Negative Response Bias Research Articles

Negative Response Bias, Malingering and Symptom Validity in Psychology: A Türkiye Focused-Review

Negative Response Bias, Malingering and Symptom Validity in Psychology: A Türkiye Focused-Review

Effects of positive and negative affect inductions on interpretive and response bias

Affective states and interpretations of ambiguous stimuli are inherently related constructs, although effects of induced affective states on interpretive and response biases have not been comprehensively explored. The present study examined the relationship between induced affective states and interpretive and response bias in a sample of 189 undergraduates. Participants completed an online study in which they were randomized into one of two mood induction conditions and subsequently completed an interpretive bias task. Results demonstrated significant condition differences in affect after the mood induction; the positive induction condition demonstrated significantly more positive mood and the negative condition demonstrated more negative mood. A significant difference between conditions emerged with respect to positive interpretive bias for non-social scenarios, with the positive mood induction condition demonstrating more positive interpretive bias to non-social situations than the negative induction condition (p = .04). The negative induction condition demonstrated significantly greater negative response bias for social scenarios (p = .03) and, unexpectedly, a significantly higher positive response bias for non-social scenarios (p = .05). Findings offer some support for the notion that inducing positive affect may promote more positive interpretations of ambiguous scenarios.

Ruling out feigned crime-related amnesia? A response to Acklin (2022).

In a recent paper, Acklin discussed a case of possible amnesia for a murder in terms of neurobiology, psychoanalysis, and personality assessment. Acklin accepted the defendant's claim of amnesia for the crime as genuine. The considerable literature that takes a skeptical view of crime-related amnesia was not cited, and the possibility of feigning or malingering was "ruled out" with a single sentence that does not withstand scrutiny. A review of the literature on feigned amnesia suggests that it may not be possible to rule out malingering even if the best available tools are used: There has been minimal investigation of most validity tests and estimates of base rates of feigned amnesia for a crime vary widely and make estimates of Negative Predictor Power highly unreliable. Although one cannot know from the information presented if Acklin's defendant legitimately experienced amnesia, feigning could not be ruled out using an interview and the test data cited by Acklin. I call for a moratorium on publication of further articles on crime specific amnesia that do not conscientiously examine other potential explanations and do not use current best practices for assessing negative response bias.

Self-Rated Versus Clinician-Rated Assessment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An Evaluation of Discrepancies Between the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 and the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is commonly assessed with self-rated or clinician-rated measures. Although scores from these assessment modalities are strongly associated, they are often discrepant for individual symptoms, total symptom severity, and diagnostic status. To date, no known studies have empirically identified the sources of these discrepancies. In the present study, we had three aims: (a) replicate previously identified discrepancies; (b) examine contribution of possible objective predictors of discrepancies, including negative response bias, random responding, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and verbal IQ; and (c) identify subjective sources of discrepancies through analysis of participant feedback. Trauma-exposed undergraduates (N = 60) were administered the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5), and other questionnaires. Interviewers identified discrepancies between corresponding PCL-5/CAPS-5 scores and asked participants to describe their attributions for discrepancies. Discrepancies, both dimensional and dichotomous, occurred at the item, cluster, and total score level. Objective predictors were weakly associated with discrepancies. The most commonly reported reasons for discrepancies were time-frame reminders, comprehension of symptoms, trauma-related attribution errors, increased awareness, and general errors. These findings help explain discordance between the PCL-5 and CAPS-5, and inform use and interpretation of these two widely used PTSD measures in clinical and research applications.

Depression differentially affects patient and caregiver perceptions of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Parkinson’s disease

Objective The aims of this study were twofold. First, we examined the relationship between patient and caregiver ratings of neuropsychiatric symptoms in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Second, we examined if the severity of depressive symptoms affects patient and caregiver perceptions of other neuropsychiatric symptoms and contributes to discrepancies between their perceptions. Method We examined data from a retrospective clinical cohort of 209 patients with PD and their caregivers. We used intra-class correlation coefficients and the Bland Altman method to assess intra-respondent (retrospective versus current) and inter-respondent (patient versus caregiver) agreement between Frontal Systems Behavior Scales (FrSBe) subscale scores. We then used generalized estimating equation models to examine FrSBe subscale scores and the magnitude of the intra- and inter-respondent discrepancies in FrSBe subscale scores, as a function of Beck Depression Inventory-2nd Edition scores, with patient demographic variable adjustments. Results There was low agreement between patient and caregiver ratings on all three subscales, at both time points, and high response variability within and between raters. Patients generally reported more severe neuropsychiatric symptoms than caregivers. Depression severity predicted patients’ perceptions at both time points, but was more strongly associated with current perceptions. Depression severity predicted caregivers’ current perceptions only. The inter-respondent discrepancy in perceived apathy and disinhibition, but not executive dysfunction, increased as a function of depression severity. Conclusions There are differences in how patients with PD and caregivers perceive neuropsychiatric behaviors and the extent to which depressive symptoms influence their perceptions. Shared neuropathology and negative response biases likely contribute to these relationships.

The validity of clinicians’ diagnoses: Is it bread and butter?

Major depression has become one of the most frequent diagnoses in Germany. It is also quite prominent in cases referred for medicolegal assessment in insurance, compensation or disability claims. This report evaluates the validity of clinicians’ diagnoses of major depression in a sample of claimants. In 2015, n = 127 consecutive cases were examined for medicolegal assessment. All had been diagnosed with major depression by clinicians. All testees underwent a psychiatric interview, a physical examination, they answered questionnaires for depressive symptoms according to DSM-5, embitterment disorder, post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and unspecific somatic complaints. Performance and symptom validity tests were administered. Only 31% of the sample fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for DSM-5 major depression according to self-report, while none did so according to psychiatric assessment. Negative response bias was found in 64% of cases, feigned neurologic symptoms in 22%. Symptom exaggeration was indiscriminate rather than depression-specific. By self-report (i.e. symptom endorsement in questionnaires), 64% of the participants qualified for embitterment disorder and 93% for PCS. In conclusion, clinicians’ diagnoses of depression seem frequently erroneous. The reasons are improper assessment of the diagnostic criteria, confusion of depression with bereavement or embitterment and a failure to assess for response bias.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Scores in Self-Report Questionnaires Assessing Adult ADHD Can Be Influenced by Negative Response Bias but Are Unrelated to Performance on Executive Function and Attention Tests

Self-report questionnaires are in widespread use in the assessment of adults with suspected attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Notwithstanding the high degree of validity, these questionnaires are considered to possess, their stand-alone use in assessment for adult ADHD may result in false-positive diagnoses due to the risk of negative response bias. Most of the self-report questionnaires in typical use are based on the diagnostic systems DSM-5 or ICD-10. From a neuropsychological point of view, however, testing of various executive function abilities and attentional performance is important in the assessment of adult ADHD. The present study (N = 211) found no evidence linking executive function (working memory and inhibitory processes) and attentional performance (processing speed) to the results of a self-report questionnaire, the ADHS-LE. The number of failures on the three symptom or performance validity tests (SVT/PVT) used provided the sole, and significant, explanation for the response behavior reported on the ADHS-LE. Of these three SVT/PVTs (the German version of the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology, SIMS, the reliable digit span, and the standard deviation of simple reaction time), only the SIMS was found to be a significant predictor variable. In the clinical context of this study, 32.6% of subjects produced at least one invalid SVT/PVT result. The use of a more conservative criterion—failure on at least two of the three SVT/PVTs deemed to be feigning ADHD—reduced the proportion of participants generating invalid values to 5%.

Assessing Negative Response Bias with the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV (MCMI-IV): a Review of the Literature

Assessing Negative Response Bias with the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV (MCMI-IV): a Review of the Literature

Assessing Negative Response Bias with the Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29): a Quantitative Literature Review

Assessing Negative Response Bias with the Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29): a Quantitative Literature Review

Assessing Negative Response Bias: a Review of the Noncredible Overreporting Scales of the MMPI-2-RF and MMPI-3

Assessing Negative Response Bias: a Review of the Noncredible Overreporting Scales of the MMPI-2-RF and MMPI-3

Recall, response bias and recognition are differentially impacted by social anxiety irrespective of feedback modality

Background and objectivesThis study replicates and extends Houle-Johnson et al.’s (2019) findings to better understand the role of feedback modality, ambiguity and social anxiety in the recognition and recall of self-relevant feedback. MethodsParticipants gave a speech and were provided with positive, negative, and ambiguous feedback via written text, (n = 33) or recorded sentences (n = 31) and later completed a recognition and recall task for the feedback. ResultsRecognition (p = .80, ηp2 = 0) and recall (p = .09, ηp2 = 0.08) did not differ between written or recorded feedback. All participants demonstrated a negative response bias (p < .001, ηp2 = 0.22) and recalled more negative than positive feedback (p = .02, ηp2 = 0.10) but were no more accurate in recognizing negative compared to positive feedback (p = .08, ηp2 = 0). Although social anxiety did not impact recognition accuracy (p = .94, ηp2 = 0), participants with high social anxiety demonstrated a more pronounced negative response bias (p < .01, ηp2 = 0.11) and negative recall bias (p = .02, SE = 1.12) than low social anxiety participants. Moreover, the more negatively ambiguous items were perceived, the more likely they were identified old in the high social anxiety group, whereas the opposite was true for the low social anxiety group (B = .13, p < .10). LimitationsTask believability was relatively low across all participants. ConclusionsOur findings suggest that modality does not influence memory for feedback. Moreover, social anxiety might be characterized by a negative bias in recall and response bias, but not necessarily increased accuracy in recognition of negative feedback.

Effects of illuminance and correlated color temperature of indoor light on emotion perception

The acute non-image forming (NIF) effects of daytime light on momentary mood had been-although not always-established in the current literature. It still remains largely unknown whether short-time light exposure would modulate emotion perception in healthy adults. The current study (N = 48) was conducted to explore the effects of illuminance (100 lx vs. 1000 lx at eye level) and correlated color temperature (CCT, 2700 K vs. 6500 K) on explicit and implicit emotion perception that was assessed with emotional face judgment task and emotional oddball task respectively. Results showed that lower CCT significantly decreased negative response bias in the face judgment task, with labeling ambiguous faces less fearful under 2700 K vs. 6500 K condition. Moreover, participants responded slightly faster for emotional pictures under 6500 K vs. 2700 K condition, but no significant effect of illuminance or CCT on negativity bias was revealed in the emotional oddball task. These findings highlighted the differential role of illuminance and CCT in regulating instant emotion perception and suggested a task-dependent moderation of light spectrum on negativity bias.

Examination of the MMPI-3 over-reporting scales in a forensic disability sample

Objective: The aim of this investigation was to provide information about the utility of the newly revised and renormed Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-3 (MMPI-3) over-reporting scales in a forensic disability sample. Method: Participants consisted of 550 non-head injury disability-related referrals (i.e. 95.6% for worker’s compensation) and were primarily diagnosed with an adjustment disorder, depressive disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder. Criterion measures included performance validity indicators and non-MMPI symptom validity indicators. Results: Correlation analyses showed that validity scale F was most strongly associated with non-MMPI symptom validity indicators, whereas F, Fs, FBS, and RBS were comparable to each other in their associations with performance validity indicators. Group mean comparisons between Pass versus Fail PVT groups showed that RBS consistently yielded the largest effect sizes. Using established structured criteria for Malingered Neurocognitive Dysfunction (MND), additional group mean comparisons showed that RBS, followed by Fs, F, and FBS, performed well in differentiating genuine responders from MND examinees. Classification accuracy estimates indicated that the MMPI-3 over-reporting scales performed well in the prediction of Probable/Definite MND and, as expected, to a lesser degree of Possible MND. Conclusions: Practical applications, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. The overall findings from this study provide empirical support for the utility of the MMPI-3 over-reporting scales in detecting negative response bias in forensic disability evaluations.

Introducing Psychological Injury and Law

Psychology injury and law is a specialized forensic psychology field that concerns reaching legal thresholds for actionable negligent or related injuries having a psychological component, such as for posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and mild traumatic brain injury. The presenting psychological injuries have to be related causally to the event at issue, and if pre-existing injuries, vulnerabilities, or psychopathologies are involved at baseline, they have to be exacerbated by the event at issue, or added to in unique ways such that the psychological effects of the event at issue go beyond the de minimis range. The articles in this special issue deal with the legal aspects of cases of psychological injury, including in legal steps and procedures to follow and the causal question of whether an index event is responsible for claimed injuries. They deal with the major psychological injuries, and others such as somatic symptom disorder and factitious disorder. They address best practices in assessment such that testimony and reports proffered to court are probative, i.e., helping the trier of fact to arrive at judicious decisions. The articles in the special issue review the reliable and valid tests in the field, including those that examine negative response bias, negative impression management, symptom exaggeration, feigning, and possible malingering. The latter should be ruled in only through the most compelling evidence in the whole file of an examinee, including test results and inconsistencies. The court will engage in admissibility challenges when testimony, reports, opinions, conclusions, and recommendations do not meet the expected standards of being scientific, comprehensive, impartial, and having considered all the reliable data at hand. The critical topics in the field that cut across the articles in the special issue relate to (a) conceptual and definitional issues, (b) confounds and confusions, (c) assessment and testing, (d) feigning/malingering, and (e) medicolegal/legal/court implications. The articles in the special issue are reviewed in terms of these five themes.

Assessing the proxy response bias of EQ\u20135D-3\u2009L in general population: a study based on a large-scale representative household health survey using propensity score matching

BackgroundProxy respondent-someone who assists the intended respondent or responds on their behalf-are widely applied in the measurement of health-related quality of life (HRQL). However, proxies may not provide the same responses as the intended respondents, which may bias the findings.ObjectivesTo determine whether the use of proxies is related to socio-demographic characteristics of the intended respondent, and to assess the possible proxy response bias of Chinese version of EQ-5D-3 L in general population.MethodsA cross-sectional study based on a provincially representative sample from 2013 National Health Service Survey (NHSS) in Shaanxi, China was performed. HRQL was measured by Chinese version of EQ-5D-3 L. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to get matched pairs of self-reports and proxy-reports. Before and after PSM, univariate logistic and linear models including the indicator of proxy response as the only independent variable, were employed to assess the possible proxy response bias of the dimensional and overall health status of EQ-5D-3 L respectively.Results19.9% of the responses involved a proxy. Before PSM, the proxy-report group was younger in age and reported less unhealthy lifestyle, lower prevalence of disease, and less hospitalization than the self-report group. After PSM, it showed that the proxy-report group was statistically more likely to report health problem on each dimension of EQ-5D-3 L, with odds ratios larger than one comparing with self-report group. The means of EQ-5D-3 L index and EQ VAS of proxy-report group were 0.022 and 0.834 lower than self-report group.ConclusionsSignificantly negative proxy response bias was found in Chinese EQ-5D-3 L in general population, and the magnitude of the bias was larger in physical dimensions than psychological dimensions after using PSM to control confounders.

Assessing Negative Response Bias in Competency to Stand Trial Evaluations

Steven J. Rubenzer, PhD ABPP. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 288 pp. $41.95. It is axiomatic in a forensic mental health evaluation that an evaluee's responses may be distorted in some way, either over- or under-reporting symptoms. In the context of criminal cases, the former is more

The Case for Assessing for Negative Response Bias, Not Malingering

ABSTRACT Assessment of response style is a vital component of forensic assessment. However, the focus on malingering in the literature and test offerings has predictable and negative consequences: Because the label of malingering is viewed as toxic, tests designed to assess for it are often long and sacrifice sensitivity to minimize false-positive errors. Rather than focusing on diagnosing or ruling out malingering, examiners and validity test authors can focus on detecting negative response bias that could invalidate other clinical and forensically relevant data. Doing so can avoid overstepping one’s data and stigmatization, allow shorter, more cost-efficient assessments, better inform the court, reduce inherent conflicts of interest, and lessen conflict surrounding the response style issue.

The relative contribution of response bias and weighting-of-similarity bias to valence asymmetry in attitude generalization

Negative generalization asymmetry (NGA) is a tendency to generalize negative attitudes more widely than positive attitudes. Studies found robust NGA for new objects that resemble both positive and negative learned objects, and even stronger NGA for new objects that resemble neither. Two biases were suggested to underlie NGA: (1) negative response bias, whereby a novel object is perceived as novel, but forced to make a dichotomous good/bad decision, a responder has a strategy to classify it as bad; (2) negative weighting-of-similarity bias, whereby a novel object seems more similar to negative learned objects than to positive learned objects. We hypothesized that adding a third response alternative, “cannot be evaluated”, to the good/bad response alternatives commonly used in the BeanFest paradigm would reduce negative response bias but not negative weighting-of-similarity. As predicted, the new response alternative was used more as similarity to learned stimuli decreased. Also as predicted, NGA, although still significant, was lower in the 3-alternatives condition. Interestingly, extent of reduction in NGA due to adding the new response alternative did not vary as a function of stimulus type, and was not particularly strong for stimuli very dissimilar to any learned stimuli. These results confirm that NGA is indeed partly due to response bias. They additionally suggest that increased NGA with decreasing similarity to learned stimuli cannot be attributed solely to negative response bias. Thus, avoidance of new, unfamiliar objects does not reflect only strategic caution, but rather reflects to a large extent a naïve-realistic belief that they are negative.

Semantic Incongruency Interferes With Endogenous Attention in Cross-Modal Integration of Semantically Congruent Objects.

Efficient multisensory integration is often influenced by other cognitive processes including, but not limited to, semantic congruency and focused endogenous attention. Semantic congruency can re-allocate processing resources to the location of a congruent stimulus, while attention can prioritize the integration of multi-sensory stimuli under focus. Here, we explore the robustness of this phenomenon in the context of three stimuli, two of which are in the focus of endogenous attention. Participants completed an endogenous attention task with a stimulus compound consisting of 3 different objects: (1) a visual object (V) in the foreground, (2) an auditory object (A), and (3) a visual background scene object (B). Three groups of participants focused their attention on either the visual object and auditory sound (Group VA, n = 30), the visual object and the background (VB, n = 27), or the auditory sound and the background (AB, n = 30), and judged the semantic congruency of the objects under focus. Congruency varied systematically across all 3 stimuli: All stimuli could be semantically incongruent (e.g., V, ambulance; A, church bell; and B, swimming-pool) or all could be congruent (e.g., V, lion; A, roar; and B, savannah), or two objects could be congruent with the remaining one incongruent to the other two (e.g., V, duck; A, quack; and B, phone booth). Participants exhibited a distinct pattern of errors: when participants attended two congruent objects (e.g., group VA: V, lion; A, roar), in the presence of an unattended, incongruent third object (e.g., B, bath room) they tended to make more errors than in any other stimulus combination. Drift diffusion modeling of the behavioral data revealed a significantly smaller drift rate in two-congruent-attended condition, indicating slower evidence accumulation, which was likely due to interference from the unattended, incongruent object. Interference with evidence accumulation occurred independently of which pair of objects was in the focus of attention, which suggests that the vulnerability of congruency judgments to incongruent unattended distractors is not affected by sensory modalities. A control analysis ruled out the simple explanation of a negative response bias. These findings implicate that our perceptual system is highly sensitive to semantic incongruencies even when they are not endogenously attended.

Ambiguous Bodies: The Role of Displayed Arousal in Emotion [Mis]Perception

Emotions of other people cannot be experienced directly but are often inferred from a variety of verbal and nonverbal information, including expressive body movement (EBM). Inferring emotional states is critical in social interaction, and questions remain about the factors contributing to ambiguity of EBM. In addressing this issue, researchers have looked to the link between displayed arousal, or the intensity of the emotional expression, and the potency of a nonverbal signal to convey emotional content such as valence or category. This study reports experimental results that address limitations of prior research regarding the ambiguity of EBM. Using motion-capture technology that permits isolation of expressive cues, the results suggest that for displays of anger and happiness (a) the ambiguity of the emotional valence and category increases as a linear function of the displayed arousal, and (b) observers show a negative response bias and greater sensitivity to negative cues. Implications of these findings for research on emotion perception are discussed.