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Socio-emotional abilities have been proposed as an extension to models of intelligence, but earlier measurement approaches have either not fulfilled criteria of ability measurement or have covered only predominantly receptive abilities. We argue that faking ability—the ability to adjust responses on questionnaires to present oneself in a desired manner—is a socio-emotional ability that can broaden our understanding of these abilities and intelligence in general. To test this theory, we developed new instruments to measure the ability to fake bad (malingering) and administered them jointly with established tests of faking good ability in a general sample of n = 134. Participants also completed multiple tests of emotion perception along with tests of emotion expression posing, pain expression regulation, and working memory capacity. We found that individual differences in faking ability tests are best explained by a general factor that had a large correlation with receptive socio-emotional abilities and had a zero to medium-sized correlation with different productive socio-emotional abilities. All correlations were still small after controlling these effects for shared variance with general mental ability as indicated by tests of working memory capacity. We conclude that faking ability is indeed correlated meaningfully with other socio-emotional abilities and discuss the implications for intelligence research and applied ability assessment, publishedVersion

The ability to express emotion is considered a core socioemotional skill; however, most research is focused on receptive abilities, with little investigation of productive abilities. We present an investigation of individual differences in facial expression of emotion using observational techniques. Given descriptions of highly psychopathic persons as successful liars and manipulators, we investigate the ability to intentionally pose emotional expressions when no emotion is elicited. A mixed sample of adult men (N = 316 community volunteers, prison inmates, and forensic-psychiatric patients) ranging along the psychopathy continuum were asked to facially express a nonfelt emotion, specifically anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, through either written instructions or through imitation of a target's facial expression. Through structural equation modeling, we evaluate relations between this emotion expression ability and general mental ability, interpersonal abilities, and psychopathy. We find that psychopathy is moderately associated with poorer emotion expression ability, meaning highly psychopathic individuals are poorer at imitating the expressions of others and poorer at expressing all emotions. However, this deficit is largely attributable to deficits in general mental ability. These results challenge the view that highly psychopathic individuals have the cognitive skills to support a superior ability to deceive or manipulate others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Abstract. Although vaccines are among the most effective interventions used in fighting diseases, vaccination readiness varies substantially among individuals. Vaccination readiness is defined as a set of components that increase or decrease AN individual’s likelihood of getting vaccinated. Building on earlier work that distinguished five components of vaccination readiness (confidence, complacency, constraints, calculation, and collective responsibility), we revised the questionnaire used to measure these components to improve its psychometric properties, specifically criterion validity. In doing so, we also developed two new components of vaccination readiness: compliance and conspiracy. Compliance is the tendency to support monitoring to control adherence to regulations; conspiracy is the tendency to endorse conspiratorial beliefs about vaccination. The newly introduced 7C scale was initially piloted in a cascade of serial cross-sectional studies and then validated with N = 681 participants from the COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring in Denmark. We report a bifactor measurement model, convergent validity with other questionnaires, and an explanation of 85% variance in the willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19. We also present a 7-item short version of the scale. The instrument is publicly available in several languages ( www.vaccination-readiness.com ), and we seek collaboration to provide translations of our instrument into other languages.

Zusammenfassung. In diesem Beitrag werden wir Vor- und Nachteile onlinebasierter Leistungsprüfung thematisieren und ihre Anwendung zur Diagnostik von Lernstörungen diskutieren. Wir führen zunächst die Diagnosekriterien von Lernstörungen ein und setzen in der Folge etwaige defizitäre Leistungen bei den Betroffenen in einen Zusammenhang zu Intelligenzleistungen. Wir stellen fest, dass die Abwägungen der Validität onlinebasierter Intelligenzprüfungen ebenso für die Diagnostik beeinträchtigter Leistungen bei Lernstörungen gelten. Schließlich diskutieren wir Unterschiede herkömmlicher und onlinebasierter Testungen und folgern, dass onlinebasierte Leistungsprüfung zwar Vorteile bietet und sich als Screeninginstrument oder zur Verlaufsbeobachtung eignet, jedoch aufgrund von Antwortverzerrungen – bewusster Natur oder durch Störfaktoren in der Umwelt – nicht zur Stellung einer Initialdiagnose oder zur finalen Evaluation einer Intervention eingesetzt werden kann.

The assessment of pain relies mostly on methods that require a person to communicate. However, for people with cognitive and verbal impairments, existing methods are not sufficient as they lack reliability and validity. To approach this problem, recent research focuses on an objective pain assessment facilitated by parameters of responses derived from physiology, and video and audio signals. To develop reliable automated pain recognition systems, efforts have been made in creating multimodal databases in order to analyze pain and detect valid pain patterns. While the results are promising, they only focus on discriminating pain or pain intensities versus no pain. In order to advance this, research should also consider the quality and duration of pain as they provide additional valuable information for more advanced pain management. To complement existing databases and the analysis of pain regarding quality and length, this paper proposes a psychophysiological experiment to elicit, measure, and collect valid pain reactions. Participants are subjected to painful stimuli that differ in intensity (low, medium, and high), duration (5 s / 1 min), and modality (heat / electric pain) while audio, video (e.g., facial expressions, body gestures, facial skin temperature), and physiological signals (e.g., electrocardiogram [ECG], skin conductance level [SCL], facial electromyography [EMG], and EMG of M. trapezius) are being recorded. The study consists of a calibration phase to determine a subject's individual pain range (from low to intolerable pain) and a stimulation phase in which pain stimuli, depending on the calibrated range, are applied. The obtained data may allow refining, improving, and evaluating automated recognition systems in terms of an objective pain assessment. For further development of such systems and to investigate pain reactions in more detail, additional pain modalities such as pressure, chemical, or cold pain should be included in future studies. Recorded data of this study will be released as the "X-ITE Pain Database".

In light of Jaswal & Akhtar's compelling argument, we argue there should instead be more focus on deficits in socio-emotional abilities. However, current research is limited by the psychometric problems with most measures. We discuss specific problems, outlining examples for theory of mind. We conclude with recommendations for new lines of research derived from findings in the individual differences literature.