When Threat Is Near, Get Out of Here: Dynamics of Defensive Behavior During Freezing and Active Avoidance
When detecting a threat, humans and other animals engage in defensive behaviors and supporting physiological adjustments that vary with threat imminence and potential response options. In the present study, we shed light on the dynamics of defensive behaviors and associated physiological adjustments in humans using multiple psychophysiological and brain measures. When participants were exposed to a dynamically approaching, uncontrollable threat, attentive freezing was augmented, as indicated by an increase in skin conductance, fear bradycardia, and potentiation of the startle reflex. In contrast, when participants had the ...
Source: Psychological Science - November 5, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Löw, A., Weymar, M., Hamm, A. O. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Implicit Social Biases in People With Autism
Implicit social biases are ubiquitous and are known to influence social behavior. A core diagnostic criterion of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is abnormal social behavior. We investigated the extent to which individuals with ASD might show a specific attenuation of implicit social biases, using Implicit Association Tests (IATs) involving social (gender, race) and nonsocial (nature, shoes) categories. High-functioning adults with ASD showed intact but reduced IAT effects relative to healthy control participants. We observed no selective attenuation of implicit social (vs. nonsocial) biases in our ASD population. To extend...
Source: Psychological Science - November 5, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Birmingham, E., Stanley, D., Nair, R., Adolphs, R. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Birth Weight and Social Trust in Adulthood: Evidence for Early Calibration of Social Cognition
Social trust forms the fundamental basis for social interaction within societies. Understanding the cognitive architecture of trust and the roots of individual differences in trust is of key importance. We predicted that one of the factors calibrating individual levels of trust is the intrauterine flow of nutrients from mother to child as indexed by birth weight. Birth weight forecasts both the future external environment and the internal condition of the individual in multiple ways relevant for social cognition. Specifically, we predicted that low birth weight is utilized as a forecast of a harsh environment, vulnerable c...
Source: Psychological Science - November 5, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Petersen, M. B., Aaroe, L. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Confidence Leak in Perceptual Decision Making
People live in a continuous environment in which the visual scene changes on a slow timescale. It has been shown that to exploit such environmental stability, the brain creates a continuity field in which objects seen seconds ago influence the perception of current objects. What is unknown is whether a similar mechanism exists at the level of metacognitive representations. In three experiments, we demonstrated a robust intertask confidence leak—that is, confidence in one’s response on a given task or trial influencing confidence on the following task or trial. This confidence leak could not be explained by resp...
Source: Psychological Science - November 5, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Rahnev, D., Koizumi, A., McCurdy, L. Y., D'Esposito, M., Lau, H. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Is She Angry? (Sexually Desirable) Women "See" Anger on Female Faces
We report three studies that support these hypotheses and, more broadly, illustrate the value of a functional approach to social cognition. (Source: Psychological Science)
Source: Psychological Science - November 5, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Krems, J. A., Neuberg, S. L., Filip-Crawford, G., Kenrick, D. T. Tags: General Article Source Type: research
No Evidence for Unconscious Lie Detection: A Significant Difference Does Not Imply Accurate Classification
(Source: Psychological Science)
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Franz, V. H., von Luxburg, U. Tags: Commentary Source Type: research
Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorization of Multiracial Individuals
Categorizations of multiracial individuals provide insight into the psychological mechanisms driving social stratification, but few studies have explored the interplay of cognitive and motivational underpinnings of these categorizations. In the present study, we integrated research on racial essentialism (i.e., the belief that race demarcates unobservable and immutable properties) and negativity bias (i.e., the tendency to weigh negative entities more heavily than positive entities) to explain why people might exhibit biases in the categorization of multiracial individuals. As theorized, racial essentialism, both dispositi...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Ho, A. K., Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A. Tags: Research Report Source Type: research
Income Inequality Explains Why Economic Growth Does Not Always Translate to an Increase in Happiness
One of the most puzzling social science findings in the past half century is the Easterlin paradox: Economic growth within a country does not always translate into an increase in happiness. We provide evidence that this paradox can be partly explained by income inequality. In two different data sets covering 34 countries, economic growth was not associated with increases in happiness when it was accompanied by growing income inequality. Earlier instances of the Easterlin paradox (i.e., economic growth not being associated with increasing happiness) can thus be explained by the frequent concurrence of economic growth and gr...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Oishi, S., Kesebir, S. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Socioeconomic Status and Social Support: Social Support Reduces Inflammatory Reactivity for Individuals Whose Early-Life Socioeconomic Status Was Low
Low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood confers risk for adverse health in adulthood. Accumulating evidence suggests that this may be due, in part, to the association between lower childhood SES and higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Drawing from literature showing that low childhood SES predicts exaggerated physiological reactivity to stressors and that lower SES is associated with a more communal, socially attuned orientation, we hypothesized that inflammatory reactivity would be more greatly affected by cues of social support among individuals whose childhood SES was low than among those whose childhoo...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: John-Henderson, N. A., Stellar, J. E., Mendoza-Denton, R., Francis, D. D. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Preterm Birth and Adult Wealth: Mathematics Skills Count
This study investigated whether the relationship between preterm birth and low adult wealth is mediated by poor academic abilities and educational qualifications. Participants were members of two British population-based birth cohorts born in 1958 and 1970, respectively. Results showed that preterm birth was associated with decreased wealth at 42 years of age. This association was mediated by decreased intelligence, reading, and, in particular, mathematics attainment in middle childhood, as well as decreased educational qualifications in young adulthood. Findings were similar in both cohorts, which suggests that these mech...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Basten, M., Jaekel, J., Johnson, S., Gilmore, C., Wolke, D. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Age of Entry Into Early Childhood Education and Care as a Predictor of Aggression: Faint and Fading Associations for Young Norwegian Children
Socioemotional risks associated with nonparental care have been debated for decades, and research findings continue to be mixed. Yet few studies have been able to test the causal hypothesis that earlier, more extensive, and longer durations of nonmaternal care lead to more problems. To examine the consequences of age of entry into nonparental care for childhood aggression, we used prospective longitudinal data from Norway, where month of birth partly determines age of entry into Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) centers. In this sample of 939 children followed from ages 6 months through 4 years, ECEC teachers repor...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Dearing, E., Zachrisson, H. D., Naerde, A. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Effects of Stress on the Social Support Provided by Men and Women in Intimate Relationships
Although evolutionary and social-structural models predict that women will be more supportive than men in relationships, behavioral studies fail to confirm this difference. We predicted instead that gender differences in support will be moderated by stress, and that men will provide lower-quality support primarily when their stress is high. We predicted further that the detrimental effects of stress on men’s support will be more evident when men are responding to women’s emotionally toned expressions of stress than when men are responding to women’s affectively neutral expressions of stress. Stressed and ...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Bodenmann, G., Meuwly, N., Germann, J., Nussbeck, F. W., Heinrichs, M., Bradbury, T. N. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Running With the Pack: Teen Peer-Relationship Qualities as Predictors of Adult Physical Health
This study assessed qualities of adolescent peer relationships as long-term predictors of physical health quality in adulthood. In an intensive multimethod, multireporter study of a community sample of 171 individuals assessed repeatedly from the ages of 13 to 27 years, physical health quality in adulthood was robustly predicted by independent reports of early-adolescent close-friendship quality and by a pattern of acquiescence to social norms in adolescent peer relationships. Predictions remained after accounting for numerous potential confounds, including prior health problems, concurrent body mass index, anxious and dep...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Allen, J. P., Uchino, B. N., Hafen, C. A. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
Increased False-Memory Susceptibility After Mindfulness Meditation
The effect of mindfulness meditation on false-memory susceptibility was examined in three experiments. Because mindfulness meditation encourages judgment-free thoughts and feelings, we predicted that participants in the mindfulness condition would be especially likely to form false memories. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness induction, in which they were instructed to focus attention on their breathing, or a mind-wandering induction, in which they were instructed to think about whatever came to mind. The overall number of words from the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm that we...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Wilson, B. M., Mickes, L., Stolarz-Fantino, S., Evrard, M., Fantino, E. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
A Difference-Education Intervention Equips First-Generation College Students to Thrive in the Face of Stressful College Situations
A growing social psychological literature reveals that brief interventions can benefit disadvantaged students. We tested a key component of the theoretical assumption that interventions exert long-term effects because they initiate recursive processes. Focusing on how interventions alter students’ responses to specific situations over time, we conducted a follow-up lab study with students who had participated in a difference-education intervention 2 years earlier. In the intervention, students learned how their social-class backgrounds mattered in college. The follow-up study assessed participants’ behavioral a...
Source: Psychological Science - October 13, 2015 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Stephens, N. M., Townsend, S. S. M., Hamedani, M. G., Destin, M., Manzo, V. Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research
