No description available.

<p>The goal of this dissertation is to characterize goal directed proactive behavioral responses to threat as well as reactive responses to threat exposure, and to identify the neural and personality correlates of individual differences in these responses. Three specific studies are reported wherein participants completed a novel shock avoidance paradigm while concurrent measures of behavioral, muscular, and sympathetic autonomic activity were collected; self-report was used to measure mood and trait personality; and blood oxygen-level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) was used to measure individual differences in threat-related amygdala reactivity and intrinsic connectivity within the corticolimbic circuit.</p><p>Results from Study 1 demonstrate that during threat exposure, participants exhibit increased avoidance behavior, faster reaction times, and increased muscular and sympathetic activity. Moreover, results demonstrate that two broad patterns characterize individual differences in how participants respond during avoidance: 1) a generalized tendency to exhibit magnified threat responses across domains; and 2) a tendency to respond either with proactive behavioral responses or reactive autonomic responses. Heightened state anxiety during the shock avoidance paradigm, and increased trait anxiety were both associated with the generalized tendency to exhibit magnified threat responses. However, gender moderated the relationship between trait anxiety and generalized increases in threat responses during avoidance, such that only male participants exhibited a positive relationship between these two factors. Study 2 demonstrates that intrinsic connectivity between the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and centromedial region of the amygdala prospectively predicts whether participants will respond proactively or reactively during active avoidance. Finally, Study 3 provides evidence that responses to threat-related facial expressions within the centromedial region of the amygdala are associated with more reactive and less proactive responses during avoidance. </p><p>These results demonstrate that patterns observed in animal models of avoidance, specifically the competition between proactive and reactive responses to threat cues, extend to human participants. Moreover, our results suggest that while anxious mood during performance and heightened trait anxiety are associated with a generalized facilitation of threat responses across domains, measures of neural circuit function within the corticolimbic system predict whether individuals will exhibit increased proactive or reactive responses during active avoidance. In addition to facilitating the search for the neural processes underlying how the brain responds dynamically to threat, these results have the potential to aide researchers in characterizing the symptoms and neural processes underlying anxiety disorders.</p> / Dissertation

<p>[1] s., s. 4-70: sammanfattning, s. 73-153: 4 uppsatser</p> / digitalisering@umu

Resilience is among the increasingly popular topics of interest in the literature. Although rooted in the developmental and clinical literature, there has been an expansion of conceptualisations for this construct from various research streams, including the occupational literature. However, due to the lack of a behaviour-oriented measure of employee-centric resilience, the conceptualisation adapted in the present study refers to employee resilience as developable capacities that can be facilitated by the organisation to positively cope, adapt and thrive in response to continuously changing work environments. Using a recently developed measure of resilience, this study investigated the effects of the two leadership behaviours of empowerment and contingent reward, as well as the moderating roles of dispositional proactivity and optimism as individual differences. Regression analysis on a sample of 369 professionals supported the hypotheses that employee resilience is contingent on the leader’s operational empowerment and on contingent reward behaviours. Results also confirmed the effect of proactivity and optimism in enhancing resilience, and the moderating role of proactive personality in enhancing relation between empowering leadership and follower’s resilience. Outcomes of the study were also discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications, and recommendations were made for future research into the topic.

Studies were conducted to investigate relationships between trait emotion regulation variables (including reappraisal and suppression) and selective attention to negative emotional information. Correlation analyses of data in experiment 1 showed that trait-suppression was related to early attentional avoidance of angry faces, while reappraisal showed no relationship to attention. Experiment 2 directly compared selective attention to angry faces in groups of high trait-suppressors and high trait-reappraisers. Since reappraisers are also low trait-anxious and suppressors are high trait-anxious, low emotion regulating high- and low-anxious control groups were included. Contrary to findings from experiment 1, trait-suppressors did not have lower selective attention to angry faces than low-regulating high anxious controls. Trait-reappraisers in experiment 2 showed pronounced vigilance for angry faces compared to both trait suppressors and low-regulating low anxious controls. These results suggest that trait-suppression may reduce attentional threat biases. Conversely, trait-reappraisal combined with low anxiety may allow individuals to prioritize threat in attention.

Different versions of complex, simple, and running tests of immediate memory span were compared in their ability to predict fluid intelligence (gF). Conditions across memory tasks differed in terms of whether or not a secondary cognitive task was interleaved between to-be-remembered items (complex versus other span tasks), whether or not more items were presented than were ultimately to-be-remembered (running versus other span tasks), and whether presentation rate was relatively fast or slow (running and simple span tasks). Regressions indicated that up to 42.6% of variance in general fluid gF was explained by the memory span measures entered in different combinations. Across comparisons, shared relationships among span tasks accounted for a plurality of total variance in gF. Results indicate that in spite of procedural differences and resulting intra-individual variance in memory performance, the present memory tasks captured largely the same inter-individual variance in working memory capacity, insofar as this is important for higher-order cognition.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-111).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1995. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [61]-64).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 153 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-127). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Although children display the rudiments of altruistic capacity as early as during infancy, the manifestation of their actual altruistic behavior varies dramatically as they age. This paper explores some of the possible mechanisms behind the variation in altruistic tendencies in individual children, including some evolutionary theory, potential environmental factors, as well as sex, gender, and cultural differences. Specifically, it deals with topics such as attachment, emotions, personality, biological sex differences, gendered socialization, transgender children, parenting, reinforcement, perceptions of power, religion, and distinct cultural differences between collectivist and individualist cultures, and how each of these factors uniquely influence the manifestation of altruistic tendencies in children. Understanding the influence of even these few mechanisms ultimately leads to a better understanding of not only altruism in general, but also of specific instances of altruistic behavior in children, which may lead to a better understanding of how to encourage such behaviors to promote social and overall well-being.