Wednesday, September 21, 2022

The authors explore whether mandatory, universal, in-person sexual misconduct training achieves its goals to build knowledge about sexual assault and harassment and increase intentions to report episodes of assault

Effects of Mandatory Sexual Misconduct Training on University Campuses. Mala Htun et al. Socius, September 20, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231221124574


Abstract: The authors explore whether mandatory, universal, in-person sexual misconduct training achieves its goals to build knowledge about sexual assault and harassment and increase intentions to report episodes of assault. The authors present results from three studies with quasi-experimental designs as well as interviews with students and staff members at a diverse public university in the western United States. The surprising finding is that participating in training makes women students less likely to say they that will report experiences of sexual assault to university authorities. The training produces some small positive effects: students gain broader definitions of sexual misconduct and are less likely to endorse common rape myths, and women students express less sexist attitudes immediately after training. This study raises questions about whether one-shot training helps reduce sexual violence and increase reporting on college campuses and whether universities should invest in these types of training.

Discussion

The most striking finding of our study is that women students become less likely to say that they would report experiences of sexual assault after participating in sexual misconduct training. We see a 12 percentage point decline in the share of women who say they would report assault to the university. The share of men who say that they would report assault does not change. In addition, women become more likely to say they would encounter retaliation if they report.
Our results imply that the university’s considerable investments in reporting did not change women’s perceptions of reporting’s desirability and its risks. Women do not all welcome the possibility of reporting assault, and they are more worried about the consequences of reporting than are men. Not reporting allows women to downplay a bad experience, reject the label of victim, and preserve their existing relationships (Khan et al. 2018). Sitting through sexual misconduct training—perhaps by concretizing the meaning of assault for survivors or potential survivors—may actually induce greater resistance to reporting among women.
On the brighter side, we find that training expands student knowledge about, and attitudes toward, sexual assault and harassment in ways intended by the university and the federal government’s Title IX goals. This is potentially important, as changing knowledge and attitudes may be necessary to change the culture surrounding gendered violence on college campuses (Hirsch et al. 2019). However, the effect sizes are small and reflect the training’s immediate impact, as our study design precluded gathering evidence of changes in behavior and attitudes after more time had passed.23 Future research should probe whether the positive and negative effects of the training endure over the medium to longer term.
In contrast to other work showing that discussions of sexual assault and harassment activate gender stereotypes (e.g. Tinkler 2013), our surveys do not show that training aggravates sexist beliefs. However, we do find that men’s and women’s views on sexism diverge more after the training (see Figure 5). Some of our interviews suggest that for some people—and despite trainers’ gender neutral discourse and avoidance of the male perpetrator–female victim stereotype—the training may have reinforced differences between men and women. For example, one woman student told us she found the training to be “isolating”:
it made everyone feel, like the genders, feel polarized. So, when I walked in there, I was having a comfortable conversation with my neighbor who was a man and by the end it was like we were trying to distance our seats as much as we could from each other.24
The need to comply with federal mandates motivated university officials to develop the training program we studied, as is the case with hundreds of other institutions of higher education around the country. At our study site, the compliance process was intense because of the DOJ oversight agreement. The agreement led to multiple changes in policy and process, which were necessary and overdue, but it also had some detrimental effects on institutional culture.
A senior university leader characterized the challenge of reducing sexual assault on campus in the following way:
How do you solve a problem? Look to other cases of institutional success. [such as our work to increase graduation rates] Leadership took a strong stand and communicated a clear message. We made the issue a priority. We targeted problem cases. We did research and got data [that ruled out what many people thought to be the source of the problem]. . . . But it’s hard to launch this process under the guise of a [federal] investigation, which makes everyone defensive and resentful.25

University administrators had mixed interpretations of how much programming federal guidelines required. As one compliance officer put it, “I have super high expectations of what it means to meet [federal] expectations, but others see it more minimally.”26 Senior university leaders assigned responsibility for sexual violence prevention to certain campus units without giving them the extra staffing and budget that serious efforts require. One administrator of these units noted that the university “is continuing the pattern of marginalization and underfunding of these issues.”27 

Laughter, play faces and mimicry in animals: evolution and social functions

Laughter, play faces and mimicry in animals: evolution and social functions. Marina Davila-Ross and Elisabetta Palagi. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. September 21 2022. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0177

Abstract: Human laughter and laugh faces show similarities in morphology and function with animal playful expressions. To better understand primordial uses and effects of human laughter and laugh faces, it is important to examine these positive expressions in animals from both homologous and analogous systems. Phylogenetic research on hominids provided empirical evidence on shared ancestry across these emotional expressions, including human laughter and laugh faces. In addition, playful expressions of animals, in general, arguably have a key role in the development of social cognitive skills, a role that may help explain their polyphyletic history. The present work examines the evolution and function of playful expressions in primates and other animals. As part of this effort, we also coded for muscle activations of six carnivore taxa with regard to their open-mouth faces of play; our findings provide evidence that these carnivore expressions are homologues of primate open-mouth faces of play. Furthermore, our work discusses how the expressions of animal play may communicate positive emotions to conspecifics and how the motor resonance of these expressions increases affiliation and bonding between the subjects, resembling in a number of ways the important social–emotional effects that laughter and laugh faces have in humans.

3. Social use of open-mouth faces, laughter and other play vocalizations

(a) Play coordination, social cohesion and the development of skills

The differences in modality and anatomy of play expressions as well as their polyphyletic history indicate that these expressions have a complexity in both form and function. Carnivores and primates seem to modify their play expressions when they receive the attention of their playmates [38,45,58,80,81], and chimpanzees and bonobos are known to also modify them if the mothers of their infant playmates are nearby [82] or group members are attentive to the sender [83,84]. Multiple social functions of play expressions that are not necessarily mutually exclusive have been discussed.

As mentioned earlier in the present work, an important function of animal play expressions is to signal ‘this is play’, which helps to coordinate actions among playmates [46,8587]. Probably most importantly, such signalling is likely to help avoid escalation into real fights during rougher play and, consequently, to prevent getting hurt, especially when the playmates are dissimilar in strength and do not have close social relationships [74,8890].

Whereas mammals produce both types of open-mouth faces in both gentle and rough play [35,58], their upper-teeth exposure, which resembles wide-open mouth displays of submission and appeasement [39,54], tends to occur more often during rough play [37,60,91]. Similarly, play vocalizations seem to be predominantly produced in rough-and-tumble [74]. Thus, these types of expressions might signal to the recipient ‘this is just play’. It is also possible that the playmates widen their mouths further and expose their teeth owing to having to breathe more intensely and loudly during rough-and-tumble. Furthermore, the individuals producing these expressions could be in a state of high arousal and show more play biting [56]. The open-mouth faces without exposed teeth, on the other hand, seem to be less dependent on play intensity and have a more general application within play [37,56,60].

Consistent with the claim that play expressions signal ‘this is play’ or ‘this is just play’, empirical findings show that these expressions from rodents to primates may permit play actions and play bouts to be prolonged [58,84,86,87,89,92,93]. Furthermore, animals can sometimes produce open-mouth faces as part of the play invitation (e.g. when hitting the other playmate prior to play), and such signalling here is likely to help invite to play [60]. Such increase in playful interactions, key affiliative behaviours in social animals, is likely to have a notable impact on social bonding and, consequently, other behaviours among group members [43,9498]. In humans, it is also known that laughter helps social cohesion [1,99]. Five-month-old infants already respond differently when hearing friends laughing together compared with strangers behaving this way [100].

In accordance with Barbara Fredrickson's Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions, play expressions may contribute to the development of a range of skills that are central for individuals living in social groups, including social-cognitive skills [4]. Supporting this claim, play may consist of cooperative and competitive behaviours, where young individuals can practise with low risk a range of behaviours and further explore the impact these behaviours have on their conspecifics [93,101], which may become more relevant at a later stage in their development [102]. Such functions are consistent with the notion that positive expressions, such as laughter and other play expressions, do not necessarily need to constantly have immediate benefits, and perhaps their range in function makes them different from negative expressions, where it can be crucial to respond quickly in a risky situation [4,5].

Despite overlapping contexts, play vocalizations and open-mouth faces are at least to some extent likely to differ in function. Play vocalizations seem to be more limited to the context of play than open-mouth faces ([84]; for functional flexibility, see [103,104]). Although open-mouth faces occur predominantly during play bouts, they have also been observed shortly prior to them in order to invite a conspecific to play [105]. On a few occasions, they have been observed fully outside of play. One such incident took place at the Serengeti Park Hodenhagen, where Pia, a juvenile chimpanzee, was unsuccessfully play-inviting her father by pulling his hair (see [33]). As he did not budge, Pia left the scene, laid down to relax for a while, and suddenly started producing open-mouth faces (for a video footage, see [33]). Such rare incidents, where open-mouth faces that occur after nonaggressive violations of expectations resemble the use of human laughter linked to benign violations and humour [106,107], can already be observed in humans during infancy [108].

Perhaps the main difference in playful expressions between human and nonhuman animals lies in their occurrence. Human laughter and laugh faces with their sophisticated volitional as well as spontaneous forms are characteristic components of human everyday social interactions that may certainly vary in function and express, for instance, politeness, embarrassment, mocking and Schadenfreude [9,11,109,110]. They show a level of control that has, to our knowledge, not been found for animal play expressions, at least thus far.

(b) Mimicking and why it may be important for animals

The matching of expressions has a special role in animal play, where the expression of one playmate induces the same expression in another playmate. It has been mainly studied in the form of mimicry (e.g. dogs–horses [46], carnivores [58,62,111,112], primates [26,34,86,92,113]). Mimicry involves an automatic response system that is perhaps most easily observable as rapid mimicry, with a response latency of 1 s or less [114,115]. Rapid mimicry within short-distance communication has been predominantly observed in playful contexts, perhaps because they represent a platform for acquiring a range of social, emotional and cognitive skills [4,5].

The matching of animal play expressions, however, also comes in other types. For instance, delayed matching responses have been reported for primate open-mouth faces and play vocalizations [86,92,112]. Although caution is necessary when discussing why these responses were slower than rapid mimicry, it is interesting to note that humans sometimes respond more slowly when the behaviour is volitional, because additional neural processes are then involved compared with rapid mimicry (see [114,116,117]). Furthermore, the matching of play expressions among animals may range from being exact, i.e. with the same variant matched (e.g. open-mouth faces with upper lips raised [58,112]), to being distinct, i.e. with a different variant of the same expression matched (e.g. long laugh bouts seem to induce short laugh bouts [86]). Interestingly, previous studies have examined only dyadic constellations, so that research is needed to quantitatively explore if triadic facial expressions can occur in primates and other animals.

Thus, the matching of play expressions comes in various types, suggesting that they take up important functions among animals. Such matching is likely to heightened advantages that already come with spontaneously producing play expressions. Owing to its facial and vocal feedback component, it may serve even further as a social glue than spontaneous play expressions and may also contribute more to modulating interactions among playing animals [58,92]. In lowland gorillas, for instance, Bresciani and colleagues [118] found that such matching is prolonged when the facial response of the receiver mirrors the facial constellation of the playmate.

Although it can be problematic to link behavioural actions consistently with emotional states [119121], expressions of play seem to be, in general, closely associated with positive affect in both nonhuman animals and humans (see [33]). Perhaps the context of gentle solitary play shows its link to positive states in animals most readily. For example, expressions produced by a young animal playing by her/himself are unlikely to have an interactive application value, making it reasonable to argue that such expressions are positive emotional outbursts. Such a link to affect may certainly be sustained during social interactions. Consequently, the mirror effect of play expressions may well be linked to elevated valence arousal states among playmates.

Two distinctive pathways that may lead to such an elevated state have received notable research attention [122125]. First, the matching response is induced on a motoric level, a pathway that has been discussed in relation with behavioural contagion [126,127] as well as motor mimicry [122,128]. In this case, a spontaneous play expression triggers the same expression in the other playmate. Especially for motor mimicry, it has been argued that the motor resonance may trigger in the recipient the same emotional state experienced by the playmate [34,128,129]. However, emotions do not necessarily need to be involved when a behaviour is matched. The matching of behaviours may indicate, for instance, that the playmates are already in comparable states, perhaps in elevated positive states, which could help to prolong play. Interestingly, studies on animal play have shown that rapid facial mimicry and delayed laugh responses are linked to longer play bouts [34,58,62,86,92]. Whereas not all matching expressions in play must be linked to affect, it seems reasonable to argue that this association will strengthen over time, especially since young animals typically experience myriad playful events with familiar conspecifics.

Second, the matching response is affect-induced [122,130]. Here, a spontaneous play expression of a playmate causes an elevated positive state in the other playmate, a state that then induces the behavioural response. Whereas the two mentioned pathways may both result in elevated positive emotional states that are likely to benefit the playmates in multiple ways (for benefits of play, see [4,5]) it is difficult to determine which is the underlying path for the various forms of matching in animal play. What we know with more certainty is that any involved emotion state changes are likely to be minimal if the studied animals are already playfully interacting, i.e. in the same social–emotional context.

To systematically test for positive emotional contagion, where an emotional state spreads across individuals, it is important to have subjects socially and emotionally disconnected and, preferably, to examine them beyond a dyadic level [131,132]. An interesting study by Schwing and colleagues [75] on keas, a playful parrot species, demonstrated that played-back recordings of play vocalizations induce play behaviours in conspecifics previously involved in other behaviours. This study supports the notion that positive emotional contagion might not be a human-unique phenomenon. Interestingly, similar playback approaches carried out with chimpanzee laughter recordings did not show a comparable outcome in their conspecifics [133,134]. Unlike humans [135], chimpanzees do not seem to produce laughter merely based on hearing such vocalizations.

Mimicking and other types of behavioural matching within the context of play are also likely to be important for socially learning and practising a wide range of behaviours in humans and nonhuman animals [4,5,136]. In support of this notion, there is evidence that animals match the exact variant of the same expression of their playmates [58,112] and that the matching of play expressions may differ in form and function between social groups [86,137,138]. This brings us back to the Power Asymmetry Hypothesis [59], which could be extended to colony differences. Colonies may differ in the degree in which they show tolerance and aggression [139,140] and it seems reasonable to argue that clearer forms of communication may be essential when there is more risk of getting hurt (see [59]). Furthermore, the absence of the exposed upper teeth in the laughing chimpanzees at Burgers' Zoo, mentioned by Jan van Hooff in his pioneering work [41], and its presence in other chimpanzee colonies (see [26]) might indicate group differences regarding this facial feature. Exact matching of facial variants could help explain such potential differences. However, this topic requires further research.

Interestingly, there is some indication that the upper-teeth exposure develops at a later stage in immature primates [57,105], so that its occurrence throughout the developmental trajectory could depend on the exact matching mechanism and the social environment. More research is, however, needed on this topic. In a recent psychoacoustic study, Kret et al. [141] played back human infant laughter to adult participants, who were asked to determine the airflow direction from the recordings. The researchers found that the infants produced laughter increasingly as an egressive vocalization (i.e. a vocalization that is produced during the exhalation phase only; see [22,142]) over time and that this acoustic trait was perceived to be more positive by the adult listeners [141]. Such developmental findings could indicate that human infants already adjust laughter to their acoustic environment via social feedback.

How much a person laughs in conversation appears to be a stable trait associated with being relatable, and is not necessarily reflective of enjoyment, since laughter negatively predicted conversation enjoyment

Tendency to laugh is a stable trait: findings from a round-robin conversation study. Adrienne Wood, Emma Templeton, Jessica Morrel, Frederick Schubert and Thalia Wheatley. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. September 21 2022. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0187

Abstract: People often laugh during conversation. Who is more responsible for the laughter, the person laughing or their partner for eliciting it? We used a round-robin design where participants (N = 66) engaged in 10 different conversations with 10 same-gender strangers and counted the instances of laughter for each person in each conversation. After each conversation, participants rated their perceived similarity with their partner and how much they enjoyed the conversation. More than half the variability in the amount a person laughed was attributable to the person laughing—some people tend to laugh more than others. By contrast, less than 5% of the variability was attributable to the laugher's partner. We also found that the more a person laughed, the more their partners felt similar to them. Counterintuitively, laughter negatively predicted conversation enjoyment. These findings suggest that, in conversations between strangers, laughter may not be a straightforward signal of amusement, but rather a social tool. We did not find any personality predictors of how much a person laughs or elicits laughter. In summary, how much a person laughs in conversation appears to be a stable trait associated with being relatable, and is not necessarily reflective of enjoyment.


Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Sophisticated deviants: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes

Sophisticated deviants: Intelligence and radical economic attitudes. Chien-AnLin, Timothy C.Bates. Intelligence, Volume 95, November–December 2022, 101699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2022.101699

Highlights

• Tested links of higher cognitive ability to more economic extremism.

• Two N = 700 pre-registered studies and a UK national cohort (N = 11,563).

• Cognitive ability predicted economic extremism (β = 0.4 to 0.12).

• Predicts intellectuals falling far left and right of the mainstream.

• Heterodox values needed to avoid runaway capture in intellectual groups.

Abstract: Conservative economic attitudes have been theorized as symptoms of low cognitive ability. Studies suggest the opposite, linking more conservative views weakly to higher, not lower, cognitive ability, but with very large between-study variability. Here, we propose and replicate a new model linking cognitive ability not to liberal or conservative economics, but to economic extremism: How far individuals deviate from prevailing centrist views. Two large pre-registered studies in the UK (N = 700 & 700) and the British Cohort Study dataset (N = 11,563) replicated the predicted association of intelligence with economic deviance (β = 0.4 to 0.12). These findings were robust and expand the role of cognitive ability from tracking the economic consensus to influencing support for (relatively) extremist views. They suggest opportunities to understand the generation and mainstreaming of radical fringe social attitudes.


Keywords: Economic ideologyEconomic conservatismIntelligenceRedistributionContext theoryExtremism theory


1. Introduction

Intellectuals are responsible for economic and philosophical ideas as divergent as communism, fascism, nihilism, anarchism, and libertarianism, and often in extreme forms (Sesardic, 2016). If cognitive ability has any association with intellectual output, the question arises: How might cognitive ability be associated with such apparently divergent intellectual extremes? Recently, a productive model for studying this question has developed around measures of economic conservatism and support for economic redistribution. While this reveals motives such as malicious envy accounting for around half of support for redistribution (Lin & Bates, 2021Lin & Bates, 2022Sznycer et al., 2017), research has also implicated higher cognitive ability as reducing support for economic redistribution (Caplan & Miller, 2010Carl, 2014Lewis & Bates, 2018Mollerstrom & Seim, 2014Oskarsson et al., 2015). Other studies, however, have found no association or even the reverse association (Choma, Sumantry, & Hanoch, 2019Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2014Sterling, Jost, & Pennycook, 2016). A recent meta-analysis supports a small but significant net association in favour of economic conservatism (Jedinger & Burger, 2021). This program of existing research has been restricted, however, to treating economic attitudes as a single increasing or decreasing function of cognitive ability. Here, we propose and test a quite different linkage of cognitive ability to economic attitudes: That intelligence is associated with deviance of view, with equal likelihood of extreme support for economic conservatism and dramatic opposition to economic conservatism. Before presenting three tests of this idea, we briefly background existing research linking cognitive ability to economic attitudes.

Monday, September 19, 2022

Overperception of Moral Outrage in Online Social Networks Inflates Beliefs About Hostility

Brady, William J., Killian L. McLoughlin, Mark Torres, Kara Luo, Maria Gendron, and Molly Crockett. 2022. “Overperception of Moral Outrage in Online Social Networks Inflates Beliefs About Intergroup Hostility.” OSF Preprints. September 19. doi:10.31219/osf.io/k5dzr

Abstract: As individuals and political leaders increasingly interact in online social networks, it is important to understand how the affordances of social media shape social knowledge of morality and politics. Here, we propose that social media users overperceive levels of moral outrage felt by individuals and groups, inflating beliefs about intergroup hostility. Utilizing a Twitter field survey, we measured authors’ moral outrage in real time and compared authors’ reports to observers’ judgments of the authors’ moral outrage. We find that observers systematically overperceive moral outrage in authors, inferring more intense moral outrage experiences from messages than the authors of those messages actually reported. This effect was stronger in participants who spent more time on social media to learn about politics. Pre-registered confirmatory behavioral experiments found that overperception of individuals’ moral outrage causes overperception of collective moral outrage and inflates beliefs about hostile communication norms, group affective polarization and ideological extremity. Together, these results highlight how individual-level overperceptions of online moral outrage produce collective overperceptions that have the potential to warp our social knowledge of moral and political attitudes.


Sunday, September 18, 2022

Inconsistencies: According to our simulations, there is a very high probability that most published criminological research findings are false-positives, and therefore wrong; the primary factor contributing to this problem is the poor quality of theory

Niemeyer, Richard E., K. R. Proctor, Joseph Schwartz, and Robert G. Niemeyer. 2022. “Are Most Published Criminological Research Findings Wrong? Taking Stock of Criminological Research Using a Bayesian Simulation Approach.” OSF Preprints. September 17. doi:10.31219/osf.io/mhv8f

Abstract: This study uses Bayesian simulations to estimate the probability that published criminological research findings are wrong. Toward this end, we employ two equations originally popularized in John P.A. Ioannidis’ (in)famous article, “Why Most Published Research Findings are False.” Values for relevant parameters were determined using recent estimates for the field’s average level of statistical power, level of research bias, level of factionalization, and quality of theory. According to our simulations, there is a very high probability that most published criminological research findings are false-positives, and therefore wrong. Further, we demonstrate that the primary factor contributing to this problem is the poor quality of theory. Stated differently, even when the overall level of research bias is extremely low and overall statistical power is extremely high, we find that poor theory still results in a high rate of false positives. We conclude with suggestions for improving the validity of criminological research claims.


Saturday, September 17, 2022

From 1991 to 2015, seat belt use was about 3.3% higher each survey cycle compared with the previous survey cycle, adjusting for gender, race/ethnicity, and age; after 2015, seat belt use was about 1.8% lower each survey cycle

Trends in Passenger Seat Belt Use Among High School Students—United States, 1991–2019. Alexander Evans et al. Journal of Adolescent Health, September 7 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2022.07.005

Abstract

Purpose: Despite having the highest risk per miles driven for motor vehicle crash involvement, only 57% of US high school students reported always using a seat belt when riding in a car with another driver in 2019.

Methods: Data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys conducted biennially from 1991 to 2019 were used to assess trends in seat belt use. Modified Poisson regression with robust variance estimates and linear splines was used to examine seat belt use trend changes overall and by gender, race/ethnicity, and grade.

Results: From 1991 to 2015, seat belt use was about 3.3% higher each survey cycle compared with the previous survey cycle, adjusting for gender, race/ethnicity, and age. After 2015, seat belt use was about 1.8% lower each survey cycle than the previous survey cycle, adjusting for the same covariates.

Discussion: New and effective strategies should be considered for promoting consistent seat belt use among US high school students.

Keywords: Seat belt useYouth Risk Behavior SurveyHigh school students


Friday, September 16, 2022

Sadder, but not wiser: Another psychology classic, the popular idea of "depressive realism," bites the dust in failed replication

Dev, Amelia S., Don A. Moore, Sheri L. Johnson, and Karin Garrett. 2022. “Sadder ≠ Wiser: Depressive Realism Is Not Robust to Replication.” PsyArXiv. September 15. doi:10.31234/osf.io/xq24r


Abstract: The theory of depressive realism holds that depressed individuals are less prone to optimistic bias, and are thus more realistic, in assessing their control or performance. Since the theory was proposed 40 years ago, many innovations have been validated for testing cognitive accuracy, including improved measures of bias in perceived control and performance. We incorporate several of those innovations in a well-powered, pre-registered study designed to identify depressive realism. Amazon MTurk workers (N = 246) and undergraduate students (N = 134) completed a classic contingency task, an overconfidence task, and measures of mental health constructs, including depression and anxiety. We measured perceived control throughout the contingency task, allowing us to compare control estimates at the trial-level to estimates assessed at task conclusion. We found no evidence that depressive symptoms relate to illusory control or to overconfidence. Our results suggest that despite its popular acceptance, depressive realism is not replicable.


Psychopathy: Significant gaps in the empirical support for the theorized role of the amygdala

How reliable are amygdala findings in psychopathy? A systematic review of MRI studies. Philip Deming, Mickela Heilicher, Michael Koenigs. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, September 15 2022, 104875. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104875

• Reviewed 134 MRI studies of relationships between amygdala and psychopathy

• Null relationships more common than significant positive or negative relationships

• Negative relationships more common for studies with low power

• Many peak coordinates labeled “amygdala” in original paper outside the amygdala

Abstract: The amygdala is a key component in predominant neural circuitry models of psychopathy. Yet, after two decades of neuroimaging research on psychopathy, the reproducibility of amygdala findings is questionable. We systematically reviewed MRI studies (81 of adults, 53 of juveniles) to determine the consistency of amygdala findings across studies, as well as within specific types of experimental tasks, community versus forensic populations, and the lowest- versus highest-powered studies. Three primary findings emerged. First, the majority of studies found null relationships between psychopathy and amygdala structure and function, even in the context of theoretically relevant tasks. Second, findings of reduced amygdala activity were more common in studies with low compared to high statistical power. Third, the majority of peak coordinates of reduced amygdala activity did not fall primarily within the anatomical bounds of the amygdala. Collectively, these findings demonstrate significant gaps in the empirical support for the theorized role of the amygdala in psychopathy and indicate the need for novel research perspectives and approaches in this field.

Keywords: psychopathycallous-unemotionalamygdalaneuroimagingMRI