Exploring the Relationship between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Implicit Attitudes toward Violence.

Past research has associated callous-unemotional traits (CU) in young people with serious conduct problems and antisocial behavior. However, whether CU traits influence implicit attitudes toward violence remains largely unexplored. We assess this hypothesis in two independent samples: a sample of youth with no criminal records (Study 1, N = 86), and in a sample of young offenders (Study 2, N = 61). Both groups were not compared due to theoretical (very different demographics) and statistical reasons (the total sample was insufficient to be able to reach the statistical power required in the comparison of both groups). Further, we use an implicit procedure to examine whether CU traits modulate wanting for violent stimuli. Across two samples of youth, we found little evidence of an association between CU traits and implicit violent cognition. In youth with no criminal records, implicit attitudes toward violence were related to the unemotional factor of CU traits, but unrelated to other factors and to a global CU traits score. CU traits were not associated with implicit attitudes toward violence in young offenders. The latter finding was mirrored in the implicit wanting task. Overall, our findings cast some doubts on the adequacy of implicit measures to assess implicit violent cognition in youth with CU traits. We discuss potential methodological limitations of this research (e.g., characteristics of the sample and performance in the implicit procedures) that may impact our results.

Active tactile discrimination is coupled with and modulated by the cardiac cycle.

Perception and cognition are modulated by the phase of the cardiac signal in which the stimuli are presented. This has been shown by locking the presentation of stimuli to distinct cardiac phases. However, in everyday life sensory information is not presented in this passive and phase-locked manner, instead we actively move and control our sensors to perceive the world. Whether active sensing is coupled and modulated with the cardiac cycle remains largely unknown. Here, we recorded the electrocardiograms of human participants while they actively performed a tactile grating orientation task. We show that the duration of subjects' touch varied as a function of the cardiac phase in which they initiated it. Touches initiated in the systole phase were held for longer periods of time than touches initiated in the diastole phase. This effect was most pronounced when elongating the duration of the touches to sense the most difficult gratings. Conversely, while touches in the control condition were coupled to the cardiac cycle, their length did not vary as a function of the phase in which these were initiated. Our results reveal that we actively spend more time sensing during systole periods, the cardiac phase associated with lower perceptual sensitivity (vs. diastole). In line with interoceptive inference accounts, these results indicate that we actively adjust the acquisition of sense data to our internal bodily cycles.

Most of what is known about human senses comes from experiments under laboratory conditions where participants stay still and stimuli are presented to them by the scientists. However, this approach does not reflect what happens in real life as we move around, changing the position of our eyes, heads and hands, to actively sense the world. Our perception also changes depending on what is going on inside our bodies and minds at any one time. For instance, our sensitivity to touch varies during the two phases of our heartbeat: people are less perceptive to being touched during systole (when the heart ejects blood), compared to when they are touched during diastole (when the heart refills with blood). But it was unclear if this relationship influences how we actively touch and sense objects. For instance, do people seek touch in a particular phase of their heartbeat, and how does this change their response to the object? To investigate, Galvez-Pol et al. traced people's heartbeats while they actively touched different objects. Without looking, the participants had to work out whether the objects had vertical or horizontal grooves. Although they did not start their touches in a specific phase of the heartbeat, their hearts did influence their behaviour. If they started the touch during systole, they held their fingers over the object for longer. The effect was especially noticeable when it was difficult to discriminate the objects' grooves. Galvez-Pol et al. reasoned that this was down to participants having to compensate for the loss in touch sensitivity during the systole phase of their heartbeat. This suggests that people actively adjust how they acquire sensory information, such as touch, based on how their bodily functions alter their senses. These findings provide a starting point for future studies investigating how internal bodily fluctuations impact how we sense and respond to things in real world scenarios. This could potentially shed light on the differences between the way neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals sense the world.

Implicit Attitudes Toward Violence in a Sample of Adolescent Offenders With Conduct Disorder.

Few studies have addressed attitudes toward violence in offender populations using implicit measures. The aim of this study is to test whether implicit attitudes toward two types of violence (physical and relational) differ between two groups of adolescent offenders: one group with conduct disorder (CD; n = 36) and the other group without this condition (No-CD; n = 26). We found that adolescent offenders with CD evidenced less negative implicit attitudes toward physical violence than the No-CD group. No differences between groups were observed in the case of relational violence. Our results suggest that CD modulates implicit attitudes toward violence in adolescent offenders and that the influence of CD is stronger in the case of physical rather than relational acts of violence.

An investigation of Facebook users' implicit associations between Facebook, sexual and prosocial behavior.

Despite growing research on online social networking, implicit associations of Facebook users have been largely understudied. In Study 1, we used the Single-Target Implicit Association Test (ST-IAT; Karpinski and Steinman, 2006) in order to assess implicit associations between Facebook and two evolutionary relevant constructs: sexual and prosocial behavior. Additionally, we controlled for the role of participant's relationship status as a potential moderator of Facebook implicit associations. In Study 2, we extended these findings and explored the relationship between implicit and explicit associations towards Facebook. Across two studies, we found that Facebook is more strongly associated with prosocial than with sexual behavior. This effect was not sensitive to sex differences. Further, Study 2 results revealed that implicit and explicit associations did not correlate. We discuss the implications of these findings, underlining the role of implicit measures in cyberpsychology research.

Effects of Suboptimally Presented Erotic Pictures on Moral Judgments: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.

Previous research has identified a set of core factors that influence moral judgments. The present study addresses the interplay between moral judgments and four factors: (a) incidental affects, (b) sociocultural context, (c) type of dilemma, and (d) participant's sex. We asked participants in two different countries (Colombia and Spain) to judge the acceptability of actions in response to personal and impersonal moral dilemmas. Before each dilemma an affective prime (erotic, pleasant or neutral pictures) was presented suboptimally. Our results show that: a) relative to neutral priming, erotic primes increase the acceptance of harm for a greater good (i.e., more utilitarian judgments), b) relative to Colombians, Spanish participants rated causing harm as less acceptable, c) relative to impersonal dilemmas, personal dilemmas reduced the acceptance of harm, and d) relative to men, women were less likely to consider harm acceptable. Our results are congruent with findings showing that sex is a crucial factor in moral cognition, and they extend previous research by showing the interaction between culture and incidental factors in the making of moral judgments.