Showing papers in "Perspectives on Psychological Science in 2010"
TL;DR: It is proposed that a self is the “me” at the center of experience—a continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides actions and takes shape as the individual, both brain and body, becomes attuned to various environments.
Abstract: The study of culture and self casts psychology’s understanding of the self, identity, or agency as central to the analysis and interpretation of behavior and demonstrates that cultures and selves define and build upon each other in an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution. In a selective review of theoretical and empirical work, we define self and what the self does, define culture and how it constitutes the self (and vice versa), define independence and interdependence and determine how they shape psychological functioning, and examine the continuing challenges and controversies in the study of culture and self. We propose that a self is the ‘‘me’’ at the center of experience—a continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides actions and takes shape as the individual, both brain and body, becomes attuned to various environments. Selves incorporate the patterning of their various environments and thus confer particular and culture-specific form and function to the psychological processes they organize (e.g., attention, perception, cognition, emotion, motivation, interpersonal relationship, group). In turn, as selves engage with their sociocultural contexts, they reinforce and sometimes change the ideas, practices, and institutions of these environments.
1,041 citations
TL;DR: Often those who integrate are better adapted than those who acculturate by orienting themselves to one or the other culture or to neither culture (marginalization), and Implications of these findings for policy and program development and for future research are presented.
Abstract: In cross-cultural psychology, one of the major sources of the development and display of human behavior is the contact between cultural populations. Such intercultural contact results in both cultural and psychological changes. At the cultural level, collective activities and social institutions become altered, and at the psychological level, there are changes in an individual's daily behavioral repertoire and sometimes in experienced stress. The two most common research findings at the individual level are that there are large variations in how people acculturate and in how well they adapt to this process. Variations in ways of acculturating have become known by the terms integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization. Two variations in adaptation have been identified, involving psychological well-being and sociocultural competence. One important finding is that there are relationships between how individuals acculturate and how well they adapt: Often those who integrate (defined as being engaged in both their heritage culture and in the larger society) are better adapted than those who acculturate by orienting themselves to one or the other culture (by way of assimilation or separation) or to neither culture (marginalization). Implications of these findings for policy and program development and for future research are presented.
978 citations
TL;DR: This work revisits the idea of a motivational hierarchy in light of theoretical developments at the interface of evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology and proposes a renovated hierarchy of fundamental motives that serves as both an integrative framework and a generative foundation for future empirical research.
Abstract: Maslow’s pyramid of human needs, proposed in 1943, has been one of the most cognitively contagious ideas in the behavioral sciences. Anticipating later evolutionary views of human motivation and cognition, Maslow viewed human motives as based in innate and universal predispositions. We revisit the idea of a motivational hierarchy in light of theoretical developments at the interface of evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology. After considering motives at three different levels of analysis, we argue that the basic foundational structure of the pyramid is worth preserving, but that it should be buttressed with a few architectural extensions. By adding a contemporary design feature, connections between fundamental motives and immediate situational threats and opportunities should be highlighted. By incorporating a classical element, these connections can be strengthened by anchoring the hierarchy of human motives more firmly in the bedrock of modern evolutionary theory. We propose a renovated hierarchy of fundamental motives that serves as both an integrative framework and a generative foundation for future empirical research.
820 citations
TL;DR: This research provides a measure of stable individual differences in anthropomorphism that predicts three important consequences for everyday life: the degree of moral care and concern afforded to an agent, the amount of responsibility and trust placed on an agent and the extent to which an agent serves as a source of social influence on the self.
Abstract: Anthropomorphism is a far-reaching phenomenon that incorporates ideas from social psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and the neurosciences. Although commonly considered to be a relatively universal phenomenon with only limited importance in modern industrialized societies—more cute than critical—our research suggests precisely the opposite. In particular, we provide a measure of stable individual differences in anthropomorphism that predicts three important consequences for everyday life. This research demonstrates that individual differences in anthropomorphism predict the degree of moral care and concern afforded to an agent, the amount of responsibility and trust placed on an agent, and the extent to which an agent serves as a source of social influence on the self. These consequences have implications for disciplines outside of psychology including human–computer interaction, business (marketing and finance), and law. Concluding discussion addresses how understanding anthropom...
639 citations
TL;DR: Research on executive functioning and on self-regulation have each identified a critical resource that is central to that domain and is susceptible to depletion, and a theory-based natural environment intervention is suggested to restore this shared resource.
Abstract: Research on executive functioning and on self-regulation have each identified a critical resource that is central to that domain and is susceptible to depletion. In addition, studies have shown that self-regulation tasks and executive-functioning tasks interact with each other, suggesting that they may share resources. Other research has focused specifically on restoring what we propose is the shared resource between self-regulation and executive functioning. Utilizing a theory-based natural environment intervention, these studies have found improvements in executive-functioning performance and self-regulation effectiveness, suggesting that the natural environment intervention restores this shared resource.
622 citations
TL;DR: The final section of this article proposes that both episodic and semantic memory play an important role in the construction of episodic future thoughts and that their interaction in this process may be determined by the relative accessibility of information in memory.
Abstract: The ability to mentally simulate hypothetical scenarios is a rapidly growing area of research in both psychology and neuroscience. Episodic future thought, or the ability to simulate specific personal episodes that may potentially occur in the future, represents one facet of this general capacity that continues to garner a considerable amount of interest. The purpose of this article is to elucidate current knowledge and identify a number of unresolved issues regarding this specific mental ability. In particular, this article focuses on recent research findings from neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and clinical psychology that have demonstrated a close relation between episodic future thought and the ability to remember personal episodes from one’s past. On the other hand, considerations of the role of abstracted (semantic) representations in episodic future thought have been noticeably absent in the literature. The final section of this article proposes that both episodic and semantic memory play an importa...
542 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that the study of twin pairs discordant on exposure, and in particular discordant monozygotic twins, provides a useful analog to the idealized counterfactual design and is concluded that twin researchers could make greater use of the discordant-twin design to strengthen causal inferences in observational research.
Abstract: Valid causal inference is central to progress in theoretical and applied psychology. Although the randomized experiment is widely considered the gold standard for determining whether a given exposure increases the likelihood of some specified outcome, experiments are not always feasible and in some cases can result in biased estimates of causal effects. Alternatively, standard observational approaches are limited by the possibility of confounding, reverse causation, and the nonrandom distribution of exposure (i.e., selection). We describe the counterfactual model of causation and apply it to the challenges of causal inference in observational research, with a particular focus on aging. We argue that the study of twin pairs discordant on exposure, and in particular discordant monozygotic twins, provides a useful analog to the idealized counterfactual design. A review of discordant-twin studies in aging reveals that they are consistent with, but do not unambiguously establish, a causal effect of lifestyle factors on important late-life outcomes. Nonetheless, the existing studies are few in number and have clear limitations that have not always been considered in interpreting their results. It is concluded that twin researchers could make greater use of the discordant-twin design as one approach to strengthen causal inferences in observational research.
404 citations
TL;DR: Residential mobility is a powerful, parsimonious explanatory construct in the self, social relationships, and subjective well-being and may be a key to understanding the future of mind and behavior in the increasingly mobile world.
Abstract: Residential mobility is an increasingly important personal and societal issue in both the United States and the world in general. However, it has received relatively limited attention in psychological theorizing and research. This article demonstrates the importance of residential mobility in understanding the self, social relationships, and well-being. Recent research has shown that residential mobility (number of moves for an individual or percentage having moved recently for a neighborhood) is associated with the primacy of the personal over the collective self. It is also associated with "duty-free" friendships and group memberships rather than obligatory friendships and group memberships. Overall, residential mobility is associated with lower levels of well-being at the individual level of analysis. Finally, residential mobility is associated with personal forms of subjective well-being (based on self-esteem, the verification of the personal self) as opposed to interpersonal forms of subjective well-being (based on social support, the verification of the collective selves). In short, residential mobility is a powerful, parsimonious explanatory construct in the self, social relationships, and subjective well-being and may be a key to understanding the future of mind and behavior in the increasingly mobile world.
366 citations
TL;DR: Research is described that supports the view that social norms, intergroup contact, and perceived outgroup threat affect the relative weight children place on moral and group-based criteria during the development of prejudice.
Abstract: We argue that prejudice should be investigated in the context of social-cognitive development and the interplay between morality and group identity. Our new perspective examines how children consider group identity (and group norms) along with their developing moral beliefs about fairness and justice. This is achieved by developing an integrated framework drawing on developmental and social psychological theories of prejudice. This synthesis results in a perspective that provides a more contextualized analysis of prejudice development than that previously offered by developmental theories. We describe research that supports our view that social norms, intergroup contact, and perceived outgroup threat affect the relative weight children place on moral and group-based criteria during the development of prejudice.
327 citations
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that economic systems, political systems, religious systems, climates, and geography exert a distal yet important influence on human mind and behavior.
Abstract: This article presents a socioecological approach (accounting for physical, societal, and interpersonal environments) to psychological theorizing and research. First, we demonstrate that economic systems, political systems, religious systems, climates, and geography exert a distal yet important influence on human mind and behavior. Second, we summarize the historical precedents of socioecological psychology. There have been several waves of ecological movements with distinct emphases in the history of psychological science, such as K. Lewin’s (1936, 1939) field theory and U. Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) ecological approach to human development. Environmental and community psychologies, created in the late 1960s and early 1970s, promoted social activism through basic and applied research on ecological factors and social outcomes. Most recently, the rise of cultural psychology has encouraged psychologists to pay attention to cultural factors in basic psychological processes, but note that less attention has been given to socioecological factors per se. We highlight the benefits of bringing the socioecological perspective back to mainstream psychological theorizing and research.
319 citations
TL;DR: A general evaluability theory is proposed that specifies when people are value sensitive and when people mispredict their own or others' value sensitivity, and can explain and unify many seemingly unrelated findings.
Abstract: A central question in psychology and economics is the determination of whether individuals react differently to different values of a cared-about attribute (e.g., different income levels, different gas prices, and different ambient temperatures). Building on and significantly extending our earlier work on preference reversals between joint and separate evaluations, we propose a general evaluability theory (GET) that specifies when people are value sensitive and when people mispredict their own or others' value sensitivity. The GET can explain and unify many seemingly unrelated findings, ranging from duration neglect to affective forecasting errors and can generate many new research directions on topics ranging from temporal discounting to subjective well-being.
TL;DR: The intersubjective approach is proposed as a new approach to understanding the role that culture plays in human behavior and the implications are discussed for understanding the interaction between the individual, ecology, and culture.
Abstract: Intersubjective perceptions refer to shared perceptions of the psychological characteristics that are widespread within a culture. In this article, we propose the intersubjective approach as a new approach to understanding the role that culture plays in human behavior. In this approach, intersubjective perceptions, which are distinct from personal values and beliefs, mediate the effect of the ecology on individuals’ responses and adaptations. We review evidence that attests to the validity and utility of the intersubjective approach in explicating culture’s influence on human behaviors and discuss the implications of this approach for understanding the interaction between the individual, ecology, and culture; the nature of cultural competence; management of multicultural identities; cultural change; and measurement of culture.
TL;DR: Today's youth are less fearful of social problems than previous generations and they are also more cynical and less trusting, and today's youth have higher educational expectations than previous Generations, however, an inspection of effect sizes provided little evidence for strong or widespread cohort-linked changes.
Abstract: Social commentators have argued that changes over the last decades have coalesced to create a relatively unique generation of young people. However, using large samples of U.S. high-school seniors from 1976 to 2006 (Total N = 477,380), we found little evidence of meaningful change in egotism, self-enhancement, individualism, self-esteem, locus of control, hopelessness, happiness, life satisfaction, loneliness, antisocial behavior, time spent working or watching television, political activity, the importance of religion, and the importance of social status over the last 30 years. Today's youth are less fearful of social problems than previous generations and they are also more cynical and less trusting. In addition, today's youth have higher educational expectations than previous generations. However, an inspection of effect sizes provided little evidence for strong or widespread cohort-linked changes.
TL;DR: It is argued that scales measuring impression management should be redefined as measures of interpersonally oriented self- control that identify individuals who demonstrate high levels of self-control, especially in social contexts.
Abstract: Social desirability (specifically, impression management) scales are widely used by researchers and practitioners to screen individuals who bias self-reports in a self-favoring manner. These scales also serve to identify individuals at risk for psychological and health problems. The present review explores the evidence with regard to the ability of these scales to achieve these objectives. In the first part of the review, I present six criteria to evaluate impression management scales and conclude that they are unsatisfactory as measures of response style. Next, I explore what individual differences in impression management scores actually do measure. I compare two approaches: a defensiveness approach, which argues that these scales measure defensiveness that stems from vulnerable self-esteem, and an adjustment approach, which suggests that impression management is associated with personal well-being and interpersonal adjustment. Data from a wide variety of fields including social behavior, affect and wellbeing, health, and job performance tend to favor the adjustment approach. Finally, I argue that scales measuring impression management should be redefined as measures of interpersonally oriented self-control that identify individuals who demonstrate high levels of self-control, especially in social contexts.
TL;DR: This article argues that gestures contain detailed perceptual-motor information about the actions they represent, information often not found in the speech that accompanies the gestures, and shows that the action features in gesture do not just reflect the gesturer's thinking––they can feed back and alter that thinking.
Abstract: Recent research has shown that people’s actions can influence how they think. A separate body of research has shown that the gestures people produce when they speak can also influence how they think. In this article, we bring these two literatures together to explore whether gesture has an effect on thinking by virtue of its ability to reflect real-world actions. We first argue that gestures contain detailed perceptual-motor information about the actions they represent, information often not found in the speech that accompanies the gestures. We then show that the action features in gesture do not just reflect the gesturer’s thinking––they can feed back and alter that thinking. Gesture actively brings action into a speaker’s mental representations, and those mental representations then affect behavior––at times more powerfully than do the actions on which the gestures are based. Gesture thus has the potential to serve as a unique bridge between action and abstract thought.
TL;DR: The alcohol myopia model (AMM) is reviewed in light of its unique ability to account for a variety of alcohol and nonalcohol-related disinhibited behaviors, particularly aggression.
Abstract: The alcohol myopia model (AMM; Steele & Josephs, 1990) is reviewed in light of its unique ability to account for a variety of alcohol and nonalcohol-related disinhibited behaviors, particularly aggression. The AMM posits that alcohol has a narrowing, or a "myopic," effect on one's ability to attend to competing instigatory and inhibitory cues. Disinhibited behavior is presumed to occur when attention is directed toward salient provocative or instigatory cues rather than inhibitory cues. AMM research is reviewed with regard to stress and anxiety, risky sexual behavior, drinking and driving, suicide, disinhibited eating, smoking, and alcohol-related aggression. The AMM is also expanded by proposing five key mechanisms (i.e., negative affect, angry affect, hostile cognitive rumination, self-awareness, and empathy) that are likely to explain how the model is specifically involved in the alcohol-aggression relation. Finally, a number of public health interventions, extrapolated from the AMM, are proposed to stimulate future research directed at reducing the prevalence of alcohol-related violence.
TL;DR: The cognitive components of this complex phenomenon are elucidated and an overarching theoretical framework that specifies the cognitive mechanisms associated with the costs and benefits of collaboration on memory is proposed.
Abstract: People often form and retrieve memories in the company of others. Yet, nearly 125 years of cognitive research on learning and memory has mainly focused on individuals working in isolation. Although important topics such as eyewitness memory and autobiographical memory have evaluated social influences, a study of group memory has progressed mainly within the provinces of history, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. In this context, the recent surge in research on the cognitive basis of collaborative memory marks an important conceptual departure. As a first aim, we review these empirical and theoretical advances on the nature and influence of collaborative memory. Effects of collaboration are counterintuitive because individuals remember less when recalling in groups. Collaboration can also lead to forgetting and increase memory errors. Conversely, collaboration can also improve memory under proper conditions. As a second aim, we propose an overarching theoretical framework that specifies the cognitive mechanisms associated with the costs and benefits of collaboration on memory. A study of the reciprocal influences of the group and the individual on memory processes naturally draws upon several disciplines. Our aim is to elucidate the cognitive components of this complex phenomenon and situate this analysis within a broader interdisciplinary perspective.
TL;DR: This article explores three contentions: that the dominant discourse in modern cognitive, affective, and clinical neuroscience assumes that the authors know how psychology/biology causation works when they do not, and that crucial scientific and clinical progress will be stymied as long as psychology, biology, and their relationship are frame in currently dominant ways.
Abstract: We systematically mistreat psychological phenomena, both logically and clinically. This article explores three contentions: that the dominant discourse in modern cognitive, affective, and clinical neuroscience assumes that we know how psychology/biology causation works when we do not; that there are serious intellectual, clinical, and policy costs to pretending we do know; and that crucial scientific and clinical progress will be stymied as long as we frame psychology, biology, and their relationship in currently dominant ways. The arguments are developed with emphasis on misguided attempts to localize psychological function via neuroimaging, misunderstandings about the role of genetics in psychopathology, and untoward constraints on health-care policy and clinical service delivery. A particular challenge, articulated but not resolved in this article, is determining what constitutes adequate explanation in the relationship between psychology and biology.
TL;DR: Using a massive longitudinal database that included 2,178 business units in 10 large organizations, evidence is found supporting the causal impact of employee perceptions on these bottom-line measures; reverse causality of bottom- line measures on employee perceptions existed but was weaker.
Abstract: Perceptions of work conditions have proven to be important to the well-being of workers. However, customer loyalty, employee retention, revenue, sales, and profit are essential to the success of any business. It is known that these outcomes are correlated with employee attitudes and perceptions of work conditions, but the research into direction of causality has been inconclusive. Using a massive longitudinal database that included 2,178 business units in 10 large organizations, we found evidence supporting the causal impact of employee perceptions on these bottom-line measures; reverse causality of bottom-line measures on employee perceptions existed but was weaker. Managerial actions and practices can impact employee work conditions and employee perceptions of these conditions, thereby improving key outcomes at the organizational level. Perceptions of specific work conditions that engage employees in their work provide practical guidance in how best to manage people to obtain desired results.
TL;DR: The Cognitive Atlas Project is outlined, which is developing formal ontologies that describe the structure of mental processes, and it is shown how this knowledge could be used in conjunction with data-mining approaches to more directly relate mental processes and brain function.
Abstract: The goal of cognitive neuroscience is to identify the mapping between brain function and mental processing. In this article, I examine the strategies that have been used to identify such mappings and argue that they may be fundamentally unable to identify selective structure–function mappings. To understand the functional anatomy of mental processes, it will be necessary for researchers to move from the brain-mapping strategies that the field has employed toward a search for selective associations. This will require a greater focus on the structure of cognitive processes, which can be achieved through the development of formal ontologies that describe the structure of mental processes. In this article, I outline the Cognitive Atlas Project, which is developing such ontologies, and show how this knowledge could be used in conjunction with data-mining approaches to more directly relate mental processes and brain function.
TL;DR: It is argued that a social group containing members with different attachment patterns may be more conducive to survival than a homogeneous group of securely attached individuals.
Abstract: Bowlby’s (1969/1982) attachment theory has generated an enormous body of research and conceptual elaborations. Although attachment theory and research propose that attachment security provides a pe...
TL;DR: There is limited evidence that cultural experiences affect brain structure and considerably more evidence that neural function is affected by culture, particularly activations in ventral visual cortex—areas associated with perceptual processing.
Abstract: There is clear evidence that sustained experiences may affect both brain structure and function. Thus, it is quite reasonable to posit that sustained exposure to a set of cultural experiences and behavioral practices will affect neural structure and function. The burgeoning field of cultural psychology has often demonstrated the subtle differences in the way individuals process information—differences that appear to be a product of cultural experiences. We review evidence that the collectivistic and individualistic biases of East Asian and Western cultures, respectively, affect neural structure and function. We conclude that there is limited evidence that cultural experiences affect brain structure and considerably more evidence that neural function is affected by culture, particularly activations in ventral visual cortex—areas associated with perceptual processing.
TL;DR: A framework for analyzing the causal effects of interventions in the presence of latent factors that could affect outcomes, even in the absence of interventions is developed, which will be useful in situations in which genes are included among the latent factors.
Abstract: In this article, we develop a framework for analyzing the causal effects of interventions in the presence of latent factors that could affect outcomes, even in the absence of interventions. This framework will be useful in situations in which genes are included among the latent factors. We estimate the model and study the early origins of observed later-life disparities by education. We determine the role played by cognitive, noncognitive, and early health endowments. We identify the causal effect of education on health and health-related behaviors. We show that family background characteristics and cognitive, noncognitive, and health endowments developed by age 10 are important determinants of health disparities at age 30. We also show that not properly accounting for personality traits results in overestimation of the importance of cognitive ability in determining later health. Selection on preexisting traits explains more than half of the observed differences in poor health and obesity. Education has an important causal effect in explaining differences in smoking rates. There are significant gender differences. We go beyond the current literature, which typically estimates mean effects, to compute distributions of treatment effects. We show that the effect of education on health varies among individuals who are similar in their observed characteristics, and how a mean effect can hide gains and losses for different individuals. This analysis highlights the crucial role played by promotion of good health at an early age and the importance of prevention in the reduction of health disparities. We speculate about how the model can be applied to genetic studies.
TL;DR: Good intuition and reasoning inform mature moral functioning, which needs to include capacities that promote sustainable human well-being, which also requires collective capacities for moral dialogue and moral institutions.
Abstract: Recently, intuitionist theories have been effective in capturing the academic discourse about morality. Intuitionist theories, like rationalist theories, offer important but only partial understanding of moral functioning. Both can be fallacious and succumb to truthiness: the attachment to one's opinions because they "feel right," potentially leading to harmful action or inaction. Both intuition and reasoning are involved in deliberation and expertise. Both are malleable from environmental and educational influence, making questions of normativity-which intuitions and reasoning skills to foster-of utmost importance. Good intuition and reasoning inform mature moral functioning, which needs to include capacities that promote sustainable human well-being. Individual capacities for habituated empathic concern and moral metacognition-moral locus of control, moral self-regulation, and moral self-reflection-comprise mature moral functioning, which also requires collective capacities for moral dialogue and moral institutions. These capacities underlie moral innovation and are necessary for solving the complex challenges humanity faces.
TL;DR: This article briefly describes how psychology, psychiatry, and the mental health professions treated sexual orientation differences as deficits for much of the 20th century, as well as some of the negative consequences that practice had for sexual minorities.
Abstract: This article briefly describes how psychology, psychiatry, and the mental health professions (here collectively referred to as Psychology) treated sexual orientation differences as deficits for much of the 20th century, as well as some of the negative consequences that practice had for sexual minorities. The 1970s witnessed a remarkable turnaround when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the American Psychological Association called for psychologists to work to remove the stigma historically associated with homosexuality. This history illustrates not only how cultural institutions play a central role in legitimating stigma, but also how they can recognize their own complicity in this process and work effectively to undo its harmful effects. It is argued that Psychology still has an important role to play in challenging the differences-as-deficits model in contemporary policy debates.
TL;DR: The principles of Mendelian randomization are illustrated with specific reference to studies of the effects of alcohol intake on various health-related outcomes through the utilization of genetic variants related to alcohol metabolism (in ALDH2 and ADH1B).
Abstract: Identification of environmentally modifiable factors causally influencing disease risk is fundamental to public-health improvement strategies Unfortunately, observational epidemiological studies are limited in their ability to reliably identify such causal associations, reflected in the many cases in which conventional epidemiological studies have apparently identified associations that randomized controlled trials have failed to verify The use of genetic variants as proxy measures of exposure -an application of the Mendelian randomization principle-can contribute to strengthening causal inference Genetic variants are not subject to bias due to reverse causation (disease processes influencing exposure, rather than vice versa) or recall bias, and if simple precautions are applied, they are not influenced by confounding or attenuation by errors The principles of Mendelian randomization are illustrated with specific reference to studies of the effects of alcohol intake on various health-related outcomes through the utilization of genetic variants related to alcohol metabolism (in ALDH2 and ADH1B) Ways of incorporating Gene × Environment interactions into the Mendelian randomization framework are developed, and the strengths and limitations of the approach discussed
TL;DR: Examination of the meta-analyses appearing in Psychological Bulletin from 1978 to 2006 shows that most employ a statistically inappropriate model for meta-analysis and that 90% do not correct for the biasing effects of measurement error, suggesting there is still a long way to go in the improvement of data analysis and interpretation methods.
Abstract: Because of the way in which data are typically analyzed and interpreted, they frequently lie to researchers, leading to conclusions that are not only false but more complex than the underlying real...
TL;DR: It is shown that when new data on narcissism are folded into preexisting meta-analytic data, there is no increase in narcissism in college students over the last few decades, and that age changes in narcissistic tendencies are both replicable and comparatively large in comparison to generational changes in Narcissism.
Abstract: In this article, we make two points about the ongoing debate concerning the purported increase in narcissistic tendencies in college students over the last 30 years. First, we show that when new data on narcissism are folded into preexisting meta-analytic data, there is no increase in narcissism in college students over the last few decades. Second, we show, in contrast, that age changes in narcissism are both replicable and comparatively large in comparison to generational changes in narcissism. This leads to the conclusion that every generation is Generation Me, as every generation of younger people are more narcissistic than their elders.
TL;DR: The authors argue that outside the very narrow domain in which consequences can be unambiguously anticipated, it is not at all clear that calculation processes optimize outcomes and that following moral rules can lead to superior consequences in certain contexts.
Abstract: There has been a recent upsurge of research on moral judgment and decision making. One important issue with this body of work concerns the relative advantages of calculating costs and benefits versus adherence to moral rules. The general tenor of recent research suggests that adherence to moral rules is associated with systematic biases and that systematic cost-benefit analysis is a normatively superior decision strategy. This article queries both the merits of cost-benefit analyses and the shortcomings of moral rules. We argue that outside the very narrow domain in which consequences can be unambiguously anticipated, it is not at all clear that calculation processes optimize outcomes. In addition, there are good reasons to believe that following moral rules can lead to superior consequences in certain contexts. More generally, different modes of decision making can be seen as adaptations to particular environments.
TL;DR: Evidence for the role of epigenetic mechanisms in shaping developmental trajectories in response to early life experience as well as the potential plasticity that can occur beyond the perinatal period are discussed.
Abstract: Longitudinal studies in humans demonstrate the association between prenatal and postnatal experiences of adversity and long-term changes in neurodevelopment. These studies raise the question of how experiences become incorporated at a biological level to induce persistent changes in functioning. Laboratory studies using animal models and recent analyses in human cohorts implicate epigenetic mechanisms as a possible route through which these environmental effects are achieved. In particular, there is evidence that changes in DNA methylation are associated with early life experiences with consequences for gene expression and behavior. Despite the potential stability of DNA methylation, it is apparent that this epigenetic mark can be dynamically modified through pharmacological targeting and behavioral experiences. Developmental plasticity may also be achieved through modification of the juvenile environment. Although these juvenile experiences may lead to common endpoints, there is evidence suggesting that the effects of early and later life experiences may be achieved by different molecular pathways. This review discusses evidence for the role of epigenetic mechanisms in shaping developmental trajectories in response to early life experience as well as the potential plasticity that can occur beyond the perinatal period. These studies have implications for approaches to intervention and suggest the importance of considering individual differences in genetic and epigenetic vulnerability in developing treatment strategies.