Gilles E Gignac

University of Western Australia | UWA · School of Psychological Science

Expression recognition abilities are key to navigating our social world. Accordingly, understanding how expression recognition is associated with individual differences in other abilities linked with positive life outcomes, such as empathy and general cognitive ability, is a topic of considerable public and scientific interest. However, most studie...

Grandiose narcissism is considered a multidimensional personality trait that consists of two facets: narcissistic admiration and rivalry. Admiration is associated with a self-enhancement and a self-promotion tendency, while narcissistic rivalry reflects a self-defensive tendency aimed to protect the threatened ego and manifests in the devaluation o...

We investigated whether adding hypnosis to CBT (CBTH) improved treatment outcomes for MDD with a two-armed, parallel-treated, randomized-controlled trial using anonymous self-report and clinician-blinded assessments. Expectancy, credibility, and attitude to hypnosis were also examined. Participants (n = 66) were randomly allocated to 10-weekly sess...

Research on individual differences in face recognition has provided important foundational insights: their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, and resilience to change. Elusive, however, has been the key issue of practical relevance: do these individual differences correlate with aspects of life that go beyond the recognition o...

Homeownership rates are declining in many countries and the potential impact on financial wellbeing is largely unknown. Additionally, the potential impact may be expected to be larger for women than men, as women tend to value homeownership more than men. Finally, financial literacy may play a role on financial wellbeing via a positive effect onto...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the broader autistic phenotype (BAP) have been suggested to be associated with perceptual–cognitive difficulties processing human faces. However, the empirical results are mixed, arguably, in part due to inadequate samples and analyses. Consequently, we administered the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT), the R...

Grandiose narcissism is defined as increased motivation for status and viewing oneself as entitled and superior to others. We hypothesized that these tendencies might be associated with basal levels of testosterone because testosterone is considered the most social hormone-driving dominance and the motivation to achieve social status. We distinguis...

Financial literacy is positively associated with intelligence, with typically moderate to large effect sizes across studies. The magnitude of the effect, however, has not yet been estimated meta-analytically. Such results suggest financial literacy may be conceptualised as a possible cognitive ability within the Cattel-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of c...

Grandiose narcissism is considered a multidimensional personality trait that consists of two facets: narcissistic admiration and rivalry. Admiration is associated with a self-enhancement and a self-promotion tendency, while narcissistic rivalry reflects a self-defensive tendency aimed to protect the threatened ego and manifests in the devaluation o...

Misinformation can continue to influence reasoning after correction; this is known as the continued influence effect (CIE). Theoretical accounts of the CIE suggest failure of two cognitive processes to be causal, namely memory updating and suppression of misinformation reliance. Both processes can also be conceptualised as subcomponents of contempo...

Little research has examined the association between general figure closure speed, a stratum I ability within the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model of intelligence, and face-specific closure ability; an important consideration, as some research suggests face processing is independent of other abilities. Additionally, figure closure ability (general...

Whether there is an association between intelligence and face processing ability (i.e., face detection, face perception and face memory) is contentious, with some suggesting a moderate, positive association and others contending there is no meaningful association. The inconsistent results may be due to sample size differences, as well as variabilit...

Emotional disorders are pervasive in the acquired brain injury (ABI) population, adversely affecting quality of life and rehabilitation. This study aimed to explore the unique associative effects of alexithymia as measured by the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ; i.e., difficulty identifying positive/negative feelings, difficulty describing pos...

We examine the causal direction of the relation between (grandiose agentic) narcissism and self-assessed intelligence (SAI). We manipulated narcissism with a validated procedure. In Studies 1-2, high (vs. low) narcissism increased SAI. In Study 2, SAI mediated the effect of narcissism on academic goal-pursuit, expected academic achievement, and psy...

Misinformation can continue to influence reasoning after correction; this is known as the continued influence effect (CIE). Theoretical accounts of the CIE suggest failure of two cognitive processes to be causal, namely memory updating and suppression of misinformation reliance. Both processes can also be conceptualised as subcomponents of contempo...

Test motivation has been suggested to strongly influence low-stakes intelligence scores, with for instance, a recent meta-analysis of monetary incentive effects suggesting an average 9.6 IQ point impact (d = 0.64). Effects of such magnitude would have important implications for the predictive validity of intelligence tests. We report six studies (N...

Working memory is an often studied and important psychological construct. The growth of working memory capacity (WMC) in childhood is described as linear. Average adult WMC is estimated as either four or five "chunks." Using latent curve models of data from a measure of digit span backward that was administered longitudinally to a large sample repr...

Apathy and depression are common sequelae of acquired brain injury (ABI). Apathy is a syndrome characterized by diminished motivation and purposeful behaviours. Depression is a mood disorder featuring sadness, worthlessness, anhedonia and suicidal ideation. Both are associated negatively with activities of daily living (ADL), the skills required to...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-021-09509-0

Background : Alexithymia is a multidimensional personality trait comprised of difficulty identifying feelings, difficulty describing feelings, and externally oriented thinking. The assessment of alexithymia in people with acquired brain injury (ABI) is of clinical interest because alexithymia is linked to poor psychosocial functioning and community...

Positive correlations have been reported between objective (tests) and subjective (self-report) financial literacy, however, the precise nature of the association has not been examined yet. In particular, it remains a possibility that subjective financial literacy is impacted by the Dunning-Kruger effect: the observation of greater overestimation o...

Alexithymia is the inability to identify and describe one’s own emotions. Some research suggests that organic alexithymia may occur after acquired brain injury (ABI). However, the results in the literature are inconsistent, when comparisons are made against healthy controls. Furthermore, a precise estimate of alexithymia prevalence in the ABI popul...

Research indicates that grandiose narcissism is associated positively with self-assessed intelligence (SAI). Furthermore, the direction of possible causation is considered to flow from narcissism to SAI. However, an intriguing question is whether the effect might be reciprocal, that is, whether the belief that one is intelligent facilitates the exp...

Financial literacy is often measured with only three to five questions, suggesting challenges with achieving respectable levels of internal consistency reliability. Based on our review, we found financial literacy tests composed of three and five test questions yielded mean reliability estimates of .40 (k = 7; N = 167,075) and .54 (k = 8; N = 57,93...

Objective Exercise has been found to be important in maintaining neurocognitive health. However, the effect of exercise intensity level remains relatively underexplored. Thus, to test the hypothesis that self-paced high-intensity exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness (peak aerobic capacity; VO 2peak ) increase grey matter (GM) volume, we examined...

Research has consistently shown that misinformation can continue to affect inferential reasoning after a correction. This phenomenon is known as the continued influence effect (CIE). Recent studies have demonstrated that CIE susceptibility can be predicted by individual differences in stable cognitive abilities. Based on this, it was reasoned that...

Apathy and depression are common sequelae of acquired brain injury. Apathy is a syndrome characterized by diminished motivation and purposeful behaviours. Depression is a mood disorder featuring sadness, worthlessness, anhedonia and suicidal ideation. Both are associated negatively with activities of daily living, the skills required to fulfil basi...

Within the narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept (NARC), it has been theorized that narcissistic admiration is the default mode of narcissistic expression, however, relatively little research has examined this possibility. Furthermore, although narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry have been reported to be inter-correlated positive...

Event-related misinformation that has been retracted often continues to influence later reasoning regarding the event; this is known as the continued influence effect. To explain this effect, most research has focused on factors governing retrieval of the misinformation and its retraction from long-term memory. However, recent research has begun to...

Background Traits and characteristics qualitatively similar to those seen in diagnosed autism spectrum disorder can be found to varying degrees in the general population. To measure these traits and facilitate their use in autism research, several questionnaires have been developed that provide broad measures of autistic traits [e.g. Autism-Spectru...

Relatively little research has examined the association between subjectively measured IQ and subjectively measured EI. Furthermore, the possibility of a nonlinear association between subjectively measured IQ and EI has not been examined, which could have implications for evaluating the pervasiveness of the stereotype that very intelligent people te...

The compatibility between partners in romantic relationships has been found for various characteristics, including intelligence. Theoretically, this phenomenon implies that people are able to discern the intelligence of themselves and others. In practice, however, the accuracy of such estimations is influenced by various factors, such as personalit...

Pronounced difficulties in functional outcomes often follow acquired brain injury (ABI), and may be due, in part, to deficits in metacognitive knowledge (being unaware of one’s cognitive strengths and limitations). A meta-analytic review of the literature investigating the relationship between metacognitive knowledge and functional outcomes in ABI...

Working memory (WM) is a system for maintenance of and access to a limited number of goal-relevant representations in the service of higher cognition. Because of its limited capacity, WM requires interference-control processes, allowing us to avoid being distracted by irrelevant information. Recent research has proposed two interference-control pro...

The linear association between intelligence and openness has been estimated at r ≈ 0.20 to 0.30. However, little research has examined the possibility of a nonlinear effect between the two dimensions. Consequently, task-based intelligence and self-reported openness data were collected from 371 participants (UK community sample). We found that the a...

Two decades of research have shown that women are portrayed sexually in certain types of visual media, including video games, so that women are at greater risk than men of being sexually objectified. We aimed to determine whether greater sexually objectifying gaze occurs during exposure to female characters from games rated for adults only, in comp...

People tend to rate exceptional levels of IQ (99th percentile) as less attractive than high levels of IQ (90th percentile), and it remains to be determined why. Furthermore, the desirability of emotional intelligence (EI) in a prospective partner has yet to be investigated. Finally, we sought to determine whether individual differences in self-asse...

Some research suggests that university lecture attendance positively correlates with academic performance. Although there are several motivational pathways which may explain attendance, few studies have examined the psychosocial factors leading to student attendance intentions and behavior. Consequently, we evaluated via structural equation modelin...

A number of cognitive abilities have been reported to predict outcome following a non-traumatic acquired brain injury (ABI) in adults. However, the results are inconsistent. Furthermore, the unique and combined capacity of these cognitive abilities to predict ABI outcome has not been evaluated. Consequently, we employed meta-analysis and multiple r...

Background There is a paucity of interventional research that systematically assesses the role of exercise intensity and cardiorespiratory fitness, and their relationship with executive function in older adults. To address this limitation, we have examined the effect of a systematically manipulated exercise intervention on executive function. Meth...

Working memory (WM) is a system for maintenance of and access to a limited number of goal-relevant representations in the service of higher cognition. Because of its limited capacity, WM requires interference-control processes, allowing us to avoid being distracted by irrelevant information. Recent research has proposed two interference-control pro...

The Dunning-Kruger hypothesis states that the degree to which people can estimate their ability accurately depends, in part, upon possessing the ability in question. Consequently, people with lower levels of the ability tend to self-assess their ability less well than people who have relatively higher levels of the ability. The most common method u...

The Autism‐Spectrum Quotient (AQ) is a psychometric scale that is commonly used to assess autistic‐like traits and behaviors expressed by neurotypical individuals. A potential strength of the AQ is that it provides subscale scores that are specific to certain dimensions associated with autism such as social difficulty and restricted interests. Howe...

Confidence intervals and regression lines were omitted from Fig. 1 in this article as originally published. This error was introduced during production. The original article has been corrected.

Intelligence tests are assumed to require maximal effort on the part of the examinee. However, the degree to which undergraduate first-year psychology volunteers, a commonly used source of participants in low-stakes research, may be motivated to complete a battery of intelligence tests has not yet been tested. Furthermore, the assumption implies th...

Internet blogs have become an important platform for the discussion of many scientific issues, including climate change. Blogs, and in particular the comment sections of blogs, also play a major role in the dissemination of contrarian positions that question mainstream climate science. The e↵ect of this content on people's attitudes is not fully un...

People can estimate their own and their romantic partner's intelligence (IQ) with some level of accuracy, which may facilitate the observation of assortative mating for IQ. However, the degree to which people may overestimate their own (IQ), as well as overestimate their romantic partner's IQ, is less well established. In the current study, we inve...

We conducted a Monte-Carlo simulation within a latent variable framework by varying the following characteristics: population correlation (ρ = .10, .20, .30, .40, .50, .60, .70, .80, .90, and 1.00) and composite score reliability (coefficient omega: ω = .40, .50, .60, .70, .80, and .90). The sample sizes required to estimate stable measurement-erro...

OBJECTIVES: To examine the associations between physical activity duration and intensity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and executive function in older adults. METHODS: Data from ninety-nine cognitively normal adults (age = 69.10 ± 5.1 years n = 54 female) were used in the current study. Physical activity (intensity and duration) was measured with the...

Monte-Carlo simulation research has shown that observed score bivariate correlations typically reported in the differential psychology literature (r = .20) can be expected to stabilize at sample sizes that approach N = 240. However, a factor that has yet to be investigated with respect to the point of stability of effect size estimation is the reli...

Prospective mate characteristics such as kindness, intelligence, easygoingness, and physical attraction are ranked consistently highly by both men and women. However, rank measurement does not allow for determinations of what level of a mate characteristic is rated most desirable. Based on a more informative percentile scale measurement approach, i...

The purpose of this investigation was to examine a single-anagram, a double-anagram, and multi-anagram versions of the Anagram Persistence Task (APT) for factorial validity, reliability, and convergent validity. Additionally, a battery of intelligence tests was administered to examine convergent validity. Based on an unrestricted factor analysis, t...

The response bias hypothesis specifies that the predictive capacity of a predictor should be enhanced by controlling for the effects of bias on the predictor variable, in particular, socially desirable responding (SDR) bias. To-date, the vast majority of the SDR research in the area, which is principally personality related, has failed to support t...

Misinformation often affects inferences and judgments even after it has been retracted and discredited. This is known as the continued influence effect. Memory processes have been theorized to contribute to the continued influence effect, and much previous research has focussed on the role of long-term memory processes at the time misinformation is...

Patient-perceived stress and avoidance-oriented coping strategies are mental health risk factors well documented within the infertility literature. Relatedly, these factors are associated with maladaptive eating behaviours known to influence reproductive functioning. This study aims to investigate the interconnection between perceived stress, avoid...

Misinformation often affects inferences and judgments even after it has been retracted and discredited. This is known as the continued influence effect. Memory processes have been theorized to contribute to the continued influence effect, and much previous research has focussed on the role of long-term memory processes at the time misinformation is...

A process of active, item-wise removal of information from working memory (WM) has been proposed as the core component process of WM updating. Consequently, we investigated the associations between removal efficiency, WM capacity, and fluid intelligence (gF) in a series of three individual-differences studies via confirmatory factor analysis. In ea...

A process of active, item-wise removal of information from working memory (WM) has been proposed as the core component process of WM updating. Consequently, we investigated the associations between removal efficiency, WM capacity, and fluid intelligence (gF) in a series of three individual-differences studies via confirmatory factor analysis. In ea...

A positive correlation between self-reported test-taking motivation and intelligence test performance has been reported. Additionally, some financial incentive experimental evidence suggests that intelligence test performance can be improved, based on the provision of financial incentives. However, only a small percentage of the experimental resear...

Working memory (WM) is a limited-capacity system requiring an interference-control process to avoid being cluttered from irrelevant information. Recently, it has been suggested that this “housekeeping” mechanism can be attributed to an item-wise removal process serving to actively remove irrelevant information from WM. It has been theorized that th...

Working memory (WM) is a limited-capacity system requiring an interference-control process to avoid being cluttered from irrelevant information. Recently, it has been suggested that this “housekeeping” mechanism can be attributed to an item-wise removal process serving to actively remove irrelevant information from WM. It has been theorized that th...

The correlation between Digit Span Forward (DSF) and Digit Span Backward (DSB) scores from the Wechsler scales is moderate (r ≈.50), but surprisingly small given the highly similar nature of the tests. To-date, little research has examined the association between forward and backward recall across other stimulus modalities (e.g., words, shapes). Fu...

The Digit Span subscale (Digit Span Forward, Backward, and Sequencing combined composite) internal inconsistency reliability has been reported at .93, based on a coefficient known as stratified coefficient alpha. With accessible examples, we demonstrate that stratified coefficient alpha can deviate substantially from a model-based internal consiste...

The emergence of the popular culture notion of a sapiosexual, an individual who finds high levels of intelligence (IQ) the most sexually attractive characteristic in a person, suggests that a high IQ may be a genuinely sexually attractive trait, at least for some people. Consequently, mean desirability ratings of IQ on a percentile continuum were e...

A substantial amount of empirical research has estimated the association between brain volume and intelligence. The most recent meta-analysis (Pietschnig, Penke, Wicherts, Zeiler, & Voracek, 2015) reported a correlation of .24 between brain volume and intelligence – notably lower than previous meta-analytic estimates. This headline meta-analytic re...

Several neuropsychological dimensions are correlated with functional outcome (e.g., ability to return to family and community roles) following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Commonly investigated neuropsychological dimensions include verbal memory, visuo-spatial construction, set-shifting, generativity, and processing speed. Unfortunately, small sam...

Hallucinations and other unusual sensory experiences (USE) can occur in all modalities in the general population. Yet, the existing literature is dominated by investigations into auditory hallucinations (“voices”), while other modalities remain under-researched. Furthermore, there is a paucity of measures which can systematically assess different m...

Many differential cognitive psychologists appear to interpret correlated-factor models associated with inter-latent variable correlations meaningfully < 1.0 as support for the plausibility of several related, but to some degree distinct, dimensions. It is contended in this paper that such a conclusion drawn from a well-fitting correlated-factor mod...

Past literature has proposed that empathy consists of two components: cognitive and affective empathy. Error monitoring mechanisms indexed by the error-related negativity (ERN) have been associated with empathy. Studies have found that a larger ERN is associated with higher levels of empathy. We aimed to expand upon previous work by investigating h...