Mechanisms underlying prosocial behavior, behavior or actions carried out with the intention to benefit another individual, are unclear. Previous studies have found a positive relationship between...Show moreMechanisms underlying prosocial behavior, behavior or actions carried out with the intention to benefit another individual, are unclear. Previous studies have found a positive relationship between empathy and prosocial learning. The current study, inspired by the study of Lockwood and colleagues (2016), consists of two experiments where the link between prosocial learning, learning to obtain rewards for others, and empathy is investigated through a probabilistic learning task based on reinforcement learning principles. Participants had to choose between two different symbols and learn which of these had the highest probability of earning points in three different conditions: for themselves (selfish), for another person (other) or for no one (none). The first experiment measured the conditions with two probabilities (60/40, 70/30), whereas in the second experiment one probability was used (75/25). The aim of the current study was to replicate the findings of Lockwood and colleagues (2016) who found a positive relationship between empathy and prosocial learning with the same probabilities as our second experiment. The results from both experiments revealed no significant relationship between empathy and prosocial learning. The second experiment showed that participants learned better in the selfish condition compared to the prosocial and none condition. It can be concluded that in the current study no link was found between empathy and prosocial learning, which might be explained from the differences in research design between the study of Lockwood and colleagues (2016) and the current study. There seemed to be a self-bias in learning, i.e., people learn better for themselves than for others.Show less
How we behave in social contexts influences essential life aspects such as quality of relationships and well-being. Here, actions may have positive or negative consequences for others. Notably,...Show moreHow we behave in social contexts influences essential life aspects such as quality of relationships and well-being. Here, actions may have positive or negative consequences for others. Notably, patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) display inflated responsibility attitudes and often fear negatively affecting others. This study investigated whether participants high in obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) display enhanced learning to benefit others in a prosocial learning task. Healthy individuals of two samples (N = 95; N = 86) performed the task in three responsibility contexts. Participants in the first study learned to obtain rewards for 1) no one, 2) an anonymous other, or 3) themselves. Participants in the second study learned to obtain rewards for a friend instead of no one. Groups of low and high scorers were created based on the participants’ scores on the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R). The results did not reveal support for a relationship between OCS and prosocial behavior. Further, high OCS learned similarly to obtain rewards in anonymous and public prosocial contexts. Additionally, in both studies, participants learned best to obtain rewards for themselves. Results suggest that responsibility contexts do not modulate high OCS participants’ learning. This unexpected pattern may be explained by the absence of negative consequences for others. The present study also suggests that individuals, in general, may show enhanced motivation for effort when they can obtain a reward for themselves. Future research should investigate whether individuals who score low and high on OCS exhibit differences in obtaining rewards and preventing punishment.Show less
The aim of this study was to investigate if parental verbal threat vs. safe comments paired with strangers led to children having more fear beliefs and attention towards the stranger paired with...Show moreThe aim of this study was to investigate if parental verbal threat vs. safe comments paired with strangers led to children having more fear beliefs and attention towards the stranger paired with threat comments, while also looking if temperament (measured as behavioral inhibition (BI)) would have a moderating role. It was expected that children would have more fear beliefs and attention towards the stranger paired with parental verbal threat comments compared to the stranger paired safe comments and that BI would have a moderating role on the effect of parental verbal comments. The sample consisted of 4-6-year-olds. In the experiment a manipulation was used where one stranger was paired with threat comments and the other one with safe comments, both given by the parent. Then, the children encountered the strangers during a social and interaction task. The results show that children’s fear beliefs about the stranger paired with parental threat comments were significantly higher than about the stranger paired with parental safe comments. This was not the case for children’s attention towards the strangers. So, parental verbal threat comments paired with a stranger led to more fear beliefs but did not increase attention. Furthermore, the moderating role of temperament was not significant. To conclude, this study supports the growing evidence that children's fear beliefs can be changed by giving information but did not found this effect for attention. Also, the effect of verbal threat information on fear beliefs and attention did not differ as a function of child temperament.Show less
As previous studies show a positive relationship between present time orientation and psychological well-being, the purpose of the current within-subjects study is to examine whether a present time...Show moreAs previous studies show a positive relationship between present time orientation and psychological well-being, the purpose of the current within-subjects study is to examine whether a present time orientation, and otherwise mindfulness, can be found in word use of suicidal musicians over time. Fewer words referring to the present, compared to the past and the future were expected. Moreover, a decrease in the use of present time words, and an increase in the use of past and future time words, closer to the moment of suicide, was expected. The different means of the time categories were calculated with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to test for differences in these means. To test for change over time in the time categories, the Kendall’s Tau B correlation coefficients were used. Present time orientation (M = 8.449) had a mean greater than both the mean of past time orientation (M = 2.308) and the future time orientation (M = 1.500). Moreover, future time orientation had a mean greater than past time orientation. I found that these differences were statistically significant. There was a significant decrease in words referring to the past (τb = -.113, p = .005) and a non-significant decrease in words referring to the future (τb = -.071, p = .081). Lastly, there was a significant decrease in words referring to the present (τb = -.153, p < .001). The finding of a decrease in present time, and the finding of less words referring to the future, compared to the past, are in line with previous studies on this topic. It is concluded that fewer words referring to the future, compared to the past and present, and a decrease in present time words over time can be an indication of suicide risk.Show less
Physical pain and error processing have indicated a neurophysiological overlap. They both activate the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) through which is originated the error-related negativity (ERN)...Show morePhysical pain and error processing have indicated a neurophysiological overlap. They both activate the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) through which is originated the error-related negativity (ERN), a reflection of error sensitivity. Thus, our research was based on the hypothesis that people who are more sensitive to one type of alarm - pain - might also be more sensitive to a different kind of alarm signal - errors. Impulsivity was also investigated, since it has been related to the same neural network, and small ERN amplitudes have been linked to high rates of impulsiveness in reaction-time tasks, indicating dysfunctional inhibitory learning. Healthy volunteers (N = 65, mean age = 20.3 years), performed the Error Responsibility task, a variant of the Eriksen Flanker task, during EEG data recording, and filled in the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ). No significant relation was found between pain and error sensitivity. Attention impulsiveness was significantly associated with ERN and pain sensitivity. The absence of the neural shared sensitivity might not be warranted due to the measurement of pain only with a self-report questionnaire. Notably, it was replicated that highly impulsive people show reduced ERN, indicating inefficient error processing. Future studies could research whether the type of instrument for pain measurement influences the depiction of a common sensitivity between pain and error processing. Lastly, the results regarding impulsivity could assist existing treatment guidelines for clinical populations that lack inhibition control, being at risk of adopting dangerous methods to heal painful experiences.Show less
People with social anxiety symptoms (SAS) have an inflated sense of responsibility towards the mistakes that might cause them embarrassment or humiliation. This event-related potential (ERP) study...Show morePeople with social anxiety symptoms (SAS) have an inflated sense of responsibility towards the mistakes that might cause them embarrassment or humiliation. This event-related potential (ERP) study examined individual differences in SAS in social performance monitoring through focusing on the role of perceived responsibility in error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe). Healthy volunteers with low (N = 22), specific (N = 26), or generalized (N = 17) SAS took part in the study. Participants completed a Flanker task under the observation of a co-actor in three conditions where their errors resulted in one of the following negative monetary consequences: no harm, harm to oneself, or harm to the other. Behavioural findings suggested an opposite direction of responding to errors between two groups where the low showed more impulsive response patterns, while the specific one showed a cautious one. Moreover, ERP results showed no group differences and unaffected ERN and Pe across conditions. However, an exploratory analysis comparing only generalized and low SAS groups showed that people with generalized SAS displayed enhanced ERNs when they were responsible for other’s compared to their own bonus, but not after controlling for OCD symptoms. These findings suggest that inflated sense of responsibility in generalized SAS is more relevant to situations that involve responsibility towards others compared to oneself. The study also highlights the need for investigating the impact of perceived responsibility in social performance monitoring of people with SAS, but then by explicitly focusing on mistakes that trigger embarrassment.Show less
