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ABSTRACT: Recent progress in cognitive neuroscience suggests that alpha activity may reflect selective cortical inhibition involved in signal amplification, rather than neural idling. Unfortunately, these theoretical advances remain largely ignored in affective neuroscience. To address this limitation the present paper proposes a novel research avenue aimed at using alpha to elucidate cortical inhibitory mechanisms involved in affective processes. The proposal is illustrated by developing inhibitory accounts of affective attention and affective tuning phenomena. The emergent predictions were tested using event-related perturbations from 73 students evaluating affective and nonaffective aspects of five types of emotional images. The results revealed that upper alpha power was increased by affective content in general and aversive stimuli in particular from 350 ms at posterior and from 575 ms at central sites. The evaluation task interacted with affective content only at a liberal statistical significance level in late posterior alpha. These results are generally in line with the proposed inhibitory accounts of affective attention and tuning, although the evidence is preliminary rather than conclusive. As confirmation of functional origins of alpha in affect remains beyond the scope of a single study, this paper aims to inspire further extrapolation of the inhibitory account of alpha within affective neuroscience.
International journal of psychophysiology: official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology 05/2013; · 3.05 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A general explanation for the observer's ability to judge the mean size of simple geometrical figures, such as circles, was advanced. Results indicated that, contrary to what would be predicted by statistical averaging, the precision of mean size perception decreases with the number of judged elements. Since mean size discrimination was insensitive to how total size differences were distributed among individual elements, this suggests that the observer has a limited cognitive access to the size of individual elements pooled together in a compulsory manner before size information reaches awareness. Confirming the associative law of addition means, observers are indeed sensitive to the mean, not the sizes of individual elements. All existing data can be explained by an almost general theory, namely, the Noise and Selection (N&S) Theory, formulated in exact quantitative terms, implementing two familiar psychophysical principles: the size of an element cannot be measured with absolute accuracy and only a limited number of elements can be taken into account in the computation of the average size. It was concluded that the computation of ensemble characteristics is not necessarily a tool for surpassing the capacity limitations of perceptual processing.
Vision research 03/2013; · 2.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Momentary ratings of affective states with a pair of strict antonyms (“happy” vs. “sad”) were studied with an experience-sampling method in a group of 110 participants during 14 consecutive days at 7 randomly determined occasions per day. Before and after the experimental session participants also retrospectively rated how happy or sad they had been during the previous 2 weeks. Multilevel analysis showed that, at the level of single measurement trials, the momentary ratings of happiness and sadness were moderately negatively correlated (r = –.32, p < .001). A between-subject correlation of the two antonyms, however, was in a positive direction (r = .13, p = .123). Participants experienced mixed feelings during a considerable number of measurement trials, whereas the tendency to feel mixed emotions was predicted by all Big Five personality traits except Agreeableness. A configural frequency analysis (CFA) demonstrated that, although there was no strict bipolarity between momentary ratings of happiness and sadness, they were nevertheless used in an exclusive manner in many occasions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Journal of Individual Differences 10/2012; 33(1):43-53. · 0.83 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The aim of the current study is to examine the role of personality traits in self-other agreement in happiness and life-satisfaction which are often seen as the essential components of subjective well-being (SWB). Self-reports on the SWB measure and the NEO Personality Inventory-3 were obtained from 1,251 Estonians aged between 18 and 86 years. Other-ratings on the same measures were provided by knowledgeable informants. The measure of SWB showed significant self-other agreement, r = .55 (p = .000). We found this agreement to be transmitted (i.e., mediated) through the self- and other-rated personality facet scores of N3 (Depression) and E6 (Positive Emotions), Z = 2.8001 - 11.7142. The findings suggest that when an informant evaluates someone's happiness or life-satisfaction, his / her rating is inflated by the image held about the personality of this person. Furthermore, self-reported SWB reflects, to some extent, what other people think about one's personality.
Social Indicators Research 09/2012; · 1.13 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Introduction. Stable individual differences in personality traits have well-documented associations with various aspects of health. One of the health outcomes that directly depends on people's behavioral choices, and may therefore be linked to personality traits, is having a sexually transmitted disease (STD). Aim. The study examines the associations between a comprehensive set of basic personality traits and past STD history in a demographically diverse sample. Methods. Participants were 2,110 Estonians (1,175 women) between the ages of 19 and 89 (mean age 45.8 years, SD = 17.0). The five-factor model personality traits (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) and their specific facets were rated by participants themselves and knowledgeable informants. Sex, age, and educational level were controlled for. Main Outcome Measure. History of STD diagnosis based on medical records and/or self-report. Results. History of STD diagnosis was associated with higher Neuroticism and lower Agreeableness in both self- and informant-ratings. Among the specific personality facets, the strongest correlates of STD were high hostility and impulsiveness and low deliberation. Conclusions. Individual differences in several personality traits are associated with a history of STD diagnosis. Assuming that certain personality traits may predispose people to behaviors that entail a higher risk for STD, these findings can be used for the early identification of people at greater STD risk and for developing personality-tailored intervention programs. Mõttus R, Realo A, Allik J, Esko T, and Metspalu A. History of the diagnosis of a sexually transmitted disease is linked to normal variation in personality traits. J Sex Med **;**:**-**.
Journal of Sexual Medicine 08/2012; · 3.55 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The human observer is surprisingly inaccurate in discriminating proportions between two spatially overlapping sets of randomly distributed elements moving in opposite directions. It was shown that observers took into account an equivalent of 74 % of all moving elements when the task was to estimate their relative number, but only an equivalent of 21 % of the same elements when the task was to discriminate between opposite directions. It was concluded that, in the motion direction discrimination task, a large proportion of the signal from all of the elements was inaccessible to the observers, whereas the majority of the signal was accessible in a numerosity task. This type of perceptual limitation belongs to the attentional blindness category, where a strong sensory signal cannot be noticed when processing is diverted by parallel events. In addition, we found no evidence for the common-fate principle, as the ability to discriminate numerical proportions remained the same, irrespective of whether all estimated elements were moving coherently in one direction or unpredictably in opposite directions.
Attention Perception & Psychophysics 05/2012; 74(6):1252-9. · 2.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A major problem in the research considering impulsivity is the lack of mutual understanding on how to measure and define impulsivity. Our study examined the relationship between self-reported impulsivity, behavioral excitatory and inhibitory processes and time perception. Impulsivity--fast, premature, thoughtless or disinhibited behavior--was assessed in 58 normal, healthy participants (30 men, mean age 21.9 years). Self-reported impulsivity as measured by Adaptive and Maladaptive Impulsivity Scale (AMIS) and behavioral excitatory and inhibitory processes as measured by Stop Signal Task were not directly related. Time perception, measured by the retrospective Time Estimation Task, was related to both. The length of the perceived time interval was positively correlated to AMIS Disinhibition subscale and negatively to several Stop Signal Task parameters. The longer subjects perceived the duration to last, the higher was their score on Disinhibition scale and the faster were their reactive responses in the Stop Signal Task. In summary our findings support the idea of cognitive tempo as a possible mechanism underlying impulsive behavior.
Scandanavian Journal of Psychology 03/2012; 53(3):216-23. · 1.52 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVE: Men vary more than women in cognitive abilities and physical attributes, and we expected that men vary more in personality too. That that has not been found previously may reflect: (a) personality was measured by self-reports that confound target sex with informant sex, and (b) men actually vary more but accentuate personality differences less than women. METHOD: We analyzed informant reports and self-reports on the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R or NEO-PI-3) collected for two community and two student samples from four countries: Czech Republic (N = 714, age M = 36.1, SD = 14.1, 58% women), Estonia (N = 1,685, age M = 42.6, SD = 13.4, 58% women), Belgium (N = 345, age M = 18.4, SD = 3.0, 78% women), and Germany (N = 302, age M = 23.4, SD = 2.7, 56% women).
Journal of Personality 02/2012; · 2.44 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Objectives: Diet has health consequences, which makes knowing the psychological correlates of dietary habits important. Associations between dietary habits and personality traits were examined in a large sample of Estonians (N = 1,691) aged between 18 and 89 years. Method: Dietary habits were measured using 11 items, which grouped into two factors reflecting (a) health aware and (b) traditional dietary patterns. The health aware diet factor was defined by eating more cereal and dairy products, fish, vegetables and fruits. The traditional diet factor was defined by eating more potatoes, meat and meat products, and bread. Personality was assessed by participants themselves and by people who knew them well. The questionnaire used was the NEO Personality Inventory-3, which measures the Five-Factor Model personality broad traits of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, along with six facets for each trait. Gender, age and educational level were controlled for. Results: Higher scores on the health aware diet factor were associated with lower Neuroticism, and higher Extraversion, Openness and Conscientiousness (effect sizes were modest: r = .11 to 0.17 in self-ratings, and r = .08 to 0.11 in informant-ratings, ps < 0.01 or lower). Higher scores on the traditional diet factor were related to lower levels of Openness (r = -0.14 and -0.13, p < .001, self- and informant-ratings, respectively). Conclusions: Endorsement of healthy and avoidance of traditional dietary items are associated with people's personality trait levels, especially higher Openness. The results may inform dietary interventions with respect to possible barriers to diet change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Health Psychology 01/2012; · 3.87 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A new approach to the study of a relatively neglected property of mental architecture-whether and when the already-processed elements are separated from the to-be-processed elements-is proposed. The process of numerical proportion discrimination between two sets of elements defined either by color or by orientation can be described as sampling with or without replacement (characterized by binomial or hypergeometric probability distributions respectively) depending on the possibility to tag an element once or repeatedly. All empirical psychometric functions were approximated by a theoretical model showing that the ability to keep track of the already tagged elements is not an inflexible part of the mental architecture but rather an individually variable strategy which also depends on conspicuity of perceptual attributes. Strong evidence is provided that in a considerable number of trials, observers tagged the same element repeatedly which can only be done serially at two separate time moments.
PLoS ONE 01/2012; 7(1):e29667. · 4.09 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: A review of nearly three decades of cross-cultural research shows that this domain still has to address several issues regarding the biases of data collection and sampling methods, the lack of clear and consensual definitions of constructs and variables, and measurement invariance issues that seriously limit the comparability of results across cultures. Indeed, a large majority of the existing studies are still based on the anthropological model, which compares two cultures and mainly uses convenience samples of university students. This paper stresses the need to incorporate a larger variety of regions and cultures in the research designs, the necessity to theorize and identify a larger set of variables in order to describe a human environment, and the importance of overcoming methodological weaknesses to improve the comparability of measurement results. Cross-cultural psychology is at the next crossroads in it’s development, and researchers can certainly make major contributions to this domain if they can address these weaknesses and challenges. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Swiss Journal of Psychology 12/2011; 71(1):5-12. · 0.57 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This study investigated the role of adolescents' cognitive ability, personality traits and school success in predicting later criminal behaviour. Cognitive ability, the five-factor model personality traits and the school grades of a large sample of Estonian schoolboys (N = 1919) were measured between 2001 and 2005. In 2009, judicial databases were searched to identify participants who had been convicted of misdemeanours or criminal offences. Consistent with previous findings, having a judicial record was associated with lower cognitive ability, grade point average, agreeableness, and conscientiousness and higher neuroticism. In multivariate path models, however, the contributions of cognitive ability and conscientiousness were accounted for by school grades and the effect of neuroticism was also accounted for by other variables, leaving grade point average and agreeableness the only independent predictors of judicial record status. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
European Journal of Personality 12/2011; 26(1):56 - 62. · 2.44 Impact Factor
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Steve Loughnan,
Peter Kuppens, Jüri Allik,
Katalin Balazs,
Soledad de Lemus,
Kitty Dumont,
Rafael Gargurevich,
Istvan Hidegkuti,
Bernhard Leidner,
Lennia Matos,
Joonha Park,
Anu Realo,
Junqi Shi,
Victor Eduardo Sojo,
Yuk-Yue Tong,
Jeroen Vaes,
Philippe Verduyn,
Victoria Yeung,
Nick Haslam
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ABSTRACT: People's self-perception biases often lead them to see themselves as better than the average person (a phenomenon known as self-enhancement). This bias varies across cultures, and variations are typically explained using cultural variables, such as individualism versus collectivism. We propose that socioeconomic differences among societies--specifically, relative levels of economic inequality--play an important but unrecognized role in how people evaluate themselves. Evidence for self-enhancement was found in 15 diverse nations, but the magnitude of the bias varied. Greater self-enhancement was found in societies with more income inequality, and income inequality predicted cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement better than did individualism/collectivism. These results indicate that macrosocial differences in the distribution of economic goods are linked to microsocial processes of perceiving the self.
Psychological Science 09/2011; 22(10):1254-8. · 4.43 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Six observers were asked to indicate in which of two opposite directions, to the right or to the left, an entire display appeared to move, based on the proportion of right vs leftward motion elements, each of which was distinctly visible. The performance of each observer was described by Thurstone's discriminative processes and Bernoulli trial models which described empirical psychometric functions equally well. Although formally it was impossible to discriminate between these two models, treating observer as a counting device which measures a randomly selected subsample of all available motion elements had certain advantages. According to the Bernoulli trial model decisions about the global motion direction in a range of 12-800 elements were based on taking into account about 4±2 random moving dot elements. This small number is not due to cancellation of the opposite motion vectors since the motion direction recognition performance did not improve after the compared motion directions were made orthogonal. This may indicate that the motion pooling mechanism studied in our experiment is strongly limited in capacity.
Vision research 07/2011; 51(17):1949-57. · 2.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Reaction times (RT) to motion onset of a target grating moving at 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 or 1.6 °/s and magnitude estimation of the same velocities were studied in the presence of the surrounding background motion which was either in the same or opposite direction. Surprisingly, we found no relative motion effect: if the background motion, irrespective of its direction, affected the target, then it delayed the RTs and decreased velocity ratings. The background motion was effective on RTs to motion onset only when the target was relatively small and immediately surrounded by a moving background. Increases in RTs were mostly explained by an apparent slowdown of the target stimulus velocity which was caused by the interference from the moving background. The background motion also affected velocity ratings by decreasing them without systematic effect of the background motion direction.
Vision research 03/2011; 51(11):1254-61. · 2.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Consensus studies from 4 cultures--in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, and Germany--as well as secondary analyses of self- and observer-reported Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) data from 29 cultures suggest that there is a cross-culturally replicable pattern of difference between internal and external perspectives for the Big Five personality traits. People see themselves as more neurotic and open to experience compared to how they are seen by other people. External observers generally hold a higher opinion of an individual's conscientiousness than he or she does about him- or herself. As a rule, people think that they have more positive emotions and excitement seeking but much less assertiveness than it seems from the vantage point of an external observer. This cross-culturally replicable disparity between internal and external perspectives was not consistent with predictions based on the actor-observer hypothesis because the size of the disparity was unrelated to the visibility of personality traits. A relatively strong negative correlation (r = -.53) between the average self-minus-observer profile and social desirability ratings suggests that people in most studied cultures view themselves less favorably than they are perceived by others.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 11/2010; 99(5):870-82. · 5.08 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: To examine the combined effect of birth weight, mothers' education and prenatal smoking on psychometrically measured intelligence at school age 1,822 children born in 1992-1999 and attending the first six grades from 45 schools representing all of the fifteen Estonian counties with information on birth weight, gestational age and mother's age, marital status, education, parity and smoking in pregnancy, and intelligence tests were studied. The scores of Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices were related to the birth weight: in the normal range of birth weight (>or=2500 g) every 500 g increase in birth weight was accompanied by around 0.7-point increase in IQ scores. A strong association between birth weight and IQ remained even if gestational age and mother's age, marital status, education, place of residence, parity and smoking during pregnancy have been taken into account. Maternal prenatal smoking was accompanied by a 3.3-point deficit in children's intellectual abilities. Marriage and mother's education had an independent positive correlation with offspring intelligence. We concluded that the statistical effect of birth weight, maternal education and smoking in pregnancy on offspring's IQ scores was remarkable and remained even if other factors have been taken into account.
Early human development 08/2010; 86(8):493-7. · 2.12 Impact Factor
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Viren Swami,
David A Frederick,
Toivo Aavik,
Lidia Alcalay, Jüri Allik,
Donna Anderson,
Sonny Andrianto,
Arvind Arora,
Ake Brännström,
John Cunningham, [......],
Dhachayani Sinniah,
Mira Swami,
Griet Vandermassen,
Marijke van Duynslaeger,
Markku Verkasalo,
Martin Voracek,
Curtis K Yee,
Echo Xian Zhang,
Xiaoying Zhang,
Ivanka Zivcic-Becirevic
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ABSTRACT: This study reports results from the first International Body Project (IBP-I), which surveyed 7,434 individuals in 10 major world regions about body weight ideals and body dissatisfaction. Participants completed the female Contour Drawing Figure Rating Scale (CDFRS) and self-reported their exposure to Western and local media. Results indicated there were significant cross-regional differences in the ideal female figure and body dissatisfaction, but effect sizes were small across high-socioeconomic-status (SES) sites. Within cultures, heavier bodies were preferred in low-SES sites compared to high-SES sites in Malaysia and South Africa (ds = 1.94-2.49) but not in Austria. Participant age, body mass index (BMI), and Western media exposure predicted body weight ideals. BMI and Western media exposure predicted body dissatisfaction among women. Our results show that body dissatisfaction and desire for thinness is commonplace in high-SES settings across world regions, highlighting the need for international attention to this problem.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 03/2010; 36(3):309-25. · 2.22 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: a b s t r a c t In this study, 3705 participants from across the Russian Federation were asked to rate their own person-ality traits, those of a typical Russian living in their region, and those of an ideal person, using the National Character Survey (NCS). Another large group of participants (N = 3537) was asked to identify an ethnically Russian college-aged man or woman whom they knew well and rate this target using the NEO PI-R. The mean personality profiles of the typical Russian converged significantly with self-rated personality traits (r = .63, p < .01), but not with observer-ratings (r = .33, p = .08). However, the former correlation lost its significance when the mean ratings of an ideal person ratings were controlled for (r = .35, p = .06). The mean ratings of a typical Russian converged even more substantially with the per-sonality profile of an ideal person (r = .71, p < .001). Overall, the results suggest that the portrait of a typ-ical Russian may to some extent be based on actual personality dispositions of Russians, but it is more likely that this portrait reflects socially desirable personality traits that have been attributed to a typical Russian. The results extend previous findings by demonstrating the importance of using multiple rating conditions at the same time.
12/2009;
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ABSTRACT: Both social capital and individualism–collectivism (IC) have been, and still are, popular and well-researched constructs in social sciences. Many theorists have argued that individualism poses a threat to social cohesion and communal association. Other researchers believe that growth of individuality, autonomy, and self-sufficiency are necessary conditions for the development of social solidarity and cooperation. The present article reviews the studies on the relationship between social capital and IC, using different data and different measures. We conclude that countries with higher level of social capital (where people believe that most people can be trusted) are also more individualistic, emphasizing the importance of independence, personal accomplishments, and freedom to choose one’s own goals. In societies where trust is limited to the nuclear family or kinship alone, people have lower levels of social capital. Social capital increases as the radius of trust widens to encompass a larger number of people and social networks, bridging the ‘gap’ between the family and state.
Social and Personality Psychology Compass 11/2009; 3(6):871 - 886.
