Alike but not the same: Psychological profiles of COVID-19 vaccine skeptics.

One of the challenges of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was a widespread skepticism about vaccination. To elucidate the underlying mental and emotional predispositions, we examined a sample of 1428 participants using latent profile analysis (LPA) on selected personality trait variables, mental health status, and measures of irrational beliefs. LPA revealed five distinct profiles: two classes of non-skeptics and three of skeptics.

Dreaming during a pandemic: Low incorporation of COVID-19-specific themes and lucidity in dreams of psychiatric patients and healthy controls.

The present study examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the emotional quality of dreams, the incorporation of pandemic-related themes, and the occurrence of lucid dreaming. Dream reports and lucidity ratings of psychiatric outpatients ( = 30) and healthy controls ( = 81) during two lockdowns in Germany were compared to those of healthy controls ( = 33) before the pandemic. Results confirmed previous reports that pandemic-specific themes were incorporated into dreams.

Grassroots Autonomy: A Laypersons' Perspective on Autonomy.

In the age of artificial intelligence, the common interest in human autonomy is experiencing a revival. Autonomy has formerly and mostly been investigated from a theoretical scientific perspective, in which scholars from various disciplines have linked autonomy with the concepts of dignity, independence from others, morality, self-awareness, and unconventionality. In a series of three semi-qualitative, preregistered online studies (total = 505), we investigated laypersons' understanding of autonomy with a bottom-up procedure to find out how far lay intuition is consistent with scientific theory.

Interpersonal problems and cooperative behavior in patients suffering from prolonged grief disorder as compared to bereaved healthy controls.

Objectives: Interpersonal factors, such as impairments in social interaction or lack of social support, have an important share when it comes to the development, maintenance, and progression of various mental disorders.

Methods: Individuals suffering from prolonged grief disorder (PGD) and matched bereaved healthy controls (n = 54) underwent a thorough diagnostic procedure, further completed the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP-D-32), and participated in a finitely iterated prisoner's dilemma (FIPD).

Results: Individuals suffering from PGD reported significantly more interpersonal problems.

Adapting to a major crisis: Sleep and mental health during two lockdowns.

The present study aimed at investigating the impact of the pandemic on sleep and mental health in healthy individuals (n = 78) as well as in psychiatric outpatients (n = 30) during the first and the second lockdown in Germany, in March and November 2020, respectively. Sleep quality and anxiety were worse in patients compared with controls during both lockdowns. Further, patients but not controls exhibited higher levels of depression and overall psychiatric symptomatology during the second lockdown.

Overgeneralizing emotions: Facial width-to-height revisited.

Facial width-to height ratio (fWHR), presumed to be shaped by testosterone during puberty, has been linked with aggressive, dominant, and power-seeking behavioral traits in adult males, although the causal mediation is still being disputed. To investigate the role of mere observer attribution bias in the association, we instructed participants to draw, feature-assemble, or photo-edit faces of fictitious males with aggressive-dominant character (compared with peaceloving-submissive), or powerful social status (compared with powerless). Across three studies involving 1,100 modeled faces in total, we observed little evidence for attribution bias with regards to facial width.

Inclusion of the other in the self as a potential risk factor for prolonged grief disorder: A comparison of patients with matched bereaved healthy controls.

Pathological grief has received increasing attention in recent years, as about 10% of the bereaved suffer from one kind of it. Pathological grief in the form of prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a relatively new diagnostic category which will be included into the upcoming ICD-11. To date, various risk and protective factors, as well as treatment options for pathological grief, have been proposed.

Effects of Message Framing, Sender Authority, and Recipients' Self-Reported Trait Autonomy on Endorsement of Health and Safety Measures during the Early COVID-19 Pandemic.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, human solidarity plays a crucial role in meeting this maybe greatest modern societal challenge. Public health communication targets enhancing collective compliance with protective health and safety regulations. Here, we asked whether authoritarian/controlling message framing as compared to a neutral message framing may be more effective than moralizing/prosocial message framing and whether recipients' self-rated trait autonomy might lessen these effects.

Reduced Social Connectedness and Compassion Toward Close Others in Patients With Chronic Depression Compared to a Non-clinical Sample.

Reduced social functioning in depression has been explained by different factors. Reduced social connectedness and prosocial motivation may contribute to interpersonal difficulties, particularly in chronic depression. In the present study, we tested whether social connectedness and prosocial motivation are reduced in chronic depression.

The role of resources in the face of psychopathology.

Objectives: The current study compared resource realization and psychological distress in patients with different psychiatric diagnoses and healthy individuals and examined the moderating effect of intrapersonal resources (personal strengths) and interpersonal resources (relationships) on the association between incongruence (unsatisfactory realization of personal goals) and psychological distress.

Method: In total, 218 participants (45.87% female, mean age = 39.

Reduced reciprocal giving in social anxiety - Evidence from the Trust Game.

Background And Objectives: Social anxiety is known to impair interpersonal relationships. These impairments are thought to partly arise from difficulties to engage in affiliative interactions with others, such as sharing favors or reciprocating prosocial acts. Here, we examined whether individuals high compared to low in social anxiety differ in giving towards strangers in an economic game paradigm.

Facial width-to-height ratio differs by social rank across organizations, countries, and value systems.

Facial Width-to-Height Ratio (fWHR) has been linked with dominant and aggressive behavior in human males. We show here that on portrait photographs published online, chief executive officers (CEOs) of companies listed in the Dow Jones stock market index and the Deutscher Aktienindex have a higher-than-normal fWHR, which also correlates positively with their company's donations to charitable causes and environmental awareness. Furthermore, we show that leaders of the world's most influential non-governmental organizations and even the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, have higher fWHR compared to controls on public portraits, suggesting that the relationship between displayed fWHR and leadership is not limited to profit-seeking organizations.

The facial width-to-height ratio determines interpersonal distance preferences in the observer.

Facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is correlated with a number of aspects of aggressive behavior in men. Observers appear to be able to assess aggressiveness from male fWHR, but implications for interpersonal distance preferences have not yet been determined. This study utilized a novel computerized stop-distance task to examine interpersonal space preferences of female participants who envisioned being approached by a man; men's faces photographed posed in neutral facial expressions were shown in increasing size to mimic approach.

Reliance on functional resting-state network for stable task control predicts behavioral tendency for cooperation.

Humans display individual variability in cooperative behavior. While an ever-growing body of research has investigated the neural correlates of task-specific cooperation, the mechanisms by which situation-independent, stable differences in cooperation render behavior consistent across a wide range of situations remain elusive. Addressing this issue, we show that the individual tendency to behave in a prosocial or individualistic manner can be predicted from the functional resting-state connectome.

Dissociating electrophysiological correlates of subjective, objective, and correct memory in investigating the emotion-induced recognition bias.

Performance on tasks requiring discrimination of at least two stimuli can be viewed either from an objective perspective (referring to actual stimulus differences), or from a subjective perspective (corresponding to participant's responses). Using event-related potentials recorded during an old/new recognition memory test involving emotionally laden and neutral words studied either blockwise or randomly intermixed, we show here how the objective perspective (old versus new items) yields late effects of blockwise emotional item presentation at parietal sites that the subjective perspective fails to find, whereas the subjective perspective ("old" versus "new" responses) is more sensitive to early effects of emotion at anterior sites than the objective perspective. Our results demonstrate the potential advantage of dissociating the subjective and the objective perspective onto task performance (in addition to analyzing trials with correct responses), especially for investigations of illusions and information processing biases, in behavioral and cognitive neuroscience studies.

How to trust a perfect stranger: predicting initial trust behavior from resting-state brain-electrical connectivity.

Reciprocal exchanges can be understood as the updating of an initial belief about a partner. This initial level of trust is essential when it comes to establishing cooperation with an unknown partner, as cooperation cannot arise without a minimum of trust not justified by previous successful exchanges with this partner. Here we demonstrate the existence of a representation of the initial trust level before an exchange with a partner has occurred.

Examining Event-Related Potential (ERP) correlates of decision bias in recognition memory judgments.

Memory judgments can be based on accurate memory information or on decision bias (the tendency to report that an event is part of episodic memory when one is in fact unsure). Event related potentials (ERP) correlates are important research tools for elucidating the dynamics underlying memory judgments but so far have been established only for investigations of accurate old/new discrimination. To identify the ERP correlates of bias, and observe how these interact with ERP correlates of memory, we conducted three experiments that manipulated decision bias within participants via instructions during recognition memory tests while their ERPs were recorded.

An ERP study of passive creative conceptual expansion using a modified alternate uses task.

A novel ERP paradigm was employed to investigate conceptual expansion, a central component of creative thinking. Participants were presented with word pairs, consisting of everyday objects and uses for these objects, which had to be judged based on the two defining criteria of creative products: unusualness and appropriateness. Three subject-determined trial types resulted from this judgement: high unusual and low appropriate (nonsensical uses), low unusual and high appropriate (common uses), and high unusual and high appropriate (creative uses).

The tricks of the trait: neural implementation of personality varies with genotype-dependent serotonin levels.

Gray's Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) has developed into one of the most prominent personality theories of the last decades. The RST postulates a Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) modulating the reaction to stimuli indicating aversive events. A number of psychiatric disorders including depression, anxiety disorders, and psychosomatic illnesses have been associated with extreme BIS responsiveness.

Dual-processing altruism.

Altruism refers to an other-benefiting behavior that is costly but bears no direct profit to oneself. At least three different forms can be distinguished: help giving, altruistic punishment, and moral courage. We investigated the differential impact of two thinking modes, intuitive (System 1) and rational (System 2), on these three altruistic behaviors.

Can clouds dance? Part 2: an ERP investigation of passive conceptual expansion.

Conceptual expansion, one of the core operations in creative cognition, was investigated in the present ERP study. An experimental paradigm using novel metaphoric, nonsensical and literal phrases was employed where individual differences in conceptual knowledge organization were accounted for by using participants' responses to categorize the stimuli to each condition. The categorization was determined by their judgment of the stimuli on the two defining criteria of creativity: unusualness and appropriateness.

Creativity and the brain: uncovering the neural signature of conceptual expansion.

Neurophysiological studies of creativity thus far have not allowed for clear conclusions to be made regarding the specific neural underpinnings of such complex cognition due to overgeneralizations concerning the creativity construct, heterogeneity in the type of creativity tasks used, and the questionable efficacy of the employed comparison tasks. A novel experimental design was developed in the present fMRI study which rendered it possible to investigate a critical facet of creative cognition - that of conceptual expansion - as distinct from general divergent thinking, working memory, or cognitive load. Brain regions involved in the retention, retrieval and integration of conceptual knowledge such as the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, the temporal poles and the lateral frontopolar cortex were found to be selectively involved during conceptual expansion.

Can clouds dance? Neural correlates of passive conceptual expansion using a metaphor processing task: Implications for creative cognition.

Creativity has emerged in the focus of neurocognitive research in the past decade. However, a heterogeneous pattern of brain areas has been implicated as underpinning the neural correlates of creativity. One explanation for these divergent findings lies in the fact that creativity is not usually investigated in terms of its many underlying cognitive processes.

Using a shoe as a plant pot: neural correlates of passive conceptual expansion.

Conceptual expansion is a key process that underlies our ability to think creatively. In the present event-related fMRI study, a modified Alternate Uses Task was used to identify brain regions involved during passive conceptual expansion and thereby separately assess the effects of the two defining elements of creative output: Originality (unusualness) and Relevance (appropriateness). Participants viewed word pairs consisting of an object and a use and indicated whether the given use was unusual and/or appropriate for the given object.

Beyond revenge: neural and genetic bases of altruistic punishment.

It is still debated how altruistic punishment as one form of strong reciprocity has established during evolution and which motives may underlie such behavior. Recent neuroscientific evidence on the activation of brain reward regions during altruistic punishment in two-person one-shot exchange games suggests satisfaction through the punishment of norm violations as one underlying motive. In order to address this issue in more detail, we used fMRI during a one-shot economic exchange game that warrants strong reciprocity by introducing a third party punishment condition wherein revenge is unlikely to play a role.