Sean M. Laurent

Sexual dysfunction in depression and anxiety: Conceptualizing sexual dysfunction as part of an internalizing dimension

Sexual dysfunction is often implicated in depression and anxiety disorders, but the current nosology of sexual dysfunction, depression, and anxiety (i.e., DSM-IV) does not adequately address these relationships. Because recent papers (Krueger, R. F., & Markon, K. E. (2006). Reinterpreting comorbidity: A model-based approach to understanding and classifying psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2, 111-133) have suggested and provided evidence for latent internalizing and externalizing dimensions that help explain high comorbidity between mental disorders, the current paper suggests that sexual dysfunction might conceptually belong to a latent internalizing factor. To address this, evidence is presented for the relationship among disorders of sexual desire, arousal, and orgasm comorbid with depression and anxiety. A review of sexual disorders is also presented along with a critical examination of the way the current DSM is organized with respect to sexual dysfunction, depression, and anxiety.

Reading Between the Minds: The Use of Stereotypes in Empathic Accuracy

An ideal empathizer may attend to another person’s behavior in order to understand that person, but it is also possible that accurately understanding other people involves top-down strategies. We hypothesized that perceivers draw on stereotypes to infer other people’s thoughts and that stereotype use increases perceivers’ accuracy. In this study, perceivers (N = 161) inferred the thoughts of multiple targets. Inferences consistent with stereotypes for the targets’ group (new mothers) more accurately captured targets’ thoughts, particularly when actual thought content was also stereotypic. We also decomposed variance in empathic accuracy into thought, target, and perceiver variance. Although past research has frequently focused on variance between perceivers or targets (which assumes individual differences in the ability to understand other people or be understood, respectively), the current study showed that the most substantial variance was found within targets because of differences among thoughts.

Salivary nerve growth factor reactivity to acute psychosocial stress: A new frontier for stress research

Objective Neurotrophins such as nerve growth factor (NGF) may represent a stress-responsive system complementing the better known neuroendocrine (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) and autonomic nervous system, but there is little evidence for NGF response to acute stress in humans because noninvasive measures have not been available. We investigated salivary NGF (sNGF) in 40 healthy young adults confronting a romantic conflict stressor. Methods Five saliva samples—two collected before and three after the conflict—were assayed for sNGF, cortisol (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal marker), and &agr;-amylase (sAA; ANS marker). In addition, a control group (n = 20) gave saliva samples at the same time intervals to determine whether sNGF changes were specific to the conflict stressor. Results sNGF showed significant reactivity from entry to the first poststress sample among study participants (&bgr; = .13, p = .001), with nonsignificant change across poststress samples. Control participants showed no change in sNGF across the same period. Within-person changes in sNGF were generally aligned with both cortisol (&bgr; = .17, p = .003) and sAA (&bgr; = .17, p = .021) responses. Preconflict negative emotion predicted lower sNGF reactivity (&bgr; = −.08, p = .009) and less alignment with sAA (&bgr; = −.09, p = .040), whereas positive emotion predicted less alignment with cortisol (&bgr; = −.10, p = .019). Conclusions This study is the first to document sNGF as a marker that responds to stress in humans.

Punishing hypocrisy: the roles of hypocrisy and moral emotions in deciding culpability and punishment of criminal and civil moral transgressors.

Three experiments explored how hypocrisy affects attributions of criminal guilt and the desire to punish hypocritical criminals. Study 1 established that via perceived hypocrisy, a hypocritical criminal was seen as more culpable and was punished more than a non-hypocritical criminal who committed an identical crime. Study 2 expanded on this, showing that negative moral emotions (anger and disgust) mediated the relationships between perceived hypocrisy, criminal guilt, and punishment. Study 3 replicated the emotion finding from Study 2 using new scenarios where group agents were clearly aware of the hypocrisy of their actions, yet acted anyway. Again, perceived hypocrisy worked through moral emotions to affect criminal guilt and punishment. The current studies provide empirical support for theories relating hypocrisy and moral transgressions to moral emotions, also informing the literature on the role of moral emotions in moral reasoning and legal decision making.

Salivary nerve growth factor response to stress related to resilience

Salivary nerve growth factor (sNGF) has recently been shown to respond to psychosocial stress, but little is known about how individual differences in this neurotrophic marker relate to stress vulnerability vs. resilience. This study followed up on these initial findings by examining sNGF responses to interpersonal stress in relation to both well-being and state/trait factors that determine the way a person approaches and is impacted by stress. Young adults (n=40) gave 5 saliva samples over the course of a laboratory session that involved an interpersonal conflict stressor, and all samples were assayed for sNGF. Participants also completed self-report measures of global well-being, stress appraisals before and following the conflict, and agency. Greater sNGF reactivity to conflict related to stronger appraisals of coping ability and agency. Post-conflict sNGF recovery related to lower anticipatory stress appraisals, and to higher agency and well-being. These results support the idea that dynamic sNGF responses are adaptive. Implications for the potential role of the neurotrophic system in stress resilience are discussed.

Self-Efficacy and Hemoglobin A1C Among Adults With Serious Mental Illness and Type 2 Diabetes: The Roles of Cognitive Functioning and Psychiatric Symptom Severity.

Background Self-efficacy is a core element of diabetes self-care and a primary target of diabetes interventions. Adults with serious mental illness (SMI) are twice as likely as adults among the general population to have Type 2 diabetes. This population faces substantial barriers (i.e., cognitive impairment, psychiatric symptoms) to optimal diabetes self-care, but the relationship of these barriers to both self-efficacy and glycemic control (hemoglobin A1C [A1C]) is not clearly understood. Methods Data collected from adult participants with SMI (i.e., schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder) and Type 2 diabetes (n = 92) were used to examine the moderating effects of cognitive functioning and psychiatric symptoms (i.e., positive and negative symptoms) on the association between self-efficacy and A1C. Results The relationship between self-efficacy and A1C was moderated by cognitive functioning (B = −4.03, standard error = 1.54, p = .011). Greater self-efficacy was associated with better glycemic control when cognitive functioning was high, but worse control when functioning was low. The relationship between self-efficacy and A1C was moderated by negative symptom severity (B = 6.88, standard error = 3.34, p = .043). Higher self-efficacy was associated with poorer glycemic control only when negative symptom severity was high. Positive symptoms did not interact with self-efficacy to predict A1C. Conclusions These results suggest that adults with SMI and low cognitive function or high negative symptom severity may misperceive their ability to manage their diabetes. They may benefit from efforts, including care management and monitoring, cognitive remediation, and skill training, to identify and correct inaccurate diabetes self-efficacy.

Unintended, but still blameworthy: the roles of awareness, desire, and anger in negligence, restitution, and punishment

ABSTRACT Two experiments (Experiment 1 N = 149, Experiment 2 N = 141) investigated how two mental states that underlie how perceivers reason about intentional action (awareness of action and desire for an outcome) influence blame and punishment for unintended (i.e., negligent) harms, and the role of anger in this process. Specifically, this research explores how the presence of awareness (of risk in acting, or simply of acting) and/or desire in an acting agents mental states influences perceptions of negligence, judgements that the acting agent owes restitution to a victim, and the desire to punish the agent, mediated by anger. In both experiments, awareness and desire led to increased anger at the agent and increased perception of negligence. Anger mediated the effect of awareness and desire on negligence rather than negligence mediating the effect of mental states on anger. Anger also mediated punishment, and negligence mediated the effects of anger on restitution. We discuss how perceivers consider mental states such as awareness, desire, and knowledge when reasoning about blame and punishment for unintended harms, and the role of anger in this process.

Perspective-taking influences autonomic attunement between partners during discussion of conflict

This study investigated the effects of dispositional and experimentally induced perspective-taking (PT) on physiological attunement between romantic partners during a conflict resolution task. Young adult couples (N = 103 dyads) rated their trait PT 1 week prior to participating in a conflict resolution session with their romantic partner. Immediately before the conflict task, participants were given one of the following three instructions: to take their partner’s perspective (PT condition), to approach the conflict mindfully (mindfulness condition), or to focus on their own perspective regarding the conflict (control condition). Participants provided four saliva samples over the course of the laboratory session, and the samples were assayed for alpha-amylase to measure autonomic nervous system activity. Multilevel modeling results revealed that couples in the PT condition displayed greater autonomic attunement over the course of the conflict session compared to those in the other conditions. In addition, female partners’ dispositional PT enhanced the effect of the PT induction on couples’ attunement. Furthermore, secondary analyses provided support for the beneficial role of autonomic attunement. Specifically, attunement was decreased by negative conflict behaviors and predicted increased post-conflict negative affect in females. Implications for dyadic functioning and intervention are discussed.