UNASSIGNED: A promising approach to enhancing trauma-focused treatment is moral elevation-feeling inspired by witnessing a virtuous act. This study explored potential links between eliciting elevation and relevant outcomes in a series of case examples. Veterans with probable posttraumatic stress disorder completed experimental tasks including a written trauma narrative exercise and watching elevation-eliciting videos. Participants also completed baseline assessments, repeated measures of trauma-related cognitions, emotions, elevation, and saliva sample collection. Four cases were identified and reviewed: two positive responders (high elevation after videos) and two nonresponders (restricted elevation response). Positive responder cases reported decreased cognitions, emotions, and moral injury distress from after the trauma narrative to after elevation exercises, whereas nonresponders reported minimal to no changes. Positive responders also demonstrated decreases in cortisol, whereas nonresponders demonstrated increases in cortisol. Future work should examine whether elevation contributes to changes in biopsychosocial outcomes and identify individual factors that indicate who might benefit from elevation-based interventions.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a heterogenous condition, and variations in its presentation may be accounted for by individual differences in personality dimensions. Extant treatments for BPD are long term and intensive; it is possible that prioritizing the personality-based difficulties that underlie an individual\'s symptoms may improve the efficiency of care. This article describes the conceptual background for the development of a novel, personality-based intervention for BPD (BPD Compass), which was informed by recent research on personality mechanisms maintainin this condition, and was designed to address gaps left by existing treatments and to be maximally efficient and disseminable. BPD Compass is a comprehensive, short-term package with a fully modular design that allows for personalization (e.g., all skills can be presented in isolation or in any order based on pretreatment assessment). We discuss the theoretical background for its development, an overview of the skills included in the treatment, as well as preliminary efficacy data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

What drives people\'s perceptions of novel risks, and how malleable are such risk perceptions? Psychological research has identified multiple potential drivers of risk perception, but no studies have yet tested within a unified analytic framework how well each of these drivers accounts for individual differences in large population samples. To provide such a framework, I harnessed the deployment of 5G-the latest generation of cellular network technology. Specifically, I conducted a multiverse analysis using a representative population sample in Switzerland (Study 1; N = 2,919 individuals between 15 and 94 years old), finding that interindividual differences in risk perceptions were strongly associated with hazard-related drivers (e.g., trust in the institutions regulating 5G, dread) and person-specific drivers (e.g., electromagnetic hypersensitivity)-and strongly predictive of people\'s policy-related attitudes (e.g., voting intentions). Further, a field experiment based on a national expert report on 5G (N = 839 individuals in a longitudinal sample between 17 and 79 years old) identified links between intraindividual changes in psychological drivers and perceived risk, thus highlighting potential targets for future policy interventions.

People are often considered cognitive misers. When given a free choice between two tasks, people tend to choose tasks requiring less cognitive effort. Such demand avoidance (DA) is associated with cognitive control, but it is still not clear to what extent individual differences in cognitive control can account for variations in DA. We sought to elucidate the relation between cognitive control and cognitive effort preferences by investigating the extent to which sustained neural activity in a task requiring cognitive control is correlated with DA. We hypothesized that neural measures of efficient filtering will predict individual variations in demand preferences. To test this hypothesis, we had participants perform a delayed-match-to-sample paradigm with their ERPs recorded, as well as a separate behavioral demand-selection task. We focused on the ERP correlates of cognitive filtering efficiency (CFE)-the ability to ignore task-irrelevant distractors during working memory maintenance-as it manifests in a modulation of the contralateral delay activity, an ERP correlate of cognitive control. As predicted, we found a significant positive correlation between CFE and DA. Individuals with high CFE tended to be significantly more demand avoidant than their low-CFE counterparts. Low-CFE individuals, in comparison, did not form distinct cognitive effort preferences. Overall, our results suggest that cognitive control over the contents of visual working memory contribute to individual differences in the expression of cognitive effort preferences. This further implies that these observed preferences are the product of sensitivity to cognitive task demands.

Reduced high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) is associated with a greater risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Although African Americans (AA) are at greater risk for CVD, they show greater HF-HRV compared to European Americans (EA). Previous studies suggest that differences in the association between regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) and HF-HRV in AA and EA may explain this surprising pattern of findings, termed the Cardiovascular Conundrum. Here we pooled data from a total of n = 452 EA and n = 102 AA, investigating differences in the association between CBF in 8 regions of interest (ROI), including the cingulate (anterior, mid, posterior), insula (anterior, posterior), and amygdala (basolateral, centromedial, superfical), with HF-HRV, mean heart rate (HR) and their Coefficient of Variation (CoV). Bayesian statistics illustrate that CBF - in particular in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) - is positively associated with HF-HRV and CoV in EA, but negatively associated in AA. Exploring the association between HF-HRV and CBF with self-reports of affect and affect regulation showed some differences as a function of ethnicity. The association between greater habitual use of reappraisal only showed a positive correlation with HF-HRV in AA. Similar, greater suppression or non-expression of angry emotions was associated with greater HF-HRV whereas greater outward direction of anger was associated with lower HF-HRV in AA only. Given the importance of the ACC in emotion and emotion regulation, we suggest that increased HF-HRV may serve a compensatory role in AA. Implications from these findings and suggestions for future studies are discussed.

The present work highlight the missing picture of interdisciplinarity in Indian social psychology from a critical cultural perspective. In India, social psychologists\' tried to inculcate the missing picture of \'indigenous perspective\' from the cultural vantage point. The idea of this article is to explain the problem with claimed indigenous status without critically handling the reified social categories such as social class, religion, gender, and caste. However, this was handled to some extent in other disciplines but a deeper connection was not observed to be with the social psychology in India. There were divides and differences in the explanation of the same issues and the theoretical and methodological stance of these different disciplines created a further gap in coming up with the meaningful construction.

This article presents a critical analysis of the views of Michael Sandel on human enhancement in his book The Case Against Perfection (2007). Sandel argues that the use of biotechnologies for human enhancement is driven by a will to mastery or hybris, leading to an \'explosion of responsibility\' and a disappearance of solidarity. I argue that Sandel is using a traditional concept of solidarity which leaves little room for individual differences and which is difficult to reconcile with the modern trend towards individual autonomy and cultural heterogeneity. With reference to the sociology of Giddens, I argue that the \'explosion of responsibility\' can be considered an expression of the insecurity in modern society and the need for reflexivity in personal and social life. I argue that the need for reflexivity is a driving social and cultural force behind the interest in human enhancement, and that this trend can go together with a commitment to take care of the needs of others. I agree with Sandel that there is a risk that human enhancement may develop into \'hybris\', particularly when enhancement is driven by scientism and a naturalist reduction of human values to neurological processes. Enhancement based on scientism will threaten solidarity defined by Honneth as an interactive relationship aimed at the mutual recognition of individual identities in relation to a shared value horizon. I will call for a reflective approach in which human enhancement technologies are explored in the context of a \'system of reference\'. Such a reflective approach will help to protect against the hybris of scientism and to maintain solidarity with vulnerable groups.

We examine the utility of individualizing activities for persons with dementia (PwD) on the basis of congruence with preferences. Previous studies demonstrated only limited evidence of individualization of activity content to improve response, tended not to consider group activities, or were inconclusive.
Participants were 90 PwD residing in a nursing home or attending a day center. After family and staff caregivers rated preferences for music, exercise, reading, brain games, and baking, group activities were conducted, and the impact on mood and engagement was monitored. We tested whether participants showed more engagement and better mood when group activities were related to topics they liked, in comparison to topics they did not like (within-person analysis), and whether persons who liked certain topics showed better outcomes in comparison to persons who did not like those topics (between-person analyses).
Within-person analysis found a relationship between the report of liking the topic and engagement and mood during the group activity, confirming the benefit of individualizing activities to persons\' preferences. Between-person analyses were statistically significant only when based on staff preference ratings.
Despite the fact that each topic represents a wide range of possible activities, individualizing group activities based on participants\' preferences can optimize the impact.

Seli, Jonker, Cheyne, Cortes, and Smilek (2015) found that, through retrospective confidence reports, participants can distinguish the validity of their mind wandering reports during a sustained attention (\"metronome response\") task. In addition, some participants were better able to make this distinction than others. Here, I sought to replicate both the within- and between-subjects\' effects of confidence judgments on thought probe validity. To this end, I executed a preregistered close replication of Seli et al. (2015) and extended this work by administering the metronome response task twice and by measuring potential individual difference markers for which participants may be better than others at monitoring their thoughts: working memory capacity, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and dispositional mindfulness. With data from 291 participants, I found only weak evidence for a within-subject effect of confidence on thought-report validity in the first administration of the metronome response task and weak to nonexistent evidence for individual differences in thought monitoring. No evidence was found for individual differences in the ability to provide valid thought reports. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Early in the 20th century, individual differences were a central focus of psychologists. By the end of that century, studies of individual differences had become far less common, and attention to these differences played little role in the development of contemporary theory. To illustrate the important role of individual differences, here we consider variations in intelligence as a compelling example. General intelligence (g) has now been demonstrated in at least 2 distinct genera: primates (including humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and tamarins) and rodents (mice and rats). The expression of general intelligence varies widely across individuals within a species; these variations have tremendous functional consequence, and are attributable to interactions of genes and environment. Here we provide evidence for these assertions, describe the processes that contribute to variations in general intelligence, as well as the methods that underlie the analysis of individual differences. We conclude by describing why consideration of individual differences is critical to our understanding of learning, cognition, and behavior, and illustrate how attention to individual differences can contribute to more effective administration of therapeutic strategies for psychological disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record