latter ability has been found to correlate with language, some have speculated whether it might be essentially language dependent and therefore uniquely human. Existing studies with non-human primates seem to speak against this hypothesis, but fail to present conclusive evidence due to methodological shortcomings. In the present experiments we set out to test non-linguistic object individuation in three great ape species with a refined manual search methodology. Experiment 1 tested for spatiotemporal object individuation: Subjects saw 1 or 2 objects simultaneously being placed inside a box in which they could reach, and then in both conditions only found 1 object. After retrieval of the 1 object, subjects reached again significantly more often when they had seen 2 than when they had seen 1 object. Experiment 2 tested for object individuation according to property/kind information only: Subjects saw 1 object being placed inside the box, and then either found that object (expected) or an object of a different kind (unexpected). Analogously to Experiment 1, after retrieval of the 1 object, subjects reached again significantly more often in the unexpected than in the expected condition. These results thus confirm previous findings suggesting that individuating objects according to their property/kind is neither uniquely human nor essentially language dependent. It remains to be seen, however, whether this kind of object individuation requires sortal concepts as human linguistic thinkers use them, or whether some simpler form of tracking properties is sufficient.     

How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional responses to social rejection and acceptance

The authors examined White and Black participants' emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to same-race or different-race evaluators, following rejecting social feedback or accepting social feedback. As expected, in ingroup interactions, the authors observed deleterious responses to social rejection and benign responses to social acceptance. Deleterious responses included cardiovascular (CV) reactivity consistent with threat states and poorer performance, whereas benign responses included CV reactivity consistent with challenge states and better performance. In intergroup interactions, however, a more complex pattern of responses emerged. Social rejection from different-race evaluators engendered more anger and activational responses, regardless of participants' race. In contrast, social acceptance produced an asymmetrical race pattern--White participants responded more positively than did Black participants. The latter appeared vigilant and exhibited threat responses. Discussion centers on implications for attributional ambiguity theory and potential pathways from discrimination to health outcomes.     

From "in the air" to "under the skin": cortisol responses to social identity threat

The authors examined women's neuroendocrine stress responses associated with sexism. They predicted that, when being evaluated by a man, women who chronically perceive more sexism would experience more stress unless the situation contained overt cues that sexism would not occur. The authors measured stress as the end product of the primary stress system linked to social evaluative threat-the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal cortical axis. In Study 1, female participants were rejected by a male confederate in favor of another male for sexist reasons or in favor of another female for merit-based reasons. In Study 2, female participants interacted with a male confederate who they learned held sexist attitudes or whose attitudes were unknown. Participants with higher chronic perceptions of sexism had higher cortisol, unless the situation contained cues that sexism was not possible. These results illustrate the powerful interactive effects of chronic perceptions of sexism and situational cues on women's stress reactivity.