Under the thin skin of narcissus: Facial muscle activity reveals amplified emotional responses to negative social evaluation in individuals with grandiose narcissistic traits.

Individuals with grandiose narcissism exhibit enhanced antagonism and a defensive pattern of discordance between their emotional and physiological reactions to self-threatening evaluations. Although theoretical perspectives link narcissistic defensiveness to negative emotions, empirical evidence linking grandiose narcissism to emotional reactivity remains mixed. The current study used self-reported affect, electrocardiography, and facial electromyography (fEMG) to examine whether people scoring high in grandiose narcissism show amplified physiological and self-reported emotional reactivity to negative social evaluation. Following two challenging cognitive tasks, participants received negative and neutral feedback in a face-to-face evaluation situation. Receiving negative feedback decreased self-reported positive affect and dominance, slowed heart rate, and amplified fEMG activity related to frowning and eye constriction. Although self-reported emotional reactions were unrelated to grandiose narcissism, fEMG activity associated with negative affect was significantly enhanced by grandiose narcissism. In conclusion, individuals with higher levels of grandiose narcissism may not be willing to report overt emotional reactivity to self-threatening feedback, but physiological responses "beneath their thin skin" reveal amplified threat-related facial muscle activity suggestive of a negative emotional state.

Psychosocial Effects of Receiving Genome-Wide Polygenic Risk Information Concerning Type 2 Diabetes and Coronary Heart Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Receiving polygenic risk estimates of future disease through health care or direct-to-consumer companies is expected to become more common in the coming decades. However, only a limited number of studies have examined if such estimates might evoke an adverse psychosocial reaction in receivers. The present study utilized data from a sub-section of a personalized medicine project (the P5 study) that combines genomic and traditional health data to evaluate participants' risk for certain common diseases. We investigated how communication of future disease risk estimates related to type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease influenced respondents' risk perception, self-efficacy, disease-related worry, and other emotions. A randomized controlled trial was conducted, where the experimental group (n = 714) received risk estimates based on traditional and polygenic risk factors and the control group (n = 649) based solely on traditional risk factors. On average, higher disease risk was associated with higher perceived risk (ps, <0.001, ηp 2 = 0.087-0.071), worry (ps <0.001, ηp 2 = 0.061-0.028), lower self-efficacy (p <0 .001, ηp 2 = 0.012), less positive emotions (ps <0.04, ηp 2 = 0.042-0.005), and more negative emotions (ps <0.048, ηp 2 = 0.062-0.006). However, we found no evidence that adding the polygenic risk to complement the more traditional risk factors would induce any substantive psychosocial harm to the recipients (ps >0.06).

A Web Portal for Communicating Polygenic Risk Score Results for Health Care Use-The P5 Study.

We present a method for communicating personalized genetic risk information to citizens and their physicians using a secure web portal. We apply the method for 3,177 Finnish individuals in the P5 Study where estimates of genetic and absolute risk, based on genetic and clinical risk factors, of future disease are reported to study participants, allowing individuals to participate in managing their own health. Our method facilitates using polygenic risk score as a personalized tool to estimate a person's future disease risk while offering a way for health care professionals to utilize the polygenic risk scores as a preventive tool in patient care.

Sociodemographic differences in motives for food selection: results from the LoCard cross-sectional survey.

BACKGROUND: Although sociodemographic differences in dietary intake have been widely studied, the up-to-date evidence on the corresponding variations in motives for food selection is limited. We investigated how sociodemographic characteristics and special diets in households are associated with the relative importance of various food motives. METHODS: Participants were members of the S Group loyalty card program across Finland who consented to release their grocery purchase data to be used for research purposes and responded to a web-based questionnaire in 2018 (LoCard study). Self-reported information on sociodemographic factors (age, gender, marital status, living situation, education, household income), special diets in household and food motives (Food Choice Questionnaire) were utilized in the present analyses (N = 10,795). Age- and gender-adjusted linear models were performed separately for each sociodemographic predictor and motive dimension (derived by factor analysis) outcome. The importance of each sociodemographic predictor was evaluated based on an increase in R2 value after adding the predictor to the age- and gender-adjusted model. RESULTS: Age emerged as a central determinant of food motives with the following strongest associations: young adults emphasized convenience (∆R2 = 0.09, P < 0.001) and mood control (∆R2 = 0.05, P < 0.001) motives more than middle-aged and older adults. The relative importance of cheapness decreased with increasing socioeconomic position (SEP) (∆R2 = 0.08, P < 0.001 for income and ∆R2 = 0.04, P < 0.001 for education). However, the price item ("is good value for money") depicting the concept of worth did not distinguish between SEP categories. Considerations related to familiarity of food were more salient to men (∆R2 = 0.02, P < 0.001) and those with lower SEP (∆R2 = 0.03, P < 0.001 for education and ∆R2 = 0.01, P < 0.001 for income). Respondents living in households with a vegetarian, red-meat-free, gluten-free or other type of special diet rated ethical concern as relatively more important than households with no special diets (∆R2 = 0.02, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: We observed sociodemographic differences in a range of food motives that might act as barriers or drivers for adopting diets that benefit human and planetary health. Interventions aiming to narrow SEP and gender disparities in dietary intake should employ strategies that take into account higher priority of familiarity and price in daily food selection in lower-SEP individuals and males.

How bodily expressions of emotion after norm violation influence perceivers' moral judgments and prevent social exclusion: A socio-functional approach to nonverbal shame display.

According to a socio-functional perspective on emotions, displaying shame with averted gaze and a slumped posture following a norm violation signals that the person is ready to conform to the group's moral standards, which in turn protects the person from social isolation and punishment. Although the assumption is intuitive, direct empirical evidence for it remains surprisingly limited and the mediating social-psychological mechanisms are poorly understood. Therefore, three experimental studies were conducted to investigate the social function of nonverbal displays of shame in the context of everyday norm violations. In Study 1, participants evaluated ten different expressions of emotion in regard to their affective valence, arousal, dominance, as well as social meaning in the context of norm violations. Displays of shame and sadness were seen as the most similar expressions with respect to the three affective dimensions and were perceived to communicate the perpetrator's understanding of the group's moral standards most effectively. In Study 2, participants read vignettes concerning norm violations and afterward saw a photograph of the perpetrator displaying nonverbal shame, sadness or a neutral expression. Perpetrators' displays of shame and sadness increased perceived moral sense and amplified the observers' willingness to cooperate with the perpetrators. However, neither display weakened the observer's willingness to punish the perpetrator. In Study 3, the perpetrator was shown to display shame, sadness, anger or a neutral expression after getting caught at mild or severe norm violation. The results replicated previous findings but revealed also that the social effects of shame and sadness displays on punitive and cooperative intentions were mediated by different social appraisals. For example, display of shame uniquely reduced punitive intentions by increasing the perpetrator's perceived moral sense, whereas expressions of both shame and sadness evoked empathy in the observers, which in turn reduced the punitive intentions. These results give support to the assumption that nonverbal shame displays serve a unique social function in preventing moral punishment and social exclusion. However, this support is only partial as the social functions of displaying shame are largely parallel to those of expressing sadness in the situation.