Finding the Loch Ness Monster: Left‐Wing Authoritarianism in the United States

Although past research suggests authoritarianism may be a uniquely right‐wing phenomenon, the present two studies tested the hypothesis that authoritarianism exists in both right‐wing and left‐wing contexts in essentially equal degrees. Across two studies, university (n = 475) and Mechanical Turk (n = 298) participants completed either the RWA (right‐wing authoritarianism) scale or a newly developed (and parallel) LWA (left‐wing authoritarianism) scale. Participants further completed measurements of ideology and three domain‐specific scales: prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. Findings from both studies lend support to an authoritarianism symmetry hypothesis: Significant positive correlations emerged between LWA and measurements of liberalism, prejudice, dogmatism, and attitude strength. These results largely paralleled those correlating RWA with identical conservative‐focused measurements, and an overall effect‐size measurement showed LWA was similarly related to those constructs (compared to RWA) in both Study 1 and Study 2. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that LWA may be a viable construct in ordinary U.S. samples.     

Promoting an Empathic Dialectic for Therapeutic Change: An Integrative Review

This integrative review is focused on a formulation of therapeutic empathy. We describe the “empathic dialectic” as therapists’ capacity to emotionally resonate with patients’ internal states, such as during ruptures, and to coregulate their own and the patients’ states through mentalization. The first aim was to provide a theoretical framework for the empathic dialectic, by summarizing background literature on the empathic process, intersubjectivity, rupture repair, relational psychoanalysis, and attachment. The second aim was to conduct an integrative review of peer-reviewed articles published between the years of 2016 and 2021. After conducting a review of 28 articles, we sought to identify (1) research that supports the existence of an empathic dialectic, (2) evidence that therapists’ attachment influences the empathic dialectic, and (3) implications of the empathic dialectic for training and supervision. Results pointed to the central role of therapists’ attachment security in the empathic dialectic, and the negative repercussions of therapists’ insecurity when mentalization is underdeveloped. Results also highlighted the role of supervision as a means of enhancing trainees’ self-awareness of their attachment, and its impact on the alliance. As the American Psychological Association embraces a clinical competencies model in its accreditation of clinical psychology doctoral programs, the importance of attaining an integrative understanding of therapeutic empathy has become increasingly imperative. To this end, we conclude by promoting the empathic dialectic as a key clinical competency, and providing further recommendations for training and supervision.

     

African Immigrant Parents’ Perspectives on the Factors Influencing Their Children’s Mental Health

Journal of Child and Family Studies - African immigrant children experience some of the poorest mental health outcomes in Canada, yet limited research has systematically mental health determinants...     

Assessment of apathy in neurological patients using the Apathy Motivation Index caregiver version

Apathy is a common, disabling neuropsychiatric syndrome that occurs across many brain disorders and may be associated with diminished motivation in behavioural, cognitive, emotional and social domains. Assessment is complicated by the variability of symptoms across apathy domains and self-report from patients, which can be misleading due to their lack of insight. Independent evaluation by clinicians also has limitations though if it has to be performed with limited time. Caregiver reports are a viable alternative, but current assessments for them either do not distinguish between different apathy domains or are interview-based and take long to administer. In this study, we developed a brief caregiver questionnaire version of the recently developed Apathy Motivation Index (AMI), which is a self-report tool. We confirmed three apathy factors in this new caregiver measure (AMI-CG) that were also present in the AMI: Behavioural Activation, Emotional Sensitivity and Social Motivation. Furthermore, we validated the scores against more extensive caregiver interviews using the established Lillle apathy rating scale as well as patient self-reports of apathy, measures of depression, anhedonia, cognition, activities of daily living and caregiver burden across four different neurological conditions: Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, subjective cognitive impairment and limbic encephalitis. The AMI-CG showed good internal reliability, external validity and diagnostic accuracy. It also uncovered cases of social apathy overlooked by traditional instruments. Crucially, patients who under-rated their apathy compared to informants were more likely to have difficulties performing everyday activities and to be a greater burden to caregivers. The findings provide evidence for a multidimensional conceptualization of apathy and an instrument for efficient detection of apathy based on caregiver reports for use in clinical practice.     

Unstable high self-esteem and the eliciting conditions of self-doubt

Previous research has implicated the role of easily activated self-doubt in unstable high self-esteem (HSE). The current study sought to further elucidate the eliciting conditions of such self-doubt by assessing cardiovascular responses that are sensitive to self-doubt. Participants heard that an upcoming test of reasoning ability could only identify either exceptionally high or especially low ability, and then completed either a difficult or easy version of the test while cardiovascular markers of challenge/threat were measured. As hypothesized, individuals with unstable HSE exhibited cardiovascular responses consistent with greater self-doubt (threat) than others, but only during a difficult test that was diagnostic of exceptionally high ability. This suggests that people with unstable HSE do not experience a high level of self-doubt whenever they are faced with a test of themselves, but instead only when there is a high risk of confirming a lack of exceptional ability. This has important implications for further understanding the nature and underlying mechanisms of unstable HSE.     

Resilience in the face of romantic rejection: The automatic impulse to trust

Can heeding the automatic impulse to trust one's romantic partner increase physical and psychological resilience in the face of doubts about a partner's responsiveness? Experimental participants were led to believe that their partner perceived a long list of faults in them. All participants then gave a speech about their future career goals while their partner watched. The results revealed impulsive trust (i.e., evaluative associations to the partner on the Implicit Associations Test) increased resilience to partner-criticism for people who heed their automatic impulses (i.e., low in working memory capacity). Specifically, for people low in working memory capacity and high in impulsive trust, partner-criticism increased resilience relative to control participants (i.e., expecting a more approving partner reaction to their speech, cardiovascular reactivity consistent with a positive challenge response). In contrast, for people low in working memory capacity and low in impulsive trust, partner-criticism decreased resilience relative to control participants (i.e., expecting a more disapproving partner reaction, cardiovascular reactivity consistent with a negative threat response).     

Why group apologies succeed and fail: intergroup forgiveness and the role of primary and secondary emotions

It is widely assumed that official apologies for historical transgressions can lay the groundwork for intergroup forgiveness, but evidence for a causal relationship between intergroup apologies and forgiveness is limited. Drawing on the infrahumanization literature, we argue that a possible reason for the muted effectiveness of apologies is that people diminish the extent to which they see outgroup members as able to experience complex, uniquely human emotions (e.g., remorse). In Study 1, Canadians forgave Afghanis for a friendly-fire incident to the extent that they perceived Afghanis as capable of experiencing uniquely human emotions (i.e., secondary emotions such as anguish) but not nonuniquely human emotions (i.e., primary emotions such as fear). Intergroup forgiveness was reduced when transgressor groups expressed secondary emotions rather than primary emotions in their apology (Studies 2a and 2b), an effect that was mediated by trust in the genuineness of the apology (Study 2b). Indeed, an apology expressing secondary emotions aroused no more forgiveness than a no-apology control (Study 3) and less forgiveness than an apology with no emotion (Study 4). Consistent with an infrahumanization perspective, effects of primary versus secondary emotional expression did not emerge when the apology was offered for an ingroup transgression (Study 3) or when an outgroup apology was delivered through an ingroup proxy (Study 4). Also consistent with predictions, these effects were demonstrated only by those who tended to deny uniquely human qualities to the outgroup (Study 5). Implications for intergroup apologies and movement toward reconciliation are discussed.     

Unimanual and bimanual continuous movements benefit from visual instructions in persons with down syndrome

ABSTRACT The authors' aim was to understand how persons with Down syndrome (DS) perform different tasks and to assess if there were any differences in performance based on the type of instructions. This is important because of neurological differences in persons with DS and neurological demands for performing different types of tasks. Twenty right-handed participants with DS, 20 chronological age-matched (CA), and 20 mental age-matched (MA) performed unimanual, bimanual, discrete, and continuous drumming following visual, auditory, and verbal instructions. Overall, discrete drumming was performed with shorter movement times than continuous drumming and unimanual drumming was performed with shorter movement amplitude than bimanual drumming. With respect to instructions, persons with DS performed with smaller amplitudes, thus more efficient movements, following the visual instructions than auditory and verbal instructions for all types of tasks, whereas CA performed similarly with all instructions and MA performed with smaller amplitudes with visual instructions than auditory instructions. These results suggest that visual instruction provides the best information for people with DS to aid in performance of many different types of movements.     

The effect of gender on the N1-P2 auditory complex while listening and speaking with altered auditory feedback

The effect of gender on the N1-P2 auditory complex was examined while listening and speaking with altered auditory feedback. Fifteen normal hearing adult males and 15 females participated. N1-P2 components were evoked while listening to self-produced nonaltered and frequency shifted /a/ tokens and during production of /a/ tokens during nonaltered auditory feedback (NAF), frequency altered feedback (FAF), and delayed auditory feedback (DAF; 50 and 200 ms). During speech production, females exhibited earlier N1 latencies during 50 ms DAF and earlier P2 latencies during 50 ms DAF and FAF. There were no significant differences in N1-P2 amplitudes across all conditions. Comparing listening to active speaking, N1 and P2 latencies were earlier among females, with speaking, and under NAF. N1-P2 amplitudes were significantly reduced during speech production. These findings are consistent with the notions that speech production suppresses auditory cortex responsiveness and males and females process altered auditory feedback differently while speaking.     

Sex differences for the recognition of direct versus averted gaze faces

Gaze direction plays a central role in face recognition. Previous research suggests that faces with direct gaze are better remembered than faces with averted gaze. We compared recognition of faces with direct versus averted gaze in male versus female participants. A total of 52 adults (23 females, 29 males) and 46 children (25 females, 21 males) completed a computerised task that assessed their recognition of faces with direct gaze and faces with averted gaze. Adult male participants showed superior recognition of faces with direct gaze compared to faces with averted gaze. There was no difference between recognition of direct and averted gaze faces for the adult female participants. Children did not demonstrate this sex difference; rather, both male and female youth participants showed better recognition of faces with direct gaze compared to averted gaze. A large body of previous research has revealed superior recognition of faces with direct, compared to averted gaze. However, relatively few studies have examined sex differences. Our findings suggest that gaze direction has differential effects on face recognition for adult males and females, but not for children. These findings have implications for previous explanations of better recognition for direct versus averted gaze.