Cognitive Bias Modification for Behavior Change in Alcohol and Smoking Addiction: Bayesian Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data

Neuropsychology Review - Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) refers to a family of interventions targeting substance-related cognitive biases, which have been found to play a role in the maintenance...     

Influence of authoritarianism,vagal tone and mental fatigue on obedience to authority

Recent research suggests that obedience in the Milgram paradigm is underpinned by stress vulnerability and inhibitory control over pain sharing. Because self-regulatory fatigue (SRF) induction is a suited method to investigate the influence of inhibitory control on behaviour, participants (n?=?99) were randomly assigned to a High vs. Low self-regulatory condition. Heart rate variability (HRV, a biomarker of stress vulnerability) was collected during 5-min baseline and continuously during the experimental procedure. Prior to the experiment, participants completed an online survey assessing right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), a well-known predictor of obedience. Using the Immersive Video Milgram Obedience Experiment, we found (i) that lower resting HRV predicted higher destructive obedience, (ii) that low self-regulatory inhibition (induced by fatigue) reduced destructive obedience, (iii) that the well-established influence of RWA on destructive obedience was suppressed in the presence of SRF. Implications for future directions in obedience research are discussed.     

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder’: People who think they are drunk also think they are attractive

This research examines the role of alcohol consumption on self‐perceived attractiveness. Study 1, carried out in a barroom (N= 19), showed that the more alcoholic drinks customers consumed, the more attractive they thought they were. In Study 2, 94 non‐student participants in a bogus taste‐test study were given either an alcoholic beverage (target BAL [blood alcohol level]= 0.10 g/100 ml) or a non‐alcoholic beverage, with half of each group believing they had consumed alcohol and half believing they had not (balanced placebo design). After consuming beverages, they delivered a speech and rated how attractive, bright, original, and funny they thought they were. The speeches were videotaped and rated by 22 independent judges. Results showed that participants who thought they had consumed alcohol gave themselves more positive self‐evaluations. However, ratings from independent judges showed that this boost in self‐evaluation was unrelated to actual performance.     

Assessing Private and Public Need for Uniqueness: Validation of French Versions of the Need for Uniqueness (NfU) and Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness (SANU) Scales

Need for uniqueness represents the need for people to feel different and distinguish themselves from others. Two major scales exist that measure this need: the Need for Uniqueness scale (NfU; Snyder &; Fromkin, 1977 Snyder, C. R., &; Fromkin, H. L. (1977). Abnormality as a positive characteristic: The development and validation of a scale measuring need for uniqueness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86, 518–527. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.86.5.518[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and the Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness scale (SANU; Lynn &; Harris, 1997b Lynn, M., &; Harris, J. (1997b). Individual differences in the pursuit of self-uniqueness through consumption. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 1861–1883. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1997.tb01629.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We propose here a French version of both scales. Through a dual approach of exploratory and confirmatory factorial analyses, we investigated the scales' structure in student samples from two French-speaking countries (France and Switzerland, N = 1,348) as well as measures of internal and external validity. Both scales presented good psychometric properties in French. Additionally, we investigated differences between the scales, as literature suggests that the NfU relies mostly on public and risky displays of uniqueness, whereas the SANU focuses on private and more socially acceptable means to acquire a feeling of uniqueness. Differences arose in the links with several personality characteristics (emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, sensation seeking, and self-consciousness), suggesting that the NfU corresponds rather to a need to demonstrate uniqueness through public displays and the SANU to a need to feel unique through more private means. We discuss implications for research and provide advice on choosing by the scale most appropriate to the researcher's aims.     

Self-Regulation Failure Reduces the Effect Alcohol Portrayals in Movies on Indirect Attitudes toward Alcohol

Abstract

We investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying change in implicit cognitions following exposure to alcohol portrayals. More precisely, we tested in an experimental study whether this change depends on controlled or automatic processes by putting participants in a state of self-regulatory fatigue prior to being exposed to alcohol portrayals. Ninety participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (attitude measure: before vs after) × 2 (alcohol portrayal: yes vs no) × 2 (ego depletion: yes vs no) mixed design to assess whether the effects of alcohol portrayals affected cognitive resources. It was hypothesized that alcohol portrayals would have more of an impact on participants submitted to an ego-depletion task. We found a change in attitudes toward alcohol only for participants that had been exposed to alcohol portrayals, and who had not been cognitively depleted. These results suggest that these changes rely on controlled, resource-dependent processes rather than on purely associative and automatic processes. Implications regarding alcohol advertising effects on public health are discussed.