Stability and Change of Personality across the Life Course: The Impact of Age and Major Life Events on Mean-Level and Rank-Order Stability of the Big Five

Does personality change across the entire life course, and are those changes due to intrinsic maturation or major life experiences? This longitudinal study investigated changes in the mean levels and rank order of the Big Five personality traits in a heterogeneous sample of 14,718 Germans across all of adulthood. Latent change and latent moderated regression models provided four main findings: First, age had a complex curvilinear influence on mean levels of personality. Second, the rank-order stability of Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, and Agreeableness all followed an inverted U-shaped function, reaching a peak between the ages of 40 and 60, and decreasing afterwards, whereas Conscientiousness showed a continuously increasing rank-order stability across adulthood. Third, personality predicted the occurrence of several objective major life events (selection effects) and changed in reaction to experiencing these events (socialization effects), suggesting that personality can change due to factors other than intrinsic maturation.. - Fourth, when events were clustered according to their valence, as is commonly done,. - effects of the environment on changes in personality were either overlooked or. - overgeneralized. In sum, our analyses show that personality changes throughout the life. - span, but with more pronounced changes in young and old ages, and that this change is. - partly attributable to social demands and experiences.personality development, Big Five, life events, stability, adulthood

The Benefits of Believing in Chance or Fate: External Locus of Control as a Protective Factor for Coping with the Death of a Spouse

The death of a spouse is an extremely stressful life event that consequently causes a large drop in life satisfaction. Reactivity to the loss, however, varies markedly, a phenomenon that is currently not well understood. Because lack of controllability essentially contributes to the stressful nature of this incident, we analyzed whether individual differences in the belief in external control influence the coping process. To examine this issue, widowed individuals (N = 414) from a large-scaled panel study were followed for the 4 years before and after the loss by using a latent growth model. Results showed that belief in external control led to a considerably smaller decline in life satisfaction and higher scores in the year of the loss. Thus, although usually regarded as a risk factor, belief in external control acts as a protective factor for coping with the death of a spouse.Locus of control, life satisfaction, latent growth model, subjective well-being, subjective indicators, family and networks

Algometry with a clothes peg compared to an electronic pressure algometer: a randomized cross-sectional study in pain patients

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hypersensitivity of the central nervous system is widely present in pain patients and recognized as one of the determinants of chronic pain and disability. Electronic pressure algometry is often used to explore aspects of central hypersensitivity. We hypothesized that a simple pain provocation test with a clothes peg provides information on pain sensitivity that compares meaningfully to that obtained by a well-established electronic pressure algometer. "Clinically meaningful" was defined as a medium (r = 0.3-0.5) or high (r > 0.5) correlation coefficient according to Cohen's conventions.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We tested 157 in-patients with different pain types. A calibrated clothes peg was applied for 10 seconds and patients rated the pain intensity on a 0 to 10 numerical rating scale. Pressure pain detection threshold (PPdt) and pressure pain tolerance threshold (PPtt) were measured with a standard electronic algometer. Both methods were performed on both middle fingers and ear lobes. In a subgroup of 47 patients repeatability (test-retest reliability) was calculated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Clothes peg values correlated with PPdt values for finger testing with r = -0.54 and for earlobe testing with r = -0.55 (all p-values < 0.001). Clothes peg values also correlated with PPtt values for finger testing with r = -0.55 (p < 0.001). Test-retest reliability (repeatability) showed equally stable results for clothes peg algometry and the electronic algometer (all r-values > 0.89, all p-values < 0.001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Information on pain sensitivity provided by a calibrated clothes peg and an established algometer correlate at a clinically meaningful level.</p

A measure of majorisation emerging from single-shot statistical mechanics

The use of the von Neumann entropy in formulating the laws of thermodynamics has recently been challenged. It is associated with the average work whereas the work guaranteed to be extracted in any single run of an experiment is the more interesting quantity in general. We show that an expression that quantifies majorisation determines the optimal guaranteed work. We argue it should therefore be the central quantity of statistical mechanics, rather than the von Neumann entropy. In the limit of many identical and independent subsystems (asymptotic i.i.d) the von Neumann entropy expressions are recovered but in the non-equilbrium regime the optimal guaranteed work can be radically different to the optimal average. Moreover our measure of majorisation governs which evolutions can be realized via thermal interactions, whereas the nondecrease of the von Neumann entropy is not sufficiently restrictive. Our results are inspired by single-shot information theory.Comment: 54 pages (15+39), 9 figures. Changed title / changed presentation, same main results / added minor result on pure bipartite state entanglement (appendix G) / near to published versio

Coping with anxiety: Brain structural correlates of vigilance and cognitive avoidance

Background: Individuals differ in their dispositional coping behavior when they are confronted with anxiety-provoking situations. Cognitive avoidance is characterized by a withdrawal from threatening information, whereas vigilance denotes the intensive search for threat-related information. Functional neuroimaging studies indicate alterations in brain responsivity to emotional stimuli as a function of cognitive avoidant and vigilant coping, but findings are partially discrepant. Studies on structural correlates of coping styles are scarce. Materials and Methods: By using structural magnetic resonance imaging, the present study examined the relationship between brain gray matter volume and coping strategies in 114 healthy individuals. Individual differences in vigilance and cognitive avoidance were measured by the Mainz Coping Inventory. Results: Exploratory whole-brain analyses were conducted. Cognitive avoidant coping significantly predicted reduced gray matter volume in the bilateral thalamus, whereas vigilant coping was associated with volumetric increases in the bilateral thalamus. These relationships remained significant when controlling for a potential influence of age, sex, depressive symptoms, and trait anxiety. Discussion: Our findings indicate that dispositional strategies to deal with anxiety-provoking situations are related to volumetric alterations in the thalamus, a brain structure that has been implicated in the mediation of attentional processes and alertness, and the anticipation of harm. The dispositional tendency to monitor the environment for potential threats (i.e., vigilance), appears to be associated with volumetric increases in the thalamus, whereas the dispositional inclination to divert one’s attention away from distressing stimuli (i.e., cognitive avoidance) seems to go along with reductions in thalamic gray matter density

Hilbert geometry for convex polygonal domains

We prove in this paper that the Hilbert geometry associated with an open convex polygonal set is Lipschitz equivalent to Euclidean plane

Targeting dendritic cell dysfunction to circumvent anti-PD1 resistance in head and neck cancer

PURPOSE: Neoadjuvant anti-PD1 (aPD1) therapies are being explored in surgically resectable head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Encouraging responses have been observed, but further insights into the mechanisms underlying resistance and approaches to improve responses are needed. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: We integrated data from syngeneic mouse oral carcinoma (MOC) models and neoadjuvant pembrolizumab HNSCC patient tumor RNA-sequencing data to explore the mechanism of aPD1 resistance. Tumors and tumor-draining lymph nodes (DLN) from MOC models were analyzed for antigen-specific priming. CCL5 expression was enforced in an aPD1-resistant model. RESULTS: An aPD1-resistant mouse model showed poor priming in the tumor DLN due to type 1 conventional dendritic cell (cDC1) dysfunction, which correlated with exhausted and poorly responsive antigen-specific T cells. Tumor microenvironment analysis also showed decreased cDC1 in aPD1-resistant tumors compared with sensitive tumors. Following neoadjuvant aPD1 therapy, pathologic responses in patients also positively correlated with baseline transcriptomic cDC1 signatures. In an aPD1-resistant model, intratumoral cDC1 vaccine was sufficient to restore aPD1 response by enhancing T-cell infiltration and increasing antigen-specific responses with improved tumor control. Mechanistically, CCL5 expression significantly correlated with neoadjuvant aPD1 response and enforced expression of CCL5 in an aPD1-resistant model, enhanced cDC1 tumor infiltration, restored antigen-specific responses, and recovered sensitivity to aPD1 treatment. CONCLUSIONS: These data highlight the contribution of tumor-infiltrating cDC1 in HNSCC aPD1 response and approaches to enhance cDC1 infiltration and function that may circumvent aPD1 resistance in patients with HNSCC

Dose-response relationship between ambulatory load magnitude and load-induced changes in COMP in young healthy adults

To determine the dose-response relationship between ambulatory load magnitude during a walking stress test and load-induced changes in serum concentration of cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (sCOMP) in healthy subjects.; sCOMP was assessed before and after a 30-min walking stress test performed on three test days by 24 healthy volunteers. In each walking stress test, one of three ambulatory loads was applied in a block randomized crossover design: normal body weight (BW) (100%BW = normal load); reduced BW (80%BW = reduced load); increased BW (120%BW = increased load). Knee kinematics and ground reaction force (GRF) were measured using an inertial sensor gait analysis system and a pressure plate embedded in the treadmill.; Load-induced increases in sCOMP rose with increasing ambulatory load magnitude. Mean sCOMP levels increased immediately after the walking stress test by 26.8 ± 12.8%, 28.0 ± 13.3% and 37.3 ± 18.3% for the reduced, normal or increased load condition, respectively. Lower extremity kinematics did not differ between conditions.; The results of this study provide important evidence of a dose-response relationship between ambulatory load magnitude and load-induced changes in sCOMP. Our data suggests that in normal weight persons sCOMP levels are more sensitive to increased than to reduced load. The experimental framework presented here may form the basis for studying the relevance of the dose-response relationship between ambulatory load magnitude and load-induced changes in biomarkers involved in metabolism of healthy articular cartilage and after injury

Exclusive diffractive processes and the quark substructure of mesons

Exclusive diffractive processes on the nucleon are investigated within a model in which the quark-nucleon interaction is mediated by Pomeron exchange and the quark substructure of mesons is described within a framework based on the Dyson-Schwinger equations of QCD. The model quark-nucleon interaction has four parameters which are completely determined by high-energy $\pi N$ and $K N$ elastic scattering data. The model is then used to predict vector-meson electroproduction observables. The obtained $\rho$- and $\phi$-meson electroproduction cross sections are in excellent agreement with experimental data. The predicted $q^2$ dependence of $J/\psi$-meson electroproduction also agrees with experimental data. It is shown that confined-quark dynamics play a central role in determining the behavior of the diffractive, vector-meson electroproduction cross section. In particular, the onset of the asymptotic $1/q^4$ behavior of the cross section is determined by a momentum scale that is set by the current-quark masses of the quark and antiquark inside the vector meson. This is the origin of the striking differences between the $q^2$ dependence of $\rho$-, $\phi$- and $J/\psi$-meson electroproduction cross sections observed in recent experiments.Comment: 53 pages, 23 figures, revtex and epsfig. Minor additions to tex