Who Wants to Enhance Their Cognitive Abilities? Potential Predictors of the Acceptance of Cognitive Enhancement.

With advances in new technologies, the topic of cognitive enhancement has been at the center of public debate in recent years. Various enhancement methods (e.g., brain stimulation, smart drugs, or working memory training) promise improvements in one's cognitive abilities such as intelligence and memory. Although these methods have been rather ineffective so far, they are largely available to the general public and can be applied individually. As applying enhancement might be accompanied by certain risks, it is important to understand which individuals seek to enhance themselves. For instance, individuals' intelligence, personality, and interests might predict their willingness to get enhanced. Thus, in a preregistered study, we asked 257 participants about their acceptance of various enhancement methods and tested predictors thereof, such as participants' psychometrically measured and self-estimated intelligence. While both measured and self-estimated intelligence as well as participants' implicit beliefs about intelligence, did not predict participants' acceptance of enhancement; a younger age, higher interest in science-fiction, and (partially) higher openness as well as lower conscientiousness did. Thus, certain interests and personality traits might contribute to the willingness to enhance one's cognition. Finally, we discuss the need for replication and argue for testing other potential predictors of the acceptance of cognitive enhancement.

Supporting Cognition With Modern Technology: Distributed Cognition Today and in an AI-Enhanced Future.

In the present article, we explore prospects for using artificial intelligence (AI) to distribute cognition via cognitive offloading (i.e., to delegate thinking tasks to AI-technologies). Modern technologies for cognitive support are rapidly developing and increasingly popular. Today, many individuals heavily rely on their smartphones or other technical gadgets to support their daily life but also their learning and work. For instance, smartphones are used to track and analyze changes in the environment, and to store and continually update relevant information. Thus, individuals can offload (i.e., externalize) information to their smartphones and refresh their knowledge by accessing it. This implies that using modern technologies such as AI empowers users via offloading and enables them to function as always-updated knowledge professionals, so that they can deploy their insights strategically instead of relying on outdated and memorized facts. This AI-supported offloading of cognitive processes also saves individuals' internal cognitive resources by distributing the task demands into their environment. In this article, we provide (1) an overview of empirical findings on cognitive offloading and (2) an outlook on how individuals' offloading behavior might change in an AI-enhanced future. More specifically, we first discuss determinants of offloading such as the design of technical tools and links to metacognition. Furthermore, we discuss benefits and risks of cognitive offloading. While offloading improves immediate task performance, it might also be a threat for users' cognitive abilities. Following this, we provide a perspective on whether individuals will make heavier use of AI-technologies for offloading in the future and how this might affect their cognition. On one hand, individuals might heavily rely on easily accessible AI-technologies which in return might diminish their internal cognition/learning. On the other hand, individuals might aim at enhancing their cognition so that they can keep up with AI-technologies and will not be replaced by them. Finally, we present own data and findings from the literature on the assumption that individuals' personality is a predictor of trust in AI. Trust in modern AI-technologies might be a strong determinant for wider appropriation and dependence on these technologies to distribute cognition and should thus be considered in an AI-enhanced future.

Human enhancement and personality: A new approach towards investigating their relationship.

With the rise of new technologies, also human enhancement is widely discussed. Especially the philosophical movement "transhumanism" urges for creating "better humans" by applying different enhancement methods, namely: pharmacological, current-based, and genetic enhancement as well as mind uploading. While the first three aim at enhancing human characteristics, mind uploading promises immortality by uploading one's brain onto an external storage medium. In the present study, we adapted the method of divergent thinking tasks to assess individuals' assumptions about enhancement methods. These were rated regarding their negativity/positivity and societal-/individual-orientation and then tested whether they are predicted by basic human values and selected personality traits. While individuals' values were not related to their assumptions about enhancement, openness predicted more negative assumptions about most enhancement methods, and a higher intellect predicted more societal-oriented assumptions about genetic enhancement. Furthermore, higher grandiose narcissism predicted more negative assumptions about current-based enhancement and higher psychopathic tendencies predicted more positive assumptions about genetic enhancement. Additionally, higher Machiavellianism predicted more individual-oriented assumptions about pharmacological and current-based enhancement. However, all relationships were of small effect size. We urge for further psychological research in this increasingly relevant field.

Less-Intelligent and Unaware? Accuracy and Dunning-Kruger Effects for Self-Estimates of Different Aspects of Intelligence.

People's perceptions of their intelligence correlate only moderately with objective intelligence measures. On average, people overestimate themselves. According to the popular Dunning-Kruger effect, this is particularly true for low performers: across many domains, those in the lowest quartile overestimate their abilities the most. However, recent work using improved statistical approaches found little support for a Dunning-Kruger effect in general intelligence. We investigated accuracy and Dunning-Kruger effects for self-estimates of general, verbal, numerical, and spatial intelligence-domains that differed in how well they can be judged in the past. A total of 281 participants completed self-estimates and intelligence measures online. Self-estimates showed mostly moderate correlational accuracy that was slightly higher for numerical intelligence and lower for verbal intelligence. Across domains, participants rated their intelligence as above average. However, as their intelligence was indeed high, this was not an overestimation. While standard analyses indicated Dunning-Kruger effects in general, verbal, and spatial intelligence, improved statistical methods only yielded some support for one in verbal intelligence: people with lower verbal intelligence tended to have less self-knowledge about it. The generalizability of these findings is limited to young, highly educated populations. Nevertheless, our results contribute to a growing literature questioning the generality of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The Impact of Personality in the Selection of Teacher Students: Is There More to it Than the Big Five?

The bandwidth-fidelity dilemma is a controversially discussed problem in personality measurement. In this study, we contrasted the utility of broad versus narrow personality traits in an admission exam for teacher students. We compared the Big Five and narrow personality constructs (social-communicative behavior, achievement behavior, health and recreation behavior), which were part of an assessment battery for teacher student selection (N = 1120), regarding overlap and predictive validity. As criterion variables, academic satisfaction (N = 184) and GPA (N = 680) were assessed later. Reasonableness of including both questionnaires in one assessment may be questioned in terms of overlap of the personality inventories. Results show that health and recreation behavior cannot be covered by the Big Five in a selection procedure. Empirically, both broad and narrow traits show predictive validity for academic success and satisfaction.

Creativity and intelligence: A link to different levels of human needs hierarchy?

The relationship between creativity and intelligence has been intensely studied, but still is not clearly understood. Here, we aimed to investigate how creativity and intelligence are related to the different levels of human needs hierarchy. 342 participants completed a battery of instruments for intelligence and creativity as well as inventories for assessing the human needs satisfaction/frustration and self-actualization. We expected that creativity, as a characteristic of a self-actualized person should be related stronger to self-actualization needs, whereas intelligence should be related stronger to satisfaction/frustration, because of its role for humans' adaptation and survival. Results largely confirm expectations: Intelligence is positively related to lower needs, while creativity measures (divergent thinking, creative achievements and activities) show positive associations with higher levels of human needs. These results might contribute to the scientific debate regarding the distinction and the nature of the difference between intelligence and creativity.

To create or to recall original ideas: Brain processes associated with the imagination of novel object uses.

This fMRI study investigated what brain processes contribute to the generation of new ideas. Brain activation was measured while participants generated new original object uses, recalled original object uses, or recalled common object uses. Post-scan evaluations were used to confirm what ideas were newly generated on the spot or actually retrieved from memory. When compared to the recall of common ideas, the generation of new and old original ideas showed a similar activation pattern including activation of bilateral parahippocampal and mPFC regions, suggesting that the construction of new ideas builds on similar processes like the reconstruction of original ideas from episodic memory. As a difference, the generation of new object uses involved higher activation of a focused cluster in the left supramarginal gyrus compared to the recall of original ideas. This finding adds to the converging evidence that the left supramarginal gyrus is crucially involved in the construction of novel representations, potentially by integrating memory content in new ways and supporting executively demanding mental simulations. This study deepens our understanding of how creative thought builds on and goes beyond memory.

The self-other knowledge asymmetry in cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and creativity.

The self-other knowledge asymmetry model (SOKA) assumes that some personality traits might be open to oneself and other persons ('open area'), while other traits are more accurately perceived by others ('blind spot'); a third group of traits might be visible only to oneself and not to others ('hidden area'), and finally a trait might neither be visible to oneself nor to one's peers ('unknown area'). So far, this model has been tested only for personality traits and general intelligence, not for more specific abilities; to do so was the novel intention of our study. We tested which of six abilities (verbal, numerical, and spatial intelligence; interpersonal and intrapersonal competence; and creative potential/divergent thinking ability) are in which SOKA area. We administered performance tests for the six abilities in two samples - 233 14-year-olds and 215 18-year-olds - and collected self- and peer-ratings for each domain. Numerical intelligence and creativity were judged validly both from self- and peer-perspectives ('open area'). In the younger sample verbal intelligence was validly estimated only by peers ('blind spot'), whereas the older group showed some insight into their own abilities as well ('blind spot' to 'open area'). While in the younger group only the pupils themselves could validly estimate their intra- and interpersonal competence ('hidden area'), in the older group peers were also successful in estimating other's interpersonal competence, albeit only with low accuracy ('hidden area' to 'open area'). For 18-year-olds, spatial ability was in the hidden area too, but in 14-year-olds this could neither be validly estimated by pupils themselves nor by peers ('unknown area'). These results implicate the possibility of non-optimal career choices of young people, and could, therefore, be helpful in guiding professional career counselling.

The Relationship between Grandiose and Vulnerable (Hypersensitive) Narcissism.

Narcissistic grandiosity is characterized by overt expressions of feelings of superiority and entitlement, while narcissistic vulnerability reflects hypersensitivity and introversive self-absorbedness. Clinical evidence suggests that grandiosity is accompanied by vulnerable aspects, pointing to a common foundation. Subclinical personality research, however, views grandiose and vulnerable narcissism as independent traits. Grandiose narcissism displays substantial correlation with extraversion, while vulnerable narcissism correlates highly with introversion. We investigated if (1) controlling for intro-/extraversion might reveal a "common core" of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, and if (2) the correlation between both aspects might be higher at higher levels of narcissism. Latent variable structural equation modeling and segmented regression analysis confirmed these hypotheses in a large non-clinical sample (N = 1,006). Interindividual differences in intro-/extraversion mask the common core of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. The association between both aspects increases at high levels (upper 10%) of grandiose narcissism, which suggests a possible transition to clinically relevant (pathological) narcissism.

Creativity on tap? Effects of alcohol intoxication on creative cognition.

Anecdotal reports link alcohol intoxication to creativity, while cognitive research highlights the crucial role of cognitive control for creative thought. This study examined the effects of mild alcohol intoxication on creative cognition in a placebo-controlled design. Participants completed executive and creative cognition tasks before and after consuming either alcoholic beer (BAC of 0.03) or non-alcoholic beer (placebo). Alcohol impaired executive control, but improved performance in the Remote Associates Test, and did not affect divergent thinking ability. The findings indicate that certain aspects of creative cognition benefit from mild attenuations of cognitive control, and contribute to the growing evidence that higher cognitive control is not always associated with better cognitive performance.

Self-viewing is associated with negative affect rather than reward in highly narcissistic men: an fMRI study.

Subclinical narcissism is a personality trait with two faces: According to social-cognitive theories it is associated with grandiosity and feelings of superiority, whereas psychodynamic theories emphasize vulnerable aspects like fluctuating self-esteem and emotional conflicts. The psychodynamic view, however, is commonly not supported by self-report studies on subclinical narcissism. Personality neuroscience might help to better understand the phenomenon of narcissism beyond the limits of self-report research. While social-cognitive theory would predict that self-relevant processing should be accompanied by brain activity in reward-related areas in narcissistic individuals, psychodynamic theory would suggest that it should be accompanied by activation in regions pointing to negative affect or emotional conflict. In this study, extreme groups of high and low narcissistic individuals performed a visual self-recognition paradigm during fMRI. Viewing one's own face (as compared to faces of friends and strangers) was accompanied by greater activation of the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in highly narcissistic men. These results suggest that highly narcissistic men experience greater negative affect or emotional conflict during self-relevant processing and point to vulnerable aspects of subclinical narcissism that might not be apparent in self-report research.

Brain mechanisms associated with internally directed attention and self-generated thought.

Internal cognition like imagination and prospection require sustained internally directed attention and involve self-generated thought. This fMRI study aimed to disentangle the brain mechanisms associated with attention-specific and task-specific processes during internally directed cognition. The direction of attention was manipulated by either keeping a relevant stimulus visible throughout the task, or by masking it, so that the task had to be performed "in the mind's eye". The level of self-directed thought was additionally varied between a convergent and a divergent thinking task. Internally directed attention was associated with increased activation in the right anterior inferior parietal lobe (aIPL), bilateral lingual gyrus and the cuneus, as well as with extended deactivations of superior parietal and occipital regions representing parts of the dorsal attention network. The right aIPL further showed increased connectivity with occipital regions suggesting an active top-down mechanism for shielding ongoing internal processes from potentially distracting sensory stimulation in terms of perceptual decoupling. Activation of the default network was not related to internally directed attention per se, but rather to a higher level of self-generated thought. The findings hence shed further light on the roles of inferior and superior parietal cortex for internally directed cognition.

Personality and complex brain networks: The role of openness to experience in default network efficiency.

The brain's default network (DN) has been a topic of considerable empirical interest. In fMRI research, DN activity is associated with spontaneous and self-generated cognition, such as mind-wandering, episodic memory retrieval, future thinking, mental simulation, theory of mind reasoning, and creative cognition. Despite large literatures on developmental and disease-related influences on the DN, surprisingly little is known about the factors that impact normal variation in DN functioning. Using structural equation modeling and graph theoretical analysis of resting-state fMRI data, we provide evidence that Openness to Experience-a normally distributed personality trait reflecting a tendency to engage in imaginative, creative, and abstract cognitive processes-underlies efficiency of information processing within the DN. Across two studies, Openness predicted the global efficiency of a functional network comprised of DN nodes and corresponding edges. In Study 2, Openness remained a robust predictor-even after controlling for intelligence, age, gender, and other personality variables-explaining 18% of the variance in DN functioning. These findings point to a biological basis of Openness to Experience, and suggest that normally distributed personality traits affect the intrinsic architecture of large-scale brain systems. Hum Brain Mapp 37:773-779, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Training of verbal creativity modulates brain activity in regions associated with language- and memory-related demands.

This functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) study was designed to investigate changes in functional patterns of brain activity during creative ideation as a result of a computerized, 3-week verbal creativity training. The training was composed of various verbal divergent thinking exercises requiring participants to train approximately 20 min per day. Fifty-three participants were tested three times (psychometric tests and fMRI assessment) with an intertest-interval of 4 weeks each. Participants were randomly assigned to two different training groups, which received the training time-delayed: The first training group was trained between the first and the second test, while the second group accomplished the training between the second and the third test session. At the behavioral level, only one training group showed improvements in different facets of verbal creativity right after the training. Yet, functional patterns of brain activity during creative ideation were strikingly similar across both training groups. Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses (along with supplementary region of interest analyses) revealed that the training was associated with activity changes in well-known creativity-related brain regions such as the left inferior parietal cortex and the left middle temporal gyrus, which have been shown as being particularly sensitive to the originality facet of creativity in previous research. Taken together, this study demonstrates that continuous engagement in a specific complex cognitive task like divergent thinking is associated with reliable changes of activity patterns in relevant brain areas, suggesting more effective search, retrieval, and integration from internal memory representations as a result of the training.

Gray matter correlates of creative potential: a latent variable voxel-based morphometry study.

There is increasing research interest in the structural and functional brain correlates underlying creative potential. Recent investigations found that interindividual differences in creative potential relate to volumetric differences in brain regions belonging to the default mode network, such as the precuneus. Yet, the complex interplay between creative potential, intelligence, and personality traits and their respective neural bases is still under debate. We investigated regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differences that can be associated with creative potential in a heterogeneous sample of N=135 individuals using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). By means of latent variable modeling and consideration of recent psychometric advancements in creativity research, we sought to disentangle the effects of ideational originality and fluency as two independent indicators of creative potential. Intelligence and openness to experience were considered as common covariates of creative potential. The results confirmed and extended previous research: rGMV in the precuneus was associated with ideational originality, but not with ideational fluency. In addition, we found ideational originality to be correlated with rGMV in the caudate nucleus. The results indicate that the ability to produce original ideas is tied to default-mode as well as dopaminergic structures. These structural brain correlates of ideational originality were apparent throughout the whole range of intellectual ability and thus not moderated by intelligence. In contrast, structural correlates of ideational fluency, a quantitative marker of creative potential, were observed only in lower intelligent individuals in the cuneus/lingual gyrus.

Intelligence, creativity, and cognitive control: The common and differential involvement of executive functions in intelligence and creativity.

Intelligence and creativity are known to be correlated constructs suggesting that they share a common cognitive basis. The present study assessed three specific executive abilities - updating, shifting, and inhibition - and examined their common and differential relations to fluid intelligence and creativity (i.e., divergent thinking ability) within a latent variable model approach. Additionally, it was tested whether the correlation of fluid intelligence and creativity can be explained by a common executive involvement. As expected, fluid intelligence was strongly predicted by updating, but not by shifting or inhibition. Creativity was predicted by updating and inhibition, but not by shifting. Moreover, updating (and the personality factor openness) was found to explain a relevant part of the shared variance between intelligence and creativity. The findings provide direct support for the executive involvement in creative thought and shed further light on the functional relationship between intelligence and creativity.

Sex differences in the IQ-white matter microstructure relationship: a DTI study.

Sex differences in the relationship between general intelligence and brain structure are a topic of increasing research interest. Early studies focused mainly on gray and white matter differences using voxel-based morphometry, while more recent studies investigated neural fiber tracts using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to analyze the white matter microstructure. In this study we used tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) on DTI to test how intelligence is associated with brain diffusion indices and to see whether this relationship differs between men and women. 63 Men and women divided into groups of lower and higher intelligence were selected. Whole-brain DTI scans were analyzed using TBSS calculating maps of fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (RD), and axial diffusivity (AD). The results reveal that the white matter microstructure differs between individuals as a function of intelligence and sex. In men, higher intelligence was related to higher FA and lower RD in the corpus callosum. In women, in contrast, intelligence was not related to the white matter microstructure. The higher values of FA and lower values of RD suggest that intelligence is associated with higher myelination and/or a higher number of axons particularly in men. This microstructural difference in the corpus callosum may increase cognitive functioning by reducing inter-hemispheric transfer time and thus account for more efficient brain functioning in men.

Creativity and the default network: A functional connectivity analysis of the creative brain at rest.

The present research used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether the ability to generate creative ideas corresponds to differences in the intrinsic organization of functional networks in the brain. We examined the functional connectivity between regions commonly implicated in neuroimaging studies of divergent thinking, including the inferior prefrontal cortex and the core hubs of the default network. Participants were prescreened on a battery of divergent thinking tests and assigned to high- and low-creative groups based on task performance. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis revealed greater connectivity between the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the entire default mode network in the high-creative group. The right IFG also showed greater functional connectivity with bilateral inferior parietal cortex and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the high-creative group. The results suggest that the ability to generate creative ideas is characterized by increased functional connectivity between the inferior prefrontal cortex and the default network, pointing to a greater cooperation between brain regions associated with cognitive control and low-level imaginative processes.

Creativity and personality in classical, jazz and folk musicians.

The music genre of jazz is commonly associated with creativity. However, this association has hardly been formally tested. Therefore, this study aimed at examining whether jazz musicians actually differ in creativity and personality from musicians of other music genres. We compared students of classical music, jazz music, and folk music with respect to their musical activities, psychometric creativity and different aspects of personality. In line with expectations, jazz musicians are more frequently engaged in extracurricular musical activities, and also complete a higher number of creative musical achievements. Additionally, jazz musicians show higher ideational creativity as measured by divergent thinking tasks, and tend to be more open to new experiences than classical musicians. This study provides first empirical evidence that jazz musicians show particularly high creativity with respect to domain-specific musical accomplishments but also in terms of domain-general indicators of divergent thinking ability that may be relevant for musical improvisation. The findings are further discussed with respect to differences in formal and informal learning approaches between music genres.