Social Rejection Magnifies Impulsive Behavior Among Individuals with Greater Negative Urgency: An Experimental Test of Urgency Theory

Impulsivity is a multifaceted trait with substantial implications for human well-being. One facet of impulsivity is negative urgency, the tendency to act impulsively in response to negative affect. Correlational evidence suggests that negative affect magnifies impulsive behavior among individuals with greater negative urgency, yet causal evidence for this core pillar of urgency theory is lacking. To fill this gap in the literature, participants (N = 363) were randomly assigned to experience social rejection (a situation shown to induce negative affect) or acceptance. Participants then reported their subjective negative affect, completed a behavioral measure of impulsivity, and reported their negative urgency. Among individuals with relatively high and average negative urgency, social rejection increased their impulsive behavior through greater experiences of negative affect. These indirect effects were not observed among individuals relatively low in negative urgency. These findings suggest that negative urgency exists at the nexus of urgent dispositions and situations that elicit negative affect, which offers novel support for urgency theory

Neural Mechanisms of the Rejection-Aggression Link

Social rejection is a painful event that often increases aggression. However, the neural mechanisms of this rejection–aggression link remain unclear. A potential clue may be that rejected people often recruit the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex’s (VLPFC) self-regulatory processes to manage the pain of rejection. Using functional MRI, we replicated previous links between rejection and activity in the brain’s mentalizing network, social pain network and VLPFC. VLPFC recruitment during rejection was associated with greater activity in the brain’s reward network (i.e. the ventral striatum) when individuals were given an opportunity to retaliate. This retaliation-related striatal response was associated with greater levels of retaliatory aggression. Dispositionally aggressive individuals exhibited less functional connectivity between the ventral striatum and the right VLPFC during aggression. This connectivity exerted a suppressing effect on dispositionally aggressive individuals’ greater aggressive responses to rejection. These results help explain how the pain of rejection and reward of revenge motivate rejected people to behave aggressively

Craving Versus Control: Negative Urgency and Neural Correlates Of Alcohol Cue Reactivity

Background: Alcohol abuse is a common and costly practice. Individuals high in negative urgency, the tendency to act rashly when experiencing negative emotions, are at particular risk for abusing alcohol. Alcohol abuse among individuals high in negative urgency may be due to (a) increased activity in the brain’s striatum, (b) decreased activity in brain regions associated with self-control, or (c) a combination of the two. Methods: Thirty eight non-alcohol-dependent participants completed a measure of negative urgency and then underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while passively viewing pleasant and alcohol images. Results: Alcohol images (as compared to pleasant images) were associated with activation in the caudate nucleus, a brain region associated with linking reward to external stimuli. Negative urgency (above and beyond other facets of impulsivity) correlated positively with this caudate activation in response to alcohol images. Alcohol images and negative urgency were unassociated with activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex, a self-regulatory brain region. Conclusions: These findings provide initial support that the alcohol abuse observed among individuals high in negative urgency may be due, in part, to heightened reactivity in the striatum to alcohol. Investigating such neural contributors to self-regulation failure is crucial to reducing substance abuse

Physical Aggressiveness and Gray Matter Deficits in Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

What causes individuals to hurt others? Since the famous case of Phineas Gage, lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) have been reliably linked to physically aggressive behavior. However, it is unclear whether naturally-occurring deficits in VMPFC, among normal individuals, might have widespread consequences for aggression. Using voxel based morphometry, we regressed gray matter density from the brains of 138 normal female and male adults onto their dispositional levels of physical aggression, verbal aggression, and sex, simultaneously. Physical, but not verbal, aggression was associated with reduced gray matter volume in the VMPFC and to a lesser extent, frontopolar cortex. Participants with less gray matter density in this VMPFC cluster were much more likely to engage in real-world violence. These findings suggest that even granular deficits in normal individuals’ VMPFC gray matter can promote physical aggression

Alcohol Use and Strenuous Physical Activity in College Students: A Longitudinal Test of 2 Explanatory Models of Health Behavior

Objective: To help clarify the effect of gender on the bidirectional relationship between alcohol use and strenuous physical activity in college students. Participants: Five hundred twenty-four (52% female) college students recruited in August 2008 and 2009 and followed up in April 2009 and April 2011, respectively. Methods: Participants reported their alcohol use and strenuous physical activity on 2 occasions (baseline and follow-up) spaced approximately 1 or 2 years apart. Results: For females, alcohol use quantity at baseline was associated with increased strenuous physical activity at 1- and 2-year follow-ups, and alcohol use frequency at baseline was associated with decreased strenuous physical activity at 2-year follow-up. For males, alcohol use frequency at baseline predicted decreased strenuous physical activity at 1-year follow-up. Conclusions: Gender differences may be explained from an eating disorders perspective such that women use physical activity as a compensatory strategy to combat potential weight gain from calories consumed during alcohol use

Cross-Lagged Relations Between Motives and Substance Use: Can Use Strengthen Your Motivation Over Time?

Motives for substance use have garnered considerable attention due to the strong predictive utility of this construct, both in terms of use and problems associated with use. The current study examined the cross-lagged relations between alcohol use and motives, and marijuana use and motives over three yearly assessment periods in a large sample (N = 526, 48% male) of college students. The relations between substance use and motives were assessed at each time point, allowing for the examination of these inter-relations over time. Results indicated different trends based on the type of substance. For alcohol use, cross-lagged trends were found between freshman and sophomore year for coping, social, and conformity motives with cross-lagged relations between enhancement motives and alcohol use across all years. However, outside of enhancement motives, cross-lagged relations were not found between sophomore and junior year. In contrast, cross-lagged effects were found for marijuana use and coping, enhancement, and expansion motives between sophomore and junior year, but not freshman year. These results suggest that people’s expectations that drinking or smoking marijuana makes activities more reinforcing and helps them cope with distress may perpetuate use. In turn, use itself may enhance these expectations over time. Results have direct implications for treatment, with recommended focus on motives, behavior activation, and healthy coping skills in order to interrupt the cycle of substance use

The idea of slavic philosophy in the theoretical heritage of I. Mirchuk

The article analyzes the views of I.Mirchuk on the philosophy of the Slavic peoples as an integral phenomenon that has its own problems and peculiarities. The characteristic features distinguishing the philosophy of certain Slavic peoples allowed us to draw a conclusion on the common foundations of Slavic philosophy, to which I.Mirchuk attributed: the practical nature of philosophy and its close connection with life; correspondence between theory and practice; anthropocentricity of philosophical knowledge; religiosity and the spread of messianic ideas. The internal and external problems of the development of the philosophy of the Slavic peoples, identified by I.Mirchuk, have been analyzed in detail. Special focus was on internal problems, which include: the weak influence of the tradition on the formation of new original concepts and horizontal tendencies of the direction of spiritual energy, expressed in the spread of philosophical ideas not only in the professional, but also in imaginative literature and art. While analyzing the views of the slavicist on Slavic philosophy, the relationship between the spiritual peculiarities of the people, his mentality with the specifics of the philosophical thought of a particular thinker was revealed. У статті проаналізовано погляди І.Мірчука на філософію слов’янських народів як на цілісне явище, що має свої проблеми та особливості. Виокремлення характерних рис філософії окремих слов’янських народів дозволило зробити висновок про спільні основи слов’янської філософії, до яких І.Мірчук відносив: практичний характер філософії та її тісний зв’язок із життям; відповідність між теорією та практикою; антропоцентричність філософського знання; релігійність та поширення месіаністичних ідей. Детально проаналізовано, означені І.Мірчуком, внутрішні та зовнішні проблеми розвитку філософії слов’янських народів. Особливу увагу приділено внутрішнім проблемам, до яких відносимо: слабкий вплив традиції на формування нових оригінальних концепцій та горизонтальні тенденції спрямованості духовної енергії, що виражалися у поширенні філософських ідей не лише у фаховій, але і у художній літературі та мистецтві. При аналізі поглядів слов’янознавця на слов’янську філософію розкрито взаємозв’язок між духовними особливостями народу, його ментальністю зі специфікою філософської думки конкретного мислителя

The Effects of Cue Salience and Prior Training on the Behavior of Juvenile- and Adult-Onset Obese Individuals

Two critical factors relevant to Schachter\u27s external hypersensitivity explanation of obesity are: (a) the existence of a contradictory theory (Singh, 1973). and (b) problems in the generalizability of the findings. Both factors were addressed in the present study by pitting the hypotheses of Schachter and Singh against each other in a single study using a sample of the adult obese population more representative than those of the previous research. A reaction time task was employed in which cue salience (high vs low) and prior training (compatible vs incompatible) were manipulated. Significant main effects for the salience and training manipulations were demonstrated, providing the necessary conditions for tests of both Schachter\u27s and Singh\u27s hypotheses. Analyses revealed no significant interactions between body weight and cue salience, as predicted by Schachter\u27s theory, nor between body weight and prior training, as predicted by Singh\u27s theory. The lack of support for the hypotheses questions their generalizability to a representative sample of the adult obese population such as used in the present study. The role of age of onset of obesity was evaluated but was not found to interact with either experimental manipulation. An unexpected finding was that the normals responded significantly faster than the juvenile-onset obese across all experimental conditions

The Effects of Cue Salience and Prior Training on the Behavior of Juvenile- and Adult-Onset Obese Individuals

Two critical factors relevant to Schachter\u27s external hypersensitivity explanation of obesity are: (a) the existence of a contradictory theory (Singh, 1973). and (b) problems in the generalizability of the findings. Both factors were addressed in the present study by pitting the hypotheses of Schachter and Singh against each other in a single study using a sample of the adult obese population more representative than those of the previous research. A reaction time task was employed in which cue salience (high vs low) and prior training (compatible vs incompatible) were manipulated. Significant main effects for the salience and training manipulations were demonstrated, providing the necessary conditions for tests of both Schachter\u27s and Singh\u27s hypotheses. Analyses revealed no significant interactions between body weight and cue salience, as predicted by Schachter\u27s theory, nor between body weight and prior training, as predicted by Singh\u27s theory. The lack of support for the hypotheses questions their generalizability to a representative sample of the adult obese population such as used in the present study. The role of age of onset of obesity was evaluated but was not found to interact with either experimental manipulation. An unexpected finding was that the normals responded significantly faster than the juvenile-onset obese across all experimental conditions