The impact of egg incubation temperature on the personality of oviparous reptiles

Personality traits, defined as differences in the behavior of individual animals of the same species that are consistent over time and context, such as ‘boldness,’ have been shown to be both heritable and be influenced by external factors, such as predation pressure. Currently, we know very little about the role that early environmental factors have upon personality. Thus, we investigated the impact of incubation temperature upon the boldness on an oviparous reptile, the bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps). Eggs, from one clutch, were incubated at two different average temperatures within the normal range. After hatching the lizards were raised under the same environmental conditions. Novel object and novel environment tests were used to assess personality. Each test was repeated in both the short term and the long term. The results revealed that incubation temperature did impact upon ‘boldness’ but only in the short term and suggests that, rather than influencing personality, incubation temperature may have an effect on the development of behavioral of oviparous reptiles at different stages across ontogeny.     

Intrapersonal curiosity: Inquisitiveness about the inner self

Intrapersonal Curiosity (InC) involves inquisitively introspecting to better understand one’s inner self. A pool of 39 face-valid InC items was administered to 1005 participants, along with other curiosity, personality, self-awareness, self-regulation, and psychological well-being scales. Three InC factors with good model fit were identified, from which four-item (α ≥ .89) subscales were developed: “Understanding one’s Emotions and Motives,” “Reflecting On one’s Past,” and “Exploring one’s Identity and Purpose.” InC correlated positively with other measures of curiosity, evidencing convergence; weak correlations to conceptually unrelated constructs demonstrated divergence. Higher InC scores corresponded to perceptions of having less available self-knowledge, heightened sensitivity to others’ expressions, a greater tendency to privately introspect, increased distress, and more concern about how to best cope with worry over self-relevant threats.     

Don't hide your happiness! Positive emotion dissociation, social connectedness, and psychological functioning

It is now clear that positive emotion leads to enhanced psychological functioning. What is less clear, however, is just why this is so. Drawing on a social-functional perspective, we argue that positive emotional behavior that accurately signals to others the individual's internal state will enhance social connectedness. Positive emotional behavior that does not accurately signal a person's experience--such as a smile that is not felt--may impede social connectedness and, in turn, psychological functioning. This perspective suggests that (a) the degree to which experience and behavior are dissociated during positive emotional episodes, over and above level of positive behavior, should predict worse psychological functioning and (b) the effect of dissociation should be mediated by social connectedness. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a short-term prospective longitudinal study, with a baseline assessment of depressive symptoms and well-being at Time 1. Six months later, at Time 2, we used a novel within-individual laboratory paradigm to measure the degree to which positive emotional behavior was dissociated from (vs. coherent with) a participant's positive emotional experience. We also assessed level of positive behavior and experience. Then, another 6 months later, we assessed social connectedness as a mediator and depressive symptoms and well-being as outcomes at Time 3. Even when controlling for baseline functioning and for level of positive emotion behavior and experience, we found that greater positive experience-behavior dissociation at Time 2 predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower levels of well-being at Time 3. As predicted, these associations were mediated by social connectedness.     

Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample

Hypotheses about mean-level age differences in the Big Five personality domains, as well as 10 more specific facet traits within those domains, were tested in a very large cross-sectional sample (N = 1,267,218) of children, adolescents, and adults (ages 10-65) assessed over the World Wide Web. The results supported several conclusions. First, late childhood and adolescence were key periods. Across these years, age trends for some traits (a) were especially pronounced, (b) were in a direction different from the corresponding adult trends, or (c) first indicated the presence of gender differences. Second, there were some negative trends in psychosocial maturity from late childhood into adolescence, whereas adult trends were overwhelmingly in the direction of greater maturity and adjustment. Third, the related but distinguishable facet traits within each broad Big Five domain often showed distinct age trends, highlighting the importance of facet-level research for understanding life span age differences in personality.     

Resisting the temptation to compete: Self-control promotes cooperation in mixed-motive interactions

This article provides a self-control analysis of mixed-motive interactions, including 2-person social dilemmas and bargaining encounters. We propose that mixed-motive interactions pose a self-control conflict between pursuing immediate benefits through competition and pursuing long-term benefits through cooperation. As such, anticipating high (vs. low) barriers to successful outcomes triggers counteractive self-control operations that increase cooperation, so long as people believe that by doing so they can influence others to reciprocate.     

Religiosity and HIV risk behaviors in African-American students

The participants were 256 African-American students between the ages of 18 and 25, from two historically Black universities. The purpose of this study was to see how dimensions of religiosity and spirituality influenced the HIV risk behavior in African-American college students. Each participant completed the Expressions of Spirituality Inventory (ESI) and a survey of sexual attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The data were analyzed using a series of ANOVAs, t tests, and correlations. The results from the study confirmed that there was a relationship between religiosity/spirituality and one's tendency to engage in HIV risk behaviors in the population of African-American college students. Interestingly, this study was able to reveal that traditional indicators of religiosity, such as association and church attendance, were not predictors of any of the risky sexual behaviors or attitudes. The portions of religiosity with the greatest impact on these behaviors were the Experiential/Phenomenological, the Existential Well-being, and the Cognitive dimensions, with high scores on each indicative of less likelihood of engaging in risky sexual behaviors.     

Affective bias in complex decision making: Modulating sensitivity to aversive feedback

The present study investigated the conflict between well-developed attitudes and incentive rewards using the Iowa Gambling Task. In particular, the incorporation of emotional labels allowed us to model the role of affective biases and their impact on complex decision making over time. Two experiments manipulated the class of deck label (emotional pictures and racial faces) using both congruent and incongruent association to the deck incentives. Both experiments demonstrated that an incongruent association can lead to striking and persistent decision making biases. Thus, a common theme was a general inability to tolerate conflict between rewards and goal-irrelevant labels. Notably, Experiment 2 demonstrated that this ‘incongruency’ effect appeared to result from positive labels interfering with aversive experiences from bad decks. More generally, sensitivity to accumulating losses from punishing decks was primarily associated with successful performance on these Gambling Task variants. These results suggest emotional biases are readily harmful in complex decision making, and that flexibility in the extent to which we permit emotional influences to guide our decisions is crucial.     

Perception as interacting psychophysical functions. Could the configuring of features replace a specialised receptor?

This paper illustrates how perception is achieved through interactions among the psychophysical functions of judged features of an object. The theory is that the perceiver places processed features in a multidimensional space of discriminal processes. Each dimension is scaled in units of discrimination performance. The zero coordinate of each feature is its level in an internal standard (norm) established by previous experience of that category of object in context. Experiments are reported which show that one, two, or three concurrent single-featured objects matched the multiple features of another object in two ways. Either stimulation from the two objects had discrimination distances from norm that added, or the stimulation by one object was processed through a concept describing stimulation by the other object. It follows that, in this case, perception via a receptor for the multi-featured object can be replaced by a point of balance among receptors for each single feature. The object with its own receptor is the gustatory stimulant L-glutamic acid as its monosodium salt. The features that stimulate diverse gustatory receptors of their own are sodium chloride, citric acid, sucrose, and caffeine. A more complex approach to dimensional coding was developed earlier for photoreceptors in colour judgments. The present approach is modality independent, mathematically simple, and economical in experimental data.     

On the specificity of face cognition compared with general cognitive functioning across adult age

Face cognition is considered a specific human ability, clearly differentiable from general cognitive functioning. Its specificity is primarily supported by cognitive-experimental and neuroimaging research, but recently also from an individual differences perspective. However, no comprehensive behavioral data are available, which would allow estimating lifespan changes of the covariance structure of face-cognition abilities and general cognitive functioning as well as age-differences in face cognition after accounting for interindividual variability in general cognition. The present study aimed to fill this gap. In an age-heterogeneous (18-82 years) sample of 448 adults, we found no factorial dedifferentiation between face cognition and general cognition. Age-related differences in face memory were still salient after taking into account changes in general cognitive functioning. Face cognition thus remains a specific human ability compared with general cognition, even until old age. We discuss implications for models of cognitive aging and suggest that it is necessary to include more explicitly special social abilities in those models.     

Emotion regulation strategy selection in daily life: The role of social context and goals

Recent studies have begun to document the diversity of ways people regulate their emotions. However, one unanswered question is why people regulate their emotions as they do in everyday life. In the present research, we examined how social context and goals influence strategy selection in daily high points and low points. As expected, suppression was particularly tied to social features of context: it was used more when others were present, especially non-close partners, and when people had instrumental goals, especially more interpersonal ones (e.g., avoid conflict). Distraction and reappraisal were used more when regulating for hedonic reasons (e.g., to feel better), but these strategies were also linked to certain instrumental goals (e.g., getting work done). When contra-hedonic regulation occurred, it primarily took the form of dampening positive emotion during high points. Suppression was more likely to be used for contra-hedonic regulation, whereas reappraisal and distraction were used more for pro-hedonic regulation. Overall, these findings highlight the social nature of emotion regulation and underscore the importance of examining regulation in both positive and negative contexts.