Haloperidol-induced Mood and Retrieval of Happy and Unhappy Memories

The present study investigated the effect of haloperidol-induced mood in normal healthy male volunteers on the retrieval of memories of real-life personal experiences using a between-subjects double-blind design. Forty subjects were required to retrieve past real life experiences associated with a series of stimulus words following administration of a single oral dose of 5mg haloperidol or placebo. The experiences were subsequently rated by subjects for their happiness felt at the time of the original experience. A significant decline in self-reported hedonic tone was observed in subjects given haloperidol. In addition, subjects on placebo recalled a significantly greater percentage of happy memories than subjects who were on haloperidol; a trend for a reverse pattern was observed for unhappy memories. The effects of the drug on the retrieval of memories were only in part mediated by the decline in hedonic tone scores. The effects of haloperidol are interpreted in terms of drug-induced dysphoria.     

Personality and modulation of the startle reflex by emotionally-toned filmclips

Several researchers have found that pleasant foreground stimuli attenuate the eyeblink component of the startle reflex while unpleasant foreground stimuli potentiate it. The effects of personality factors on such modulation of the eyeblink response, as measured by electromyographic (EMG) activity in reaction to loud acoustic startle probes, were examined in subjects viewing emotionally-toned (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral) filmclips. During the main part of the experiment, introverts had higher baseline EMG activity and lower response probability than extraverts; no differences were observed at the beginning of the experiment, during an acclimatization session. Reflex modulation, as measured by response latency, was influenced by the Psychoticism (P) factor of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire: subjects high on P showed longer latencies to eyeblink onset when probed during viewing of pleasant filmclips than subjects low on this dimension; no significant differences were observed between subjects low and high on P for neutral and unpleasant filmclips. No influence of personality factors was found on affective modulation as measured by response amplitude/magnitude. The results are discussed in relation to Gray's and Eysenck's theories of personality.     

Sensitivity to prosodic structure in left- and right-hemisphere-damaged individuals

An experiment was conducted in order to determine whether left- (LHD) and right-hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients exhibit sensitivity to prosodic information that is used in syntactic disambiguation. Following the work of, a cross-modal lexical decision task was performed by LHD and RHD subjects, as well as by adults without brain pathology (NC). Subjects listened to sentences with attachment ambiguities with either congruent or incongruent prosody, while performing a visual lexical decision task. Results showed that each of the unilaterally damaged populations differed from each other, as well as from the NCs in terms of sensitivity regarding prosodic cues. Specifically, the RHD group was insensitive to sentence prosody as a whole. This was in contrast to the LHD patients, who responded to the prosodic manipulation, but in the unexpected direction. Results are discussed in terms of current hypotheses regarding the hemispheric lateralization of prosodic cues.     

Conceptualization and measurement of millennial's social signaling and self‐signaling for socially responsible consumption

Social responsibility has rapidly gained popularity among consumers specifically among millennials born 1980 to 2000. Millennials are characterized by their willingness to get involved with social and political initiatives. Motivations for social responsibility are not completely unselfish in that individuals receive personal gain when providing support for others. This research proposes that socially responsible (SR) consumption has both social signaling and self‐signaling abilities. The scales for measuring millennial's social signaling and self‐signaling for SR consumption were developed to reflect the evolving nature of both social responsibility and the millennial generation. In‐depth interviews (n = 12) were used to generate scale items and an exploratory factor analysis was used to assess the dimensionality of the scales. Results were subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis that examined convergent and discriminant validity. Nomological validity testing was also performed. The social signaling for SR consumption scale was a one‐dimensional factor structure whereas the self‐signaling for SR consumption scale had two factors. These scales provide a tool for marketers and researchers to develop relevant SR initiatives aimed at millennials.     

Neural correlates of deficient response inhibition in mentally disordered violent individuals

In this study, response inhibition and associated neural activation during a motor inhibition paradigm were investigated in (i) men with antisocial personality disorder (APD) with a history of violence (n = 14), (ii) men with schizophrenia with a history of violence (n = 12), (iii) men with schizophrenia without a history of violence (n = 12), and (iv) healthy control subjects (n = 14) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). At the behavioural level, individuals with schizophrenia showed impaired performance across all conditions, whereas an increased error rate was seen in the APD group only during the conditions requiring inhibition. At the neural level, both violent groups showed reduced thalamic activity, compared with controls, in association with modulation of inhibition by task demands. In addition, the violent schizophrenia group, compared with controls, showed reduced activity in the caudate nucleus during the condition requiring inhibition. It is concluded that violence may not be specifically associated with impaired voluntary inhibition in schizophrenia but this is likely in APD. Reduced thalamic function, perhaps due to its known association with sensorimotor disturbances, is implicated in violent behaviour across both disorders. In addition, caudate dysfunction may contribute, given its role in timing and temporal processing as well as suppression of motor actions, to deficient inhibition and violent behaviour in schizophrenia.     

Religiosity and HIV-Related Drug Risk Behavior: A Multidimensional Assessment of Individuals from Communities with High Rates of Drug Use

We examined the relationship between religiosity and HIV-related drug risk behavior among individuals from communities with high rates of drug use who participated in the SHIELD (Self-Help in Eliminating Life-Threatening Disease) study. This analysis examined the dimensions of religious ideation, religious participation, and religious support separately to further understand the relationship with risk taking. Results indicate that greater religious participation appeared to be the dimension most closely associated with drug behaviors. Specifically, we found that those with greater religious participation are significantly less likely to report recent opiates or cocaine use; injection drug use; crack use; and needle, cotton or cooker sharing. Future work to understand the nature of these associations will assist in the development of interventions in communities with high rates of drug use.     

Personality and occupational markers of ‘solid citizenship’ are associated with having fewer children

Investigating associations between personality and reproductive fitness may reveal the adaptive significance of human behavioural traits. What we dub ‘solid-citizenship’ personality characteristics such as self-control, diligence and responsibility may repay study from an evolutionary perspective as they protect against negative life-outcomes. We explored associations between reproductive fitness and personality questionnaire markers of solid citizenship in 4981 women from four Australian samples. We also examined relations between reproductive fitness and army discharge status, an applied measure of solid citizenship, in 15,283 Vietnam War-era military veterans. In two Australian samples there were significant negative associations between reproductive fitness and personality measures of solid citizenship. Similarly, in the US study honourably discharged servicemen on average fathered significantly fewer children than non-honourably discharged servicemen. Since personality is genetically influenced, our results suggest that genetic variants for solid citizenship may be decreasing in frequency in some populations, in line with other modern findings but in contrast to historical analyses. Causes for this change may include relatively more conscientious women using contraception to prioritise their careers over reproduction and the availability of systematic welfare provisioning.     

The role of neuroticism in startle reactions to fearful and disgusting stimuli

It has frequently been observed that negative moods potentiate the startle reflex to unexpected, threatening stimuli. However, recent work from our laboratory suggests that this effect relates primarily to the emotion of fear or anxiety, while stimuli which evoke powerful feelings of disgust can in some circumstances inhibit the startle reflex. In this study we reanalyse data from 42 subjects in whom eye-blink amplitudes to an auditory probe were measured whilst viewing emotionally arousing film clips. Classifying the negative film clips into separate categories of “frightening” vs “disgusting” revealed a previously undetected interaction with EPQ Neuroticism. High N subjects showed greater startle reactions than low N subjects under fearful conditions but low N subjects showed greater startle when disgust was evoked. This suggests that Neuroticism may increase vigilance where evasive action is possible but promote emotional blunting when escape is not an option.     

Validating age-related functional imaging changes in verbal working memory with acute stroke

Functional imaging studies consistently find that older adults recruit bilateral brain regions in cognitive tasks that are strongly lateralized in younger adults, a characterization known as the Hemispheric Asymmetry Reduction in Older Adults model. While functional imaging displays what brain areas are active during tasks, it cannot demonstrate what brain regions are necessary for task performance. We used behavioral data from acute stroke patients to test the hypothesis that older adults need both hemispheres for a verbal working memory task that is predominantly left-lateralized in younger adults. Right-handed younger (age ? 50, n = 7) and older adults (age > 50, n =21) with acute unilateral stroke, as well as younger (n =6) and older (n =13) transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients, performed a self-paced verbal item-recognition task. Older patients with stroke to either hemisphere had a higher frequency of deficits in the verbal working memory task compared to older TIA patients. Additionally, the deficits in older stroke patients were mainly in retrieval time while the deficits in younger stroke patients were mainly in accuracy. These data suggest that bihemispheric activity is necessary for older adults to successfully perform a verbal working memory task.     

The malleable bicultural consumer: effects of cultural contexts on aesthetic judgments

• Grounded in the cognitive framework of processing fluency, this study proposes further support for the experiential perspective in aesthetics by positing that aesthetic response to the same object may be malleable, depending on how the symbolic properties of the object interact with different cultural contexts which either facilitate or debilitate the processing experience of the perceiver. The study employed an Internet experiment to test the hypotheses among 105 female Hispanic college‐aged students enrolled at a large midwestern university. The findings revealed that symbolic attributes of products interact with cultural contexts to affect aesthetic judgments of (Hispanic) consumers. Aesthetic judgments were more positive when evaluating culturally symbolic product attributes after exposure to congruent contextual cues that facilitate fluent processing. The study furnishes support for the impact of environment/context on consumer behavior and aesthetic judgment, thus establishing further support for the cognitive framework of conceptual fluency in explaining aesthetic response. The study also contributes to recent literature on “frame‐switching” among bicultural consumers by suggesting that these consumers navigate between competing cultural frames in response to visual primes, with resultant shifts in aesthetic judgments. Important marketing insights emerge from these findings.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.