Psychopathic traits in females and males across the globe

The current study examined the prevalence and structure of psychopathic traits in females and males using a very large world sample (N = 33,016, females = 19,183). Psychopathic traits were assessed with the Self-Report Psychopathy (SRP) scale, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the four-factor model of psychopathy (interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, antisocial) both in the total sample and in the separate samples of females and males. Multi-sample confirmatory factor analysis was used to test for invariance of model parameters across sex as well as across females from different world regions. Inferential statistics were used to examine how the mean-level average of the four SRP facets varied as a function of culture and sex. Finally, the SRP data were linked to objective world health data (e.g., mortality, fertility, gross domestic product) from relevant world regions. The results indicated good support for the four-factor model, as well as invariance across sex and reasonably good evidence of invariance across females from different world regions. Variation in the elevation of SRP facet scores across major world regions suggested that cultural factors moderated the expression of the level of psychopathic propensities and that these traits were strongly correlated with the world health data.

The moderating role of father's care on the onset of binge eating symptoms among female late adolescents with insecure attachment

The present study examined the association between quality of attachment, perception of the father's bond, and binge eating symptoms in a sample of female late adolescents. In total, 233 female students aged between 18 and 20 years completed measures on binge eating, quality of attachment and parent-child relationship. Data showed that respondents with binge symptoms reported lower scores on secure attachment and father's care, and higher scores on preoccupied and fearful attachment. Binge eating symptoms were associated with father's care, but not with father's overprotection. Also, binge symptoms were negatively associated with secure attachment styles, and positively with preoccupied and fearful attachment. The data, finally, provided evidence that at higher levels of preoccupied attachment, the impact of binge symptoms tended to be lower when father's care was high.

Variation in the μ-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) moderates the influence of early maternal care on fearful attachment

There is evidence that both early experience and genetic variation play a role in influencing sensitivity to social rejection. In this study, we aimed at ascertaining if the A118G polymorphism of the μ-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) moderates the impact of early maternal care on fearful attachment, a personality trait strongly related to rejection sensitivity. In 112 psychiatric patients, early maternal care and fearful attachment were measured using the Parental Bonding Inventory and the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ), respectively. The pattern emerging from the RQ data was a crossover interaction between genotype and maternal caregiving. Participants expressing the minor 118 G allele had similar and relatively high scores on fearful attachment regardless of the quality of maternal care. By contrast, early experience made a major difference for participants carrying the A/A genotype. Those who recalled higher levels of maternal care reported the lowest levels of fearful attachment whereas those who recalled lower levels of maternal care scored highest on fearful attachment. Our data fit well with the differential susceptibility model which stipulates that plasticity genes would make some individuals more responsive than others to the negative consequences of adversity and to the benefits of environmental support and enrichment.

Patients' sense of relationship with breast cancer surgeons: the relative importance of surgeon and patient variability and the influence of patients' attachment style

OBJECTIVE

We examined to what extent variability in breast cancer patients' sense of relationship with their surgeons was attributable to patient vs surgeon variation and we examined the role of one patient characteristic: attachment style.

METHODS

Women (N=133) due to undergo surgery for breast cancer with one of six surgeons self-rated their relationship with the surgeon, using the Working Alliance Inventory, and indicated their adult attachment style (secure vs insecure). Multilevel analysis of alliance scores quantified variance components at patient and surgeon levels and tested the relationship with attachment.

RESULTS

Variability in alliance was overwhelmingly at the patient level. Alliance was greater in securely than non-securely attached patients, although this influence was small.

CONCLUSION

Variability in quality of clinical relationships after breast cancer diagnosis largely reflects variation between individual patients, not surgeons. Although patients' attachment style is significant, its role is modest. More influential patient characteristics need to be identified.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Breast cancer patients report a strong relationship with their surgeons. Because differences between surgeons make only a small contribution to variability in relationship, it should be a priority to identify and address the characteristics or behaviours at the level of individual patients that are associated with poorer relationships.

Culture-general and -specific associations of attachment avoidance and anxiety with perceived parental warmth and psychological control among Turk and Belgian adolescents

Both the adolescent peer attachment and perceived parenting style literatures emphasize the role of the quality of the parent-child relationship in children's healthy adjustment beyond the family, but few studies have investigated links between adolescents' peer attachment and perceptions of parenting. We investigate relations of adolescents' perceptions of warmth and psychological control from parents with avoidance and anxiety in attachment to close friends in two contrasting cultures. Altogether, 262 Turk and 263 Belgian youth between 14 and 18 years of age participated. Cross-culturally, attachment avoidance was negatively related to maternal warmth, and attachment anxiety positively related to maternal and paternal control and negatively to paternal warmth. Beyond these general relations, attachment avoidance was associated with paternal psychological control in Belgians but not in Turks. The study provides cross-cultural evidence for specific relations between peer attachment and perceived parenting and suggests a culture-specific pathway for the development of attachment avoidance.

Marital Satisfaction Across Three Cultures: Does the Number of Children Have an Impact After Accounting for Other Marital Demographics?

U.S. studies indicate that children tend to stabilize marriage but, paradoxically, to reduce marital satisfaction. To explore whether this finding exists in a similar fashion in other cultures, the authors studied the impact of number of children on spousal love in the United States, United Kingdom, and Turkey, while accounting for other marital demographics (such as duration of marriage and the ages of wives and husbands). The number of children predicted diminished marital satisfaction in couples from all three cultures, although this effect arguably was not present in Turkish wives. In addition, marital satisfaction in couples from all three cultures was generally negatively predicted by the duration of marriage. Marital satisfaction was generally unrelated to wife’s age. The effect of husband’s age was important to marital satisfaction in couples from all cultures, although the nature of this effect diverged in relating positively to marital satisfaction for British and American couples but negatively for Turkish couples and especially Turkish wives. The authors identify several potentially important implications of these results.

Gender and Attachment Representations in the Preschool Years

Bowlby proposed that the individual's social experiences, as early as in infancy, contribute to the construction of Internal Working Models (IWMs) of attachment, which will later guide the individual's expectations and behaviors in close relationships all along his or her life. The qualitative, individual characteristics of these models reflect the specificity of the individual's early experiences with attachment figures. The attachment literature globally shows that the qualities of IWMs are neither gender specific nor cultural specific. Procedures to evaluate IWMs in adulthood have been well established, based on narrative accounts of childhood experiences. Narrative procedures at earlier ages (e.g., in the preschool years) have been proposed, such as Bretherton's Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), to evaluate attachment representations. More than 500 ASCT narratives of preschoolers, coming from five different countries, have been collected, in the perspective of examining possible interactions between gender and culture regarding attachment representations. A specific Q-Sort coding procedure (CCH) has been used to evaluate several dimensions of the narratives. Girls' narratives appeared as systematically more secure than those of same-age boys, whatever their culture. The magnitude of gender differences, however, varied between countries. Taylor's model of gender-specific responses to stress and Harwood's and Posada's hypothesis on inter-cultural differences regarding caregiving are evoked to understand the differences across gender and countries.

Cultural Psychology Today: Innovations and Oversights

Culture & Psychology has developed from a small start-up journal in 1995 into the key trend-setter in the field. This editorial analysis continues the tradition of inquiry started in previous efforts (Valsiner, 2001, 2004a) and extends it to the needs of psychology as a whole for the study of dynamic, meaning-making human beings. Cultural psychology—using the term culture as a generic term in various versions—continues to be an arena where innovations can occur. Separate research fields— such as the dialogical self, social representation processes, semiotic mediation, symbolic action, and actuation theories—have all been co-participants in this new advancement of ideas. Yet the central problem—an innovation of empirical research methodology which would appropriately capture human active meaning-making—has not been solved. Likewise, cultural psychology has only marginally touched upon the lessons from indigenous psychologies—the richness of folk psychological terms, and the cultural over-determination of objects used in human everyday living. Contemporary cultural psychology turns increasingly towards the study of objects as cultural constructs. Editing a journal is itself an act of construction of a cultural object, and the current state of contemporary scientific journals indicates a re-construction of the social nature of knowledge. Moving beyond its postmodernist and empiricist confines, psychology is set to return to the level of an abstracted generalization of its culture-inclusive theories. Culture—in terms of semiotic mediators and meaningful action patterns—is the inherent core of human psychological functions, rather than an external causal entity that has `effects' on human emotion, cognition, and behavior.

Big Five Traits Related to Short-Term Mating: From Personality to Promiscuity across 46 Nations

As part of the International Sexuality Description Project, 13,243 participants from 46 nations responded to self-report measures of personality and mating behavior. Several traits showed consistent links with short-term mating. Extraversion positively correlated with interest in short-term mating, unrestricted sociosexuality, having engaged in short-term mate poaching attempts, having succumbed to short-term poaching attempts of others, and lacking relationship exclusivity. Low levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness also related to short-term mating, especially with extra-pair mating. Neuroticism and openness were associated with short-term mating as well, but these links were less consistent across sex and nation. Nation-level links between personality and sexuality replicated within-region findings, such as the strong association between national extraversion and national sociosexuality. Discussion focuses on the origins of personality-sexuality links and their implications across nations.

Doctors' attachment style and their inclination to propose somatic interventions for medically unexplained symptoms

OBJECTIVE

We tested the theory that general practitioners (GPs) offer somatic intervention to patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) as a defensive response to patients' dependence. We predicted that GPs most likely to respond somatically after patients indicated symptomatic or psychosocial needs had attachment style characterised by negative models of self and others.

METHOD

Twenty-five GPs identified 308 patients presenting MUS and indicated their own models of self and others. Consultations were audio recorded and coded speech-turn-by-speech-turn. We modeled the probability of GPs proposing somatic intervention on any turn as a function of their models of self and other and the number of prior turns containing symptomatic or psychosocial presentations.

RESULTS

Prior psychosocial presentations decreased the likelihood of GPs offering somatic intervention. The decrease was greatest in GPs with most positive models of self and, contrary to prediction, least positive models of others. The positive relationship between prior somatic presentations and the likelihood that GPs offered somatic intervention was unrelated to either model.

CONCLUSION

Findings are incompatible with our theory that GPs propose somatic interventions defensively. Instead, GPs may provide somatic intervention because they value patients (positive model of others) but devalue their own psychological skills (negative model of self).

Psychometric Properties of the Spanish and American Versions of the ECR Adult Attachment Questionnaire

Abstract. We compared the psychometric properties of the American and Spanish versions of the Experiences in Close Relationship measure (ECR; Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998 ; ECR-S, Alonso-Arbiol, Balluerka, & Shaver, 2007 ; Alonso-Arbiol, Shaver, & Yárnoz, 2002) , which assesses individual differences in attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. The American version of the questionnaire was administered to 1,265 Americans and the Spanish version to 747 Spaniards, all of them university students. The results indicate that the two linguistic versions are comparable, and that the Avoidance and Anxiety scales exhibit high internal consistency reliability in both languages, although the α values are slightly lower for the Spanish version. Avoidance was related to relationship status in both language groups, with about the same effect size. The factor structure of the measure was similar across both the American and Spanish samples.

Doctors' responses to patients with medically unexplained symptoms who seek emotional support: criticism or confrontation?

OBJECTIVE

Consultations about medically unexplained symptoms (MUSs) can resemble contests over the legitimacy of patients' demands. To understand doctors' motivations for speech appearing to be critical of patients with MUSs, we tested predictions that its frequency would be related to patients' demands for emotional support and doctors' patient-centered attitudes as well as adult attachment style.

METHODS

Twenty-four general practitioners identified 249 consecutive patients presenting with MUSs and indicated their own patient-centered attitudes as well as adult attachment style (positive models of self and others). Before consultation, patients self-reported their desire for emotional support. Consultations were audio recorded and coded utterance by utterance. The number of utterances coded as criticism was the response variable in the multilevel regression analyses.

RESULTS

Frequency of criticism was positively related to patients' demands for emotional support, to doctors' belief in sharing responsibility with patients and to doctors' positive model of themselves. It was inversely associated with doctors' belief that patients' feelings were legitimate business for consultation and was unrelated to their model of others.

CONCLUSIONS

From the perspective of doctors, speech that appears to be critical probably reflects therapeutic intent and might therefore be better described as "confrontation." Understanding doctors' motivations for what they say to patients with MUSs will allow for more effective interventions to improve the quality of consultations.