Perceived threat of infectious disease and its implications for sexual attitudes

A study (n = 411) investigated the relationship between chronic individual differences in germ aversion and sociosexual attitudes (short-term mating orientation, long-term mating orientation, and anticipated future sexual promiscuity), and also tested whether the magnitudes of these relations differ depending on the temporary perceptual salience of disease threat. Results revealed person-by-situation interactions. When the threat of disease was temporarily salient, germ aversion correlated negatively with short-term mating orientation and with future sexual promiscuity, and correlated positively with long-term mating orientation; these effects were either weaker or nonexistent under control conditions. These effects emerged most clearly among women.     

Gender differences in implicit and explicit personality traits

This article investigates gender differences in implicit and explicit measures of the Big Five traits of personality. In a high-powered study (N = 14,348), we replicated previous research showing that women report higher levels of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Neuroticism. For implicit measures, gender differences were much smaller for all, and opposite in sign for Extraversion. Somewhat higher levels of implicit Neuroticism and Agreeableness were observed in women, and somewhat higher levels of implicit Extraversion and Openness were observed in men. There was no gender difference in implicit Conscientiousness. A possible explanation is that explicit self-concepts partly reflect social norms and self-expectations about gender roles, while implicit self-concepts may mostly reflect self-related experiences.     

A preliminary investigation of sex differences in associations between emotion regulation difficulties and higher-order cognitive abilities

The present study sought to clarify the cognitive correlates of emotion regulation difficulties (ERD). Further, because prior evidence suggests sex differences in emotion regulation, sex was examined as a moderator of associations between cognitive abilities and ERD. Participants (N = 154) completed self-report measures of ERD, and were administered neuropsychological tests assessing crystallized and fluid intelligence, as well as various components of executive functioning. Bivariate correlations and results from regression analyses suggested sex-dependent associations among cognitive processes and ERD. For men, inhibition of dominant response tendencies was associated with lower ERD, whereas for women, a host of executive abilities (e.g., greater inhibition, cognitive flexibility, semantic processing, abstract reasoning) were associated with greater ERD. Implications for the neurocognitive conceptualization of emotion dysregulation will be discussed.     

Interview anxiety across the sexes: Support for the sex-linked anxiety coping theory

The sex-linked anxiety coping theory states that females’ anxiety levels may be less detrimental to their selection test performance because they have more available coping resources and engage in more constructive coping strategies prior to and during selection tests. This research project sought to investigate whether gender moderates the link between interview anxiety and interview performance. Co-op students (N = 125) participated in a mock interview as part of a course requirement. The results indicated that gender moderated the relation between self-rated interview anxiety and interview performance. Males were no more anxious than were females, but experienced significantly greater impairments to performance in the job interview as a result of interview anxiety. Of interest, interviewer-rated interview anxiety did not interact with gender to predict interview performance, which supports preliminary research evidence that perceptions and the experience of interview anxiety are not necessarily congruent.     

It takes one to know one: Relationship between lie detection and psychopathy

We investigated primary and secondary psychopathy and the ability to detect high-stakes, real-life emotional lies in an on-line experiment (N = 150). Using signal detection analysis, we found that lie detection ability was overall above chance level, there was a tendency towards responding liberally to the test stimuli, and women were more accurate than men. Further, sex moderated the relationship between psychopathy and lie detection ability; in men, primary psychopathy had a significant positive correlation with the ability to detect lies, whereas in women there was a significant negative correlation with deception detection. The results are discussed with reference to evolutionary theory and sex differences in processing socio-emotional information.     

Age and emotion affect how we look at a face: Visual scan patterns differ for own-age versus other-age emotional faces

We investigated how age of faces and emotion expressed in faces affect young (n=30) and older (n=20) adults’ visual inspection while viewing faces and judging their expressions. Overall, expression identification was better for young than older faces, suggesting that interpreting expressions in young faces is easier than in older faces, even for older participants. Moreover, there were age-group differences in misattributions of expressions, in that young participants were more likely to label disgusted faces as angry, whereas older adults were more likely to label angry faces as disgusted. In addition to effects of emotion expressed in faces, age of faces affected visual inspection of faces: Both young and older participants spent more time looking at own-age than other-age faces, with longer looking at own-age faces predicting better own-age expression identification. Thus, cues used in expression identification may shift as a function of emotion and age of faces, in interaction with age of participants.     

Examining the contextual and temporal stability of perceptions of emotional utility

The present research examined the degree to which perceptions of emotional utility are stable across contexts and over time. Self-reported perceptions of emotional utility and actual experience of emotion were measured in two samples of college students. In Study 1, participants were presented with two different types of goals (independent vs. interdependent) and were asked to rate the degree to which they found different types of emotions (e.g., appreciation, pride) useful in each context. In Study 2, participants completed daily online questionnaires in which they responded to questions assessing perceptions of emotional utility and actual affect in relation to personal goals. As predicted, across both samples, perceived utility of specific types of emotions was found to be associated with specific types of goals. Importantly, perceived utility of emotion was also found to be a relatively stable individual difference variable, even after taking into account the actual experience of emotion.     

True Overconfidence in Interval Estimates: Evidence Based on a New Measure of Miscalibration

Overconfidence is often regarded as one of the most prevalent judgment biases. Several studies show that overconfidence can lead to suboptimal decisions of investors, managers, or politicians. Recent research, however, questions whether overconfidence should be regarded as a bias and shows that standard “overconfidence” findings can easily be explained by different degrees of knowledge of agents plus a random error in predictions. We contribute to the current literature and ongoing research by extensively analyzing interval estimates for knowledge questions, for real financial time series, and for artificially generated charts. We thereby suggest a new method to measure overconfidence in interval estimates, which is based on the implied probability mass behind a stated prediction interval. We document overconfidence patterns, which are difficult to reconcile with rationality of agents and which cannot be explained by differences in knowledge as differences in knowledge do not exist in our task. Furthermore, we show that overconfidence measures are reliable in the sense that there exist stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence in interval estimates, thereby testing an important assumption of behavioral economics and behavioral finance models: stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence across people. We do this in a “field experiment,” for different levels of expertise of subjects (students on the one hand and professional traders and investment bankers on the other hand), over time, by using different miscalibration metrics, and for tasks that avoid common weaknesses such as a non‐representative selection of trick questions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental Health Services Use Intentions Among Canadian Military Recruits

Identifying the factors associated with mental health services use (MHSU) is an important step in developing strategies to improve services access and delivery. The aims of the present study were to (a) identify personality and individual difference characteristics associated with MHSU intentions within the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and (b) explore complex relationships that might exist between these characteristics and determinants of MHSU intentions identified in TPB, including attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Data for 244 Canadian Armed Forces recruits who completed a MHSU questionnaire following mental health training were linked to personality data collected earlier. Multivariate analyses showed that the relationship between agreeableness and MHSU intentions was mediated by instrumental attitudes and subjective norms. The relationship between hardiness and MHSU intentions was mediated by subjective norms and self-efficacy. Findings suggest it may be worthwhile to consider mental health education initiatives to improve MHSU.