Search

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) both predict generalized prejudice, dehumanization, intergroup discrimination, oppression, violence, right-wing political party preference, and generally punitive attitudes. Authoritarian attitudes have been theorized to involve maladaptive emotional, cognitive, and social self-regulation. However, there is no study of authoritarianism using the functioning of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) as a physiological index of self-regulation, thus leaving it unclear whether regulation is "impaired" with authoritarian attitudes per se. PNS functioning is commonly assessed by examining tonic and phasic heart rate variability (HRV). These two components are recognized to be important in terms of adaptation to stress. Decreased HRV has been associated with hypoactive prefrontal regulation, hyperactive subcortical structures, maladaptive self-regulation, hyper-vigilance, decreased prosocial tendencies, defensiveness, impulsive behaviors, and aggression. Previous research suggests that self-regulatory failure may favor hostile attitudes and prejudicial intergroup behaviors. In a first study, we found that high RWA was associated with lower tonic HRV at rest. In a second study, stress-induced autonomic reactivity and poststress autonomic recovery were examined as potential pathways linking authoritarian attitudes to self-regulation. We found that high RWA and high SDO were associated with (i) lower tonic HRV during stress, (ii) greater autonomic reactivity during stress, and (iii) lower autonomic recovery. Overall, our results suggest that autonomic dysregulation during and following stress is a plausible physiological pathway connecting RWA and SDO to self-regulation. Implications of such results for research on political attitudes are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Lack of sleep is common in adolescence, and represents an important threat to adolescents' well-being, academic commitment, and general health. It also has significant behavioral consequences through an increased likelihood of interpersonal violence. Previous studies have demonstrated an association between aggressive behavior and lack of sleep, but the psychological mediators remain completely unexplored. Grounded in the General Aggression Model, we investigated the affective pathway as one of the potential mechanisms linking lack of sleep and aggression. We hypothesized and showed that psychological distress is an intermediary phenomenon linking lack of sleep and physical aggression. Based on a school sample of 11,912 participants (median age: 14.5), we observed that 23.7% of the young people admitted having been involved in physical fighting on one or more occasions, and that 25.81% were in sleep debt when referred for medical assessment. We analyzed the relationship between sleep duration and physical fighting and the mediating link of psychological distress by performing multiple regressions in the components' paths. The results showed that the adolescents' amount of sleep appeared to be a significant predictor of physical fighting, and that this relationship was partially mediated by psychological distress. These results are consistent with the General Aggression Model, and represent the first empirical confirmation that psychological distress symptoms partially mediate the connection between lack of sleep and physical aggression.

The present research investigated how scientific authority increases the lethal use of animals in biomedical experimentation. In two behavioral studies ( N = 151 and 150), participants were required to incrementally administer 12 doses of a toxic chemical to a 53-cm fish (in reality, a biomimetic robot) for research on animal learning. Consistent with the Engaged Followership Theory on obedience, participants placed in a pro-scientific mindset more severely harmed the laboratory animal. In a cross-sectional study ( N = 351), participants in medical fields endorsed a more pro-scientific attitude than those in paramedical fields, which mediated their support for animal experimentation. Drawing on a representative European sample ( N = 31,238), we also confirmed the specificity of this link by controlling for potential demographic and ideological confounds. In a final study ( N = 1,598), instrumental harm was shown as mediating the link between a pro-scientific attitude and support for animal experimentation.

Over the past three decades, researchers have increasingly examined the menstrual cycle as a potential source of day-to-day variation in women’s cognitions, motivations, and behavior. Within this literature, several lines of research have examined the impact of the menstrual cycle on women’s engagement in activities that could negatively affect their health, including sexual behavior and alcohol and tobacco consumption, as well as their ability to recognize and avoid potentially threatening people and situations. However, findings have been mixed, leaving it unclear whether women may expose themselves to more health-related risks during certain phases of the cycle. To address this question, we conducted a meta-analysis of 23 published and 4 unpublished studies (N = 7,527). The meta-analysis revealed some shifts across the menstrual cycle in women’s sexual behavior and risk recognition and avoidance, whereas patterns were less clear for alcohol and cigarette consumption. These findings help to clarify the proximate physiological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying women’s health-related risk-taking and may inform new interventions.

Across two experimental studies, we investigated the short-term effect of video games with sexist content (i.e,. representing women as sexual objects and men as hyper-masculine) on women’s objectif...

Animal abuse is considered a significant marker of violence towards humans, and understanding its determinants is important. In this first large-scale survey on adolescent animal abuse carried out in France, we introduced and tested the relative explanatory power of a new variable potentially involved in animal abuse: speciesism, defined as the belief that humans are intrinsically more valuable than individuals of other species. In a school sample composed of 12,344 participants aged 13–18 years, we observed that 7.3% of participants admitted having perpetrated animal abuse. Consistent with existing studies, cats and dogs were the animals most often abused. Animal abuse was a solitary behavior approximately half of the time, and in 25% of instances it involved only another person. A multivariate logistic regression revealed that animal abuse was more frequent among males and that it occurred more often among adolescents with less positive family climate, lower support from friends, lower attachment to school, and with higher anxio-depressive symptomatology. As implied by the generalized deviance hypothesis, animal abuse was related to more deviant behavior such as drunkenness and bullying. Moreover, this study showed for the first time that animal abuse was higher among adolescents who endorsed speciesist attitudes. These results suggest that beyond psychopathological factors, normative beliefs regarding the value of animals and their human use may also be involved in animal mistreatment.

Background: Little experimental researches have investigated how alcohol portrayal influences alcohol-related cognitions that could lead to long-term alcohol consumption. We identified two potentia...

Existing studies do not provide consistent results regarding the role of alcohol intoxication on sentencing, and little is known about the specificity of sentencing by judges when compared to the general population. In this study, we experimentally investigated the influence of the level of alcohol intoxication on the sentence given to a defendant who had committed an act of physical aggression toward another person. A large sample of judges ( N = 1,207) and a representative sample from the general population ( N = 1,972) from both Germany and France were randomly assigned to a written depiction of an assault case in which the protagonist had either previously drunk no alcohol, or 0.50 L, or 1.5 L of beer. The respondents were then asked to assign a sentence to the defendant from a range of predefined options. Based on previous studies on sentencing among judges, we hypothesized that they would deliver harsher sentences than the participants from the general population contrary to the “myth of judicial leniency.” Moreover, following attribution theory, we hypothesized that alcohol consumption would decrease the severity of the sentence chosen by the participants from the general population. It was expected that the judges would not be influenced by alcohol information because in both France and Germany, alcohol is not considered to be an aggravating factor in crime according to national laws. The results showed that irrespective of the level of alcohol intoxication, the judges recommended harsher sentences than the participants from the general population and tended to rely on fewer sentence options. However, contrary to our expectations, in both countries, the protagonist’s level of intoxication did not influence sentencing severity.

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.

Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another condition, 20% described hostile behaviors. Following the descrambling task, all participants read a vignette about a man named Donald who behaved in an ambiguously hostile manner and then rated him on a set of personality traits. Next, participants rated the hostility of various ambiguously hostile behaviors (all ratings on scales from 0 to 10). Participants who descrambled mostly hostile sentences rated Donald and the ambiguous behaviors as approximately 3 scale points more hostile than did those who descrambled mostly neutral sentences. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 26 independent replications ( N = 7,373 in the total sample; k = 22 labs and N = 5,610 in the primary analyses) of Srull and Wyer’s Experiment 1, each of which followed a preregistered and vetted protocol. A random-effects meta-analysis showed that the protagonist was seen as 0.08 scale points more hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% confidence interval, CI = [0.004, 0.16]). The ambiguously hostile behaviors were seen as 0.08 points less hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% CI = [−0.18, 0.01]). Although the confidence interval for one outcome excluded zero and the observed effect was in the predicted direction, these results suggest that the currently used methods do not produce an assimilative priming effect that is practically and routinely detectable.

International audience

In an anonymous 4-person economic game, participants contributed more money to a common project (i.e., cooperated) when required to decide quickly than when forced to delay their decision (Rand, Greene & Nowak, 2012), a pattern consistent with the social heuristics hypothesis proposed by Rand and colleagues. The results of studies using time pressure have been mixed, with some replication attempts observing similar patterns (e.g., Rand et al., 2014) and others observing null effects (e.g., Tinghög et al., 2013; Verkoeijen & Bouwmeester, 2014). This Registered Replication Report (RRR) assessed the size and variability of the effect of time pressure on cooperative decisions by combining 21 separate, preregistered replications of the critical conditions from Study 7 of the original article (Rand et al., 2012). The primary planned analysis used data from all participants who were randomly assigned to conditions and who met the protocol inclusion criteria (an intent-to-treat approach that included the 65.9% of participants in the time-pressure condition and 7.5% in the forced-delay condition who did not adhere to the time constraints), and we observed a difference in contributions of −0.37 percentage points compared with an 8.6 percentage point difference calculated from the original data. Analyzing the data as the original article did, including data only for participants who complied with the time constraints, the RRR observed a 10.37 percentage point difference in contributions compared with a 15.31 percentage point difference in the original study. In combination, the results of the intent-to-treat analysis and the compliant-only analysis are consistent with the presence of selection biases and the absence of a causal effect of time pressure on cooperation.

L'Encephale - Sous presse. Epreuves corrigees par l'auteur. Disponible en ligne depuis le jeudi 15 novembre 2018

The majority of studies investigating attitudes toward animals have underscored the role of demographic and personality factors. The study of the role of general moral worldviews on attitudes toward animals represents an important complementary perspective. In the current study, we analyzed the relationship between moral utilitarianism toward humans and attitudes toward animals. In psychological and neuroscientific studies, moral utilitarianism has been shown to be related to empathy deficits. We expected that utilitarian decision making would be related to the endorsement of an instrumental representation of animals. We measured utilitarianism with the trolley problem, a hypothetical moral dilemma widely used in the psychological study of moral reasoning. A sample of 20,474 French adults answered an online survey measuring attitudes toward animals and moral decision making involving human beings. Results showed that irrespective of participants’ age and gender, there was a slight relationship between uti...

This is a correction to the article Hasan, Y., Begue, L., & Bushman, B. J. (2012). Viewing the world through “blood-red tinted glasses”: The hostile expectation bias mediates the link between violent video game exposure and aggression. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 953–956. In the Results section, the paragraph under “Intercoder reliability” should read: “Two independent raters, blind to experimental conditions, rated on a 1-7 scale (from “not at all aggressive” to “completely aggressive”) the aggressive content of each of the behaviors, thoughts, and feelings participants listed when completing the story stems. The intraclass correlation coefficients were.74,.78, and.82 for aggressive behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, respectively (Shrout & Fleiss, 1979). Because the intraclass correlation coefficients were relatively high, the scores from the two raters were averaged. All ratings in each response category were averaged, and then further averaged across the two story stems to increase reliability.” The authors regret this error and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Indexado en Scopus Evolutionary medicine proposes studying alcohol use and abuse through the lens of modern evolutionary theory. This study (https://osf.io/p48uw/) follows this approach and uses an evolutionary framework to predict how young adults (18–35 years old) form impression of a binge drinker. We predicted that displaying sexual dysfunctions (short-term risk) in a binge drinking video would negatively influence attitudes and expectations of a target when compared to cognitive (short-term risk) or long-term deficits. In the following studies, we use a Zahavian framework to understand and influence impression formation of a male binge drinker among women (intersexual selection) and men (intrasexual competition) participants in a subsequent task. Via a randomized experimental online study in France (N = 177, M = 23.39 [4.91], 43.50% men) and a preregistered conceptual replication study in Peru (N = 176, M = 25.61 [4.76], 53.41% men), women exposed to a binge drinking video—describing sexual impotence after a binge drinking episode—tended to downgrade attractiveness evaluation of the binge drinker. However, male participants were not impacted by the different types of signals displayed in the videos. These results show that evolutionary theory could help us understand impression formation in binge drinking context and call for gender-specific health messages. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Revisión por pares

Introduction and aims We tested whether incidental exposure to alcohol marketing messages in sporting events: (i) influenced automatic evaluation of brands and alcohol in general; and (ii) if these processes occur through deliberative (conscious) or non-conscious processes. Design and methods Using an experimental design, participants watched a sport event containing: (i) a prototypical alcohol brand; (ii) a brand unrelated to alcohol; or (iii) a non-prototypical alcohol brand. One hundred and nine participants were randomly assigned to either a cognitively depleting task to impair motivation for effortful conscious processing before watching the excerpt, or a control task. We measured indirect (implicit) and direct (explicit) attitudes toward alcohol and brands, and self-report measures assessing affective response toward the event, involvement in processing the message and identifications toward the playing teams. Results We found a positive main effect of incidental exposure to alcohol brands on indirect measures of attitudes toward alcohol as well as the specific brand. No effect of cognitive fatigue on indirect measure toward brands and alcohol was observed. Discussion and conclusions Incidental exposure to alcohol marketing messages appear to impact indirect measures of attitudes toward the brand and alcohol in general, and seems to rely on non-conscious automatic processes.

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.

There is emerging evidence that Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) supplements can decrease aggression. However, experimental studies with adults from non-specific populations are scarce. We hypothesized that Omega-3 supplements would decrease self-reported aggression among non-clinical participants. In a double-blind randomized trial, two groups of participants (N = 194) aged 18-45 from the general population followed a 6-weeks treatment with 638mg docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and 772mg eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) per day or the equivalent quantity of copra oil (placebo). Self-reported aggressiveness was measured at baseline and after the 6-week treatment period. Findings showed that Omega-3 supplements significantly decreased self-reported aggressiveness at the end of the 6-week period (d = 0.31). In conclusion, this experiment indicates that Omega-3 administration has beneficial effects in reducing aggression among the general population.

Since implicit attitudes (i.e. evaluations occurring outside of complete awareness) are highly predictive of alcohol consumption, we tested an evaluative learning procedure based on repeated pairing to a critical stimulus (i.e. alcohol, the CS) with a valenced stimulus (the US) in order to modify implicit attitudes (i.e. evaluative conditioning; EC). We hypothesized that manipulating the learning context to bolster implicit affect misattribution should strengthen EC effects on implicit attitudes toward alcohol, while encouraging deliberate processing of CS-US pairs, should strengthen EC effects on explicit attitudes. In our study (n=114 students) we manipulated whether CS-US pairs were presented simultaneously or sequentially. Recollective memory was estimated with a Process Dissociation Procedure. Both implicit and explicit attitudes were assessed immediately after the procedure. Behavioral intentions were measured directly after and one week after the EC-procedure. We found that EC with sequential presentation had a stronger impact on implicit and explicit measures and on purchase intentions immediately after the procedure and one week after. The present findings provide new evidence that (i) EC is an effective way to change implicit attitudes toward alcohol and (ii) evidence that EC may be better described by propositional rather than dual process accounts.

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) and the Self-Attributed Need for Uniqueness scale (SANU; Lynn & Harris, 1997b). 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 D 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.

Craig A. Anderson, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University; Luca Andrighetto, Dip. di Scienze della Formazione, University of Genova; Bruce D. Bartholow, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri; Laurent Begue, Laboratoire Interuniversitaire de Psychologie, University of Grenoble; Paul Boxer, Department of Psychology, Rutgers University; Jeanne Funk Brockmyer, Department of Psychology, University of Toledo; Melinda C. R. Burgess, Department of Psychology, Southwestern Oklahoma State University; Esther Calvete, Deusto International Research School, Universidad de Deusto; Joanne Cantor, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin; Sarah M. Coyne, School of Family Life, Brigham Young University; Karen Dill-Shackleford, Fielding Graduate University; Ed Donnerstein, Department of Communication, University of Arizona; Alessandro Gabbiadini, University of Milano Bicocca; Bryan Gibson, Department of Psychology, Central Michigan University; Youssef Hasan, Qatar University; Adam K. Lueke, Department of Psychology, Central Michigan University; Izaskun Orue, Dpto. de Personalidad, Evaluacion y Tratamiento psicologico, Universidad de Deusto; Paolo Riva, Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca; Victor C. Strasburger, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico; Chiara Volpato, Department of Psychology, University of MilanoBicocca; Wayne Warburton, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Craig A. Anderson, Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-3180. E-mail: caa@iastate.edu T hi s do cu m en t is co py ri gh te d by th e A m er ic an Ps yc ho lo gi ca l A ss oc ia tio n or on e of its al lie d pu bl is he rs .

Alcohol is a risk factor for suicide and is often involved in violent actions. The aim of the study was to assess the involvement of alcohol in suicides and its relationship with the lethality of suicide methods.In a retrospective study on autopsy reports, we compared suicide and non-suicide victims, suicides with positive and negative blood alcohol concentration (BAC), and studied the lethality of suicide methods using a multivariate analysis.Suicide victims (n=88) were not different to non-suicide victims (n=270) for positive BAC and narcotics, but were more often positive for prescription medications (59.1 vs. 35.6%, p=0.003) and medications in blood (72.7 vs. 54.8%, p=0.004). Whereas non-suicidal victims died mainly of traumas (60%, p0.001), two populations of suicides emerged with regard to BAC, self-poisoning predominating with positive BAC (38.9%, p=0.039) and asphyxiation with negative BAC (41.4%, p=0.025). Positive BAC appeared as the unique and strong independent predictive factor, increasing the risk of self-poisoning suicide by 4.36 [1.29-14.76], and decreasing the risk of suicidal asphyxiation by 84% (OR=0.16 [0.03-0.83]). Positive blood narcotics tended to behave in the similar way to alcohol.Recruitment bias (victims declared by the Forensic authorities) and incomplete autopsy reports are the two main limitations.Characteristics of suicide victims with positive BAC are suggestive of Deliberate Self-Harm Syndrome (low lethality methods, substance misuse). These being at high risk of repeated suicide attempts, previous self-harm involving alcohol may represent a warning sign and access to medication should be limited to prevent recidivism.

The hypothetical moral dilemma known as the trolley problem has become a methodological cornerstone in the psychological study of moral reasoning and yet, there remains considerable debate as to the meaning of utilitarian responding in these scenarios. It is unclear whether utilitarian responding results primarily from increased deliberative reasoning capacity or from decreased aversion to harming others. In order to clarify this question, we conducted two field studies to examine the effects of alcohol intoxication on utilitarian responding. Alcohol holds promise in clarifying the above debate because it impairs both social cognition (i.e., empathy) and higher-order executive functioning. Hence, the direction of the association between alcohol and utilitarian vs. non-utilitarian responding should inform the relative importance of both deliberative and social processing systems in influencing utilitarian preference. In two field studies with a combined sample of 103 men and women recruited at two bars in Grenoble, France, participants were presented with a moral dilemma assessing their willingness to sacrifice one life to save five others. Participants' blood alcohol concentrations were found to positively correlate with utilitarian preferences (r=.31, p.001) suggesting a stronger role for impaired social cognition than intact deliberative reasoning in predicting utilitarian responses in the trolley dilemma. Implications for Greene's dual-process model of moral reasoning are discussed.

Research has indicated that many video games are saturated with stereotypes of women and that these contents may cultivate sexism. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between video game exposure and sexism for the first time in a large and representative sample. Our aim was also to measure the strength of this association when two other significant and well-studied sources of sexism, television exposure and religiosity, were also included in a multivariate model. A representative sample of 13520 French youth aged 11–19 years completed a survey measuring weekly video game and television exposure, religiosity, and sexist attitudes toward women. Controlling for gender and socioeconomic level, results showed that video game exposure and religiosity were both related to sexism. Implications of these results for future research on sexism in video games are discussed.

Cette revue de questions analyse les relations entre la consommation d’alcool et les conduites d’agression, qui sont notamment perpetrees envers un partenaire intime. Apres avoir etabli le lien statistique recurrent associant l’agression et l’alcool et donne un apercu des principales methodologies de recherche employees dans la recherche internationale a ce sujet, nous interrogeons le statut de l’alcool dans les conduites agressives entre partenaires intimes. Un examen detaille des modeles theoriques d’orientation pharmacologique et socio-cognitive qui rendent compte de ces liens est ensuite propose.

This study investigates how obedience in a Milgram-like experiment is predicted by interindividual differences. Participants were 35 males and 31 females aged 26-54 from the general population who were contacted by phone 8 months after their participation in a study transposing Milgram's obedience paradigm to the context of a fake television game show. Interviews were presented as opinion polls with no stated ties to the earlier experiment. Personality was assessed by the Big Five Mini-Markers questionnaire (Saucier, 1994). Political orientation and social activism were also measured. Results confirmed hypotheses that Conscientiousness and Agreeableness would be associated with willingness to administer higher-intensity electric shocks to a victim. Political orientation and social activism were also related to obedience. Our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that individual differences in personality and political variables matter in the explanation of obedience to authority.