Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Over the long course of evolution, in order to cope with the threat of pathogens, both animals and humans have evolved complex disease defense mechanisms, one of which is known as the behavioral immune system. The behavioral immune system is a complex suite of cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms that ultimately help prevent pathogen transmission in the face of recurrent infectious disease threats. It functions by detecting threat-relevant cues in the environment and activating disgust-related responses aimed at diminishing those threats. However, in modern times, with advanced medical technology, the behavioral immune system may not always be beneficial to human disease control behaviors. Previous studies have found that, the social strategies that are designed to avoid infection in ancient times may lead to more serious health problems (e.g., the damage to the cardiovascular system) in modern society. These studies suggest that the behavioral immune system may be evolutionary mismatch in the modern and complex medical environment, which may have negative effects on our medical-seeking behavior. Therefore, we hypothesized that, in modern society, the activation of behavioral immune system will affect individuals' medical-seeking tendency, making individuals display more negative attitudes towards health-care and become more likely to delay their medical-seeking. This hypothesis was systematically tested by three different studies. In these studies, we used a well-validated medical-seeking attitude questionnaire and a computerized patient delay task to measure the individuals' medical-seeking tendency. Specifically, in Study 1A (223 participants) and Study 2A (218 participants), we investigated the relationship between trait activation level of behavioral immune system and individuals' medical-seeking tendency by employing the scales of Disgust Scale-Revised Chinese and Perceived Vulnerability to Diseases. In Study 1B (198 participants) and Study 2B (174 participants), we situationally activated the behavioral immune system by asking the participants to watch disease-salient primes in order to investigate the effects of external disease cues on the medical-seeking tendency. In Study 3, we investigated that whether the effects of the activation of behavioral immune system on the medical-seeking attitude and tendency were mediated by the perception of the risk of hospital infection. The results showed that: 1) core disgust negatively predicted the attitude of participants toward medical- seeking; 2) core disgust positively predicted the tendency of participants to delay medical-seeking; 3) situationally activating the behavioral immune system significantly affected the attitude of participants toward medical- seeking and the tendency of participants to delay medical-seeking, participants were found to be more likely to have a negative attitude toward medical-seeking and delay their medical-seeking after watching the disease- salient primes; 4) the perception of the risk of hospital infection mediated the relationship between the activation of behavioral immune system and medical-seeking attitude and tendency, participants who had higher core disgust or received disease-salient primes were more likely to perceive the medical-seeking situations as infectious, which subsequently led the participants to adopt more negative attitudes toward medical-seeking and to display stronger patient-delay tendency. These results support our hypothesis, suggesting that the ancient behavioral immune system may have a negative effect on the medical-seeking behavior in contemporary society. These results are consistent with the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis and provide a new theoretical perspective for the further understanding of the medical-seeking behavior of modern humans.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Personality Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2022-07-28
Abstract：
Narcissism and its clinical analogue, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), comprise a set of personality constructs characterized by pervasive patterns of grandiosity in fantasy and behavior, feelings of uniqueness and superiority, excessive need for admiration, a sense of entitlement, arrogance, self-centeredness and low empathy. With some evidence suggesting that trait narcissism levels are increasing in the world, understanding its consequences is increasingly pressing. As the capacity to recognize and understand others’ emotional states and to feel a similar emotion to another person, a lack of empathy in grandiose narcissistic individuals and NPD patients has long been observed. However, the narcissistic trait can also be manifested in a lesser-studied form, vulnerable narcissism, which shares the features of self-absorption, entitlement, conceit, disregard for others and interpersonal antagonism, but presents with low self-esteem, introversion, shame, psychological distress, and fragility. Given its variants in self-regulatory functioning, studies have found that vulnerable narcissism may differently relate to empathy. Will the vulnerable narcissistic trait be negatively associated with empathy for pain? According to the Dynamic Self-Regulatory Processing Model, vulnerable narcissistic individuals need to reduce their attention to pain of others and reduce their level of pain empathy to regulate their emotions and thus maintain a positive view of themselves. In the present research, we systematically test this hypothesis by two studies.
In Study 1, we investigated whether the attentional bias toward others’ painful faces mediates the relationship between trait vulnerable narcissism and pain empathy. The level of trait vulnerable narcissism was measured by using the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS). The attentional bias toward others’ painful faces was measured by using the dot-probe paradigm, in which a painful face and a neutral face were presented simultaneously for 500 ms, and the participants had to indicate the positions of the probes after the face presentations. The empathy for pain was measured by using a pain judgement task, in which participants were asked to rate the intensity of pain portrayed by faces of 10 Chinese models. The results of Study 1 showed that, trait level variations in vulnerable narcissism were negatively associated with attentional bias toward painful faces, which in turn led to lower levels of empathy responses to painful faces. In addition, the results also revealed that such an association held even when the effects of control variables, including age, gender, education, positive affect and negative affect, were controlled.
In Study 2, we further investigated whether the eye movement pattern in pain perception mediates the relationship between trait vulnerable narcissism and pain empathy. In this study, participants were asked to complete a pain judgment task, in which painful faces or neutral faces was presented for 2000 ms and participants had to indicate the intensity of pain portrayed by those faces in 10-point-scale. Eye movements were tracked by the SMI RED 500 eye-tracker when participants were viewing the faces. Four areas of interests were selected (i.e., areas of forehead, eyes, nose, and mouth). The results showed that trait vulnerable narcissism was negatively associated with the fixation duration within the eye areas of painful faces, which in turn led to the decreasing of empathy for pain.
In summary, the results of the present research support our hypothesis which suggest that vulnerable narcissistic individuals have deficits in their ability of pain empathy, which is caused by their reduced attentions toward others’ painful faces.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Computer Science >> Integration Theory of Computer Science submitted time 2022-05-18 Cooperative journals: 《计算机应用研究》
Abstract： Aiming at the problems of long time delay and high computation cost of using complex bilinear mapping in the current LEO satellite network authentication scheme, this paper proposed an efficient certificateless authentication scheme based on the Gayathri’s certificateless authentication scheme. This scheme unifies the user's public key and real identity, so that need not the third party to participate in the authentication process and reduce the authentication delay; uses a small number of point multiplication and point addition operations on the elliptic curve to construct the authentication message, which does not involve the bilinear mapping and reduces the computation cost. Then this paper proves the authentication scheme’s security based on the assumption of elliptic curve discrete mathematics under the random oracle model. Finally, through experimental simulation, comparing with the existing LEO satellite identity authentication schemes, the proposed scheme has lower authentication delay, computational overhead and communication overhead.
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Medical Psychology submitted time 2022-02-27
Abstract：
Over the long course of evolution, in order to cope with the threat of pathogens, both animals and humans have evolved complex disease defense mechanisms, one of which is known as the behavioral immune system. The behavioral immune system is a complex suite of cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms that ultimately help prevent pathogen transmission in the face of recurrent infectious disease threats. It functions by detecting threat-relevant cues in the environment and activating disgust-related responses aimed at diminishing those threats. However, in modern times, with advanced medical technology, the behavioral immune system may not always be beneficial to human disease control behaviors. Previous studies have found that, the social strategies that are designed to avoid infection in ancient times may lead to more serious health problems (e.g., the damage to the cardiovascular system) in modern society. These studies suggest that the behavioral immune system may be evolutionary mismatch in the modern and complex medical environment, which may have negative effects on our medical-seeking behavior. Therefore, we hypothesized that, in modern society, the activation of behavioral immune system will affect individuals' medical-seeking tendency, making individuals display more negative attitudes towards health-care and become more likely to delay their medical-seeking.
This hypothesis was systematically tested by three different studies. In these studies, we used a well-validated medical-seeking attitude questionnaire and a computerized patient delay task to measure the individuals' medical-seeking tendency. Specifically, in Study 1A (223 participants) and Study 2A (218 participants), we investigated the relationship between trait activation level of behavioral immune system and individuals' medical-seeking tendency by employing the scales of Disgust Scale-Revised Chinese and Perceived Vulnerability to Diseases. In Study 1B (198 participants) and Study 2B (174 participants), we situationally activated the behavioral immune system by asking the participants to watch disease-salient primes in order to investigate the effects of external disease cues on the medical-seeking tendency. In Study 3, we investigated that whether the effects of the activation of behavioral immune system on the medical-seeking attitude and tendency were mediated by the perception of the risk of hospital infection.
The results showed that: 1) core disgust negatively predicted the attitude of participants toward medical-seeking; 2) core disgust positively predicted the tendency of participants to delay medical-seeking; 3) situationally activating the behavioral immune system significantly affected the attitude of participants toward medical-seeking and the tendency of participants to delay medical-seeking, participants were found to be more likely to have a negative attitude toward medical-seeking and delay their medical-seeking after watching the disease-salient primes; 4) the perception of the risk of hospital infection mediated the relationship between the activation of behavioral immune system and medical-seeking attitude and tendency, participants who had higher core disgust or received disease-salient primes were more likely to perceive the medical-seeking situations as infectious, which subsequently led the participants to adopt more negative attitudes toward medical-seeking and to display stronger patient-delay tendency.
These results support our hypothesis, suggesting that the ancient behavioral immune system may have a negative effect on the medical-seeking behavior in contemporary society. These results are consistent with the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis and provide a new theoretical perspective for the further understanding of the medical-seeking behavior of modern humans.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2020-09-03
Abstract： " Throughout the animal kingdom, larger animals are more likely to attain dominance and thus enhance their ability to acquire mates. In human males, body height is also associated with the success and failure in sexual selection. For example, studies found that taller men have higher strength or fighting ability, they are more likely to higher overall income and higher social status, and they are also more likely to acquire mates in the mating market. However, shorter men are not necessarily being doomed with disadvantages. Previous studies have suggested that men have a flexible status psychology that may allow them to exercise behavioral flexibility (e.g., by showing more indirect aggression or feeling more jealousy toward sexual rivals) to compensate for their disadvantage in height. Given the importance of risk-taking behavior in signalizing the quality of ones’ genes, in the present study, we hypothesized that when encountering a taller same-sex rival, shorter men will also compensate for their disadvantages in height by showing more risk-taking behaviors, and their mating motives will modulate such an effect in men. This hypothesis was tested by employing four different behavioral studies. In these studies, we measured the risk-taking behaviors of participants by employing a well-validated and computerized laboratory task (i.e., Balloon Analogue Risk Task, BART). In Study 1 and 2, male or female participants (176 participants in Study 1, and 246 participants in Study 2, respectively) were paired with a taller or shorter same-sex opponent, and they were asked to compete with that opponent in a computerized game (i.e., the BART task). In Study 3 (255 male participants), we further tested our hypothesis by situationally activating the mating motives of male participants (i.e., by watching videos depicting highly attractive females) and paired them with a taller or shorter male opponent in the competitive BART task as in Study 1 and 2. In Study 4 (90 male participants), we further investigated the effects of chronic mating motive and the relative height disadvantage on male risk- 29 taking by employing the Mate Seeking scale of Fundamental Social Motives Inventory. Results showed that: 1) when encountering a taller opponent, male participants displayed more risk-taking behavior, their BART score (i.e., the average number of pumps per unexploded balloon) was significantly higher than being confronted with a shorter male opponent; 2) such an effect was caused by the increasing of risk-taking propensity when facing a taller opponent, and facing a shorter opponent didn’t affect the risk-taking of male participants (also be compared to a no-height-info control); 3) the relative height difference between the participants and their opponent couldn’t affect the risk-taking of female participants; 4) situationally activating the mating motives of male participants significantly affected the effects of relative height disadvantage on male risk-taking, after watching the mating prime, male participants were more likely to elevate their risk-propensity to compensate for their disadvantage in height; 5) male participants with high level of chronic mating motivation were also more likely to elevate their risk-propensity to compensate for the height disadvantage. The results of the current study suggest that men may have evolved a behavioral strategy to elevate their risk-taking propensity to compensate their height disadvantage, and this strategy was driven by motives of intrasexual competition and mating. These results were consistent with our hypothesis and thus provide further evidence for the evolutionary theory of Napoleon complex. "
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2019-08-22
Abstract： " Ingroup favoritism and ingroup derogation are very common our social lives, but the researchers still don’t know why these two kinds of intergroup biases can exist and whether these two kinds of biases have evolutionary functions. By systematically reviewing the research reports about the evidence that these two kinds of intergroup biases follow the principles of smoke detection and functional flexibility to deal with the threats of violence and disease incurred by ingroups and outgroups, the literature review showed that although the directions of ingroup favoritism and ingroup derogation are completely opposite to each other, both of these two biases are adaptive responses of the same threat management mechanism which is designed to deal with specific ingroup and outgroup threats. In conclusion, the current evidence suggests that the intergroup bias has adaptive functions and thus it supports the evolutionary hypothesis of intergroup bias.
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