Longitudinal trajectory classes and correlates of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire-triarchic psychopathy scales from adolescence to young adulthood.

The present study examined longitudinal trajectory classes and correlates of triarchic psychopathy domains (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition) from age 16 to 22, leveraging Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ)-based triarchic scales data gathered on a large community sample (s ranging between 483 and 775 across waves) oversampled for parental substance use disorder (SUD). Growth mixture models were conducted to examine longitudinal trajectory classes for each domain, and their associations with environmental covariates (e.g.

Self-Affirmation Reduces Uncertainty Aversion for Potential Gains.

Decisions about one's health are often accompanied by uncertain outcomes, which may be either positively or negatively valenced. The presence of this uncertainty, which can range along a continuum from risk to ambiguity (i.e.

Elaborating on the longitudinal measurement invariance and construct validity of the triarchic psychopathy scales from the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire.

Because the construct of psychopathy is of chief interest across different disciplines, spanning developmental, clinical, and forensic psychology, its assessment bears far-reaching implications. One prominent contemporary conceptualization of psychopathy, the Triarchic Model, posits that a psychopathic personality encompasses three phenotypic constructs: boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. Recently, triarchic scales have been derived based on items from the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), and the psychometric characteristics of this approach (MPQ-triarchic [MPQ-Tri]) are promising.

Developmental trajectory classes in psychological dysregulation predict later decision-making competence.

Adolescence and emerging adulthood are developmental periods associated with increased risk taking, including alcohol and substance use and antisocial behaviors. Typical psychological growth from adolescence into early adulthood reflects increases in traits related to psychological regulation (e.g.

Bidirectional associations between self-regulation and deviance from adolescence to adulthood.

Self-regulation is considered a major predictor of crime and deviant behavior. However, longitudinal research investigating these associations, frequently looked only at the effect of self-regulation on deviant behavior, but not the other way around. The current study argued that deviance may contribute to later problems in self-regulation, and examined bidirectional associations, comparing a unidirectional and bidirectional model of associations between these variables.

Information use in risky decision making: Do age differences depend on affective context?

The current study focused on the degree to which decision context (deliberative vs. affective) differentially impacted the use of available information about uncertainty (i.e.

Diurnal cortisol and decision making under risk in problem gambling.

The aim of this study was to assess the influence of diurnal cortisol profile on decision making under risk in individuals with problem gambling and a healthy control group. We examined the relationship between diurnal cortisol, assessed over the course of 2 days, and a battery of tasks that assessed decision making under risk, including the Columbia Card Task and the Cups Task. Thirty individuals with problem gambling and 29 healthy individuals took part in the study.

Regret-Based Decision-Making Style Acts as a Dispositional Factor in Risky Choices.

People who anticipate the potential regret of one's decisions are believed to act in a more risk-averse manner and, thus, display fewer risk-taking behaviors across many domains. We conducted two studies to investigate whether individual differences in regret-based decision-making (a) reflect a unitary cognitive-style dimension, (b) are stable over time, and (c) predict later risk-taking behavior. In Study 1, 332 participants completed a regret-based decision-making style scale (RDS) to evaluate its psychometric qualities.

Greater decision-making competence is associated with greater expected-value sensitivity, but not overall risk taking: an examination of concurrent validity.

Decision-making competence reflects individual differences in the susceptibility to committing decision-making errors, measured using tasks common from behavioral decision research (e.g., framing effects, under/overconfidence, following decision rules).

Decision-making competence predicts domain-specific risk attitudes.

Decision-making competence (DMC) reflects individual differences in rational responding across several classic behavioral decision-making tasks. Although it has been associated with real-world risk behavior, less is known about the degree to which DMC contributes to specific components of risk attitudes. Utilizing a psychological risk-return framework, we examined the associations between risk attitudes and DMC.

Plasticity of risky decision making among maltreated adolescents: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial.

Childhood maltreatment has lasting negative effects throughout the life span. Early intervention research has demonstrated that these effects can be remediated through skill-based, family-centered interventions. However, less is known about plasticity during adolescence, and whether interventions are effective many years after children experience maltreatment.

Suboptimal decision making in borderline personality disorder: effect of potential losses.

This research explored the underlying processes mediating risky decisions for individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). We tested whether BPD patients were more apt to take risks compared to a matched comparison group. We used two controlled tasks designed to assess risky decision-making, both to achieve gains and to avoid losses.

Diurnal cortisol rhythm is associated with increased risky decision-making in older adults.

Although past research has suggested a link between chronic stress and both physical and mental well-being in older adults, less is known about the degree to which neuroendocrine markers of stress are associated with higher-order cognitive processes such as decision-making. In a sample of healthy older adults (55-85 years), we tested the degree to which variation in the diurnal cortisol rhythm, an index of hypothalamic-adrenal-pituitary axis dynamics, was related to differences in risky decision-making. We found that diurnal cortisol fall predicted performance on the Cups Task, a risky decision-making task that independently tests risk-taking to achieve gains and risk-taking to avoid losses.

Development and Testing of an Abbreviated Numeracy Scale: A Rasch Analysis Approach.

Research has demonstrated that individual differences in numeracy may have important consequences for decision making. In the present paper, we develop a shorter, psychometrically improved measure of numeracy-the ability to understand, manipulate, and use numerical information, including probabilities. Across two large independent samples that varied widely in age and educational level, participants completed 18 items from existing numeracy measures.

Decision-making deficits among maltreated children.

Although maltreated children involved with child welfare services are known to exhibit elevated levels of health-risking behaviors, little is known about their decision-making processes leading to such tendencies. Research findings suggest that maltreated children exhibit developmental delays in neurocognitive and emotional regulation systems that could adversely impact their abilities to make decisions under conditions of risk. Whereas prior researchers have examined risky decision making as a global construct, maltreated children's decision making was examined in two contexts in the present study: potential gains and potential losses.

Possession attachment predicts cell phone use while driving.

Objective: Distracted driving has become an important public health concern. However, little is known about the predictors of this health-risking behavior. One overlooked risk factor for distracted driving is the perceived attachment that one feels toward his or her phone.

A neuropsychological approach to understanding risk-taking for potential gains and losses.

Affective neuroscience has helped guide research and theory development in judgment and decision-making by revealing the role of emotional processes in choice behavior, especially when risk is involved. Evidence is emerging that qualitatively and quantitatively different processes may be involved in risky decision-making for gains and losses. We start by reviewing behavioral work by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and others, which shows that risk-taking differs for potential gains and potential losses.

Do individual differences in Iowa Gambling Task performance predict adaptive decision making for risky gains and losses?

We relate performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a widely used, but complex, neuropsychological task of executive function in which mixed outcomes (gains and losses) are experienced together, to performance on a relatively simpler descriptive task, the Cups task, which isolates adaptive decision making for achieving gains and avoiding losses. We found that poor IGT performance was associated with suboptimal decision making on Cups, especially for risky losses, suggesting that losses are weighted more than gains in the IGT. These findings were significant beyond several notable gender differences in which men outperformed women.

The effects of insula damage on decision-making for risky gains and losses.

Several lines of functional neuroimaging studies have attributed a role for the insula, a critical component of the brain's emotional circuitry, in risky decision-making. However, very little evidence yet exists as to whether the insula is necessary for advantageous decision-making under risk, specifically decisions involving uncertain gains and losses. The present study uses a risky decision-making task with lesion patients and healthy controls to investigate the effects of focal insula damage on risk-taking to achieve gains and to avoid losses.

Functional dissociations of risk and reward processing in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Making a risky decision is a complex process that involves evaluation of both the value of the options and the associated risk level. Yet the neural processes underlying these processes have not so far been clearly identified. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a task that simulates risky decisions, we found that the dorsal region of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was activated whenever a risky decision was made, but the degree of this activity across subjects was negatively correlated with their risk preference.

Neural correlates of adaptive decision making for risky gains and losses.

Do decisions about potential gains and potential losses require different neural structures for advantageous choices? In a lesion study, we used a new measure of adaptive decision making under risk to examine whether damage to neural structures subserving emotion affects an individual's ability to make adaptive decisions differentially for gains and losses. We found that individuals with lesions to the amygdala, an area responsible for processing emotional responses, displayed impaired decision making when considering potential gains, but not when considering potential losses. In contrast, patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area responsible for integrating cognitive and emotional information, showed deficits in both domains.

Organization and predictive power of general and relationship-specific attachment models: one for all, and all for one?

Given recent evidence for multiple attachment models, we examined the organization and predictive power of general and relationship-specific attachment representations in two samples using two distinct measures of attachment models. With regard to associations among relationship-specific models, peer models (romantic partner and friend) and parental models (mother and father) were more similar to each other than to any other models, and anxiety/self-model representations were more consistent across relationships than avoidance/other-model representations. With regard to links between general and specific models, romantic and friend models made the strongest and independent contributions to general models, and romantic relationship involvement moderated the importance of romantic models to general models.