#eric dolan

New study sheds light on cognitive mechanisms linked to hypnosis (Eric W. Dolan, PsyPost, May 30 2021)

“Both tests were used to assess a cognitive phenomenon known as perseveration, meaning the tendency to apply previously learned (but incorrect) logical rules after being presented with new (correct) rules.

“We found an association between people’s ability to respond to suggestions in hypnosis (i.e., hypnotizability or hypnotic suggestibility) and how easy it is for them to shift between different cognitive sets (less perseveration).

“This provides behavioral evidence for a potential shared mechanism between hypnotizability and executive functions,” Faerman told PsyPost.

“Practically, the more hypnotizable one is, the easier it was for them to drop an old rule system and transition to a new rule system.

While there is a need for further evidence to substantiate this, some might interpret our findings as increased cognitive flexibility.”

The researchers had also predicted that hypnotizability would be associated with faster performance on simple attention tasks and with slower performance on more complex cognitive tasks.

However, the results from the neuropsychological tests showed no evidence of this. (…)

“Coupling behavioral performance with neuroimaging can shed more light on the neurocognitive mechanism at play in hypnotizability. 

When we have targets for neural mechanisms, we can try to modulate them to improve the effects of hypnosis,” Faerman said.

Researchers identify a new personality construct that describes the tendency to see oneself as a victim (Eric W. Dolan, PsyPost, Dec 03 2020)

“Study authors Rahav Gabay and team describe how the social world is satiated with interpersonal transgressions that are often unpleasant and seemingly unwarranted, such as being interrupted when speaking.

While some people can easily brush off these moments of hurt, others tend to ruminate over them and persistently paint themselves as a victim.

The authors present this feeling of being the victim as a novel personality construct that influences how people make sense of the world around them.

The researchers call it the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV), which they define as “an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, which is generalized across many kinds of relationships.” (…)

An initial three studies established the TIV as a consistent and stable trait that involves four dimensions: moral elitism, a lack of empathy, the need for recognition, and rumination. 

A follow-up study further found that this tendency for victimhood is linked to anxious attachment  — an attachment style characterized by feeling insecure in one’s relationships — suggesting that the personality trait may be rooted in early relationships with caregivers. (…)

The researchers suggest that TIV as a construct offers a framework for understanding how a person’s interpretation of social transgressions can inform feelings of victimhood and lead to revenge behaviors.

These insights could inform therapeutic practices for treating such cognitive biases.

The authors suggest that it would be particularly interesting for future studies to explore what happens when people high in TIV are in positions of power. 

New research indicates political conservatism, disgust sensitivity and orderliness are psychologically interrelated (Eric Dolan, PsyBlog, Oct 09 2019)

“In all six datasets, personality was assessed using the Big Five Aspect Scale, which breaks down each of the Big Five traits — neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness — into two aspects.

Importantly, conscientiousness is divided into industriousness and orderliness.

After controlling for age and gender, the researchers found that orderliness but not industriousness mediated the relationship between disgust sensitivity and political conservatism.

In other words, those who scored higher on measures of orderliness tended to also score higher on measures of disgust sensitivity, which in turn was associated with the endorsement of conservative beliefs.

“Taken together, these findings suggest that higher levels of trait disgust promote the motivation to maintain order, which contributes to the endorsement political ideologies that promote societal order,” the researchers said.

The major caveat for this study is that it is correlational.

Day 26: PURPLE DAY!

Yes, we’ve arrived, it’s Purple Day!  So many people all around the world will have been working hard to raise awareness in the run up to and for today.  There will be people wearing purple, fundraisers taking place to raise money, and those affected directly and indirectly by epilepsy celebrating their day originated by Canadian epilepsy advocate Megan Cassidy back in 2008.

My contribution today…