Leanne ten Brinke’s research while affiliated with University of British Columbia and other places

Research suggests that the degree of democracy in countries is correlated with certain characteristics of its citizens. A question is whether different types of government (e.g., autocratic vs. democratic) are associated with specific personality dispositions and the well-being of citizens. We addressed this question with a sample of over 200,000 persons from 75 countries. Using structural equation modeling and a strong measurement invariance approach we tested the association between national government type (autocratic, hybrid, flawed democracy, full democracy) and citizens report of socially aversive (malevolent) versus affiliative (benevolent) traits. As governments varied from autocratic to full democracy there were lower malevolent traits and higher benevolent traits. Further, established quantitative democracy indices predicted higher benevolent and lower malevolent traits in the total sample, while only benevolent traits were strongly associated with well-being. The findings highlight associations between governments and personality traits and how democratic practices might influence the well-being of its citizens.

Objective: We replicated research by ten Brinke and Porter (2012), who reported that a combination of four behavioral cues (word count, tentative words, upper face surprise, lower face happiness) could accurately discriminate deceptive murderers from genuinely distressed individuals, pleading for the return of a missing relative. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that each of the four behavioral cues identified in the original study would be similarly related (i.e., size, direction, significance) to veracity in a novel set of pleaders. With these cues as predictors, we also hypothesized that logistic regression models—separately testing the original and replication samples—would produce similar accuracy rates exceeding chance in discriminating genuine from deceptive pleaders. Method: We gathered a new sample of public appeals, including 82 genuine and 14 deceptive pleaders. After establishing ground truth, we transcribed video-recorded pleas and coded them for the presence of upper face surprise and lower face happiness. We used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to determine word count and the proportion of tentative words in each appeal. Results: We found support for several hypotheses. Tentative words were used significantly more by deceptive (vs. genuine) pleaders in both the original and replication samples. Deceptive pleaders used significantly fewer words in both samples, although this relationship was significant only in the original sample. Liars in both samples smiled more than truth-tellers, although this relationship was statistically significant only in the replication sample. However, predictive accuracy was poor and did not differ from chance in the replication sample. Conclusions: Findings do not provide a tidy picture of the reliability of behavioral cues to deception. Although some behavioral cues did replicate across samples, others did not. More research will be necessary to understand the factors that produce variable findings across samples, despite using the same methods of investigation.

We propose that people learn biases against women leaders through patterns of nonverbal behavior depicted in media. Specifically, we hypothesized that (a) people encounter culturally prevalent patterns of nonverbal behavior that favor men leaders over women leaders and (b) seeing patterns of nonverbal behavior favoring men leaders causes people to prefer working under men than women. An analysis of nonverbal behavior directed by and at leaders in 18 popular TV shows revealed that interactions between women leaders and their subordinates were more negative than those between men leaders and their subordinates. In two experimental studies, participants ( N = 193: 53% women, 47% men, 78% White, M age = 19.5 and N = 237: 75% women, 25% men, 77% White, M age = 18.45) exposed to this nonverbal bias favoring men (vs. a nonverbal bias favoring women) were more likely to choose to work for a White man than a White woman leader. This work has implications for understanding one mechanism through which gender stereotypes of leadership are transmitted and upheld in social groups. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843251318964.

Research suggests that level of democracy among countries is associated with the characteristics of their citizens. A critical question is whether types of government (e.g., autocratic vs. democratic) are linked to specific personality dispositions among its citizens, and their wellbeing. We addressed this question with a sample of over 200,000 persons from 75 countries. Using structural equation modeling and a strong measurement invariance approach we tested the association between national government status (i.e., autocratic, hybrid, flawed democracy, full democracy) and citizens display of socially aversive (malevolent) versus affiliative (benevolent) dispositional traits. As governments varied from autocratic to full democracy there were lower malevolent traits and higher benevolent traits. Further a quantitative democracy index predicted higher benevolent and lower malevolent traits, while only benevolent traits were strongly related to wellbeing. The findings highlight links between governments and the personality among citizens, and how democratic practices might influence wellbeing.

Research suggests that the level of democracy among countries is associated with the characteristics of their citizens. A critical question is whether types of government (e.g., autocratic vs. democratic) are linked to specific personality dispositions among its citizens, and their well-being. We addressed this question with a sample of over 200,000 persons from 75 countries. Using structural equation modeling and a strong measurement invariance approach we tested the association between national government status (i.e., autocratic, hybrid, flawed democracy, full democracy) and citizens display of socially aversive (malevolent) versus affiliative (benevolent) dispositional traits. As governments varied from autocratic to full democracy there were lower malevolent traits and higher benevolent traits. Further, established quantitative democracy indices predicted higher benevolent and lower malevolent traits, while only benevolent traits were strongly related to well-being. The findings highlight links between governments and the personality among citizens and how democratic practices influence well-being.

Objectives Difficulties with deception detection may leave older adults especially vulnerable to fraud. Interoception, i.e., the awareness of one’s bodily signals, has been shown to influence deception detection, but this relationship has not been examined in aging yet. The present study investigated effects of interoceptive accuracy on two forms of deception detection: detecting interpersonal lies in videos and identifying text-based deception in phishing emails. Method Younger (18-34 years) and older (53-82 years) adults completed a heartbeat-detection task to determine interoceptive accuracy. Deception detection was assessed across two distinct, ecologically valid tasks: i) a lie detection task in which participants made veracity judgments of genuine and deceptive individuals, and ii) a phishing email detection task to capture online deception detection. Using multilevel logistic regression models, we determined the effect of interoceptive accuracy on lie and phishing detection in younger versus older adults. Results In older, but not younger, adults greater interoceptive accuracy was associated with better accuracy in both detecting deceptive people and phishing emails. Discussion Interoceptive accuracy was associated with both lie detection and phishing detection accuracy among older adults. Our findings identify interoceptive accuracy as a potential protective factor for fraud susceptibility, as measured through difficulty detecting deception. These results support interoceptive accuracy as a relevant factor for consideration in interventions targeted at fraud prevention among older adults.

We introduce the Denver Pain Authenticity Stimulus Set (D-PASS), a free resource containing 315 videos of 105 unique individuals expressing authentic and posed pain. All expressers were recorded displaying one authentic (105; pain was elicited via a pressure algometer) and two posed (210) expressions of pain (one posed expression recorded before [posed-unrehearsed] and one recorded after [posed-rehearsed] the authentic pain expression). In addition to authentic and posed pain videos, the database includes an accompanying codebook including metrics assessed at the expresser and video levels (e.g., Facial Action Coding System metrics for each video controlling for neutral images of the expresser), expressers’ pain threshold and pain tolerance values, averaged pain detection performance by naïve perceivers who viewed the videos (e.g., accuracy, response bias), neutral images of each expresser, and face characteristic rating data for neutral images of each expresser (e.g., attractiveness, trustworthiness). The stimuli and accompanying codebook can be accessed for academic research purposes from https://digitalcommons.du.edu/lsdl_dpass/1/. The relatively large number of stimuli allow for consideration of expresser-level variability in analyses and enable more advanced statistical approaches (e.g., signal detection analyses). Furthermore, the large number of Black (n = 41) and White (n = 56) expressers permits investigations into the role of race in pain expression, perception, and authenticity detection. Finally, the accompanying codebook may provide pilot data for novel investigations in the intergroup or pain sciences.