You ≠ Me: Individual differences in the structure of social cognition

This study investigated the structure of social cognition, and how it is influenced by personality; specifically, how various socio-cognitive capabilities, and the pattern of inter-relationships and co-dependencies among them differ between divergent personality styles. To measure social cognition, a large non-clinical sample (n = 290) undertook an extensive battery of self-report and performance-based measures of visual perspective taking, imitative tendencies, affective empathy, interoceptive accuracy, emotion regulation, and state affectivity. These same individuals then completed the Personality Styles and Disorders Inventory. Latent Profile Analysis revealed two dissociable personality profiles that exhibited contrasting cognitive and affective dispositions, and multivariate analyses indicated further that these profiles differed on measures of social cognition; individuals characterised by a flexible and adaptive personality profile expressed higher action orientation (emotion regulation) compared to those showing more inflexible tendencies, along with better visual perspective taking, superior interoceptive accuracy, less imitative tendencies, and lower personal distress and negativity. These characteristics point towards more efficient self-other distinction, and to higher cognitive control more generally. Moreover, low-level cognitive mechanisms served to mediate other higher level socio-emotional capabilities. Together, these findings elucidate the cognitive and affective underpinnings of individual differences in social behaviour, providing a data-driven model that should guide future research in this area

Agent-based Social Psychology: from Neurocognitive Processes to Social Data

Moral Foundation Theory states that groups of different observers may rely on partially dissimilar sets of moral foundations, thereby reaching different moral valuations. The use of functional imaging techniques has revealed a spectrum of cognitive styles with respect to the differential handling of novel or corroborating information that is correlated to political affiliation. Here we characterize the collective behavior of an agent-based model whose inter individual interactions due to information exchange in the form of opinions are in qualitative agreement with experimental neuroscience data. The main conclusion derived connects the existence of diversity in the cognitive strategies and statistics of the sets of moral foundations and suggests that this connection arises from interactions between agents. Thus a simple interacting agent model, whose interactions are in accord with empirical data on conformity and learning processes, presents statistical signatures consistent with moral judgment patterns of conservatives and liberals as obtained by survey studies of social psychology.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 2 C codes, to appear in Advances in Complex System

Implementing multifactorial psychotherapy research in online virtual environments (IMPROVE-2): study protocol for a phase III trial of the MOST randomized component selection method for internet cognitive-behavioural therapy for depression.

BACKGROUND: Depression is a global health challenge. Although there are effective psychological and pharmaceutical interventions, our best treatments achieve remission rates less than 1/3 and limited sustained recovery. Underpinning this efficacy gap is limited understanding of how complex psychological interventions for depression work. Recent reviews have argued that the active ingredients of therapy need to be identified so that therapy can be made briefer, more potent, and to improve scalability. This in turn requires the use of rigorous study designs that test the presence or absence of individual therapeutic elements, rather than standard comparative randomised controlled trials. One such approach is the Multiphase Optimization Strategy, which uses efficient experimentation such as factorial designs to identify active factors in complex interventions. This approach has been successfully applied to behavioural health but not yet to mental health interventions. METHODS/DESIGN: A Phase III randomised, single-blind balanced fractional factorial trial, based in England and conducted on the internet, randomized at the level of the patient, will investigate the active ingredients of internet cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for depression. Adults with depression (operationalized as PHQ-9 score ≥ 10), recruited directly from the internet and from an UK National Health Service Improving Access to Psychological Therapies service, will be randomized across seven experimental factors, each reflecting the presence versus absence of specific treatment components (activity scheduling, functional analysis, thought challenging, relaxation, concreteness training, absorption, self-compassion training) using a 32-condition balanced fractional factorial design (2IV(7-2)). The primary outcome is symptoms of depression (PHQ-9) at 12 weeks. Secondary outcomes include symptoms of anxiety and process measures related to hypothesized mechanisms. DISCUSSION: Better understanding of the active ingredients of efficacious therapies, such as CBT, is necessary in order to improve and further disseminate these interventions. This study is the first application of a component selection experiment to psychological interventions in depression and will enable us to determine the main effect of each treatment component and its relative efficacy, and cast light on underlying mechanisms, so that we can systematically enhance internet CBT. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN24117387 . Registered 26 August 2014.Funding for this trial is provided by grants from the Cornwall NHS Foundation Trust and South West Peninsula Academic Health Research Network to EW. LC is supported by United States National Institutes of Health grants P50DA039838, P01CA180945, R01DK097364, and R01AA022931

Mindfulness as a Buffer of Leaders’ Self-Rated Behavioral Responses to Emotional Exhaustion: A Dual Process Model of Self-Regulation

In this study, we investigate the self-regulatory role of mindfulness in buffering the relationship between leaders’ emotional exhaustion and self-rated leadership behavior (transformational leadership and abusive supervision). Specifically, we propose that leader mindfulness buffers the relationship between emotional exhaustion and both negative affect and impaired perspective taking, which link leader emotional exhaustion and leadership behavior (i.e., moderated mediation). Using a time-lagged survey of leaders (N = 505) we found that leader perspective taking and negative affect mediated the relationships between emotional exhaustion and self-reported leadership behavior. Furthermore, we found that leader mindfulness buffers the relationship between emotional exhaustion and negative affect, which weakened the mediated relationship between emotional exhaustion and both transformational leadership and abusive supervision. However, leader mindfulness did not moderate the relationship between emotional exhaustion and perspective taking. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

THE MEDIATING EFFECT OF MARITAL SATISFACTION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN QUALITY FAMILY LIFE AND WELL-BEING OF MARRIED COUPLES

The purpose of this study was to determine the mediating effect of marital satisfaction on the relationship between the quality family life and the well-being of married couples. Utilizing quantitative, non-experimental design via correlational technique, data were obtained from 300 married couples, in one of the cities in Davao Province. The researcher utilized a stratified sampling technique and survey mode of data collection. The researcher also utilized the statistical tools mean, Pearson r and Med-graph using Sobel z-test. From the results of the study, it was found out that there are very high levels of mean scores for quality family life and well-being of married couples while a high level for marital satisfaction. Also, results revealed that there are significant relationships between quality family life and the well-being of married couples, between quality family life and marital satisfaction and between marital satisfaction and the well-being of married couples. Further, it was revealed that there is a partial mediation of the effect of marital satisfaction on the relationship between quality family life and the well-being of married couples.  Article visualizations

Communications Design for Co-Op: A Group Decision Support System

Decision Support Systems (DSSs), computer-based systems intended to assist managers in preparing and analyzing decisions, have been single-user systems for most of the past decade. Only recently has DSS research begun to study the implications of the fact that most complex managerial decisions involve multiple decision makers and analysts. A number of tools for facilitating group decisions have been proposed under the label Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs). One of the most important functions of a GDSS is to provide problem-oriented services for communication among decision makers. On the basis of an analysis of the communication requirements in various group decision settings, this paper presents an architecture for defining and enforcing dynamic application-level protocols that organize decision group interaction. The architecture has been implemented on a network of personal computers in Co-oP, a GDSS for cooperative group decision making based on interactive, multiple-criteria decision methods

Explanation and Intergroup Emotion: Social Explanations as a Foundation of Prejudice-Related Compunction

Two studies examined whether social explanations—causal frameworks used to make sense of a group’s status and behavior—are associated with prejudice-related compunction. In Study 1, based on Devine, Monteith, Zuwerink, & Elliott, (1991), participants who endorsed external explanations (e.g. low socioeconomic status of Blacks stems from historical maltreatment) showed a particularly strong tendency to experience compunction in response to prejudice-related discrepancies. Study 2 involved a novel paradigm. Participants were induced to admit that they would discriminate against Black males. Conceptually replicating Study 1, endorsement of external explanations was positively associated with compunction in response to this imagined discrimination. Across both studies, there was also evidence that the effects of external explanations are not explicable in terms of internal motivation to avoid prejudice, global prejudice, or global positive evaluation of African Americans. Discussion centers on the importance of explanations in shaping intergroup emotions and how the concept of explanation links the intergroup emotion literature to other emotion literatures

The relevance and usefulness of the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) in adolescent development, attachment and depression

This thesis focuses on the Implicit Associations Test (IAT), as a measure of implicit cognition aiming to tap distortions of cognitive processing by unconsciously held personal and interpersonal attitudes and beliefs. Classically, IAT had revealed delays in processing of information when dissonant attitudes were activated, even when the participant denied these attitudes. It is a popular measure, but there is little scientific consensus about its value and reliably to detect individual differences across a number of domains. This thesis examined the validity if the IAT in a number of clinical contexts attempting to test its clinical relevance and practical usefulness as a psychometric instrument. The thesis contains 5 empirical studies: 1) Attachment transmission: The test is administered to a sample of mothers with infants of 1 year of age. IAT was used to measure the mother’s implicit attitudes towards attachment relationships and parenting in general and its capacity accurately to predict other measures of attachment, parenting, and psychopathology. In this context, the IAT resulted to be of little value. 2) A newly developed version of the IAT with the potential to measure implicit self-esteem was administered to a large sample of adolescents (14-24 y-o) to test the prediction that implicit self-esteem measured with the IAT is robust to age and gender of the sample. 3, and 5) Depression: Three studies aimed to validate the SE-IAT in the context of depression. The first assessed the ability of the SE-IAT to discriminate between depressed and non-depressed patients. The second study, cross-validated the SE-IAT against several other psychometric instruments in this depressed sample. The third study aimed to assess the value of the SE-IAT to predict and monitor individual gains in the psychotherapy for depression. The SE-IAT is useful at calculating discrepancies between explicit and implicit self-esteem to predict internalizing disorders

Rule-Based Automatic Generation of Mediator Patterns for Service Composition Mismatches

To perform service composition, mismatches are challenging obstacles due to the decentralization and independent development of services. Mediation, as a promising solution, attracts most attentions. And pattern based mediation proposed a modularly constructive thoughtway: Basic mediator patterns were created and sufficient for advanced mediators against all possible mismatches. The pattern structure is illustrated in this paper. And construction rules for each pattern are presented. Executable codes such as BPEL codes can be automatically generated from these rules. As a systematic engineering solution, its feasibility is validated through a case study in the end

What is Strategic Competence and Does it Matter? Exposition of the Concept and a Research Agenda

Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical insights from strategic management and the cognitive and organizational sciences, we argue that strategic competence constitutes the ability of organizations and the individuals who operate within them to work within their cognitive limitations in such a way that they are able to maintain an appropriate level of responsiveness to the contingencies confronting them. Using the language of the resource based view of the firm, we argue that this meta-level competence represents a confluence of individual and organizational characteristics, suitably configured to enable the detection of those weak signals indicative of the need for change and to act accordingly, thereby minimising the dangers of cognitive bias and cognitive inertia. In an era of unprecedented informational burdens and instability, we argue that this competence is central to the longer-term survival and well being of the organization. We conclude with a consideration of the major scientific challenges that lie ahead, if the ideas contained within this paper are to be validated