Corrigendum: Does personality change follow deep brain stimulation in Parkinson's disease patients?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.643277.].

Polish Validation of a 14-Item Version of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS-14): Factorial Structure, Psychometric Properties, and Clinical Correlates.

Religious and spiritual (R/S) struggles are defined as the occurrence of tension, conflict, or strain that focus on matters of ultimate significance perceived by people as sacred. The widespread prevalence of R/S struggles and the growing demand for research in this area created the need for a brief tool. Recently, the 14-item form of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale was developed and validated (Exline et al. in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2022a). Given the significance of the empirical research on R/S struggles, we implemented the project of structure verification, internal consistency confirmation, reliability, and nomological validation of the Polish variant of the RSS-14 through three separate studies. With respect to the internal structure of the RSS-14, the CFA from three studies confirmed the good fit of the six-factor model, very similar to the one obtained in the original version of the tool. Moreover, both the total score and the subscales had high reliability and acceptable stability over the three studies. With respect to the nomological analyses, R/S struggles were related negatively to life satisfaction, presence of meaning in life, self-esteem, social desirability, religious centrality, and positively with search for meaning, God's disengagement, poorer health indicators, sleep problems, stress, and cognitive schemas (this category was the new element of our research). Polish 14-item version of the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale seems a valuable tool to assess religious strains.

Does perceived post-traumatic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic reflect actual positive changes?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: People commonly report positive changes following stressful experiences (perceived posttraumatic growth; PPTG), yet whether PPTG validly reflects positive changes remains unestablished. DESIGN AND METHODS: We tested the extent to which COVID-19 pandemic-related PPTG relates to positive changes in corresponding psychosocial resources in a national US sample participating in a five wave study (T1-T5), focusing here on T2-T5: ns = 712-860. We examined correlations between resource change (both latent and observed difference scores) and PPTG at each occasion and conducted structural equation models to separate occasion-specific and stable (traitlike) PPTG variance. We related changes in resources to occasion-specific and stable PPTG components. RESULTS: Associations between change scores and occasion-specific PPTG were sparse, providing limited evidence of PPTG validity. Associations between change scores and stable PPTG tended to be positive and stronger than associations for occasion-specific PPTG. DISCUSSION: Perceptions of growth were largely unrelated to experienced positive changes and thus appear to be largely illusory. However, a personality-like tendency to believe one grows from stressful experiences relates more strongly to actual resource growth. These results suggest that people are not accurate reporters of positive changes they experience and that interventions aimed at promoting post-traumatic growth may be premature.

How and why people want to be more moral.

OBJECTIVE: What types of moral improvements do people wish to make? Do they hope to become more good, or less bad? Do they wish to be more caring? More honest? More loyal? And why exactly do they want to become more moral? Presumably, most people want to improve their morality because this would benefit others, but is this in fact their primary motivation? Here, we begin to investigate these questions. METHOD: Across two large, preregistered studies (N = 1818), participants provided open-ended descriptions of one change they could make in order to become more moral; they then reported their beliefs about and motives for this change. RESULTS: In both studies, people most frequently expressed desires to improve their compassion and more often framed their moral improvement goals in terms of amplifying good behaviors than curbing bad ones. The strongest predictor of moral motivation was the extent to which people believed that making the change would have positive consequences for their own well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Together, these studies provide rich descriptive insights into how ordinary people want to be more moral, and show that they are particularly motivated to do so for their own sake.

Supernatural Attributions: Seeing God, the Devil, Demons, Spirits, Fate, and Karma as Causes of Events.

For many people worldwide, supernatural beliefs and attributions-those focused on God, the devil, demons, spirits, an afterlife, karma, or fate-are part of everyday life. Although not widely studied in clinical psychology, these beliefs and attributions are a key part of human diversity. This article provides a broad overview of research on supernatural beliefs and attributions with special attention to their psychological relevance: They can serve as coping resources, sources of distress, psychopathology signals, moral guides, and decision-making tools. Although supernatural attributions sometimes involve dramatic experiences seen to violate natural laws, people more commonly think of supernatural entities working indirectly through natural events. A whole host of factors can lead people to make supernatural attributions, including contextual factors, specific beliefs, psychopathology, cognitive styles and personality, and social and cultural influences. Our aim is to provide clinical psychologists with an entry point into this rich, fascinating, and often overlooked literature.

It's about time: Emphasizing temporal dynamics in dynamic personality regulation.

People change over time. These changes are thought to represent some self-regulatory, dynamic processes. However, dynamic processes need to be distinguished from mere stochastic variation. Just as the Brownian motion of a dust mote does not help us understand the basic principles of classical physics, neither does random variation within an individual describe the complexity of self-regulatory processes. This regulation implies solving the problem of competing goals and desires within the constraints of situational presses. And what people feel, think, and do at one moment affects what they feel, think and do in the next moment. Thus, describing and explaining change over time must focus on dynamics in response to environmental cues and competing internal states. That is, we must include time and change over time in our models. We will outline the constructs needed to examine time explicitly in models of personality regulation, distinguishing between those that are not inherently temporal from those that are. We will discuss how computational modeling approaches may be used to study temporal dynamics and explain personality consistency and change. We will consider different time scales and discuss how an information processing perspective may inform choices regarding time scale and corresponding contexts for empirical studies.

Does perceived post-traumatic growth predict better psychological adjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic? Results from a national longitudinal survey in the USA.

Perceiving that one has grown in positive ways following highly stressful experiences (perceived posttraumatic growth; PPTG) is common and sometimes--but not always--related to psychological wellbeing. However, PPTG is typically studied cross-sectionally and well after the stressful experience has passed; how PPTG might relate to wellbeing over time in an unprecedented, ongoing worldwide disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown. Thus, the current study sought to answer whether, in the midst of the pandemic, PPTG relates to subsequent wellbeing, broadly defined. Participants were N = 1544 MTurk workers who completed a five-wave (T1-T5) six-month longitudinal study. Current analyses focused on T2-T5 (ns = 860-712). At each time point, participants completed self-report measures of PPTG and wellbeing (depression, anxiety, stress, positive states of mind, alcohol use, posttraumatic stress). In cross-lagged panel models, PPTG was largely unrelated to subsequent wellbeing. Somewhat more evidence was found that increasing distress led to increases in PPTG, suggesting perceptions of growth may serve as a coping mechanism. PPTG does not appear to benefit adjustment to the COVID-19 pandemic and may simply reflect efforts to manage distress.

Does Personality Change Follow Deep Brain Stimulation in Parkinson's Disease Patients?

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) has emerged as a safe, effective, and appealing treatment for Parkinson's Disease (PD), particularly for improving motor symptoms (e. g., tremor, bradykinesia, and rigidity). However, concerns have been raised about whether DBS causes psychological changes, including changes to personality: characteristic and relatively stable patterns of affect, behavior, cognition, and desire. In this article, after first presenting some background information about PD and DBS, we examined evidence obtained from various empirical research methods (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods for evaluating patient valued characteristics) pertaining to whether DBS causes personality change. General limitations across research methods include a lack of randomized clinical trials and small sample sizes. We organized our review of findings according to different layers of personality variables: dispositional traits (including personality pathology), characteristic adaptations, and narrative identity. Though most work has been done on dispositional traits, there is not much evidence that dispositional traits change following DBS. Little work has been done on characteristic adaptations, but there is somewhat consistent evidence for positive perceived progress toward goals across a number of domains: routine activities, work, social/relational, and leisure. Nascent work on narrative identity holds promise for revealing issues around self-image that may be common following DBS. We listed a number of strategies for advancing research, highlighting opportunities related to personality conceptualization, personality assessment, and interdisciplinary scholarship. Finally, we offer practical applications of our findings for the informed consent process and for ongoing treatment.

Authenticity and inauthenticity in narrative identity.

Self-reported authenticity is related to higher well-being, however, employing self-report questionnaires to measure authenticity may be limited in that they do not capture the lived experience of authenticity. We employ a narrative identity approach to the study of authenticity to potentially better capture some of the idiosyncratic richness and nuance of authentic experience. In Study 1, 87 undergraduates wrote descriptions of three separate memories: one in which they felt authentic, one in which they felt inauthentic, and a vivid, emotional memory. Thematic analysis identified five dimensions of authenticity (relational authenticity, resisting external pressures, expression of true self, contentment, owning one's actions) and 4 dimensions of inauthenticity (phoniness, suppression, self-denigration, and conformity). In study 2, 103 undergraduates provided written descriptions of authentic and inauthentic experiences. Scenes were coded for the dimensions of authenticity and inauthenticity listed above, and those categories were related to self-report scales assessing authenticity and related constructs (autonomy, honesty, Machiavellianism). Correlational and factor extension results suggested that narratives themes showed evidence of both convergent and discriminant validity. Implications for narrative and self-report approaches to authenticity are discussed.

Pornography Problems Due to Moral Incongruence: An Integrative Model with a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The notion of problematic pornography use remains contentious in both academic and popular literature. Although the mental health community at large is divided as to the addictive versus non-addictive nature of Internet pornography, substantial numbers of individuals report "feeling" as if their use of Internet pornography is problematic. The present work seeks to construct a model related to problematic pornography use that is clearly derived from empirical literature and that provides directions to be tested in future research. The focus of the present work is on those perceptions as they relate to the overarching experience of moral incongruence in pornography use, which is generally thought of as the experience of having one's behaviors be inconsistent with one's beliefs. To this end, we put forth a model of pornography problems due to moral incongruence. Within this model, we describe how pornography-related problems-particularly feelings of addiction to pornography-may be, in many cases, better construed as functions of discrepancies-moral incongruence-between pornography-related beliefs and pornography-related behaviors. A systematic review of literature and meta-analysis is conducted in order to evaluate support for this model, and the implications of this model for research and clinical practice are discussed.

Pragmatism and the Importance of Interdisciplinary Teams in Investigating Personality Changes following DBS.

Gilbert and colleagues (2018) point out the discrepancy between the limited empirical data illustrating changes in personality (and related concepts of identity, agency, authenticity, autonomy, and self, i.e., PIAAAS) following implantation of deep brain stimulating (DBS) electrodes and the vast number of conceptual neuroethics papers implying that these changes are widespread, deleterious, and clinically significant. Their findings are reminiscent of C. P. Snow's essay on the divide between the two cultures of the humanities (representing the conceptual publications) and the sciences (representing the empirical work). This division in the literature raises significant ethical concerns surrounding unjustified fear of personality changes in the context of DBS and negative perceptions of clinician-scientists engaged in DBS. These concerns have real world implications for funding future innovative, DBS trials aimed to reduce suffering as well as hampering true interdisciplinary scholarship. We argue that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism and the value it places on empirical inquiry, experiential knowledge, and inter-disciplinary scholarship - reflecting diverse ways of knowing - provides a framework to start to address the important questions Gilbert and colleagues raise. In particular, we highlight the importance of expert clinician knowledge in contributing to the neuroethical questions raised by Gilbert and colleagues. Finally, we provide illustrative examples of some of our interdisciplinary empirical research that demonstrate the iterative cycle of inquiry characteristic of pragmatism in which conceptual neuroethics questions have led to empirical studies whose results then raise additional conceptual questions that give rise to new empirical studies in a way that highlights the contributions of the humanities and the sciences.

The Big Five, Everyday Contexts and Activities, and Affective Experience.

Prior research shows that personality traits predict time spent with different people and frequency of engagement in different activities. Further, personality traits, company, and activity are related to the experience of affect. However, little research has examined personality, context, and affect together in the same study. In the current study, 78 people described their Big Five traits and took part in a 1-week experience sampling study using mobile phones as a means for data collection. Participants indicated their current company, activity, and momentary affect along the dimensions of energetic arousal (EA), tense arousal (TA), and hedonic tone (HT). Poisson regressions revealed that traits predicted higher frequencies of trait-consistent contexts: for example, extraversion was related to more frequently being with various types of company. Results predicting contexts from multilevel logistic regressions were sparser. Multilevel models revealed that traits and contexts had main effects on affect, yet there were relatively few interactions of traits X contexts predicting affect. We discuss more specific implications of these findings.

Predicting pornography use over time: Does self-reported "addiction" matter?

In recent years, several works have reported on perceived addiction to internet pornography, or the potential for some individuals to label their own use of pornography as compulsive or out of control. Such works have consistently found that perceived addiction is related to concerning outcomes such as psychological distress, relational distress, and other addictive behaviors. However, very little work has specifically examined whether or not perceived addiction is actually related to increased use of pornography, cross-sectionally or over time. The present work sought to address this deficit in the literature. Using two longitudinal samples (Sample 1, Baseline N = 3988; Sample 2, Baseline N = 1047), a variety of factors (e.g., male gender, lower religiousness, and lower self-control) were found to predict any use of pornography. Among those that acknowledged use (Sample 1, Baseline N = 1352; Sample 2, Baseline N = 793), perceived addiction to pornography consistently predicted greater average daily use of pornography. At subsequent longitudinal follow-ups (Sample 1, Baseline N = 265; Sample 2, One Month Later, N = 410, One Year Later, N = 360), only male gender and baseline average pornography use consistently predicted future use. These findings suggest that perceived addiction to pornography is associated with concurrent use of pornography, but does not appear to predict use over time, suggesting that perceived addiction may not always be an accurate indicator of behavior or addiction.

Moral disapproval and perceived addiction to internet pornography: a longitudinal examination.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Internet pornography use is an increasingly common, yet controversial, behavior. Whereas mental health communities are divided about potentially problematic use patterns, many lay people identify as feeling dysregulated or compulsive in their use. Prior work has labeled this tendency perceived addiction to internet pornography (PA). This study's aims were to (1) assess the association between PA at baseline and other factors, including actual levels of average daily pornography use and personality factors and (2) assess the associations between baseline variables and PA 1 year later. DESIGN: Two large-scale community samples were assessed using online survey methods, with subsets of each sample being recruited for follow-up surveys 1 year later. SETTING: United States. PARTICIPANTS: Participants were adults who had used pornography within the past 6 months recruited in two samples. Sample 1 (n = 1507) involved undergraduate students from three US universities and sample 2 (n = 782) involved web-using adults. Subsets of each sample (sample 1, n = 146; sample 2, n = 211) were surveyed again 1 year later. MEASUREMENTS: At baseline, we assessed average daily pornography use, PA and relevant predictors (e.g. trait neuroticism, trait self-control, trait entitlement, religiousness, moral disapproval of pornography use). One year later, we assessed PA. FINDINGS: Cross-sectionally, PA was correlated strongly with moral disapproval of pornography use [sample 1, Pearson's correlation: r = 0.68 (0.65, 0.70); sample 2, r = 0.58 (0.53, 0.63)]. Baseline moral disapproval [sample 1, r = 0.46 (0.33, 0.56); sample 2, r = 0.61 (0.51, 0.69)] and perceived addiction demonstrated relationships with perceived addiction 1 year later. We found inconclusive evidence of a substantial or significant association between pornography use and perceived addiction over time [sample 1, r = 0.13 (-0.02, 0.28); sample 2, r = 0.11 (-0.04, 0.25)]. CONCLUSIONS: Perceived addiction to internet pornography appears to be related strongly to moral scruples around pornography use, both concurrently and over time, rather than with the amount of daily pornography use itself.

Velocity Explains the Links between Personality States and Affect.

The present research examined whether perceived rate of progress toward a goal (velocity) mediated the relationships between personality states and affective states. Drawing from control theories of self-regulation, we hypothesized (i) that increased velocity would mediate the association between state extraversion and state positive affect, and (ii) that decreased velocity would mediate the association between state neuroticism and state negative affect. We tested these hypotheses in 2 experience sampling methodology studies that each spanned 2 weeks. Multilevel modeling analyses showed support for each of the bivariate links in our model, and multilevel path analyses supported our mediation hypotheses. We discuss implications for understanding the relations between personality states and affective states, control theories of self-regulation, and goal striving.

Within-subject covariation between depression- and anxiety-related affect.

Studies find a strong positive relationship between the affective components of anxiety and depression. However, most research thus far has examined the between-person correlations among these constructs, while ignoring how changes in these two types of affect covary over time within a person. Within-person correlations could differ meaningfully from how anxiety- and depression-related affect relate across individuals. Further, individuals may differ in terms of how highly these constructs covary over time. The current study aimed to (1) compare between- and within-person correlations between anxious and depressive affect, (2) examine lagged effects between anxious and depressive affect over time, (3) test whether individuals differ in their within-person correlations between these two types of affect, and (4) examine whether the mean level of affective intensity moderated these individual differences. These questions were explored using college undergraduates (N = 50) who rated their depression- and anxiety- related affect six times a day for two weeks. A higher average correlation was observed between anxious and depressive affect in between-person compared to within-person analyses. Significant bidirectional lagged effects were observed between these constructs. Individuals with higher average levels of anxious affect experienced stronger within-person correlations between anxious and depressive affect.

Finding a Life Worth Living: Meaning in Life and Graduation from College.

Graduation from college is an important milestone for young adults, marked by mixed emotions and poignancy, and therefore is an especially salient context for studying meaning in life. The present research used experience-sampling methodology to examine the antecedents and consequences of students' experience of meaning in life over the course of graduation. Participants were 74 graduating students who provided a total of 538 reports over the span of three days, including commencement day. Increased levels of state meaning in life during the days around commencement were linked to spending time with people in general and with family in particular, as well as thinking about one's years in college. Thinking about one's years in college mediated the effects of present company on state meaning in life. Graduates who experienced higher levels of state meaning in life during the days around their commencement ceremony had higher trait levels of meaning in life one week following commencement. We discuss how making meaning of a poignant experience has implications for healthy psychological development.

The Data Box and Within-Subject Analyses: A Comment on Nesselroade and Molenaar (2016).

Nesselroade and Molenaar suggest that it is the relationships between latent variables within subjects that are invariant across subjects and thus the appropriate unit of analysis. We disagree and take the view that between-factor correlations may differ systematically across subjects. Further, individual differences in these correlations may be an important source of information about each unique individual. Following from this premise, analyses of consistencies and differences between subjects of the within-subject pattern of interfactor correlations is a step toward an integrative science of behavior. We give several examples demonstrating how this approach has the potential to yield novel insights into personality functioning.

A multilevel path model analysis of the relations between sleep, pain, and pain catastrophizing in chronic pain rehabilitation patients.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Pain catastrophizing is linked to heightened pain and poorer coping among individuals with chronic pain, yet little is known about how pain catastrophizing associates with sleep and pain over the course of treatment for chronic pain. Previous research employing a cross-sectional design suggests that sleep mediates the association between pain catstrophizing and pain, but there have been no longitudinal studies examining the directionality of these associations. Thus, the aim of this study was to test two competing theoretical models. The first model specified that pain catastrophizing leads to increased pain via poor sleep. The second model specified that poor sleep leads to increased pain catastrophizing via increased pain. METHODS: This study examined the relations between pain catastrophizing, sleep, and pain among 50 consecutive patients (36 female, 14 male) ages 20-80 (M=45.96, SD=13.94) with chronic, non-malignant pain who were admitted to the Cleveland Clinic, Chronic Pain Rehabilitation Programme (CPRP). The CPRP, within the Neurological Centre for Restoration, Neurologic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary programme designed to treat patients with disabling chronic pain. As part of their daily, morning update with their case manager, patients completed self-report ratings of their previous night's sleep time (TST), and their current pain, anxiety, and depression. Pain catastrophizing was assessed at admission and discharge. RESULTS: Over the course of treatment, daily TST increased from approximately 5h and 20min per night to nearly 6h and 30min per night, and average daily pain, daily depression, and daily anxiety decreased over the course of treatment. As the data in this study has a multilevel structure, with daily reports nested with in patients, we conducted multilevel path models to examine the longitudinal relations between pain catastrophizing, sleep, and pain. Multilevel path analysis permits the analysis of interdependent data without violating the assumptions of standard multiple regression. Models were conducted for pain catastrophizing and each of its subscales: rumination, magnification and helplessness. The findings were uniform across the composite pain catastrophizing scale and its subscales. There was an indirect path from sleep to pain catastrophizing (post-treatment) via pain, but not from pain catastrophizing (pre-treatment) to pain via sleep. There were also direct effects of sleep on pain and from pain to pain catastrophizing (post-treatment). Additionally, decreases in pain over the course of treatment were related to lower pain catastrophizing post-treatment. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: These results call into question previous evidence that pain catastrophizing indirectly affects pain by way of its impact on sleep. Rather, our findings suggest that pain mediates the relationship between sleep and levels of pain catastrophizing. These results therefore underscore importance and value in collecting longitudinal data and potential influence on the conclusions gained with regards to sleep, pain and psychological variables. These findings may be of clinical importance when tailoring interventions for individuals with chronic pain and perhaps even more so for those with comorbid pain and sleep disturbance; prioritizing the treatment of sleep difficulties could result in improvements to pain-related outcomes.