Patrick Mcknight

George Mason University | GMU · Department of Psychology

Historical narratives can satisfy basic individual psychological needs. However, an over-reliance on a group's past can marginalize those who think differently – thus, homogenizing the culture and stifling creativity. By revising narratives to balance the power of collective narratives with the richness of individuality, we foster groups that encou...

The unbridled positivity toward curiosity and creativity may be excessive. Both aid species survival through exploration and advancement. These beneficial effects are well documented. What remains is to understand their optimal levels and contexts for maximal achievement, health, and well-being. Every beneficial element to individuals and groups ca...

Head-up displays (HUDs) have the potential to change work in operation environments by providing hands-free information to wearers. However, these benefits may be accompanied by trade-offs, primarily by increasing cognitive load due to dividing attention. Previous studies have attempted to understand the trade-offs of HUD usage; however, all of whi...

Theoretically, purpose serves as a basic dimension of healthy psychological functioning and an important protective factor from psychopathology. Theory alone, however, is insufficient to answer critical questions about human behavior and functioning; we require empirical evidence that explores the parameters of purpose with respect to measurement,...

Objective This study aimed to assess the plausibility of self-control depletion, or ego-depletion, as the underlying cognitive resource responsible for performance decrements on the sustained attention to response task. Background Researchers suggested that self-control is a limited cognitive resource used to complete a myriad of processes, includ...

Young children need increased access to dental prevention and care. Targeting high caries risk children first helps meet this need. The objective of this study was to develop a parent-completed, easy-to-score, short, accurate caries risk tool for screening in primary health care settings to identify children at increased risk for cavities. A longit...

Background Little is known about factors that influence dentists’ decision making concerning antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) prescribing. The objective of this study was to determine factors that influence dentists’ AP prescribing habits in patients at risk of developing infective endocarditis and prosthetic joint infections. Methods A questionnaire wa...

Background Little is known about factors that influence dentists’ decision making concerning antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) prescribing. The objective of this study was to determine factors that influence dentists’ AP prescribing habits in patients at risk of developing infective endocarditis and prosthetic joint infections. Methods A questionnaire w...

Objectives We investigated the effects of auditory cues of varying reliability levels on response inhibition performance using a target detection task to determine if external cues offer performance benefits. Further, we examined how the slope of the speed accuracy trade-off changes as a function of auditory cue reliability and used the trade-off t...

Much has been discovered about well-being since 1998, when positive psychology entered the lexicon. Among the wide range of areas in positive psychology, in this commentary we discuss recent discoveries on (1) distinctions between meaning in life, a sense of purpose, and happiness, (2) psychological or personality strengths and the benefits of part...

Our facilitated discussion begins by briefly summarizing the numeracy that produced a "psychology reversal" refuting key aspects of two decades of research that established the Dunning-Kruger Effect as the consensus for characterizing human self-assessment. We then draw on the new findings of an expanded research team of scholars who now use these...

Emotion-driven impulse control difficulties are associated with negative psychological outcomes. Extant research suggests that high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) may be indicative of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and potentially moderated by negative emotion. In the current study, 248 eleven- to 14-year-olds and their pare...

Approximately 15-20% of adult women in the United States have been sexually assaulted. Given the high prevalence of sexual assault, it becomes increasingly important to understand immediate responses to sexual assault. A lack of information prior to sexual assaults contributes to a literature that is unable to showcase the presence and amount of ch...

Psychological flexibility (PF), defined as the ability to pursue valued life aims despite the presence of distress, is a fundamental contributor to health (Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010). Existing measures of PF have failed to consider the valued goals that give context for why people are willing to manage distress. Using 4 independent samples and 3 f...

Background: Little is known about antibiotic prescribing practices of dentists. The objective of this study was to gain a better understanding of dentists' beliefs and behaviors regarding the use of antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) before invasive dental procedures. Methods: A multidisciplinary team developed and disseminated a questionnaire to 3,584...

Curiosity is a fundamental human motivation that influences learning, the acquisition of knowledge, and life fulfillment. Our ability to understand the benefits (and costs) of being a curious person hinges on adequate assessment. Synthesizing decades of prior research, our goal was to improve a well-validated, multi-dimensional measure of curiosity...

Background Dentists are high prescribers of antibiotics for both treatment and prevention of infection, although there are few guidelines to aid clinicians. Given the worldwide concerns about unnecessary use of antibiotics, there is a need for a better understanding of dentists’ use of these drugs for antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) to prevent distant...

Objectives: It has been recommended that clinical trials of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) would be more ecologically valid if its characteristic mode of diagnostic reasoning were integrated into their design. In that context, however, it is also widely held that demonstrating a high level of agreement on initial TCM diagnoses is necessary for...

Background: The diagnostic framework and clinical reasoning process of Chinese medicine are central to the practice of acupuncture and other related disciplines. There is growing interest in integrating it into clinical trials of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine to guide individualized treatment protocols and evaluate outcomes. Strategies th...

Curiosity is a fundamental human motive that is beginning to garner closer attention by researchers and practitioners interested in workplace functioning. Recent work suggests that rather than designating someone as possessing curiosity or not, there is benefit in detailing the various elements of curiosity. To date, there is no research on how mul...

Curiosity is a fundamental human motivation that influences learning, the acquisition of knowledge, and life fulfillment. Our ability to understand the benefits (and costs) of being a curious person hinges on adequate assessment. Synthesizing decades of prior research, our goal was to improve a well-validated, multi-dimensional measure of curiosity...

Approximately 15-20% of adult women in the United States have been sexually assaulted. To our knowledge, there are no studies capturing prior functioning and near immediate psychological reactions of sexual assault survivors. In the present study, each night over the course of three weeks, we asked college students to report on their sexual activit...

Despite growing research interest in distress tolerance (DT), studies have routinely neglected the role that DT plays in close, interpersonal relationships and how DT fluctuates from 1 day to the next. In addition, an understanding of DT hinges on the presence of distress, yet existing studies have failed to include distress in conceptual and analy...

Our objective was to identify which aspects of World Workshop on Oral Medicine (WWOM) participation were perceived as significant for participants’ professional development. Online survey was sent to previous WWOM participants. Qualitative analysis of participants’ responses to an open‐ended question was performed. Fifty‐two WWOM participants respo...

Evaluation of college instructors often centers on course ratings; however, there is little evidence that these ratings only reflect teaching. The purpose of this study was to assess the relative importance of three facets of course ratings: instructor, course and occasion. We sampled 2,459 fully-crossed dyads from a large university where two inst...

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Detecting a pattern within a sequence of ordered units, defined as patterning, is a cognitive ability that is important in learning mathematics and influential in learning to read. The present study was designed to examine relations between first-grade children’s executive functions, patterning, and reading abilities, and to examine whether these r...

Curiosity is a fundamental human motive that is beginning to garner closer attention by researchers and practitioners interested in workplace functioning. Recent work suggests that rather than designating someone as possessing curiosity, there is benefit in detailing the various elements of curiosity. To date, there is no research on how multiple d...

Expanded partnership with the medical community is a promising strategy for reducing disparities in dental caries among young children. However, no validated caries risk instrument exists for use in primary health care settings. To help resolve this gap, a 52-item caries risk questionnaire was developed and targeted to primary caregivers (PCGs) to...

Objective The present study examined the proposition that patients need to focus on something beyond simply “getting better”. In a sample of arthritis sufferers, we distinguished individuals by the goals that motivated them – moving toward aspirational goals and maximizing gains (promotion focus) rather than obligations and minimizing losses (preve...

Recent changes to health care reimbursement and funding have made cost-effectiveness analyses more relevant for pediatric psychologists. Evaluating and presenting uncertainty around cost-effectiveness estimates is important for proper reporting of results and represents one area where pediatric psychologists may have limited training. This article...

Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) have difficulty engaging in social situations because their actions are predicated on minimizing the subjectively biased high potential for rejection. That is, individuals with SAD frequently perceive social situations as challenging, and their performance as subpar. Yet when individuals perceive thems...

Is gratitude developmentally related to improvements in social behavior? This study examined 566 adolescents (51.6% female, M age = 11.95 years at baseline, 68.0% White, 11.0% African-American, 9.9% Asian-American, 1.9% Hispanic, 8.8% ‘Other’) from middle school to high school for 4 years. Controlling for social desirability, age, SES, and gender,...

Multiple informants - compared to single informants - better inform the clinical assessment and the diagnosis of psychopathology. The Operations Triad Model (OTM; De Los Reyes et al. 2013a) provides researchers with a conceptual framework for integrating information from multiple informants into research settings. We simplified this model by: 1) id...

Since the origins of psychology, curiosity has occupied a pivotal position in the study of motivation, emotion, and cognition; and disciplines as far-ranging as biology, economics, robotics, and leadership. Theorists have disagreed about the basic tenets of curiosity; some researchers contend that the rewards arise when resolving ambiguity and unce...

Measuring workload accurately is critical for human factors research and applications. However, if the instruments we use to measure workload are burdensome for participants to complete, we may find ourselves in the ironic position of increasing workload simply by measuring it. We present a pair of studies that suggest the NASA-TLX, a widely-used w...

Sex is rarely discussed in theories of well-being and rarely empirically examined using methods other than cross-sectional surveys. In the present study, a daily diary approach was used (for 21 days with 152 adults) to explore the relationship between the presence and quality of sexual episodes and well-being (positive affect, negative affect, mean...

A Target Animal Safety protocol was used to examine adverse events in male and female Fischer F344/NTac rats treated with increasing doses of a subcutaneous implant of a lipid suspension of buprenorphine. A single injection of 0.65 mg/kg afforded clinically significant blood levels of drug for 3 days. Chemistry, hematology, coagulation, and urinaly...

Three studies using samples of people in romantic relationships were conducted to create a new individual difference measure of partner strengths in couples. The 2 perceptions of partner strengths included (1) appreciation of their use and effectiveness and (2) recognition of costs associated with their use. Factor analyses supported 2-factors and...

We interact daily with computers that appear and behave like humans. Some researchers propose that people apply the same social norms to computers as they do to humans, suggesting that social psychological knowledge can be applied to our interactions with computers. In contrast, theories of human-automation interaction postulate that humans respond...

We take a look at crowdsourcing for subjective image quality evaluation using real image stimuli with nonsimulated distortions. Our aim is to scale the task of subjectively rating images while ensuring maximal data validity and accuracy. While previous work has begun to explore crowdsourcing for quality assessment, it has either used images that ar...

Significance Placebo effects pose problems for some intervention studies, particularly those with no clearly identified mechanism. Cognitive training falls into that category, and yet the role of placebos in cognitive interventions has not yet been critically evaluated. Here, we show clear evidence of placebo effects after a brief cognitive trainin...

Extraversion—one of the Big 5 personality factors—correlates negatively with vigilance, but most studies focus on performance outcomes and not the performance process. Previous research has shown that transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD), which measures cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV), can be used to examine resource allocation strategies duri...

Extended-release buprenorphine is an effective analgesic in laboratory animals, and its safety has been established in mice but not in rats. The authors used a target animal safety trial to evaluate the safety of extended-release buprenorphine in rats. Fischer 344 rats received post-surgical subcutaneous injections of 1.3 mg, 3.9 mg or 6.5 mg bupre...

Researchers and clinicians assume a strong, positive correlation between anxiety symptoms and functional impairment. That assumption may be well-justified since diagnostic criteria typically include functional impairment. Still, the relationship remains largely unavailable in any systematic review. Our aim with this paper was to provide empirical e...

This study developed and evaluated a brief training program for grant reviewers that aimed to increase inter-rater reliability, rating scale knowledge, and effort to read the grant review criteria. Enhancing reviewer training may improve the reliability and accuracy of research grant proposal scoring and funding recommendations. Seventy-five Public...

Are all bullies unhappy and socially disconnected? The majority of theorists argue that bullies are a homogeneous group, such that their aggression is linked to less happiness and a greater probability of social exclusion. Recent findings, however, indicate some bullies obtain social benefits from the act of bullying, increasing their happiness. We...

Being able to carefully perceive and distinguish the rich complexity in emotional experiences is a key component of psychological interventions. We review research in clinical, social, and health psychology that offers insights into the adaptive value of putting feelings into words with a high degree of complexity (i.e., emotion differentiation or...

Big data sets can be cumbersome and difficult to understand. User-centered and interactive graphical displays help communicate messages from large and complex data as well as provide a new method to identify data trends outside of tabular or statistical analysis. Human factors researchers can utilize data visuals to not only develop but also answer...

Disruptions to daily living, inflammation, and astrogliosis are characteristics of Alzheimer's disease. Thus, circadian rhythms, nest construction, IL-1β and TNF-α, and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) were examined in a mouse model developed to model late-onset Alzheimer's disease-the most common form of the disease. Mice carrying both the m...

Prior research suggests that laughter is correlated with resilience and well-being. To date, there is little research on the subsequent social benefits following laughter with another person. We hypothesized that laughing with another person would be associated with greater social rewards in subsequent social interactions. Using a two-week daily di...

Expanded partnership with the medical community is a promising and necessary strategy for reducing disparities in dental caries among young children. Objective: To develop a self-administered, simple-to-score caries risk tool to identify toddlers at risk of developing caries through medical settings. Methods: A psychometrically defensible, 52-item...

Nonsuicidal self-injury is especially common in adolescents and young adults. Self-injury may be related to shame or guilt-two moral emotions-as these differentially predict other maladaptive behaviors. Using a college sample, we examined not only how shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and internalizing emotional tendencies related to self-injury, b...

Research Findings: In each of 16 public school classrooms serving multiethnic low-income neighborhoods, 2 first graders were assigned to be taught patterning, 2 to be taught reading, 2 to be taught mathematics, and 2 to be taught social studies for 15-min sessions 3 days per week for 6 months. Assignment within each classroom was randomized. The ch...

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal,...

Although automated systems have decreased the information-processing load on workers and have increased productivity, studies have shown that automation can have serious drawbacks, such as reductions in operator vigilance that can lead to decreased detection of critical events. Transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) is a tool used to measure cerebra...

Hamdan, N., McKnight, P., McKnight, K., & Arfstrom, K. A This article provides a brief review of the flipped learning pedagogical model. It has become widely cited in peer reviewed journals in articles on the topic.

A growing literature attests to deficits in social and romantic life quality in people with elevated social anxiety, but no research to date has explored how intense intimate encounters influence social anxiety symptoms. This study investigated whether the presence and quality of sexual activity on a given day predicted less social anxiety and nega...

Despite the increased attention that researchers have paid to social anxiety disorder (SAD), compared with other anxiety and mood disorders, relatively little is known about the emotional and social factors that distinguish individuals who meet diagnostic criteria from those who do not. In this study, participants with and without a diagnosis of SA...

Recent acceptance- and mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral interventions explicitly target the clarification and commitment to a purpose in life. Yet, scant empirical evidence exists on the value of purpose as a mechanism relevant to psychopathology or well-being. The present research explored daily (within-person) fluctuations in purposeful pur...

Extending prior work on social anxiety and positivity deficits, we examined whether individual differences in social anxiety alter the ability to share and respond to the good news of romantic partners (i.e., capitalization support) and how this influences romantic relationship satisfaction and commitment. In this study of 174 heterosexual couples...

To continue to move the science of clinical psychology forward, this handbook brings together some of the field's foremost experts to explicate the essential research strategies currently used across the modern clinical psychology landscape that maximize both precision and significance. This volume addresses design, measurement, and analytic strate...

Diminished positive experiences and events might be part of the phenomenology of social anxiety; however, much of this research is cross-sectional by design, limiting our understanding of the everyday lives of socially anxious people. Sexuality is a primary source of positive experiences. We theorized that people with elevated social anxiety would...

Researchers have assumed a dichotomy between human-human trust (HHT) and human-automation trust (HAT). With the advent of cognitive agents, entities that are neither machine nor human, it is important to revisit this theory. Some claim that HHT and HAT are the same concept and propose that people respond socially to more human automation. Others sa...

Prior research suggests that rumination and chronic negative emotions serve to maintain emotional disorders. However, some evidence suggests that pondering the nature and meaning of negative experiences can be adaptive. To better understand the function of this dimension of rumination, we studied the use of this strategy in response to negative emo...

White paper on flipped learning model

Curious people seek knowledge and new experiences. In 3 studies, we examined whether, when, and how curiosity contributes to positive social outcomes between unacquainted strangers. Study 1 (98 college students) showed that curious people expect to generate closeness during intimate conversations but not during small talk; less curious people antic...

The use of latent curve models (LCMs) has increased almost exponentially during the last decade. Oftentimes, researchers regard LCM as a "new" method to analyze change with little attention paid to the fact that the technique was originally introduced as an "alternative to standard repeated measures ANOVA and first-order auto-regressive methods" (M...

Several self-report scales of marital satisfaction exist, but many are too lengthy for research protocols, and none allow for parallel assessment of satisfaction in non-romantic relationships. This paper presents results from the assessment of satisfaction in multiple types of close relationships with slight adaptations to the wording of the seven-...

As technology develops, social robots and synthetic avatars might begin to play more of a role in our lives. An influential theory of the perception of synthetic agents states that as they begin to look and move in a more human-like way, they elicit profound discomfort in the observer--an effect known as the Uncanny Valley. Previous attempts to exa...

Our present social sciences are at risk of losing sight of their primary purpose: the goal of reducing uncertainty. For years social scientists have drifted slowly toward the routine of employing of accepted methodological, conceptual, and analytical tools rather than engaging in problem oriented inquiry. Scientific contributions are reviewed in ac...

Our present social sciences are at risk of losing sight of their primary purpose: the goal of reducing uncertainty. For years social scientists have drifted slowly toward the routine of employing of accepted methodological, conceptual, and analytical tools rather than engaging in problem oriented inquiry. Scientific contributions are reviewed in ac...