J. Gregory Hixon

Authenticity and Positivity Strivings in Marriage and Courtship

We proposed that married persons would want their spouses to see them as they saw themselves but that dating persons would want their relationship partners to evaluate them favorably. A survey of 176 married and dating couples tested these predictions. Just as married persons were most intimate with spouses whose evaluations verified their self-views, dating persons were most intimate with partners who evaluated them favorably. For married people with negative self-views, then, intimacy increased as their spouses evaluated them more negatively. Marriage apparently precipitates a shift from a desire for positive evaluations to a desire for self-verifying evaluations.

Embracing the Bitter “Truth”: Negative Self-Concepts and Marital Commitment

We propose that because self-concepts allow people to predict (and thus control) the responses of others, people want to find support for their self-concepts. They accordingly gravitate toward relationship partners who see them as they see themselves. For people with negative self-views, this means embracing relationship partners who derogate them. Our findings confirmed this reasoning. Just as persons with positive self-concepts were more committed to spouses who thought well of them than to spouses who thought poorly of them, persons with negative self-concepts were more committed to spouses who thought poorly of them than to spouses who thought well of them.

Identity Fusion and Self-Sacrifice: Arousal as a Catalyst of Pro-Group Fighting, Dying, and Helping Behavior

Identity fusion is a feeling of oneness with the group that induces people to tether their feelings of personal agency to the group. We accordingly proposed that increasing the agency of fused persons by elevating autonomic arousal would amplify their tendency to endorse and actually enact pro-ingroup behavior. In 4 experiments, increasing autonomic arousal through physical exercise elevated heart rates and fusion-unrelated activity among all participants. Fused participants, however, uniquely responded to arousal by translating elevated agency into endorsement of pro-group activity. These effects emerged both for endorsement of extreme behaviors for the group and for overt behaviors, specifically helping behavior (donating money to needy in-group members), and the speed with which participants raced a fusion-related avatar. The effects also generalized across 3 different arousal inductions (dodgeball, wind sprints, and Exercycle). Finally, fusion-related agency partially mediated the interactive effects of fusion and arousal on pro-group behavior. Apparently, autonomic arousal increases agency and identity fusion channels increased agency into pro-group behavior.

Genetic and hormonal sensitivity to threat: Testing a serotonin transporter genotype × testosterone interaction

BACKGROUND Striking parallels are observed when comparing the literature on the 5-HTTLPR of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) to the testosterone (T) literature on measures of stress reactivity and neural activity. Short (S) allele carriers and individuals higher in testosterone levels show exaggerated stress responses, amygdala hyperactivity, and reduction of amygdala-prefrontal cortex coupling when exposed to threat. METHODS Three studies tested the hypothesis that higher T, S carriers would show increased cortisol responses to threat. RESULTS Supporting the hypothesis, a T × 5-HTTLPR interaction was obtained across all studies. Threats to status via social exclusion (Study 1), cognitive/perceptual failure (Study 2), and physical competence (Study 3) all produced elevated cortisol levels in S carriers with higher T levels. An unexpected result was that 5-HTTLPR long (L) allele homozygotes with higher T showed lower cortisol levels in response to threat-a pattern of response that closely parallels that reported for psychopathic individuals. Finally, combining effect sizes across studies showed that the likelihood that these effects were due to Type 1 errors was quite low. CONCLUSIONS What emerges from these studies is a novel yet reliable, and synergistic relationship between 5-HTTLPR genotype and testosterone on stress reactivity, possibly conferring vulnerability for multiple neuropsychiatric disorders.

Serotonin transporter promoter region (5‐HTTLPR) polymorphism predicts resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is often conceptualized as an index of physiological flexibility that has been related to emotion regulatory capacity. Although behavioral genetics research indicates that RSA is partly heritable, relatively few molecular genetics studies have been conducted. We examined whether the serotonin transporter promoter region (5-HTTLPR) polymorphism was associated with resting RSA among healthy young adults (N=71). Short 5-HTTLPR allele carriers had significantly lower resting RSA than long 5-HTTLPR homozygotes. Genotype explained 5% of the variance in resting RSA. Although firm conclusions depend on further study, the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism may contribute to individual differences in RSA and its behavioral correlates.

Effects of Age of English Exposure, Current Input/Output, and Grade on Bilingual Language Performance.

This study evaluates the effects of Age of Exposure to English (AoEE) and Current Input/Output on language performance in a cross-sectional sample of Spanish-English bilingual children. First- (N = 586) and third-graders (N = 298) who spanned a wide range of bilingual language experience participated. Parents and teachers provided information about English and Spanish language use. Short tests of semantic and morphosyntactic development in Spanish and English were used to quantify childrens knowledge of each language. There were significant interactions between AoEE and Current Input/Output for children at third grade in English and in both grades for Spanish. In English, the relationship between AoEE and language scores were linear for first- and third-graders. In Spanish a nonlinear relationship was observed. We discuss how much of the variance was accounted for by AoEE and Current Input/Output.

Finding happiness in negative emotions: An experimental test of a novel expressive writing paradigm

Using an experimental writing design, this study pitted a novel emotion regulation strategy, integrating psychological acceptance and positive reappraisal, against two established strategies for increasing psychological well-being: emotional disclosure (Pennebaker, 1997) and positive reappraisal (DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Gross & John, 2003). 315 undergraduate students wrote on four consecutive days about the biggest problem in their lives and were randomly assigned to use one of the three strategies: (1) emotional disclosure, (2) positive reappraisal, or (3) acceptance + positive reappraisal. Results indicated that the integrative condition led to optimal emotional well-being outcomes at post-intervention, including: greater happiness and positive emotions, marginally fewer negative emotions, and greater overall psychological acceptance. Findings indicate that accepting ones negative emotions and then trying to seek out positives might be an optimal strategy for building happiness.

Uncovering category specificity of genital sexual arousal in women: The critical role of analytic technique

Based on analytic techniques that collapse data into a single average value, it has been reported that women lack category specificity and show genital sexual arousal to a large range of sexual stimuli including those that both match and do not match their self-reported sexual interests. These findings may be a methodological artifact of the way in which data are analyzed. This study examined whether using an analytic technique that models data over time would yield different results. Across two studies, heterosexual (N = 19) and lesbian (N = 14) women viewed erotic films featuring heterosexual, lesbian, and gay male couples, respectively, as their physiological sexual arousal was assessed with vaginal photoplethysmography. Data analysis with traditional methods comparing average genital arousal between films failed to detect specificity of genital arousal for either group. When data were analyzed with smoothing regression splines and a within-subjects approach, both heterosexual and lesbian women demonstrated different patterns of genital sexual arousal to the different types of erotic films, suggesting that sophisticated statistical techniques may be necessary to more fully understand womens genital sexual arousal response. Heterosexual women showed category-specific genital sexual arousal. Lesbian women showed higher arousal to the heterosexual film than the other films. However, within subjects, lesbian women showed significantly different arousal responses suggesting that lesbian womens genital arousal discriminates between different categories of stimuli at the individual level. Implications for the future use of vaginal photoplethysmography as a diagnostic tool of sexual preferences in clinical and forensic settings are discussed.

Cross-Linguistic Cognate Production in Spanish–English Bilingual Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment

Purpose Bilinguals tend to produce cognates (e.g., telephone in English and teléfono in Spanish) more accurately than they produce noncognates (table/mesa). We tested whether the same holds for bilingual children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Participants included Spanish-English bilingual children (aged 5;0 to 9;11 [years;months]), 25 with SLI and 92 without, who had comparable language experience. Cognate and noncognate items were taken from English and Spanish versions of the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (Brownell, 2000, 2001). Results Although bilingual children with language impairment named fewer items correctly overall, they accurately named cognates more often than noncognates, as did typically developing children. Independent of language ability, accurate naming of a cognate in one language strongly predicted accurate naming in the other language. Conclusion Language impairment appears unrelated to the mechanism that produces a cognate advantage in naming accuracy. Given that correct performance for a difficult word in one language is associated with knowing its cognate in another, cognates may be particularly viable targets for language intervention in bilingual children with SLI.

Automated Artifact-Detection Procedure for Vaginal Photoplethysmography

ABSTRACT Vaginal photoplethysmography is the most commonly used method of assessing womens genital sexual arousal. Raw photoplethysmograph data consist of a series of peaks and troughs, and movement by the participant results in artifacts indicated by unusually high or low peak-to-trough amplitudes. The gold-standard approach to artifact detection involves visual inspection by a trained experimenter and manual removal of artifacts from the data set, however, this process is time-consuming and subject to human error. We present an automated data-processing procedure that uses a series of smoothing regression splines to model the data and identify outliers. The automated procedure was applied to a set of neutral data and sexual-arousal response data, and artifacts identified were compared to artifacts identified by the standard approach of visual inspection. The automated method showed acceptable accuracy in terms of sensitivity and specificity comparable to the manual-processing method. The automated procedure could reduce human error and data-processing time for studies using vaginal photoplethysmography.