Economic and social deprivation predicts impulsive choice in young children.

Impulsivity is an individual difference in decision-making that is a risk factor for a number of health concerns including addiction and obesity. Although impulsivity has a large heritable component it, the health concerns associated with impulsivity are not uniformly distributed across society. For example, people from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be overweight, and be dependent on tobacco or alcohol. This suggests that the environmental component of impulsivity night be related to economic circumstances and availability of resources. This paper provides evidence that children aged 4 to 12 from the most deprived areas show greater impulsivity in the form of delay discounting than do children from the least deprived areas. The data are discussed with reference to scarcity based models of decision-making and to public health inequalities.

A novel lattice hydrodynamic model accounting for individual difference of honk effect for two-lane highway under V2X environment

In this work, the individual difference of the honk effect is explored on two lanes via traffic modeling of the lattice model under Vehicle to X (V2X) environment. We study the impact of individual difference corresponding to honk cases on traffic stability through linear stability analysis for a two-lane highway. Furthermore, the mKdV equation under the lane changing phenomena is conducted via nonlinear analysis. Simulation cases for the early time and longtime impact reveal that individual difference of driving characteristics has a distinct impact on two lanes under the whistling environment.

The Diversity Paradox

The diversity paradox is an organizational emphasis placed upon one potential understanding of diversity which, paradoxically, deemphasizes alternative expressions of individual difference. An organizational focus on representations of gender, for instance, synchronously moves the focus away from sexual orientation; an focus on sexual orientation synchronously moves the focus away from age; and so on. The diversity paradox commonly manifests via six interrelated tenants. First, organizational discourses promote a fractionated understanding of what it means to be a diverse organization, resulting in a visible hierarchy of difference and the sense of false attainment among its leadership. Among organizational members, this false attainment results in neglected representation for certain minorities, as well as diminished alternatives for organizational life and an increased level of potential tokenism. The present article explores the diversity paradox in more detail, including its background, six primary tenants, and future recommendations.

Boredom is the root of all evil — or is it? A psychometric network approach to individual differences in behavioral responses to boredom

Functional accounts of boredom propose that boredom serves as an impartial signal to change something about the current situation, which should give rise to adaptive and maladaptive behavior alike. This contrasts with research on boredom proneness, which has overwhelmingly shown associations with maladaptive behavior. To shed light on this discrepancy, we disentangled boredom proneness from individual differences in (1) the urge to avoid and escape boredom and (2) adaptive and maladaptive ways of dealing with boredom. In a high-powered study (N = 636), psychometric network modeling revealed tight associations between boredom proneness and less adaptive and (especially) more maladaptive ways of dealing with boredom. However, its associations with the urge to avoid and escape boredom were rather weak. Importantly, a higher urge to avoid and escape boredom was linked not only to more maladaptive but also to more adaptive ways of dealing with boredom. This pattern of results was robust across various specific behaviors that have previously been linked to boredom. Our findings provide novel evidence for functional accounts of boredom from an individual difference perspective, cautioning against a shallow view of boredom as a purely maladaptive experience.

Susceptibility to COVID-19 Scams: The Roles of Age, Individual Difference Measures, and Scam-Related Perceptions

As the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding, a surge in scams was registered across the globe. While COVID-19 poses higher health risks for older adults, it is unknown whether older adults are also facing higher financial risks as a result of COVID-19 scams. Here, we examined age differences in vulnerability to COVID-19 scams and individual difference measures (such as impulsivity, ad skepticism, and past experiences with fraud) that might help explain them. A lifespan sample (M = 48.03, SD = 18.56) of sixty-eight younger (18–40 years, M = 25.67, SD = 5.93), 79 middle-aged (41–64 years, M = 49.86, SD = 7.20), and 63 older adults (65–84 years, M = 69.87, SD = 4.50) recruited through Prolific completed questions and questionnaires online. In a within-subjects design, each participant responded to five COVID-19 solicitations, psychological measures, and demographic questions. Age group comparisons revealed that older adults were marginally less likely to perceive COVID-19 solicitations as genuine than middle-aged adults were. In addition, older adults perceived significantly fewer benefits than both younger and middle-aged adults did and perceived marginally higher risks than younger adults did. Hence, older adults did not exhibit greater vulnerability to COVID-19 scams. Regardless of age, intentions to respond to COVID-19 solicitations were positively predicted by higher levels of educational attainment, being married, past fraud victimization, and higher levels of positive urgency. As expected, stronger genuineness and benefit perceptions positively predicted action intentions, whereas stronger risk perceptions negatively predicted action intentions As such, COVID-19 scam susceptibility appears to be the result of a impulse control issue that is not easily inhibited, not even by past experiences of scam victimization.

Machine-learning as a validated tool to characterize individual differences in free recall of naturalistic events.

The use of naturalistic stimuli, such as narrative movies, is gaining popularity in many fields, characterizing memory, affect, and decision-making. Narrative recall paradigms are often used to capture the complexity and richness of memory for naturalistic events. However, scoring narrative recalls is time-consuming and prone to human biases. Here, we show the validity and reliability of using a natural language processing tool, the Universal Sentence Encoder (USE), to automatically score narrative recall. We compared the reliability in scoring made between two independent raters (i.e., hand-scored) and between our automated algorithm and individual raters (i.e., automated) on trial-unique, video clips of magic tricks. Study 1 showed that our automated segmentation approaches yielded high reliability and reflected measures yielded by hand-scoring, and further that the results using USE outperformed another popular natural language processing tool, GloVe. In study two, we tested whether our automated approach remained valid when testing individual’s varying on clinically-relevant dimensions that influence episodic memory, age and anxiety. We found that our automated approach was equally reliable across both age groups and anxiety groups, which shows the efficacy of our approach to assess narrative recall in large-scale individual difference analysis. In sum, these findings suggested that machine learning approaches implementing USE are a promising tool for scoring large-scale narrative recalls and perform individual difference analysis for research using naturalistic stimuli.

Race, politics, and perceptions of anti-Black and anti-White discrimination over time

Race differences in perceptions of discrimination are well documented, but questions remain about contextual- and individual-difference moderators of when White and Black Americans see racial bias. We examined how temporal framing (focusing on past decades or not), race, political party, and domain of discrimination influence discrimination perceptions. Temporal framing did not moderate perceptions for White or Black participants (Study 1). Perceived anti-White and anti-Black discrimination converged over time (from the 1950s to the present), but especially so among White participants (Studies 1 and 2). Domain of discrimination moderated perceptions, with White respondents perceiving the steepest rise in anti-White discrimination and the steepest decline in anti-Black discrimination in the education and employment domains (Study 2). Across both studies, only White Republicans reported that White Americans face more discrimination than Black Americans. This research extends the literature on racial and political divides in discrimination perceptions, and highlights variability in perceptions across discrimination domains.