Browsing by Subject "psychopathology"
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Item Behavioral Economics of Persecutory Delusions(2022-06) Kazinka, RebeccaPersecutory delusions cause significant distress in the individuals who experience them, yet as a field we are still working to understand their etiology. Persecutory delusions and suspiciousness have some overlap with mistrust, and thus this dissertation focuses on the use of trust games to examine behavior and neural mechanisms of spite sensitivity. Spite sensitivity is the fear that a partner is willing to take a hit in order to ensure that you do as well, as opposed to rational mistrust, in which a partner can make a gain but at your expense. The benefit of using social decision making tasks such as the Trust Game and its adaptation, the Minnesota Trust Game, is that 1) a computational model can be developed based on the given parameters of the task to understand beliefs and motivations and 2) it can provide a well-controlled task to examine principles of trust and spite sensitivity in neuroimaging. The goal of this dissertation is to provide evidence that spite sensitivity is an important construct to understand persecutory ideation and distrust, both in psychiatric populations but also the general population. I show that while the Trust Game identifies decreased trust in individuals with psychosis, the Minnesota Trust Game identifies that spite sensitivity is distinct from rational mistrust and can be measured computationally. Further examination in a group of individuals with psychosis show a neural dissociation between spite sensitivity and rational mistrust as well. We did not find this dissociation in a community sample of twins, yet did find a relationship between twin discordance in a computational measure of spite sensitivity and a personality measure of suspiciousness. Altogether, this dissertation provides a foundation for the use of spite sensitivity as a construct to understand persecutory ideation.Item Correlates of Measures of Adaptive and Pathological Narcissism(2018-07) Paulsen, JacobSocial scientists have exhibited increased interest in narcissism in recent years and lively debates and discussion abound about potential narcissism cohort effects and their implications. The most widely used measure of narcissism has been the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), which has a history of being considered a measure of adaptive, subclinical trait narcissism. However, increasing evidence suggests that the NPI captures elements of both adaptive and maladaptive narcissism. In an attempt to better define the nomological network of narcissism and the boundaries between adaptive and maladaptive narcissism, the current studies included multiple self-report measures of many relevant constructs and also included experimental manipulation and behavioral measures. Analyses conducted on data gathered from two university undergraduate samples (Sample 1, N = 227; Sample 2, N = 148) provided increasing evidence that the NPI does indeed measure some maladaptive or pathological aspects of narcissism. Narcissistic Entitlement, Exploitativeness, and Exhibitionism, as captured by the NPI, were associated with a multitude of negative, maladaptive outcomes (e.g., elements of psychopathy and pathological narcissism, Machiavellianism, and various forms of aggression). Thus, these studies have provided increased clarity regarding narcissism’s nomological network, with special emphasis on maladaptive and pathological elements and associations. The scientific community continues to debate and present competing evidence of possible narcissism cohort effects in recent decades. The current studies have provided increased clarity with respect to one aspect of such debates; if NPI scores have indeed been increasing across recent decades, this is a cause for significant societal concern.Item Personality and Psychopathology in Offspring of Mothers Diagnosed with Affective Illness(2016-10) Allen, TimothyOffspring of mothers diagnosed with an affective illness are at increased risk for developing an affective spectrum disorder. The overarching goal of the present study is to investigate whether individual differences in cognition and personality among at-risk offspring promote or prevent the development of affective symptomatology in adolescence and young adulthood. Participants included siblings drawn from 98 families participating in a longitudinal study of the offspring of depressed mothers (Radke-Yarrow, 1998). Forty-two of the mothers in the study were diagnosed with unipolar depression, 26 with bipolar disorder I or II, and 30 were healthy comparisons. Ratings of offspring personality, cognitive style, and psychopathology were obtained from multiple measures across two time points in adolescence and young adulthood. History of a maternal affective disorder and offspring Neuroticism independently predicted elevated depressive symptoms in adolescence, while high Neuroticism and Extraversion predicted offspring mania. Offspring Neuroticism interacted with maternal diagnosis to predict risk for depression in young adulthood. Lower-order traits comprising Neuroticism showed unique associations with offspring affective symptoms both concurrently and prospectively. Overall, findings suggest that high Neuroticism is associated with increased risk for depressive and manic symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood, and this effect may be partially moderated by maternal psychopathology.