Young adult mental health and functional outcomes among individuals with remitted, persistent and late-onset ADHD

Agnew-Blais, J., Polanczyk, G., Danese, A., Wertz, J., Moffitt, T., & Arseneault, L. (2018). Young adult mental health and functional outcomes among individuals with remitted, persistent and late-onset ADHD. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 213(3), 526-534. doi:10.1192/bjp.2018.97

Abstract

Background: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with mental health problems and functional impairment across many domains. However, how the longitudinal course of ADHD affects later functioning remains unclear.

Aims: We aimed to disentangle how ADHD developmental patterns are associated with young adult functioning.

Method: The Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study is a population-based cohort of 2232 twins born in England and Wales in 1994–1995. We assessed ADHD in childhood at ages 5, 7, 10 and 12 years and in young adulthood at age 18 years. We examined three developmental patterns of ADHD from childhood to young adulthood – remitted, persistent and late-onset ADHD – and compared these groups with one another and with non-ADHD controls on functioning at age 18 years. We additionally tested whether group differences were attributable to childhood IQ, childhood conduct disorder or familial factors shared between twins.

Results: Compared with individuals without ADHD, those with remitted ADHD showed poorer physical health and socioeconomic outcomes in young adulthood. Individuals with persistent or late-onset ADHD showed poorer functioning across all domains, including mental health, substance misuse, psychosocial, physical health and socioeconomic outcomes. Overall, these associations were not explained by childhood IQ, childhood conduct disorder or shared familial factors.

Conclusions: Long-term associations of childhood ADHD with adverse physical health and socioeconomic outcomes underscore the need for early intervention. Young adult ADHD showed stronger associations with poorer mental health, substance misuse and psychosocial outcomes, emphasising the importance of identifying and treating adults with ADHD.

Attitudes towards robots became more negative between 2012 and 2017; robots assisting at work showed the strongest negative trend; countries with a larger share of older citizens evaluated robots more favorably

Are robots becoming unpopular? Changes in attitudes towards autonomous robotic systems in Europe. Timo Gnambs, Markus Appel. Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.11.045

Highlights
•    Attitudes towards robots became more negative between 2012 and 2017.
•    Attitudes towards robots assisting at work showed the strongest negative trend.
•    Women with lower education evaluated robots more negatively.
•    Countries with a larger share of older citizens evaluated robots more favorably.

Abstract: Many societies are on the brink of a robotic era. In the near future, various autonomous computer systems are expected to be part of many people's daily lives. Because attitudes influence the adoption of new technologies, we studied the attitudes towards robots in the European Union between 2012 and 2017. Using representative samples from 27 countries (three waves, total N = 80,396), these analyses showed that, within five years, public opinions regarding robots exhibited a marked negative trend. Respondents became more cautious towards the use of robots. This tendency was particularly strong for robots at the workplace, which are, despite the drop, still more positively evaluated than robots performing surgeries or autonomous cars. Attitudes were more positive among men and people in white-collar jobs. Moreover, countries with a larger share of older citizens evaluated robotic assistance more favorably. In general, these results highlight increasing reservations towards autonomous robotic systems in Europe.

The impact of pseudo-psychological demonstrations make people believe that one can read a person’s mind by evaluating micro expressions, psychological profiles & muscle activities, & can prime a person’s behaviour through subtle suggestions

Fake science: The impact of pseudo-psychological demonstrations on people’s beliefs in psychological principles. Yuxuan Lan, Christine Mohr, Xiaomeng Hu, Gustav Kuhn. PLOS, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207629

Abstract: Magicians use deception to create effects that allow us to experience the impossible. More recently, magicians have started to contextualize these tricks in psychological demonstrations. We investigated whether witnessing a magic demonstration alters people’s beliefs in these pseudo-psychological principles. In the classroom, a magician claimed to use psychological skills to read a volunteer’s thoughts. After this demonstration, participants reported higher beliefs that an individual can 1) read a person’s mind by evaluating micro expressions, psychological profiles and muscle activities, and 2) effectively prime a person’s behaviour through subtle suggestions. Whether he was presented as a magician or psychologist did not influence people’s beliefs about how the demonstration was achieved, nor did it influence their beliefs in pseudo-psychological principles. Our results demonstrate that pseudo-psychological demonstrations can have a significant impact on perpetuating false beliefs in scientific principles and raise important questions about the wider impact of scientific misinformation.

Doubling the permissible length of a Tweet led to more polite, less informal, more analytical, and overall healthier discussions online

Jaidka, Kokil and Zhou, Alvin and Lelkes, Yphtach, Brevity is the soul of Twitter: The constraint affordance and political discussion (November 20, 2018). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3287552. Final version Journal of Communication, Volume 69, Issue 4, August 2019, Pages 345–372, https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz023

Abstract: Many hoped that social networks would allow for the open exchange of information and a revival of the public sphere. Unfortunately, conversations on social media are often toxic and not conducive to healthy political discussion. Twitter, the most widely used social network for political discussions, doubled the limit of characters in a Tweet in November 2017, which provided a natural experiment to study the causal effect of technological affordances on political discussions with a discontinuous time series design. Using supervised and unsupervised natural language processing methods, we analyze 358,242 Tweet replies to U.S. politicians from January 2017 to March 2018. We show that the doubling the permissible length of a Tweet led to more polite, less informal, more analytical, and overall healthier discussions online. However, the declining trend in the political relevance of these tweets raises concerns about the implications of the changing norms for the quality of political deliberation.

Keywords: Political Communication, Political Discussion, Social Media, Computational Social Science

Study with rats sheds light on why women are roughly twice as likely as men to develop depression, anxiety and other stress-related problems, including difficulty with attention

Early Life Stress Drives Sex-Selective Impairment in Reversal Learning by Affecting Parvalbumin Interneurons in Orbitofrontal Cortex of Mice. Haley L. Goodwill et al. Cell Reports, Volume 25, ISSUE 9, P2299-2307.e4, Nov 27 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2018.11.010

Highlights
    •    Early life stress leads to select deficits in reversal learning in female mice
    •    Impaired rule-reversal learning is associated with decreased PV and GAD67 in OFC
    •    Optogenetic silencing of OFC PV+ cells recapitulates ELS effects on reversal learning
    •    Optogenetic silencing of mPFC PV+ cells impairs rule shifting, but not reversal learning

Summary: Poverty, displacement, and parental stress represent potent sources of early life stress (ELS). Stress disproportionately affects females, who are at increased risk for stress-related pathologies associated with cognitive impairment. Mechanisms underlying stress-associated cognitive impairment and enhanced risk of females remain unknown. Here, ELS is associated with impaired rule-reversal (RR) learning in females, but not males. Impaired performance was associated with decreased expression and density of interneurons expressing parvalbumin (PV+) in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), but not other interneuron subtypes. Optogenetic silencing of PV+ interneuron activity in OFC of control mice phenocopied RR learning deficits observed in ELS females. Localization of reversal learning deficits to PV+ interneurons in OFC was confirmed by optogenetic studies in which neurons in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were silenced and associated with select deficits in rule-shift learning. Sex-, cell-, and region-specific effects show altered PV+ interneuron development can be a driver of sex differences in cognitive dysfunction.

When asking for assistance, is it beneficial to incentivize a helper by offering a motivated gift (gift with the hope of getting support in return)? Sometimes undermine the assistance that people hope to receive. A third of Americans had given such gift at least once

aknin, Lara, Dylan Wiwad, and Yuthika Girme. 2018. “Not All Gifts Are Good: The Potential Practical Costs of Motivated Gifts.” PsyArXiv. November 27. doi:10.31234/osf.io/stkx8

Abstract: People rely on support from others to accomplish mundane and momentous tasks. When asking for assistance, is it beneficial to incentivize a helper by offering a motivated gift (i.e. a gift with the hope of getting support in return)? Six studies (N>2,500) examine the frequency and potential costs of motivated gifts. In Study 1, a third of Americans indicated that they had given a motivated gift at least once, while nearly two-thirds believed they had received one. In Studies 2a-d, most participants who imagined receiving a motivated gift before a favor request reported lower willingness to help and anticipated satisfaction from helping than participants who imagined simply being asked for a favor. Finally, Study 3 replicates these findings with actual help provided among friends in a laboratory setting. Findings suggest that motivated gifts are relatively common but may sometimes undermine the assistance that people hope to receive.

Dystopian novels/movies enhance the willingness to justify radical—especially violent—forms of political action; no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust & efficacy

It’s the End of the World and They Know It: How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes. Calvert W. Jones and Celia Paris. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 16, Issue 4, December 2018 , pp. 969-989. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592718002153

Abstract: Given that the fictional narratives found in novels, movies, and television shows enjoy wide public consumption, memorably convey information, minimize counter-arguing, and often emphasize politically-relevant themes, we argue that greater scholarly attention must be paid to theorizing and measuring how fiction affects political attitudes. We argue for a genre-based approach for studying fiction effects, and apply it to the popular dystopian genre. Results across three experiments are striking: we find consistent evidence that dystopian narratives enhance the willingness to justify radical—especially violent—forms of political action. Yet we find no evidence for the conventional wisdom that they reduce political trust and efficacy, illustrating that fiction’s effects may not be what they seem and underscoring the need for political scientists to take fiction seriously.

Men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism underestimated the power they had compared with their partners’ reports; this perception predicted greater aggression toward female partners; this was not the result of generally being more dominant & aggressive

An Interdependence Account of Sexism and Power: Men's Hostile Sexism, Biased Perceptions of Low Power, and Relationship Aggression. Emily J. Cross, Nickola C. Overall, Rachel S.T. Low, & James K. McNulty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nov 26, 2018.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000167

Abstract: Protecting men’s power is fundamental to understanding the origin, expression, and targets of hostile sexism, yet no prior theoretical or empirical work has specified how hostile sexism is related to experiences of power. In the current studies, we propose that the interdependence inherent in heterosexual relationships will lead men who more strongly endorse hostile sexism to perceive they have lower power in their relationship, and that these perceptions will be biased. We also predicted that lower perceptions of power would in turn promote aggression toward intimate partners. Across 4 studies, men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism perceived lower power in their relationships. Comparisons across partners supported that these lower perceptions of power were biased; men who more strongly endorsed hostile sexism underestimated the power they had compared with their partners’ reports of that power (Studies 1 and 2). These lower perceptions of power, in turn, predicted greater aggression toward female partners during couples’ daily interactions (Study 1), observed during couples’ video-recorded conflict discussions (Study 2), and reported over the last year (Studies 3 and 4). Moreover, the associations between hostile sexism, power, and aggression were specific to men perceiving lower relationship power rather than desiring greater power in their relationships (Studies 3 and 4), and they were not the result of generally being more dominant and aggressive (Studies 3 and 4), or more negative relationship evaluations from either partner (Studies 1– 4). The findings demonstrate the importance of an interdependence perspective in understanding the experiences, aggressive expressions, and broader consequences associated with hostile sexism.

Keywords: hostile sexism, relationship power, relationship aggression, biased perceptions
Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000167.supp

Reading faces: Participants correctly identified the high-narcissism male & female, & the high-psychopathy male significantly more often than by chance, & the high-psychopathy female significantly less often

Are dark triad cues really visible in faces? Victor Kenji M. Shiramizu, Luca Kozm, Lisa M. DeBruine, Benedict C. Jones. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 139, 1 March 2019, Pages 214-216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.11.011

Abstract: The ‘dark triad’ refers to the personality traits narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Previous research found that participants could distinguish dark triad faces when judging images with average facial characteristics of people who scored either high or low on these traits. These results suggest that faces contain valid cues to dark triad personality traits and that the dark triad is a set of physical-morphological characteristics, as well as a set of psycho-social characteristics. Because putative links between personality traits and facial appearance have often not replicated well across studies, we attempted to replicate these results with a new set of face images. Participants correctly identified the high-narcissism male and female prototypes and the high-psychopathy male prototype significantly more often than would be expected by chance. By contrast, our analyses showed no evidence that participants could discriminate between the high- and low-Machiavellianism prototypes for either sex. Surprisingly, participants correctly identified the high-psychopathy female prototype significantly less often than would be expected by chance alone. Together our results suggest that male and female faces contain valid cues of narcissism, but do not necessarily contain valid cues of psychopathy or Machiavellianism.

School achievement engenders high expectations about future prospects, yet markets are only contingently sensitive to that achievement; the misalignment schools-markets is perceived by academics as morally unacceptable

Magni-Berton, R., & Ríos, D. (2018). Why do academics oppose the market? A test of Nozick’s hypothesis. Current Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392118812934

Abstract: In this article, the authors explore why academics tend to oppose the market. To this intent the article uses normative political theory as an explanatory mechanism, starting with a conjecture originally suggested by Robert Nozick. Academics are over-represented amongst the best students of their cohort. School achievement engenders high expectations about future economic prospects. Yet markets are only contingently sensitive to school achievement. This misalignment between schools and markets is perceived by academics – and arguably by intellectuals in general – as morally unacceptable. To test this explanation, the article uses an online questionnaire with close to 1500 French academic respondents. The data resulting from this investigation lend support to Nozick’s hypothesis.

Keywords Academics, attitudes, justice, the market, Nozick

Sensation seeking & the factor intellect/imagination predict liking of horror & frequency of use; gender, educational level, & age are also correlated; people seek out horror media with threatening stimuli that they perceive to be plausible

Clasen, M., Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, J., & Johnson, J. A. (2018). Horror, personality, and threat simulation: A survey on the psychology of scary media. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000152

Abstract: Horror entertainment is a thriving and paradoxical industry. Who are the consumers of horror, and why do they seek out frightening media? We provide support for the threat simulation theory of horror, according to which horror media provides a form of benign masochism that offers negative emotional stimulation through simulation of threat scenarios. Through an online survey of genre use and preference as well as personality traits and paranormal beliefs (n = 1,070), we find that sensation seeking and the fifth of the Big Five factors, intellect/imagination, predict liking of horror and frequency of use. Gender, educational level, and age are also correlated with horror liking and frequency of use (males show higher liking and more frequent use, whereas liking and use frequency are negatively correlated with educational level and age). People with stronger beliefs in the paranormal tend to seek out horror media with supernatural content, whereas those with weaker beliefs in the paranormal gravitate toward horror media with natural content, suggesting that people seek out horror media with threatening stimuli that they perceive to be plausible. While frightening media may be initially aversive, people high in sensation seeking and intellect/imagination, in particular, like intellectual stimulation and challenge and expect not just negative but also positive emotions from horror consumption. They brave the initially aversive response to simulate threats and so enter a positive feedback loop by which they attain adaptive mastery through coping with virtual simulated danger.

Check also So Disgusting, But You Can't Take Your Eyes Off the Screen: Can Personality Traits and Disgust Sensitivity Influence People's Love for Horror Movies? Ashley Marie Dillard. Western Carolina University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2018. 10788427. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/09/significant-correlations-between.html

Normalized hurricane damage in the continental United States 1900–2017: Consistent with observed trends in the hurricane landfalls, the updated normalized loss estimates also show no trend

Normalized hurricane damage in the continental United States 1900–2017. Jessica Weinkle, Chris Landsea, Douglas Collins, Rade Musulin, Ryan P. Crompton, Philip J. Klotzbach & Roger Pielke Jr. Nature Sustainability (2018), https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0165-2

Abstract: Direct economic losses result when a hurricane encounters an exposed, vulnerable society. A normalization estimates direct economic losses from a historical extreme event if that same event was to occur under contemporary societal conditions. Under the global indicator framework of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the reduction of direct economic losses as a proportion of total economic activity is identified as a key indicator of progress in the mitigation of disaster impacts. Understanding loss trends in the context of development can therefore aid in assessing sustainable development. This analysis provides a major update to the leading dataset on normalized US hurricane losses in the continental United States from 1900 to 2017. Over this period, 197 hurricanes resulted in 206 landfalls with about US$2 trillion in normalized (2018) damage, or just under US$17 billion annually. Consistent with observed trends in the frequency and intensity of hurricane landfalls along the continental United States since 1900, the updated normalized loss estimates also show no trend. A more detailed comparison of trends in hurricanes and normalized losses over various periods in the twentieth century to 2017 demonstrates a very high degree of consistency.

People will often fight not for individual or collective material gain, but because of their commitment to abstract moral & sacred ideas; decisions to support or oppose war are descriptively deontological & are relatively insensitive to material costs or benefits

The Moral Logic of Political Violence. Jeremy Ginges. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.11.001

Abstract: There is a moral logic to reasoning about political violence. People will often fight not for individual or collective material gain, but because of their commitment to abstract moral and sacred ideas. Moreover, decisions to support or oppose war are descriptively deontological and are relatively insensitive to material costs or benefits.

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For example, in one set of experiments carried out with Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, participants were randomly presented with one of two compromises over a disputed issue such as Jerusalem: a straight compromise for peace, or the same compromise for peace plus a material incentive such as the promise of a life free of violence, or billions of dollars to the collective.  When participants were moral absolutists with respect to the issues in conflict (regarding them as sacred values) adding a material incentive backfired, ironically ‘increasing’ support for violent opposition to the deal. The existence of culturally specific sacred values does not itself impede tolerant interactions across cultures (Box 1). However, aggression may occur when one group acts to demean or threaten the second group’s sacred values.

Decisions about War Are Relatively Insensitive to Consequences
Rather than being a product of a breakdown in morality, war is often regarded as a moral necessity if not a moral good [2,7,13]. While moral reasoning is important to collective action in general [5], people tend to make decisions about war in a deontological way such that violence is either seen as prohibited or mandated.  This leads to decisions that are relatively insensitive to material consequences.  In anonymous surveys of Jewish Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza, participation in non-violent protest (aggressive and non-aggressive) was related to both the perceived effectiveness of such behavior and its perceived ‘righteousness’. However, participation in violent attacks was predicted by righteousness and unrelated to effectiveness [3].

Cross-cultural experiments show similar effects [2]. In one experimental paradigm, participants were randomly assigned to consider their support for either a non-violent response (negotiation) or a violent response (armed attack) to the kidnapping and imminent murder of 100 innocent civilians.  In prior tests, participants thought both options were equally appropriate and desirable. However, when asked to indicate how many hostages they required to be rescued to support the response they were considering, participants in the negotiation condition demanded between 80 and 100 hostages to be rescued, while those in the armed attack condition option required only one hostage to be rescued.  Participants in themilitary conditions would often give strategic reasons for their responses, typically by arguing that violence will deter future attacks. Yet, a subsequent experiment showed that support for military options was similarly insensitive to its deterrent capability [2]. Thus, people reason differently about violent and nonviolent option in intergroup conflicts, using the logic of instrumental rationality for nonviolence, but deontological reasoning when making choices about political violence.  This can lead to systematic inconsistency of preferences for military action (Box 2).

Degree of perceived aggression in a robot's behavior did not have a significant impact on their decision to follow the robot's instruction; people often exhibit reactance in situations where they feel their freedom is being threatened

S. Agrawal and M. Williams, "Would You Obey an Aggressive Robot: A Human-Robot Interaction Field Study," 2018 27th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), Nanjing, China, 2018, pp. 240-246. doi: 10.1109/ROMAN.2018.8525615

Abstract: Social Robots have the potential to be of tremendous utility in healthcare, search and rescue, surveillance, transport, and military applications. In many of these applications, social robots need to advise and direct humans to follow important instructions. In this paper, we present the results of a Human-Robot Interaction field experiment conducted using a PR2 robot to explore key factors involved in obedience of humans to social robots. This paper focuses on studying how the human degree of obedience to a robot's instructions is related to the perceived aggression and authority of the robot's behavior. We implemented several social cues to exhibit and convey both authority and aggressiveness in the robot's behavior. In addition to this, we also analyzed the impact of other factors such as perceived anthropomorphism, safety, intelligence and responsibility of the robot's behavior on participants' compliance with the robot's instructions. The results suggest that the degree of perceived aggression in the robot's behavior by different participants did not have a significant impact on their decision to follow the robot's instruction. We have provided possible explanations for our findings and identified new research questions that will help to understand the role of robot authority in human-robot interaction, and that can help to guide the design of robots that are required to provide advice and instructions.

Keywords: Robot sensing systems; Safety; Human-robot interaction; Security; Anthropomorphism; Surveillance

A 4-Year Longitudinal Study of the Sex-Creativity Relationship: There was female superiority in childhood & early adolescence, & male superiority was not found in adolescence & emerging adulthood

A 4-Year Longitudinal Study of the Sex-Creativity Relationship in Childhood, Adolescence, and Emerging Adulthood: Findings of Mean and Variability Analyses. Wu-Jing He. Front. Psychol., 26 November 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02331

Abstract: The relationship between sex and creativity remains an unresolved research question. The present study aimed to approach this question through the lens of the developmental theory of sex differences in intelligence, which posits a dynamic pattern of sex differences in intellectual abilities from female superiority in childhood and early adolescence to male superiority starting at 16 years of age. A total of 775 participants from three age groups (i.e., children, adolescents, and emerging adults) completed a 4-year longitudinal study comprising four assessments of creative thinking at 1-year intervals. Creative thinking was assessed with the Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production. While the results revealed female superiority in childhood and early adolescence, male superiority was not found in adolescence and emerging adulthood. Rather, greater sex similarities and greater male variability were found based on mean and variability analyses, respectively. This study elucidated the link between sex and creativity by (1) taking a developmental perspective, (2) employing a 4-year longitudinal design in three age groups (i.e., children, adolescents, and emerging adults), and (3) analyzing sex differences based on both mean and variability analyses.