Yu L. L. Luo

Narcissism predicts impulsive buying: phenotypic and genetic evidence.

Impulsive buying makes billions of dollars for retail businesses every year, particularly in an era of thriving e-commerce. Narcissism, characterized by impulsivity and materialism, may serve as a potential antecedent to impulsive buying. To test this hypothesis, two studies examined the relationship between narcissism and impulsive buying. In Study 1, we surveyed an online sample and found that while adaptive narcissism was not correlated with impulsive buying, maladaptive narcissism was significantly predictive of the impulsive buying tendency. By investigating 304 twin pairs, Study 2 showed that global narcissism and its two components, adaptive and maladaptive narcissism, as well as the impulsive buying tendency were heritable. The study found, moreover, that the connections between global narcissism and impulsive buying, and between maladaptive narcissism and impulsive buying were genetically based. These findings not only establish a link between narcissism and impulsive buying but also help to identify the origins of the link. The present studies deepen our understanding of narcissism, impulsive buying, and their interrelationship.

Male = Science, Female = Humanities Both Implicit and Explicit Gender-Science Stereotypes Are Heritable

The gender-science stereotype of associating males, rather than females, with science is pervasive and influential. The present study challenged the common-sense assumption that it is environment that leads to the gender-science stereotype by conducting a genetically informative study. A total of 304 pairs of twins (152 monozygotic [MZ] and 152 dizygotic [DZ]) completed explicit and implicit gender-science stereotype measures twice across 2 years. Results showed that both explicit and implicit gender-science stereotypes were heritable, with significant nonshared environmental influence. Moreover, genetic and nonshared environmental factors influencing the explicit gender-science stereotype also affected the implicit gender-science stereotype to some extent. These findings have important implications for understanding the nature of the gender-science stereotype and implicit social cognition.

Implicit Self-Esteem Decreases in Adolescence: A Cross-Sectional Study

Implicit self-esteem has remained an active research topic in both the areas of implicit social cognition and self-esteem in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to explore the development of implicit self-esteem in adolescents. A total of 599 adolescents from junior and senior high schools in East China participated in the study. They ranged in age from 11 to 18 years with a mean age of 14.10 (SD = 2.16). The degree of implicit self-esteem was assessed using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) with the improved D score as the index. Participants also completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (α = 0.77). For all surveyed ages, implicit self-esteem was positively biased, all ts>8.59, all ps<0.001. The simple correlation between implicit self-esteem and age was significant, r = −.25, p = 1.0×10−10. A regression with implicit self-esteem as the criterion variable, and age, gender, and age × gender interaction as predictors further revealed the significant negative linear relationship between age and implicit self-esteem, β = −0.19, t = −3.20, p = 0.001. However, explicit self-esteem manifested a reverse “U” shape throughout adolescence. Implicit self-esteem in adolescence manifests a declining trend with increasing age, suggesting that it is sensitive to developmental or age-related changes. This finding enriches our understanding of the development of implicit social cognition.

Nostalgia and Self-Enhancement Phenotypic and Genetic Approaches

We addressed phenotypic and genetic research questions regarding nostalgia and self-enhancement. At the phenotypic level (178 university students; Study 1), we found that nostalgia was moderately associated with self-enhancement. At the genotypic level (232 twin pairs; Study 2), we found that nostalgia, self-enhancement, and their relation were largely heritable. Our findings shed light on two heavily investigated traits and open up exciting research directions.

Understanding Exclusionary Reactions Toward a Foreign Culture: The Influence of Intrusive Cultural Mixing on Implicit Intergroup Bias

Recent research has begun to examine the impact of cultural mixing on human psychology. We conducted four experiments to examine the influence of intrusive cultural mixing on implicit intergroup attitudes. Our results indicated that (a) intrusive cultural mixing augmented implicit prejudice toward the intruding foreign cultural group (Study 1), (b) heightened implicit prejudice partially mediated boycotting behavior provoked by intrusive cultural mixing (Study 2), and (c) both cultural identification (Study 3) and multicultural orientation (Study 4) moderated the influence of intrusive cultural mixing on implicit prejudice so that only individuals who highly identified with their heritage culture or those who exhibited a weak multicultural orientation manifested enhanced implicit prejudice. These findings extend our understanding of the influence of cultural mixing.

A Behavioral Genetic Study of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Dimensions of Narcissism

Narcissism, characterized by grandiose self-image and entitled feelings to others, has been increasingly prevalent in the past decades. This study examined genetic and environmental bases of two dimensions of narcissism: intrapersonal grandiosity and interpersonal entitlement. A total of 304 pairs of twins from Beijing, China completed the Narcissistic Grandiosity Scale and the Psychological Entitlement Scale. Both grandiosity (23%) and entitlement (35%) were found to be moderately heritable, while simultaneously showing considerable non-shared environmental influences. Moreover, the genetic and environmental influences on the two dimensions were mostly unique (92–93%), with few genetic and environmental effects in common (7–8%). The two dimensions of narcissism, intrapersonal grandiosity and interpersonal entitlement, are heritable and largely independent of each other in terms of their genetic and environmental sources. These findings extend our understanding of the heritability of narcissism on the one hand. On the other hand, the study demonstrates the rationale for distinguishing between intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of narcissism, and possibly personality in general as well.

Neural manifestations of implicit self-esteem: an ERP study.

Behavioral research has established that humans implicitly tend to hold a positive view toward themselves. In this study, we employed the event-related potential (ERP) technique to explore neural manifestations of positive implicit self-esteem using the Go/Nogo association task (GNAT). Participants generated a response (Go) or withheld a response (Nogo) to self or others words and good or bad attributes. Behavioral data showed that participants responded faster to the self paired with good than the self paired with bad, whereas the opposite proved true for others, reflecting the positive nature of implicit self-esteem. ERP results showed an augmented N200 over the frontal areas in Nogo responses relative to Go responses. Moreover, the positive implicit self-positivity bias delayed the onset time of the N200 wave difference between Nogo and Go trials, suggesting that positive implicit self-esteem is manifested on neural activity about 270 ms after the presentation of self-relevant stimuli. These findings provide neural evidence for the positivity and automaticity of implicit self-esteem.

Be Strong Enough to Say No: Self-Affirmation Increases Rejection to Unfair Offers

We propose that self-affirmation may endow people more psychological resources to buffer against the negative influence of rejecting unfair offers in the classic ultimatum game (UG) and further lead to a stronger tendency to reject those offers. We tested this possibility by conducting an event-related potential (ERP) study about the UG, with the ERP component P3 as an indirect indicator of psychological resources. Participants were randomly assigned to the affirmation or control condition and then completed the UG through electrophysiological recording. As expected, the behavioral data indicated that compared with unaffirmed ones, affirmed participants were more likely to reject unfair UG offers; the electrophysiological data indicated that compared to the unaffirmed, affirmed participants showed a greater P3 in response to the presentation of an offer. These findings suggest that psychological resources may play a role in rejecting others beyond the fairness concern, and additionally shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying self-affirmation.

The Development and Validation of the Social Network Sites SNSs Usage Questionnaire

Surfing Social network sites SNSs has become one of the most popular activity for ordinary people. To date, there has been no satisfactory measure to understand the role of SNSs in daily life. Considering this, we developed a self-report instrument, the Social Network Sites SNSs Usage Questionnaire, which included two subscales for featured usage and affective experience, respectively. Factor analysis suggested 3 factors for the subscale of featured usage and 2 factors for the subscale of affective experience. We referred to the Big Five Personality Inventory and a revised version of the Internet Motivation Questionnaire as external criteria to validate our questionnaire. The results indicated that the newly developed questionnaire is of good psychometric characteristics.

Affective Experience on Social Networking Sites Predicts Psychological Well-Being Off-Line

Previous studies have pondered the relevance of social networking sites (SNSs) to psychological well-being, but few have taken online affective experience into consideration. To extend previous research on the relationship between SNSs and psychological well-being, we opted to target emotions experienced while visiting SNSs as a means to predict off-line well-being. In our two studies, we surveyed affective experience on SNSs, overall life satisfaction, and general emotional well-being of young adults who access SNSs regularly. The results consistently demonstrated a positive association between SNS affective experience and off-line well-being. This finding held with SNS activities (Studies 1 and 2) and relevant personality traits (i.e., the Big Five factors, self-esteem; Study 2) considered in simultaneity. Our research highlights the important role of affective experience on SNSs in predicting off-line well-being as well as helps clarify the relationship between SNSs and well-being.