Individual Difference Measures Research Articles

Concept Creep of Collective Narcissism

Collective narcissism refers to overvaluing the group with which one identifies. In a widely circulated and attention-grabbing paper, Putnam and colleagues (2018) measured collective narcissism by asking people how much their state in the U.S.A. contributed to the nation’s history. This led to some media reports proclaiming that the U.S.A. is “a nation of narcissists.” We demonstrated here (valid N = 539) that Putnam’s operationalization of collective narcissism had a small correlation (r = .18) with a traditional individual difference measure of collective narcissism, falling short of typical benchmarks for convergent validity. These results call into question whether collective narcissism can be measured as Putnam did. In the end, this empirical investigation has implications for “concept creep.” Measures that lack convergent validity but use the same label (in this case, “collective narcissism”) not only create confusion, but also increase the chances of unfounded yet highly publicized claims. In this case, the meaning of the new measure does not adequately reflect the meaning of the original construct—implicating concept creep of collective narcissism.

The role of truth and bias in parents’ judgments of children’s science interests

Parents’ judgments about their children’s level of interest in different science topics may affect the science-learning opportunities they provide their children. However, little is known about how parents judge these interests. We used the truth and bias model of judgment of West and Kenny (Psychological Review [2011], Vol. 118, pp. 357–378) to examine factors that may affect parents’ judgments of their children’s science interests such as the truth (children’s self-reported interest) and potential sources of parental bias. We also investigated whether several individual difference measures moderated the effect of truth or bias on judgments. Children (N = 139, ages 7–11 years) rated their level of interest in five science and five non-science topics. Separately, parents (N = 139) judged their children’s interest in the same topics. Overall, parents accurately judged their children’s science interests, but we also found evidence of some forms of bias, namely that parents generally under-estimated their children’s science interests. In addition, parents’ personal science attitudes were related to judgments of science interests, such that parents more favorable of science tended to rate their children’s interest in science topics higher than parents with a less favorable view. We did not find evidence that individual differences among parents moderated the effect of truth or bias on judgments; however, parents were more accurate at judging the non-science interests of older children than younger children. Parents should be aware that they may be under-estimating their children’s interest in science topics and that their personal attitudes about science may be influencing their judgments of their children’s science interests.

Financial Homo Ignorans: Development and validation of a scale to measure individual differences in financial information ignorance

Information ignorance refers to the act of deliberately avoiding, neglecting, or distorting information to uphold a positive self-image and protect our identity-based beliefs. We apply this framework to household finance and develop a concise 12-item questionnaire measuring individuals’ receptiveness to financial information, or the lack thereof – the Financial Homo Ignorans (FHI) Scale. We conduct two studies with samples from the general population in Sweden (total N=2508) and show that the FHI scale has high reliability and distinct from other commonly used individual-difference measures in behavioral finance. We show that individual heterogeneity as assessed by the FHI scale explains a substantial variation in financial behaviors and financial well-being, also when controlling for demographics and financial literacy. These results unequivocally demonstrate the utility of the FHI scale as a valuable instrument for researchers and practitioners in comprehending and addressing the challenges posed by the omnipresence of financial information in today's world.

Experiencing beauty in everyday life

Beauty surrounds us in many ways every day. In three experience sampling (ESM) studies we investigated frequency, category of eliciting stimuli (natural vs human-made) and, the potential moderating role of several individual difference measures on such everyday experiences of beauty in an ecologically valid manner. Further, we explored the impact of such experiences on valence & arousal. Study 1 re-analysed data from a previous study, in line with the current aims. In Studies 2 and 3, we asked participants to report daily experiences of beauty using a mixed random and event-contingent sampling schedule. Mobile notifications (random sampling) prompted participants to take a photo and rate the beauty of their surroundings. Further, current valence and arousal were assessed. Notification frequency and total days of participation differed between these two studies. Participants were able to report additional experiences outside of the notification windows (event-contingent sampling). Our results indicate that we frequently encounter beauty in everyday life and that we find it in nature, in particular. Our results further suggest a mood-boosting effect of encounters with beauty. Lastly, our results indicate influences of individual differences however, these were inconclusive and require further attention.

Reflecting on the use of response times to index linguistic knowledge in SLA

Abstract Response times (RTs) have become ubiquitous in second language acquisition (SLA) research, providing empirical evidence for the theorization of the language learning process. Recently, there have been discussions of some fundamental psychometric properties of RT data, including, but not limited to, their reliability and validity. In this light, we take a step back to reflect on the use of RT data to tap into linguistic knowledge in SLA. First, we offer a brief overview of how RT data are most commonly used as vocabulary and grammar measures. We then point out three key limitations of such uses, namely that (a) RT data can lack substantive importance without considerations of accuracy, (b) RT differences may or may not be a satisfactory psychometric individual difference measure, and (c) some tasks designed to elicit RT data may not be sufficiently fine-grained to target specific language processes. Our overarching goal is to enhance the awareness among SLA researchers of these issues when interpreting RT results and stimulate research endeavors that delve into the unique properties of RT data when used in our field.

Is it better to be happy or right? Examining the relative role of the pragmatic and epistemic imperatives in momentary affective evaluations.

According to research highlighting the importance of predictions, the confirmation of expectations may be a positively-laden experience. A strong test of this principle is the case of the "doomsayer's delight": the possibility that belief confirmation can be rewarding even when negative expectations are realized. In order to investigate this idea, we conducted two high-powered experiments examining people's immediate affective reactions following exposure to expected or unexpected positive and negative stimuli. The results show that people feel significantly worse when their pessimistic expectations are confirmed than when their optimistic expectations are violated. This finding was not moderated by several theoretically relevant individual difference measures or temporal dynamics. Findings from this study contribute to our understanding of the interplay between epistemic and pragmatic motivations in guiding emotional responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Multimodal Associations of FKBP5 Methylation With Emotion-Regulatory Brain Circuits

BackgroundUnderstanding the biological processes that underlie individual differences in emotion regulation and stress responsivity is a key challenge for translational neuroscience. The gene FKBP5 is a core regulator in molecular stress signaling that is implicated in the development of psychiatric disorders. However, it remains unclear how FKBP5 DNA methylation in peripheral blood is related to individual differences in measures of neural structure and function and their relevance to daily-life stress responsivity. MethodsHere, we characterized multimodal correlates of FKBP5 DNA methylation by combining epigenetic data with neuroimaging and ambulatory assessment in a sample of 395 healthy individuals. ResultsFirst, we showed that FKBP5 demethylation as a psychiatric risk factor was related to an anxiety-associated reduction of gray matter volume in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain area that is involved in emotion regulation and mental health risk and resilience. This effect of epigenetic upregulation of FKBP5 on neuronal structure is more pronounced where FKBP5 is epigenetically downregulated at baseline. Leveraging 208 functional magnetic resonance imaging scans during a well-established emotion-processing task, we found that FKBP5 DNA methylation in peripheral blood was associated with functional differences in prefrontal-limbic circuits that modulate affective responsivity to daily stressors, which we measured using ecological momentary assessment in daily life. ConclusionsOverall, we demonstrated how FKBP5 contributes to interindividual differences in neural and real-life affect regulation via structural and functional changes in prefrontal-limbic brain circuits.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with better task-based delay of gratification skills are rated as less impulsive, more agreeable, and smarter.

Delay of gratification and inhibitory control are generally considered measures of self-control. In humans, individual differences in measures of self-control are associated with a host of behavioral, neurological, cognitive, and health-related outcomes. Self-control is not unique to humans and has been demonstrated in a variety of nonhuman species using a variety of paradigms. In this study, the effect of sex and age on delay of gratification performance, as measured by the hybrid delay task, was tested in a sample of 88 chimpanzees. Additionally, whether individual differences in hybrid delay task performance were associated with different aspects of personality was examined in this study. Contrary to reports in human subjects, geriatric male chimpanzees were found to perform more efficiently than adult males, while no age differences were found between geriatric and adult females. Indeed, delay of gratification efficiency was positively associated with age in males and negatively associated with age in females. Chimpanzees that performed more efficiently on the hybrid delay task were also found to be rated as more intelligent, more extraverted, and less impulsive. These findings suggest that objective measures of efficiency in delay of gratification tasks are associated with different dimensions of personality, which have some overlapping construct validity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Capturing individual differences in sentence processing: How reliable is the self-paced reading task?

Advances in research on language processing have originally come from group-level comparisons, but there is now a growing interest in individual differences. To investigate individual differences, tasks that have shown robust group-level differences are often used with the implicit assumption that they will also be reliable when used as an individual differences measure. Here, we examined whether one of the primary tasks used in psycholinguistic research on language processing, the self-paced reading task, can reliably measure individual differences in relative clause processing. We replicated the well-established effects of relative clauses at the group level, with object relative clauses being more difficult to process than subject relative clauses. However, when using difference scores, the reliability of the size of the relative clause effect was close to zero because the self-paced reading times for the different relative clause types were highly correlated within individuals. Nonetheless, we found that the self-paced reading task can be used to reliably capture individual differences in overall reading speed as well as key sentence regions when the two types of relative clause sentences are considered separately. Our results indicate that both the reliability and validity of different sentence regions need to be assessed to determine whether and when self-paced reading can be used to examine individual differences in language processing.

Development and validation of the physical effort scale (PES)

ObjectivesPrevious literature has primarily viewed physical effort as an aversive experience. However, recent research suggests that effort can also be valued positively. These differences in approach and avoidance tendencies toward physical effort may play a key role in the self-regulation of physical activity behaviors. The aim of this study was to develop a scale that measures these tendencies and contributes to a better understanding of physical effort and how it affects behavior. MethodsThe Physical Effort Scale (PES) was developed in Study 1 based on expert evaluations (n = 9) and cognitive interviews (n = 10). In Study 2 (n = 680, 69% female), content validity and dimensional structure were examined using principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Item reduction was conducted using item response theory. Preliminary construct validity was explored using regression. Study 3 (n = 297, 71% female) was used to validate dimensional structure, internal consistency, and construct validity, and to assess test-retest reliability. ResultsIn Study 1, 44 items were rated for content validity, of which 18 were selected and refined based on cognitive interviews. Analyses from Study 2 allowed reducing the scale to 8 items with a two-dimension structure: tendency to approach (n = 4) and to avoid physical effort (n = 4). The two subscales showed high internal consistency (α = 0.897 for the approach dimension and 0.913 for the avoidance dimension) and explained usual levels of physical activity, providing preliminary evidence of construct validity. Study 3 confirmed the two-dimension structure with high internal consistency (α = 0.907 and 0.916 for the approach and avoidance dimension, respectively) and revealed acceptable test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation >0.66). Patterns of associations with other constructs showed expected relationships, confirming the concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity of the scale. ConclusionsThe PES is a valid and reliable measure of individual differences in the valuation of physical effort. This scale can assess the propensity to engage in physically demanding tasks in non-clinical populations. The PES and its manual are available in the Supplementary Material.

Psychometric Properties of the Swedish Version of the Compassion Scale

ObjectivesAn increased interest in the phenomenon and process of compassion, in both clinical and non-clinical psychological research, has been seen in recent decades. In these contexts, compassion is frequently understood as a felt response to the suffering of others that involves caring and seeing the universal nature of human suffering, as well as an authentic desire to ease the distress. Based on the above, the purpose of the study was to validate a Swedish translation of the Compassion Scale.MethodThe manuscript reports on the analyses of the factor structure, reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity of the developed scale using data from two samples (n = 1712 and n = 353) of Swedish adults, using confirmatory factor analysis and correlation analyses.ResultsThe results show that the translated scale had the same factor structure as the original scale, with four distinct but related factors relating to the aspects of “Kindness”, “Common humanity”, “Mindfulness”, and “Indifference”. In addition, the results indicate that the developed measure provided reliable scores, both for the entire scale and for the different subscales. In addition, the performed analyses indicate that the Swedish version of the Compassion Scale generally showed the expected relationship to related measures of personality and individual differences in empathic responding. Finally, the results supported the predictions that women would generally score higher than men on the Compassion Scale, and that compassion would have negative correlations with both age and average monthly income.ConclusionsIn conclusion, the performed studies provide support for the adequacy of the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the Compassion Scale, as well as for its congruent and discriminative validity.

Examining the Relationship Between Multiple Tests of Receptive Vocabulary.

Numerous tasks have been developed to measure receptive vocabulary, many of which were designed to be administered in person with a trained researcher or clinician. The purpose of the current study is to compare a common, in-person test of vocabulary with other vocabulary assessments that can be self-administered. Fifty-three participants completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) via online video call to mimic in-person administration, as well as four additional fully automated, self-administered measures of receptive vocabulary. Participants also completed three control tasks that do not measure receptive vocabulary. Pearson correlations indicated moderate correlations among most of the receptive vocabulary measures (approximately r = .50-.70). As expected, the control tasks revealed only weak correlations to the vocabulary measures. However, subsets of items of the four self-administered measures of receptive vocabulary achieved high correlations with the PPVT (r > .80). These subsets were found through a repeated resampling approach. Measures of receptive vocabulary differ in which items are included and in the assessment task (e.g., lexical decision, picture matching, synonym matching). The results of the current study suggest that several self-administered tasks are able to achieve high correlations with the PPVT when a subset of items are scored, rather than the full set of items. These data provide evidence that subsets of items on one behavioral assessment can more highly correlate to another measure. In practical terms, these data demonstrate that self-administered, automated measures of receptive vocabulary can be used as reasonable substitutes of at least one test (PPVT) that requires human interaction. That several of the fully automated measures resulted in high correlations with the PPVT suggests that different tasks could be selected depending on the needs of the researcher. It is important to note the aim was not to establish clinical relevance of these measures, but establish whether researchers could use an experimental task of receptive vocabulary that probes a similar construct to what is captured by the PPVT, and use these measures of individual differences.

Examining personality dimensions in rats using a caregiver questionnaire

Measures of individual behavioural differences (personality) are highly valuable in many areas of ethology, particularly studies of animal emotion and welfare. However, there are limitations to current behavioural tests of personality. Caregiver questionnaires may provide a complementary approach to overcome some of these limitations and provide a richer insight into personality. Drawing on previous studies, we developed a questionnaire in which caregivers were asked to rate the extent to which a given adjective/term described a rat under their care. We then used factor analysis to identify personality dimensions and assess whether those dimensions mapped to rat sex, rat age, number of companions, predator exposure, or owner experience. We obtained usable data from 296 rat caregivers and identified six personality dimensions: tameness, shyness, liveliness, interspecific sociability, inquisitiveness, aggressiveness. These dimensions are, with the exception of ‘inquisitiveness’, in line with previous studies and the broader literature on personality in non-human animals. With the exception of shyness, which was significantly associated with sex and owner experience, we found no strong evidence for a relationship between the personality dimensions and age, sex, number of companions, predator exposure, or owner experience. Although there remain important issues to be answered by future research, such as whether there is interobserver agreement in personality ratings and the extent to which the personality ratings are repeatable over time, the present study indicates that questionnaires of caregivers could in future provide a valuable tool to assess personality in rats.

Development and validation of three brief versions of the humor styles questionnaire

The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) is a frequently applied measure of individual differences in humor usage. However, previous research found several of its items to be unreliable and to provide insufficient information. Its 32-item length may also hinder its application in contexts in which short measures are required to maintain participant motivation, for instance large-scale assessments. In the present paper, we present three brief versions with five, four, and three items per subscale respectively, avoiding the questionable items. The results showed that the factor structure, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability of the original HSQ and the developed brief versions were as expected. Relations between the brief versions and psychological constructs (e.g., self-esteem, well-being, aggression, Big Five) were similar to the original HSQ. The findings support the psychometrical soundness and validity of three brief versions of the HSQ comparable to the original long version. General challenges in the assessment of humor are discussed.

An investigation of the modulatory effects of empathic and autistic traits on emotional and facial motor responses during live social interactions.

A close relationship between emotional contagion and spontaneous facial mimicry has been theoretically proposed and is supported by empirical data. Facial expressions are essential in terms of both emotional and motor synchrony. Previous studies have demonstrated that trait emotional empathy enhanced spontaneous facial mimicry, but the relationship between autistic traits and spontaneous mimicry remained controversial. Moreover, previous studies presented faces that were static or videotaped, which may lack the "liveliness" of real-life social interactions. We addressed this limitation by using an image relay system to present live performances and pre-recorded videos of smiling or frowning dynamic facial expressions to 94 healthy female participants. We assessed their subjective experiential valence and arousal ratings to infer the amplitude of emotional contagion. We measured the electromyographic activities of the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii muscles to estimate spontaneous facial mimicry. Individual differences measures included trait emotional empathy (empathic concern) and the autism-spectrum quotient. We did not find that live performances enhanced the modulatory effect of trait differences on emotional contagion or spontaneous facial mimicry. However, we found that a high trait empathic concern was associated with stronger emotional contagion and corrugator mimicry. We found no two-way interaction between the autism spectrum quotient and emotional condition, suggesting that autistic traits did not modulate emotional contagion or spontaneous facial mimicry. Our findings imply that previous findings regarding the relationship between emotional empathy and emotional contagion/spontaneous facial mimicry using videos and photos could be generalized to real-life interactions.

Individual differences in inattentional blindness.

People often fail to notice unexpected objects and events when they are performing an attention-demanding task, a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness. We might expect individual differences in cognitive ability or personality to predict who will and will not notice unexpected objects given that people vary in their ability to perform attention-demanding tasks. We conducted a comprehensive literature search for empirical inattentional blindness reports and identified 38 records that included individual difference measures and met our inclusion criteria. From those, we extracted individual difference effect sizes for 31 records which included a total of 74 distinct, between-groups samples with at least one codable individual difference measure. We conducted separate meta-analyses of the relationship between noticing/missing an unexpected object and scores on each of the 14 cognitive and 19 personality measures in this dataset. We also aggregated across personality measures reflecting positive/negative affectivity or openness/absorption and cognitive measures of interference, attention breadth, and memory. Collectively, these meta-analyses provided little evidence that individual differences in ability or personality predict noticing of an unexpected object. A robustness analysis that excluded samples with extremely low numbers of people who noticed or missed produced similar results. For most measures, the number of samples and the total sample sizes were small, and larger studies are needed to examine individual differences in inattentional blindness more systematically. However, the results are consistent with the idea that noticing of unexpected objects or events differs from deliberate attentional control tasks in that it is not reliably predicted by individual differences in cognitive ability.

The relative importance of contextual factors in judging mundane extradyadic behaviors as infidelity: A policy‐capturing study

AbstractSeemingly benign extradyadic behaviors (e.g., buying/receiving gifts or talking on the phone) may be perceived as infidelity under certain circumstances, therefore causing distress and conflict in romantic relationships. A policy‐capturing method was used to illuminate the relative role of contextual factors (secrecy, frequency of the behavior, and the victim's familiarity with the rival) in perceiving whether a mundane, everyday extradyadic act is perceived to cross the line from benign to infidelity. In two sessions, 135 participants completed individual difference measures and rated 30 different vignettes in which the extradyadic behavior (i.e., direct messaging on social media) was held constant, but levels of contextual factors varied. Participants perceived secrecy as the most important contextual factor in deciding whether a mundane extradyadic behavior constituted infidelity, followed by frequency. The victim's familiarity with the rival was deemed least important. Higher reactive jealousy predicted higher perception of the behavior as infidelity and greater anticipated emotional distress following the behavior. Implications for how couples discuss the boundaries of their relationships and understand the source of emotional distress experienced after seemingly benign extradyadic behaviors are discussed.

Domain-general and -specific individual difference predictors of an uncanny valley and uncanniness effects

Near humanlike artificial entities can appear eerie or uncanny. This uncanny valley is here investigated by testing five individual difference measures as predictors of uncanniness throughout a variety of stimuli. Coulrophobia predicted uncanniness of distorted faces, bodies, and androids and clowns; disgust sensitivity predicted the uncanniness of some distorted faces; the anxiety facet of neuroticism predicted the uncanniness of some distorted faces, bodies, and voices; deviancy aversion and need for structure predicted uncanniness of distorted places and voices. Taken together, the results suggest that while uncanniness can be caused by multiple, domain-independent (e.g., deviancy aversion) and domain-specific (e.g., disease avoidance) mechanisms, the uncanniness of androids specifically may be related to a fear of clowns, potentially due to a dislike of exaggerated human proportions.

Temporal stability of Bayesian belief updating in perceptual decision-making.

Bayesian inference suggests that perception is inferred from a weighted integration of prior contextual beliefs with current sensory evidence (likelihood) about the world around us. The perceived precision or uncertainty associated with prior and likelihood information is used to guide perceptual decision-making, such that more weight is placed on the source of information with greater precision. This provides a framework for understanding a spectrum of clinical transdiagnostic symptoms associated with aberrant perception, as well as individual differences in the general population. While behavioral paradigms are commonly used to characterize individual differences in perception as a stable characteristic, measurement reliability in these behavioral tasks is rarely assessed. To remedy this gap, we empirically evaluate the reliability of a perceptual decision-making task that quantifies individual differences in Bayesian belief updating in terms of the relative precision weighting afforded to prior and likelihood information (i.e., sensory weight). We analyzed data from participants (n = 37) who performed this task twice. We found that the precision afforded to prior and likelihood information showed high internal consistency and good test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.73, 95% CI [0.53, 0.85]) when averaged across participants, as well as at the individual level using hierarchical modeling. Our results provide support for the assumption that Bayesian belief updating operates as a stable characteristic in perceptual decision-making. We discuss the utility and applicability of reliable perceptual decision-making paradigms as a measure of individual differences in the general population, as well as a diagnostic tool in psychiatric research.

ChillsDB 2.0: Individual Differences in Aesthetic Chills Among 2,900+ Southern California Participants

We significantly enriched ChillsDB, a dataset of audiovisual stimuli validated to elicit aesthetic chills. A total of 2,937 participants from Southern California were exposed to 40 stimuli, consisting of 20 stimuli (10 from ChillsDB and 10 new) presented either in audiovisual or audio-only formats. Questionnaires were administered assessing demographics, personality traits, state affect, and political orientation. Detailed data on chills responses is captured alongside participants’ ratings of the stimuli. The dataset combines controlled elicitation of chills using previously validated materials with individual difference measures to enable investigation of predictors and correlates of aesthetic chills phenomena. It aims to support continued research on the mechanisms and therapeutic potential of aesthetic chills responses.