Status & monetary downward comparisons activated brain regions associated with reward processing while upward comparisons yielded loss‐related activity, as if downward/upward comparisons resembled gains/losses

Upward and downward comparisons across monetary and status domains. Zachary A. Yaple  Rongjun Yu. Human Brain Mapping, July 23 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25148

Abstract: The ability to accurately infer one's place with respect to others is crucial for social interactions. Individuals tend to evaluate their own actions and outcomes by comparing themselves to others in either an upward or downward direction. We performed two fMRI meta‐analyses on monetary (n = 39; 1,231 participants) and status (n = 23; 572 participants) social comparisons to examine how domain and the direction of comparison can modulate neural correlates of social hierarchy. Overall, both status and monetary downward comparisons activated regions associated with reward processing (striatum) while upward comparisons yielded loss‐related activity. These findings provide partial support for the common currency hypothesis in that downward and upward comparisons from both monetary and status domains resemble gains and losses, respectively. Furthermore, status upward and monetary downward comparisons revealed concordant orbitofrontal cortical activity, an area associated with evaluating the value of goals and decisions implicated in both lesion and empirical fMRI studies investigating social hierarchy. These findings may offer new insight into how people relate to individuals with higher social status and how these social comparisons deviate across monetary and social status domains.

4 DISCUSSION

For this study we were determined to test the common currency hypothesis for social status and monetary comparisons by performing a series of fMRI meta‐analyses. Common‐currency hypothesis assumes that the brain uses a ‘common currency’ to rank outcomes and actions analogous to monetary gains and losses (Landreth & Bickle, 2008). According to this hypothesis, we expected to show a similar pattern of activity for monetary and social status. First we adopted social comparison theory to operationally define downward and upward comparisons. To test the common‐currency hypothesis for monetary and social status contexts, we expected both brain maps to yield regions associated with reward and losses. This assumption was based on a previous meta‐analysis (Luo et al., 2018) showing that downward comparisons recruit reward‐related striatum while upward comparisons yielded bilateral insula and anterior cingulate cortical activation, reflecting neural processes associated with losses. Due to the inclusion of monetary and status‐related contrasts in this prior report, we found it necessary to separately perform and contrast meta‐analyses of monetary and status upward and downward comparisons.

4.1 Common activity for downward and upward comparisons

First and foremost, meta‐analyses of downward comparisons in both domains demonstrated common patterns of activity, namely activity within the right striatum. The right striatum is associated with learning associations between rewarding stimuli and motor responses (Pizzagalli, 2014), habitual learning (Patterson & Knowlton, 2018) and with learning new stimulus–reward contingencies (Knutson & Cooper, 2005; Rogers et al., 2004). This result confirms the notion that downward comparisons in both monetary and status domains are compatible with the common currency hypothesis since the striatum is typically associated with the reception of reward (Delgado, 2007; Haber & Knutson, 2010).

The common currency hypothesis would also predict regions associated with losses during upward comparisons such as the ACC and insula (Luo et al., 2018). Indeed, our meta‐analyses of upward comparisons in both domains demonstrated common patterns of activity, namely activity within the dorsal ACC (dACC). For status and monetary upward comparisons, the dorsal ACC was concordant across studies. Among social comparisons, the ACC is often associated with psychosocial functioning such as social neglect (Lockwood, Apps, Roiser, & Viding, 2015; Lockwood & Wittmann, 2018; van der Molen, Dekkers, Westenberg, van der Veen, & van der Molen, 2017), monitoring of other people's decisions (Apps, Balsters, & Ramnani, 2012), and motivated social cognition (Hughes & Beer, 2012; Wittmann, Lockwood, & Rushworth, 2018). This may suggest that the ACC is a common active region associated with social interactions. The dorsal ACC also plays a key role in the processing of prediction errors and expectation violation (Kedia et al., 2014; van der Molen et al., 2017), which may corroborate the common currency hypothesis since individuals viewing others as beneficial may reflect a “worse than expected” prediction error (van der Molen et al., 2017; Yu & Zhang, 2014).

Such downward‐striatum and upward‐dACC activity patterns in social comparison across domains suggest that the basic reward and aversion brain systems are underlying this well‐known social phenomenon, regardless of the social settings. These findings highlight the pervasiveness of human tendency to compare with others and point out that such tendency is closed linked to the basic reward evaluation system. Our study may help explain why humans are prone to social comparison in all types of social areas, ranging from important social dimensions like attractiveness, wealth, and intelligence, to trivial things such as speech order and seating arrangement. It has been demonstrated that humans learn and evaluate values in a relative—context‐dependent—scale such that the context value sets the reference point to which an outcome should be compared (Palminteri, Khamassi, Joffily, & Coricelli, 2015). Hence, individuals may drive pleasure for winning $100 in the context of others winning only $10 or for publishing a paper in a mediocre journal in the context of colleagues having no publications. The reward evaluation system may convert all values to a common currency and scale it to a relative value so that even a small value can have huge impact on an individual's emotions. The computational mechanisms of common currency evaluation circuits may help explain how individuals respond to social comparison in different domains and with different magnitude of importance.

4.2 Unique activity for monetary and status comparisons

The contrast analyses revealed domain‐specific activity in social status and monetary comparisons. For example, downward comparisons in the monetary domain recruited greater activity within the orbital frontal gyrus/ventral ACC, right striatum as well as right precuneus and precentral gyrus, while status downward comparisons revealed no additional clusters, indicating additional processes for monetary compared to status comparisons. Upward monetary comparisons demonstrated larger clusters within the bilateral insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex compared to status comparisons. The insula may account for evaluations of social comparisons since the insula has been attributed to anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions (Simmons et al., 2011; Späti et al., 2014), and self‐initiated actions in social exclusion trials (Wang et al., 2019). Additional activity in monetary domain for downward comparison may indicate that financial advantage is more salient than social status advantage. On the other hand, social status upward comparisons yielded activity within the orbitofrontal cortex/ventral ACC, as well as left superior occipital and posterior cingulate cortex. Such unique activity pattern for social upward comparison may speak to the strong motivational nature of lagging behind in social ladders. Being lower in social status is an important teaching signal for individuals as it is often linked to social defeat and other disadvantages when acquiring social resources. Lower social ranking in the animal kingdom may also be associated with social threat and being intimidated by higher ranking others. Interestingly, the orbital frontal cortex was the only region active in both upward and downward comparisons, greater in the monetary context when making downward comparisons, yet greater in the social status context when comparing others with higher status. The orbital frontal cortex is an area commonly known for evaluating value of goals and decisions (Elliott, Newman, Longe, & Deakin, 2003; Hare, O'Doherty, Camerer, Schultz, & Rangel, 2008; O'Doherty, Critchley, Deichmann, & Dolan, 2003), and which has been implicated in both lesion (Karafin et al., 2004; Mah et al., 2004) and empirical fMRI studies investigating social hierarchy (Kumaran et al., 2016). Recently a large meta‐analysis had shown that the medial orbital part of the medial prefrontal cortex (i.e., the ventral medial prefrontal cortex; BA 11) is specifically recruited for the processing of situations, while processing of self and others recruits mainly the anteromedial and dorsomedial sub‐regions of the prefrontal cortex, respectively (Lieberman, Straccia, Meyer, Du, & Tan, 2019). With regard to the current study, this may suggest that upward status and downward monetary comparisons involve situational processing since both yielded medial prefrontal cortical activity (labeled as orbitofrontal cortex in Tables 3, 4, 5, and 6). However, downward monetary comparisons appeared to yield a medial prefrontal cortex cluster slightly more anterior than the upward status comparison contrast, possibly indicating additional self‐referential processing.

Upward and downward social comparisons have been shown to reflect both positive and negative outcomes. For instance, evaluation of others in the upward direction may include admiration or envy toward superior peers (Hagerty, 2000; Suls, Martin, & Wheeler, 2002) whereas downward comparisons may lead to the encouragement of subordinates to strive for success rather than gloat over one's own gains (Gibbons, 1986; Wills, 1981). The finding that the OFC is activated by both upward and downward comparison may suggest that humans are actively engaged in the detection of “self‐other” differences. Monitoring whether others are different from us, regardless of being better or worse, may help mobilize resources to evaluate and resolve the social deviation. This finding indicates that social comparison is an important learning process that helps individuals to sense whether anything, in comparison with others, is out of order. Perhaps differential activation of the orbitofrontal cortex may relate to how one may be evaluating others since this region is the only region to be associated with both directions of the comparison and is functionally related to evaluation (Cloutier & Gyurovski, 2014; Elliott et al., 2003; Hare et al., 2008; O'Doherty et al., 2003). However, this notion has yet to be tested in an empirical setting. Moreover, we were unable to distinguish upward and downward comparisons that were either worse or better than expected. Few articles examined whether participants perform better or worse than someone lower in the social hierarchy (Zink et al., 2008), which may account for the functional differences in upward and downward comparisons. Potentially achieving a higher superior position could be a rewarding experience but also be associated with antagonistic retaliation (Fiske, 2010). The interaction between social status and relative performance and its relationship to the orbitofrontal cortex could be an exciting topic for future neuroimaging research.

For strong believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus threat was associated with increased strengthening of religious beliefs; non-believers's higher anxiety was associated with increased scepticism of religion

Rigoli, Francesco. 2020. “The Link Between Coronavirus, Anxiety, and Religious Beliefs in the United States and United Kingdom.” PsyArXiv. July 24. doi:10.31234/osf.io/wykeq

Abstract: Research has shown that stress impacts on people’s religious beliefs. However, several aspects of this effect remain poorly understood, for example regarding the role of prior religiosity and stress-induced anxiety. This paper explores these aspects in the context of the recent coronavirus emergency. The latter has impacted dramatically on many people’s well-being; hence it can be considered a highly stressful event. Through online questionnaires administered to UK and USA citizens professing either Christian faith or no religion, this paper examines the impact of the coronavirus crisis upon common people’s religious beliefs. We found that, following the coronavirus emergency, strong believers reported higher confidence in their religious beliefs while non-believers reported increased scepticism towards religion. Moreover, for strong believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus threat was associated with increased strengthening of religious beliefs. Conversely, for non-believers, higher anxiety elicited by the coronavirus thereat was associated with increased scepticism towards religious beliefs. These observations are consistent with the notion that stress-induced anxiety enhances support for the ideology already embraced before a stressful event occurs. This study sheds light on the psychological and cultural implications of the coronavirus crisis, which represents one of the most serious health emergencies in recent times.

Meta-analysis: Soup consumption is significantly related to lower odds ratio of obesity

Association between soup consumption and obesity: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Motonaka Kuroda, Kumiko Ninomiya. Physiology & Behavior, July 24 2020, 113103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.113103

Abstract: This systematic review aimed to determine the correlation between soup consumption and obesity. The observational studies on the association of soup consumption to obesity-related parameters were screened by database search. From 1873 identified articles, 7 cross-sectional studies were included in the review. All studies indicated a significant inverse correlation between soup consumption and obesity. The meta-analysis of the studies of which outcome is odds ratio for obesity revealed that soup consumption is significantly related to lower odds ratio of obesity in combined data (n=45292, OR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.79-0.91, p<0.0001), suggesting that soup consumption was inversely correlated with a risk of obesity.

Keywords: Obesitysoupbody mass indexsystematic reviewmeta-analysis

Moral values occupy a cardinal position in people’s evaluation of others, & so people sometimes prescribe morally-good but evidentially-poor beliefs

Morality justifies motivated reasoning. Corey Cusimano, Tania Lombrozo. Princeton Univ 2020. https://cognition.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/cognition/files/cusimanocogsci2020.pdf

Abstract: A great deal of work argues that people demand impartial, evidence-based reasoning from others. However, recent findings show that moral values occupy a cardinal position in
people’s evaluation of others, raising the possibility that people sometimes prescribe morally-good but evidentially-poor beliefs. We report two studies investigating how people evaluate beliefs when these two ideals conflict and find that people regularly endorse motivated reasoning when it can be morally justified. Furthermore, we document two ways that moral considerations result in prescribed motivated reasoning. First, morality can provide an alternative justification for belief, leading people to prescribe evidentially unsupported beliefs to others. And, second, morality can affect how people evaluate the way evidence is weighed by lowering or raising the threshold of required evidence for morally good and bad beliefs, respectively. These results illuminate longstanding questions about the nature of motivated reasoning and the social regulation of belief.

Keywords: belief; ethics of belief; moral judgment; motivated reasoning

Same‐sex favouritism: Both sexes reacted less positively to the male‐favouring differences, judging the findings to be less important, less credible, and more offensive, harmful, and upsetting

Reactions to male‐favouring versus female‐favouring sex differences: A pre‐registered experiment and Southeast Asian replication. Steve Stewart‐Williams  Chern Yi Marybeth Chang  Xiu Ling Wong  Jesse D. Blackburn  Andrew G. Thomas. British Journal of Psychology, July 23 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12463

Abstract: Two studies investigated (1) how people react to research describing a sex difference, depending on whether that difference favours males or females, and (2) how accurately people can predict how the average man and woman will react. In Study 1, Western participants (N  = 492) viewed a fictional popular‐science article describing either a male‐favouring or a female‐favouring sex difference (i.e., men/women draw better; women/men lie more). Both sexes reacted less positively to the male‐favouring differences, judging the findings to be less important, less credible, and more offensive, harmful, and upsetting. Participants predicted that the average man and woman would react more positively to sex differences favouring their own sex. This was true of the average woman, although the level of own‐sex favouritism was lower than participants predicted. It was not true, however, of the average man, who – like the average woman – reacted more positively to the female‐favouring differences. Study 2 replicated these findings in a Southeast Asian sample (N  = 336). Our results are consistent with the idea that both sexes are more protective of women than men, but that both exaggerate the level of same‐sex favouritism within each sex – a misconception that could potentially harm relations between the sexes.

From 2015... The Evolutionary Psychology of Food Intake and Choice... Food choice is central in much of human behavior

From 2015... The Evolutionary Psychology of Food Intake and Choice. Chapter in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, 2015. 10.1002/9781119125563.evpsych106

Abstract: Food choice plays a fundamental role in both biological and cultural evolution. As social generalists eating a wide range of foods, humans have faced two great problems in their evolution: how to figure out what is toxic and what is nutritive—the omnivore's dilemma—and how to coordinate the learned knowledge of multiple individuals to succeed in omnivorous food selection. Generalists like humans and rats find food sources by searching and deciding how long to stay with particular sources (as studied in the optimal foraging literature), and choose which particular foods to eat on the basis of evolved preferences, in particular for sweet tastes and fatty textures, and evolved learning abilities, including social copying and learned taste aversions.The cultural evolution of the use of many basic foods such as corn, milk, and meat in different cuisines has engaged a number of genetically programmed human predispositions, including the fat and sweet preferences. The basic emotion of disgust was originally related to the food system, but through cultural preadaptation has come to be involved with many other domains of human life. Given its centrality in much of human behavior, food choice should take a more prominent place in evolutionary psychology.

A review of the literature on partner personality judgments in both approaches suggests that individuals tend to perceive their partners with both substantial accuracy & a considerable amount of bias

Accuracy and Bias of Trait Judgments in Romantic Relationships. Shanhong Luo and David Watson. In The Oxford Handbook of Accurate Personality Judgment, edited by Tera D. Letzring and Jana S. Spain. Oxford Handbooks Online, Aug 2019. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190912529.013.17

Abstract: This chapter provides a review of recent theoretical developments and empirical evidence regarding accuracy and biases of trait judgments in romantic relationships. Consistent with prior theorizing, personality judgments may be conceptualized to consist of accurate perceptions, systematic biases, and random errors. Two common biases in romantic relationships—positivity bias and similarity bias—are the focus of the chapter. The two major approaches to conceptualizing and assessing accuracy and biases—the variable-centered approach and the person-centered approach—are discussed. A review of the literature on partner personality judgments in both approaches suggests that individuals tend to perceive their partners with both substantial accuracy and a considerable amount of bias. Judges’ personal characteristics, trait properties, and relationship factors may moderate the extent to which the judgments are accurate and biased. Finally, accuracy, positivity bias, and similarity bias all have important positive implications for romantic relationship functioning.

Keywords: accuracy, positivity bias, similarity bias, partner personality judgment, variable-centered approach, person-centered approach, relationship functioning

When objective harm decreases, concepts of harm may expand to encompass new & previously innocuous phenomena, so it appears as widespread as ever; sometimes via intentional meaning changes engineered for political ends

Harm inflation: Making sense of concept creep. Nick Haslam et al. European Review of Social Psychology, Volume 31, 2020 - Issue 1, Jul 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2020.1796080

ABSTRACT: “Concept creep” is the gradual semantic expansion of harm-related concepts such as bullying, mental disorder, prejudice, and trauma. This review presents a synopsis of relevant theoretical advances and empirical research findings on the phenomenon. It addresses three fundamental questions. First, it clarifies the characterisation of concept creep by refining its theoretical and historical dimensions and presenting studies investigating the change in harm-related concepts using computational linguistics. Second, it examines factors that have caused concept creep, including cultural shifts in sensitivity to harm, societal changes in the prevalence of harm, and intentional meaning changes engineered for political ends. Third, the paper develops an account of the consequences of concept creep, including social conflict, political polarisation, speech restrictions, victim identities, and progressive social change. This extended analysis of concept creep helps to understand its mixed implications and sets a multi-pronged agenda for future research on the topic.

KEYWORDS: Concept creep, conflict, harm, identity, morality

Intrasexual competition, indexed by the operational sex ratio & income inequality (Gini), predicts women’s beautification reflected by search queries for cosmetic surgery terms & the density of certificated plastic surgeons

Women’s Intrasexual Competition Results in Beautification. Xijing Wang et al. Social Psychological and Personality Science, July 22, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620933403

Abstract: Psychology research focuses primarily on male competition. This research, however, investigates women’s competition for love and the ideal partner in the mating market and reveals one psychological consequence for women, that is, beautification. This is demonstrated with ecologically valid, real-world archive and online search query data, a quasi-experiment, and a series of controlled experiments with random assignments. Intrasexual competition, indexed by the operational sex ratio (OSR) and income inequality (GINI), predicts women’s beautification reflected by Google search queries for cosmetic surgery terms (Study 1) and the density of certificated plastic surgeons (Study 2). Female college students from faculties with female-biased OSRs exhibit greater appearance focus than women from male-biased faculties (Study 3). A causal relationship, between women’s intrasexual competition and beautification (and even self-objectification), is subsequently demonstrated in experiments (Studies 4–6). Additionally, self-objectification due to intrasexual competition leads to women’s preference for appearance-oriented products (Study 6). Implications are discussed.

Keywords: women, intrasexual competition, sex ratio, beautification, self-objectification

Despite Conservatism being positively correlated with dogmatism & negatively correlated with openness to new experiences and uncertainty tolerance, Liberals report lower levels of attitudinal ambivalence

Liberals Report Lower Levels of Attitudinal Ambivalence Than Conservatives. Leonard S. Newman, Rikki H. Sargent. Social Psychological and Personality Science, July 22, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620939798

Abstract: Political conservatism has been shown to be positively correlated with intolerance of ambiguity, need for closure, and dogmatism and negatively correlated with openness to new experiences and uncertainty tolerance. Those findings suggest that conservatism should also be negatively correlated with attitudinal ambivalence; by definition, ambivalent attitudes are more complex and more tinged with uncertainty than univalent attitudes. However, little published research addresses this issue. The results of five studies (total N = 1,049 participants) reveal instead that political liberalism is negatively associated with ambivalence. This finding held for both subjective and potential (i.e., formula-based) measures of ambivalence and for both politicized and nonpoliticized attitude objects. Conservatives may prefer uncomplicated and consistent ways of thinking and feeling, but that preference might not necessarily be reflected in the actual consistency of their mental representations. Possible accounts for these findings are discussed.

Keywords: political psychology, attitudes, ambivalence, conservatism

Time Passes Slowly When You Are Concealing Something

Time Passes Slowly When You Are Concealing Something. Izumi Matsuda, Ayano Matsumoto, Hiroshi Nittono. Biological Psychology, July 22 2020, 107932.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2020.107932

Highlights
• Time perception during concealment was investigated.
• People perceived the duration of items as longer when they concealed one of them.
• Skin conductance level was higher in the guilty than in the innocent condition.
• The effort to conceal something leads to a non-specific temporal overestimation.

Abstract: The item to be concealed elicits greater physiological arousal than other items. Since high physiological arousal causes an overestimation of time, the display duration of an item is expected to be perceived as longer when people intend to conceal it. After stealing and concealing one item, 36 university students were asked to judge the display duration of an item as shorter than, equal to, or longer than a memorised duration of 2 s. Pictures of three items including the stolen item were presented in the guilty condition, whereas pictures of three items that had not been stolen were presented in the innocent condition. The display of all items in the guilty condition was perceived as longer than in the innocent condition without difference between the concealed and other items. The intention to conceal increases tonic arousal reflected in a higher skin conductance level and leads to a non-specific temporal overestimation.

Keywords: arousalconcealed information testskin conductancetime perceptionwithdrawal motivation

Boredom increase in teens: Maybe due to technological advances that divorce individuals from traditional sources of meaning, including social relationshiops, meaningful work, & stable routines and communities

Westgate, Erin C. 2020. “Lost by Definition: Why Boredom Matters for Psychology and Society.” PsyArXiv. July 22. doi:10.31234/osf.io/q9fd5

Abstract: Long overlooked, boredom has drawn increasing attention across multiple subfields of psychology (including clinical, developmental, educational, cognitive, and industrial/organizational psychology), as well as economics, philosophy, neuroscience, and animal cognition. In this paper, we review and integrate this work by providing a social psychological perspective on boredom as an emotion, and its role in signaling the need for change to restore successful attention in meaningful activity. In doing so, we discuss the implications of that approach for understanding boredom cross-culturally and cross-species, and identify opportunities for targeted interventions to reduce boredom and improve well-being.

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Boredom increase in teens: Maybe due to technological advances that divorce individuals from traditional sources of meaning, including social relationshiops, meaningful work, & stable routines and communities.

Financial Decision Making and Individual Dispositions

Sekścińska K., Markiewicz Ł. (2020) Financial Decision Making and Individual Dispositions. In: Zaleskiewicz T., Traczyk J. (eds) Psychological Perspectives on Financial Decision Making. Springer, July 22 2020. https://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-45500-2_7

Abstract: Understanding who takes particular financial decisions, and under which conditions, has clear implications both for decision-makers’ well-being and for financial advisors (e.g., investment and credit advisors). Improving understanding in this area would be helpful in constructing clients’ profiles and recommending adequate financial instruments to them in accordance with the requirements of the markets in financial instruments directive in Europe (European Union Markets in Financial Instruments Directive—MiFID II). Difficulties in matching people’s dispositions with financial products arise from the ways in which the influences of people’s dispositions on their financial decision-making interact with specific contexts. Thus, the natural expectation that certain relationships observed for one financial decision (e.g., investing) will generalize to other similar types of decision (e.g., saving), or even to the same type of decision (another investing decision) taken at another point in time, is not always borne out as decisions are taken in different contexts. In this chapter, we present an extensive review of research on relationships between individual dispositions and decisions involving financial risk (saving, investing, borrowing, and cheating) towards the end of analyzing the stability and consistency of the role of personality dispositions across various financial domains and between various decision contexts. We conclude that the role of individual dispositions in explaining various financial behaviors, and different aspects of the same financial behavior, often varies with context, supporting the idea that interactive models can describe the influence of personal and situational factors on financial decision-making. Thus, to correctly understand the role of individual dispositions, further studies should verify how situational and contextual factors modify individual factors’ influence on financial decision-making.

Keywords: Saving Investing Cheating Financial risk Personality Big Five Dark triad Self-control Motivation Time perspectives

Early-life cognitive enrichment was associated with late-life cognitive health in part through an association with fewer Alzheimer disease-related pathological changes

Association of Early-Life Cognitive Enrichment With Alzheimer Disease Pathological Changes and Cognitive Decline. Shahram Oveisgharan et al. JAMA Neurol., June 29, 2020, doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.1941

Key Points
Question  Is a higher level of early-life cognitive enrichment associated with lower levels of late-life Alzheimer disease and other common dementia-related pathological changes?

Findings  In this cohort study of 813 patients with postmortem data, a higher level of early-life cognitive enrichment was associated with a decreased Alzheimer disease pathology score but was not associated with any other dementia-related pathological changes.

Meaning  Early-life cognitive enrichment was associated with late-life cognitive health in part through an association with fewer Alzheimer disease-related pathological changes.

Abstract
Importance  Indicators of early-life cognitive enrichment (ELCE) have been associated with slower cognitive decline and decreased dementia in late life. However, the mechanisms underlying this association have not been elucidated.

Objective  To examine the association of ELCE with late-life Alzheimer disease (AD) and other common dementia-related pathological changes.

Design, Setting, and Participants  This clinical-pathological community-based cohort study, the Rush Memory and Aging Project, followed up participants before death for a mean (SD) of 7.0 (3.8) years with annual cognitive and clinical assessments. From January 1, 1997, through June 30, 2019, 2044 participants enrolled, of whom 1018 died. Postmortem data were leveraged from 813 participants. Data were analyzed from April 12, 2019, to February 20, 2020.

Exposures  Four indicators of ELCE (early-life socioeconomic status, availability of cognitive resources at 12 years of age, frequency of participation in cognitively stimulating activities, and early-life foreign language instruction) were obtained by self-report at the study baseline, from which a composite measure of ELCE was derived.

Main Outcomes and Measures  A continuous global AD pathology score derived from counts of diffuse plaques, neuritic plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles.

Results  The 813 participants included in the analysis had a mean (SD) age of 90.1 (6.3) years at the time of death, and 562 (69%) were women. In a linear regression model controlled for age at death, sex, and educational level, a higher level of ELCE was associated with a lower global AD pathology score (estimate, −0.057; standard error, 0.022; P = .01). However, ELCE was not associated with any other dementia-related pathological changes. In addition, a higher level of ELCE was associated with less cognitive decline (mean [SD], −0.13 [0.19] units per year; range, −1.74 to 0.85). An indirect effect through AD pathological changes constituted 20% of the association between ELCE and the rate of late-life cognitive decline, and 80% was a direct association.

Conclusions and Relevance  These findings suggest that ELCE was associated with better late-life cognitive health, in part through an association with fewer AD pathological changes.

Your Personality Does Not Care Whether You Believe It Can Change: Beliefs About Whether Personality Can Change Do Not Predict Trait Change Among Emerging Adults

Your Personality Does Not Care Whether You Believe It Can Change: Beliefs About Whether Personality Can Change Do Not Predict Trait Change Among Emerging Adults. Nathan W. Hudson  R. Chris Fraley  Daniel A. Briley  William J. Chopik. Personality, July 21 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2289

Abstract: Theorists have suggested that beliefs about whether personality can change might operate in a self‐fulfilling fashion, leading to growth in personality traits across time. In the present two studies, we collected intensive longitudinal data from a total of 1339 emerging adults (n s = 254 and 1085) and examined the extent to which both global beliefs that personality can change (e.g. ‘You can change even your most basic qualities’) and granular beliefs that the individual Big Five personality domains can change (e.g. ‘You can change how extraverted and enthusiastic you generally are’) predicted trait change across approximately 4 months. Results indicated that traits did change across time, yet beliefs that personality can change were almost completely unrelated to actual change in personality traits. Our findings suggest that personality development during emerging adulthood does not depend to any meaningful degree on whether or not individuals believe that their traits can change. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology

Advanced career female academics are more likely than their male counterparts to underestimate the career commitment of women at the beginning of their academic careers

The Queen Bee phenomenon in Academia 15 years after: Does it still exist, and if so, why? Klea Faniko  Naomi Ellemers  Belle Derks. British Journal of Social Psychology, July 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12408

Abstract: Fifteen years ago, the British Journal of Social Psychology published a set of studies on male and female academics, documenting that female faculty members were more likely than male faculty members to express stereotyped views of women at the beginning of their academic careers (PhD candidates; Ellemers et al ., 2004, Br. J. Soc. Psychol ., 43 , 3). At the same time, the self‐descriptions of female faculty members were just as masculine as those of their male colleagues. Ellemers and colleagues (2004, Br. J. Soc. Psychol ., 43 , 3) referred to this combination of results as indicating the existence of a ‘Queen Bee (QB) phenomenon’ in academia. The present contribution investigates whether the QB phenomenon is also found among current generations of academics, investigating this in two recent samples of academic professionals (N  = 462; N  = 339). Our findings demonstrate that the phenomenon first documented in 2004 still exists: Advanced career female academics are more likely than their male counterparts to underestimate the career commitment of women at the beginning of their academic careers. At the same time, both male and female academics at advanced career stages describe themselves in more masculine terms than those at early career stages. We argue this indicates a response pattern in which successful women emulate the masculinity of the work environment. To indicate this, the term ‘self‐group distancing’ might be more appropriate than ‘Queen Bee effect’.

Emotional responses and aggressive sentiments toward self-targeting and other-targeting moral violations: Disgust, Anger, Aggression, Physical Strength & Physical Attractiveness

Tybur, J. M., Molho, C., Camak, B., Dores Cruz, T., Singh, G. D., & Zwicker, M. (2020). Disgust, Anger, and Aggression: Further Tests of the Equivalence of Moral Emotions. Collabra: Psychology, 6(1), 34. http://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.349

Abstract: People often report disgust toward moral violations. Some perspectives posit that this disgust is indistinct from anger. Here, we replicate and extend recent work suggesting that disgust and anger toward moral violations are in fact distinct in terms of the situations in which they are activated and their correspondence with aggressive sentiments. We tested three hypotheses concerning emotional responses to moral violations: (1) disgust is associated with lower-cost, indirectly aggressive motives (e.g., gossip and social exclusion), whereas anger is associated with higher-cost, directly aggressive motives (e.g., physical violence); (2) disgust is higher toward violations affecting others than it is toward violations affecting the self, and anger is higher toward violations affecting the self than it is toward violations affecting others; and (3) abilities to inflict costs on or withhold benefits from others (measured via physical strength and physical attractiveness, respectively) relate to anger, but not to disgust. These hypotheses were tested in a within-subjects study in which 233 participants came to the lab twice and reported their emotional responses and aggressive sentiments toward self-targeting and other-targeting moral violations. Participants’ upper body strength and physical attractiveness were also measured with a dynamometer and photograph ratings, respectively. The first two hypotheses were supported – disgust (but not anger) was related to indirect aggression whereas anger (but not disgust) was related to direct aggression, and disgust was higher toward other-targeting violations whereas anger was higher toward self-targeting violations. However, physical strength and physical attractiveness were unrelated to anger or disgust or to endorsements of direct or indirect aggression.

Keywords: disgust , anger , morality , aggression , punishment

Discussion

Studies using three different approaches have now found that anger and disgust toward moral violations differentially vary as a function of who is victimized by the transgression: one asked participants to verbally report the degree to which they felt moral disgust and the degree to which they felt anger (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011); one asked participants to verbally report the degree to which they felt disgust (importantly, without the term “moral”) and the degree to which they felt anger (Study 2; Molho et al., 2017); and, with this study included, six have asked participants how well facial expressions of disgust and facial expressions of anger match their feelings (Studies 1–3, Lopez et al., 2019; Studies 1 and 4, Molho et al., 2017). Of course, a finding’s frequency in the literature is not necessarily diagnostic of its truth, since file drawers can be filled with null findings and methodological variety across studies can mask the unreliability of an effect (Pashler & Harris, 2012). Given that the current study followed a pre-registered protocol in replicating one of these earlier studies (albeit with a within-subjects rather than between-subjects design), results should increase our confidence in the distinct relationships between disgust and anger and different types of aggression, as well as distinct relationships between moral violation target and anger versus disgust.

The novel finding afforded by our within-subjects design suggests that individuals who tend to be disgusted by moral violations also tend to endorse indirect aggression, but that within-person variation in disgust does not relate to within-person variation in indirect aggression. In contrast, both within- and between-participant variance in anger related to direct aggression. Said differently: the type of people who respond to moral violations with more disgust also tend to endorse greater indirect aggression, but greater disgust within an individual does not relate to greater indirect aggression sentiments. Naturally, these findings should be interpreted tentatively, both given their exploratory nature and given that we only assessed emotional responses and aggression twice. Nevertheless, they might suggest that the relationship between disgust and aggression is less dose-dependent than is the relationship between anger and aggression. That is, a little bit of disgust might have a similar effect on indirect aggression as a lot of disgust, whereas a little bit of anger might have less of an effect on indirect aggression than a lot of anger.

The degree to which disgust is expressed or experienced in response to moral violations across cultures is debated (compare Curtis and Biran, 2001, and Haidt, Rozin, McCauley, and Imada, 1997, with Han et al., 2016). The current study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to find distinct relationships between disgust and anger and distinct types of aggression outside of the U.S. Such findings suggest that these relationships are not limited to the U.S. or to (native) English-speaking populations. Of course, the Netherlands and the U.S. are both Western, educated, developed nations that speak Germanic languages. Replications across more varied nations can usefully inform the degree to which these distinctions between disgust and anger generalize across cultures.

Implications for the recalibration theory of anger

Multiple studies have lent support to the hypothesis that stronger and more attractive individuals are more prone to anger and have a greater history of success in conflicts. Based on this literature, we proposed that anger – but not disgust – toward moral violations would covary with strength and attractiveness. Our results were inconsistent with both this novel hypothesis and with previous findings. That said, while the 95% confidence interval for the correlation between men’s strength and anger proneness overlapped with zero, it also included r = .27, the correlation we estimated based on our literature review. Hence, the apparent difference between conclusions from this study and others does not offer strong evidence for a smaller (or null) relationship between strength and anger proneness in this population relative to other populations. Nevertheless, the relationship between physical strength and anger proneness might vary across cultural contexts (to the point of it being weaker or equal to zero in the population from which we sampled here), as suggested by Sell and colleagues (2009). In Dutch society, physical strength might afford less ability to inflict costs on others than in U.S. society (or in Aka society, where physical strength is also associated with a history of aggression, as reported in one study; Hess et al., 2010), perhaps due to greater social sanctioning of aggressive individuals and, relatedly, greater reliance on centralized authorities to solve disputes (Pinker, 2011). A recent study of men from Scotland and Germany – societies more similar to the Netherlands than the U.S. in terms of violence – similarly found little evidence for a relationship between strength and anger proneness (Von Borell et al., 2019). Ultimately, given the lack of replication of the finding that strength relates to anger proneness, we hesitate to abandon the hypothesis that strength differentially relates to anger and disgust. We recommend further tests of this idea, perhaps in other locations that have detected relationships between strength and anger proneness (e.g., the United States).

Limitations and future directions

Naturally, multiple limitations apply to the current findings. We discuss three notable ones. First, data were collected from a relatively affluent sample of young Dutch participants. As noted above, some of the relationships observed in the current study might not be generalizable to other populations. Second, the single-item measures of emotion based on posed facial expressions are noisy. Imprecision in this measure might attenuate effect size, and results using this type of measure might not generalize to other measures of emotion (e.g., measurements of facial expression; verbal self-reports). Third, participants reported hypothetical responses to hypothetical moral violations. The extent to which these responses – in terms of emotion or aggression – would generalize to behaviors in more ecologically valid conditions is an open question. Behavioral studies report that, in contrast to the strong sentiments to directly aggress against moral transgressors in third-party settings described here, people rarely directly aggress to help others (Pedersen et al., 2019). Further, some evidence suggests that responses to hypothetical moral transgressions and responses to actual moral transgressions are predicted by different factors (e.g., Baumert et al., 2013). Hence, null results (e.g., between formidability and aggression) should be interpreted tentatively, and relations between emotion and aggression should be investigated in non-hypothetical contexts.

Longitudinal studies do not appear to support substantive long-term links between aggressive game content & youth aggression; links appear better explained by methodological weaknesses & researcher expectancy effects

Do longitudinal studies support long-term relationships between aggressive game play and youth aggressive behaviour? A meta-analytic examination. Aaron Drummond, James D. Sauer and Christopher J. Ferguson. Royal Society Open Science, July 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200373

Abstract: Whether video games with aggressive content contribute to aggressive behaviour in youth has been a matter of contention for decades. Recent re-evaluation of experimental evidence suggests that the literature suffers from publication bias, and that experimental studies are unable to demonstrate compelling short-term effects of aggressive game content on aggression. Long-term effects may still be plausible, if less-systematic short-term effects accumulate into systematic effects over time. However, longitudinal studies vary considerably in regard to whether they indicate long-term effects or not, and few analyses have considered what methodological factors may explain this heterogeneity in outcomes. The current meta-analysis included 28 independent samples including approximately 21 000 youth. Results revealed an overall effect size for this population of studies (r = 0.059) with no evidence of publication bias. Effect sizes were smaller for longer longitudinal periods, calling into question theories of accumulated effects, and effect sizes were lower for better-designed studies and those with less evidence for researcher expectancy effects. In exploratory analyses, studies with more best practices were statistically indistinguishable from zero (r = 0.012, 95% confidence interval: −0.010, 0.034). Overall, longitudinal studies do not appear to support substantive long-term links between aggressive game content and youth aggression. Correlations between aggressive game content and youth aggression appear better explained by methodological weaknesses and researcher expectancy effects than true effects in the real world.

4. Discussion

Experimental investigations of the short-term effects of aggressive game content on player aggression produce inconsistent results [2]. As can now be seen, both an initial meta-analysis without much consideration of methodological moderators [9] and the current, updated meta-analysis suggest that effects fall below the r = 0.10 benchmark for a small effect. Publication bias indicators yielded no evidence of publication bias. Thus, current research is unable to support the hypothesis that violent video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on youth aggression. However, a number of findings merit more explicit consideration.

4.1. How to interpret weak effects

First, as noted, the overall effect of aggressive game content on behavioural aggression was below our preregistered cut-off for a practically meaningful effect (and the traditional cut-off to be considered small). This brings us to acknowledge one weakness of meta-analysis in general, namely the focus on statistical significance. We observe that, for years, scholars have acknowledged that ‘statistical significance’ is a poor benchmark for theory support [37] yet psychologists often naively rely upon it when making decisions. We argue that, particularly in highly powerful analyses such as meta-analysis, the concept of statistical significance becomes irrelevant as almost everything is statistically significant. Small effects, even where statistically significant, are often explained through methodological noise such as common method variance, demand characteristics or single-responder bias. Indeed, in our study we find that effect sizes are largely inflated through issues such as poorly standardized and validated measures of both aggression and violent game content. As such, relying on ‘statistical significance’ can give scholars an inflated sense of confidence in their hypotheses and render the concept of ‘effect size’ little more than window dressing, where any effect size, no matter how small, can be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis.

We acknowledge that our adoption of the r = 0.10 standard is likely to stimulate debate, which we believe to be important and welcome. Although we adopted the 0.10 standard suggested by Przybylski & Weinstein [10], one of the authors has previously suggested that an even higher standard of 0.20 may be necessary for greater confidence in the validity of effects [38] though the origins of such concerns about over-reliance on statistical significance and over-interpretation of weak effects stretches back decades. As expressed by Lykken [39, p. 153] ‘the effects of common method are often as strong as or stronger than those produced by the actual variables of interest’. This raises the question of to what degree we can have confidence that observed effect sizes reflect the relationship of interest as opposed to research artefacts. To be fair, some scholars do argue for interpretation of much lower effect sizes, such as r = 0.05 [40], though it is important that a key phrase in this argumentation is noted: ‘Our analysis is based on a presumption that the effect size in question is, in fact, reliably estimated’ [40, p. 163]. Our observation is that this assumption appears to have been demonstrated to be false for this field of research and, with that in mind, a higher threshold of scrutiny is warranted. Funder and Ozer's argument also relies on effects accumulating over time, whereas our analysis found the opposite, that longer time-intervals were associated with smaller effect sizes. Our concerns are less about the issue that some effects may be of trivial importance (though there is that), but rather that some observed effect sizes do not index genuine effects of interest at all, being instead the product of systematic methodological limitations. Naturally, we do not suggest that our r = 0.10 threshold is the end of this debate. Further data may suggest that this number needs be revised either upwards or downwards (we suspect the former more likely than the latter). Standards may need to be flexible given the differences in rigor across different fields, or even across prior assumptions about the size of effect one expects to see. For example, there is a rough precedent for r = 0.10 from another meta-analysis of aggression and empathy wherein weak effect sizes results (r = 0.11) were interpreted as not hypothesis supportive [41]. The authors note this could be owing to either weaknesses in the theory or measurement problems (or both) and we agree those are both worthwhile issues to consider. Our observation that standardized and validated measures tend to produce weaker effects for this field, however, would appear to diminish the possibility for measurement attenuation as a driving factor of observed weak effect sizes. This cautious interpretation of weak effect sizes has precedent, as well, among meta-analyses of violent games. For instance, an earlier meta-analysis found larger effect sizes (r = 0.15), but based on methodological and theoretical issues identified in the field, interpreted this as non-convincing [42].

The adoption of the r = 0.10 standard also appears consistent with the ‘smallest effect sizes of interest’ (SESOI) approach. From this perspective, an SESOI can be developed based on multiple criteria including what is theoretically relevant, what prior literature has suggested is an important effect size, what effect sizes are considered important based on established (though ultimately arbitrary) criteria, and the degree to which resources may be burned on an effect without seeing tangible outcomes [43]. From this approach, we can see the r = 0.10 standard is defensible. Both Orben and Przybylski, as well as earlier standards set by Cohen [21], apply the 0.10 standard (though we acknowledge other scholars endorse either higher or lower standards). Further, previous meta-analyses have suggested effects should be in the range of 0.20–0.30 [44], so any observed effects under 0.10 would represent an appreciable decline in effect size. Lastly, as we observe significant methodological issues have the potential to inflate effect size estimates, as also noted by Przybylski and Weinstein, setting an interpretive threshold can help reduce misinterpretation of weak, possibly misleading results. We note our CI does not cross the 0.10 threshold and, as such, feel confident in interpreting that the threshold for interpreting the longitudinal data as meaningful has not been met.

These debates regarding the interpretation of small effect sizes exist in other realms as well. This is particularly true when large samples may result in many ‘statistically significant’ relationships between variables that bear little actual relationship to each other. For instance, one recent study linked emotional diversity to mental and physical health in two samples totalling 37 000 relying on effect sizes generally in the range of r = 0.10 and lower (some as low as r = 0.02) [45]. Reflecting our concerns here, this interpretation was criticized by other scholars who argued such weak findings were more like the product of statistical artefacts than genuine effects of interest [46]. Regarding the potential perils of misleading results in large samples, the first author of that critique states (N. Brown 2020, personal communication) ‘A large sample size is a good thing, but only if used to improve the precision of effect estimates, not to prove that cats equal dogs, p < 0.05’. We agree with this assessment. Naturally, our critique is not of the use of large samples, which we wholeheartedly endorse, but rather the lack of consideration for potential statistical ‘noise’ (demand characteristics, single-responder bias, common method variance, researcher expectancy effects, mischievous responding, etc.), and how these can cause misleading results (for a specific, discovered example, see [47]).

Alternatively, the issue could be considered from the ‘crud factor’ perspective of Meehl [48]. From this perspective, tiny effects are real though only in the sense that every low-level variable is correlated to every other low-level variable to some degree (i.e. the r = 0.00 is rarely strictly true). This alternative explanation returns the dialogue to that of triviality. If every variable is correlated to every other variable to a tiny degree and in a way that will become statistically significant in large samples, it is still valuable to understand which relationships rise above this ‘crud’ and are worthy of investigation or policy interventions. Otherwise, the argument that video games might be restricted to promote youth mental health may be no more critical than, quite literally, arguing for the restriction of potatoes or eyeglasses for the same reason [49].

We welcome debate on this issue and challenges to our own position. We believe that this is a discussion worth having and one which extends beyond video game research.

4.2. Other issues

Second, we find no evidence for the assertion that these small effects might accumulate over time. The negative association between the length of the longitudinal period and the size of the effect speaks directly against theories of accumulated effects. Indeed, we found that longer longitudinal periods were associated with smaller effect sizes, not larger, directly contradicting the accumulation narrative. This is consistent with older meta-analyses of experimental studies which, likewise, found that longer exposure times were associated with weaker effects [42]. However, this differed from a previous meta-analysis that found some evidence for a positive association between longitudinal time and effect size [9]. However, the Prescott et al. meta-analysis found this effect only for fixed effects analyses, not for random effects, and random effects would probably have been the more appropriate model given heterogeneity in the data. Further, longitudinal time was treated as a 3-part categorical variable rather than a more appropriate continuous variable, and this may have caused statistical artefacts. Our analysis also includes several newer longitudinal studies not included with Prescott et al. As to why longitudinal length is associated with reduced effect size, we can think of two categories of explanation. First, there is a genuine, small effect of interest, but this is relatively short-lived and does not accumulate. Second, there is not a genuine effect of interest and methodological issues such as demand characteristics or mischievous responding tend to have greater impact on short-term outcomes than long. Given our observations about widespread methodological limitations in this field and their impact on effect size, we suspect the latter option is more likely. As such, for this area at least, we recommend against using this narrative, and suspect it should be used more cautiously in other areas as well unless directly demonstrated through empirical studies.

Third, we demonstrate that study quality issues do matter. In particular, the use of standardized and well-validated measures matters. Specifically, the use of high-quality measures was associated with reduced effect sizes. This observation also undercuts claims in a previous meta-analysis for ethnic differences in video game effects [9]. In particular, studies with Latino participants were mostly done with a population from Laredo, Texas, and used highly validated measures such as the Child Behaviour Checklist. Thus, Latino ethnicity was conflated with highly validated, standardized aggression measures. Only one other study involved Hispanics, Caucasian Americans and African Americans, but this study both used a non-standard video game assessment, and an unstandardized aggression measure, and switched the psychometrics of the aggression measure in the final time point, making longitudinal control difficult [50]. As such, this study is not of a quality sufficient to examine for ethnic differences. Given there are no obvious reasons to think Latinos are immune to game effects, whereas non-Latinos are vulnerable, it is more parsimonious to conclude that differences in the quality of measures used were responsible for the observed ethnic differences.

Studies which were of higher quality (scoring above the median in best practices) returned an effect size statistically indistinguishable from zero. This suggests that some effects may be driven by lower quality practices that may inflate some effect sizes. It is worth noting too that issues such as the use of standardized and validated outcomes and other best practices tend to correspond with less citation bias. As such, concerns about best practices and researcher allegiances tend to overlap.

Lastly, studies evidencing citation bias had higher effect sizes than those that did not demonstrate citation bias. This may be an indication of researcher expectancy effects. As such, we recommend increased use of preregistration in empirical studies.

It is worth noting that our effect size of r = 0.059 may not appear very different from the controlled effect size of r = 0.078 obtained by Prescott and colleagues. However, this represents a reduction in explained variance from 0.608% to 0.348%. This is a reduction of approximately 43% of explained variance (0.348/0.608). Granted this reduction would seem more dramatic had the original figure of r = 0.078 been larger. As meta-analyses on violent video games have been repeated over time, there appears to be a consistent downwards tendency in their point estimates, declining from 0.15 in early estimates to 0.10 in uncontrolled and 0.078 in controlled longitudinal estimates. Our results show further reduction towards an effect size of 0 in a preregistered longitudinal meta-analysis employing theoretically relevant controls. Despite disagreement about where the precise line of the smallest effect of interest may be, downward trends in the meta-analytic point estimates over time suggest we need to, as a field, grapple with precisely where an effect becomes too small to be considered practically meaningful or risk overstating the importance of our findings.

Further, we observe that few studies were preregistered. Preregistration can be one means by which research expectancy effects can be reduced. Consistent with observations about upward bias in meta-analyses in other realms, it appears that, across study types, preregistered analyses have been much less likely to find results in support of the video game violence hypotheses than non-preregistered studies. Our meta-analysis is, to our knowledge, the first preregistered meta-analysis in this realm. Preregistration is seldom perfect, of course, and we recognize there will always be some debate and subjectivity in terms of extracting the ideal effect size that best represents a hypothesis; but preregistration of both individual studies and meta-analyses can help make decisions clearer and reduce researcher subjectivity at least partially.

At this juncture, we observe that meta-analytic studies now routinely find that the long-term impacts of violent games on youth aggression are near zero, with larger effects sizes typically associated with methodological quality issues. In some cases, overreliance on statistical significance in meta-analysis may have masked this poor showing for longitudinal studies. We call on both individual scholars as well as professional guilds such as the American Psychological Association to be more forthcoming about the extremely small observed relationship in longitudinal studies between violent games and youth aggression.

Financial Decision Making and Individual Dispositions: Individual with "nice" personality traits borrow more money and have lower amounts of liquid savings

Sekścińska K., Markiewicz Ł. (2020) Financial Decision Making and Individual Dispositions. In: Zaleskiewicz T., Traczyk J. (eds) Psychological Perspectives on Financial Decision Making. Springer, July 22 2020. https://rd.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-45500-2_7

Abstract: Understanding who takes particular financial decisions, and under which conditions, has clear implications both for decision-makers’ well-being and for financial advisors (e.g., investment and credit advisors). Improving understanding in this area would be helpful in constructing clients’ profiles and recommending adequate financial instruments to them in accordance with the requirements of the markets in financial instruments directive in Europe (European Union Markets in Financial Instruments Directive—MiFID II). Difficulties in matching people’s dispositions with financial products arise from the ways in which the influences of people’s dispositions on their financial decision-making interact with specific contexts. Thus, the natural expectation that certain relationships observed for one financial decision (e.g., investing) will generalize to other similar types of decision (e.g., saving), or even to the same type of decision (another investing decision) taken at another point in time, is not always borne out as decisions are taken in different contexts. In this chapter, we present an extensive review of research on relationships between individual dispositions and decisions involving financial risk (saving, investing, borrowing, and cheating) towards the end of analyzing the stability and consistency of the role of personality dispositions across various financial domains and between various decision contexts. We conclude that the role of individual dispositions in explaining various financial behaviors, and different aspects of the same financial behavior, often varies with context, supporting the idea that interactive models can describe the influence of personal and situational factors on financial decision-making. Thus, to correctly understand the role of individual dispositions, further studies should verify how situational and contextual factors modify individual factors’ influence on financial decision-making.

Keywords: Saving Investing Cheating Financial risk Personality Big Five Dark triad Self-control Motivation Time perspectives