"I want to lift my people up": Exploring the psychological correlates of racial themes within the life stories of midlife Black Americans.

OBJECTIVE: This study explores how middle-aged Black Americans talk about race, without prompting, while telling their life stories. METHOD: Drawing upon a dataset of lengthy Life Story Interviews (N = 70), we first employed a keyword search to identify race-relevant interview scenes for each participant. Next, we conducted a thematic analysis of these scenes to identify salient racial narrative themes. Finally, we coded race-relevant scenes to examine the psychological correlates of racial narrative themes. RESULTS: We identified 460 total racially themed Life Story Interview scenes, with the number of racially themed scenes ranging from 1 to 17 across participants' interviews. Racial narrative themes included Community of Care, Black Cultural Identity, Multiculturalism, Activism, Encounter with Racism, Systemic Racism, and Racial Reckoning. Quantitative analyses highlight a relationship between racial narrative themes and psychological measures of wisdom and generativity. CONCLUSION: This study offers insight into the ways that race manifests in the life stories of Black Americans and highlights the importance of considering race in the study of narrative identity, and personality, more broadly.

Hiding in plain view: An historical perspective on the study of morality in personality psychology.

OBJECTIVE: We aim to identify the major ideas and trends in the study of morality within personality psychology over the past 100 years. METHOD: Our historical review is organized into three sections, examining moral dimensions in personality from the standpoints of the person as (1) a social actor (moral traits), (2) a motivated agent (the mental infrastructure of morality), and (3) an autobiographical author (moral life stories). RESULTS: Within the field of personality psychology, a great deal of research into morality has been hiding for decades in plain view. Accordingly, we trace the history of research on socialization and instrumental competence, altruism, moral traits and virtues, the dimensions of morality inherent in the authoritarian personality, personal values, moral reasoning, moral intuitions, and the life stories constructed by people who have distinguished themselves for moral excellence, as evidenced in extraordinary bravery, compassion, or generativity. CONCLUSIONS: In a multitude of ways, human beings express and experience individual differences in their moral engagement of the world, all of which fall within the purview of personality psychology.

Opposing contributions of psychologically distinct components of empathy to empathic accuracy.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on Jul 23 2020 (see record 2020-54558-001). In the original article, significance levels indicated by the asterisks in Table 2 are incorrect. The corrected Table 2 is given in erratum. All versions of this article have been corrected.] What is it that provides us an accurate window into the thoughts and feelings of others? Although, intuitively, it might seem as though trait empathy would enhance this ability, research has produced decidedly mixed results, ultimately failing to uncover robust, systematic relationships between the two. Recent research has suggested, however, that different facets of empathy-emotional contagion, on the one hand, and empathic concern, on the other-are psychologically distinct and result in different behavioral tendencies (Jordan, Amir, & Bloom, 2016). In 5 preregistered studies involving nearly 2,600 participants, we assessed the opposing contributions of these distinct facets of empathy to empathic accuracy. We found that whereas trait concern is beneficial to empathic accuracy, trait contagion is, paradoxically, detrimental. These patterns emerged across 4 different measures of empathic accuracy that involve emotional and mental states communicated through the eyes (Study 1), paralinguistic cues in the voice (Study 2), facial expressions (Studies 2 and 4), and cues presented during a mock interview (Study 3). Moreover, in Study 4, we identified rational thinking style as a mechanism for these opposing effects. Whereas those who exhibit contagion tend to be less rational, those who exhibit concern tend to be more rational. These differences in cognitive style mediate the opposing relationships of contagion and concern with interpersonal accuracy. Our studies thus highlight the value of empirically separating psychologically distinct facets of empathy to more accurately characterize their independent contributions to interpersonal processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Prediction of Risk of Death for Patients Starting Dialysis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Dialysis is a preference-sensitive decision where prognosis may play an important role. Although patients desire risk prediction, nephrologists are wary of sharing this information. We reviewed the performance of prognostic indices for patients starting dialysis to facilitate bedside translation. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS: Systematic review and meta-analysis following the PRISMA guidelines. We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Ovid Central Register of Controlled Trials, Ovid Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Scopus for eligible studies of patients starting dialysis published from inception to December 31, 2018. SELECTION CRITERIA: Articles describing validated prognostic indices predicting mortality at the start of dialysis. We excluded studies limited to prevalent dialysis patients, AKI and studies excluding mortality in the first 1-3 months. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts, performed full text assessment of inclusion criteria and extracted: study design, setting, population demographics, index performance and risk of bias. Pre-planned random effects meta-analysis was performed stratified by index and predictive window to reduce heterogeneity. RESULTS: Of 12,132 articles screened and 214 reviewed in full text, 36 studies were included describing 32 prognostic indices. Predictive windows ranged from 3 months to 10 years, cohort sizes from 46 to 52,796. Meta-analysis showed discrimination area under the curve (AUC) of 0.71 (95% confidence interval, 0.69 to 073) with high heterogeneity (I2=99.12). Meta-analysis by index showed highest AUC for The Obi, Ivory, and Charlson comorbidity index (CCI)=0.74, also CCI was the most commonly used (ten studies). Other commonly used indices were Kahn-Wright index (eight studies, AUC 0.68), Hemmelgarn modification of the CCI (six studies, AUC 0.66) and REIN index (five studies, AUC 0.69). Of the indices, ten have been validated externally, 16 internally and nine were pre-existing validated indices. Limitations include heterogeneity and exclusion of large cohort studies in prevalent patients. CONCLUSIONS: Several well validated indices with good discrimination are available for predicting survival at dialysis start.