Explaining the emergence of individuality in the process of evolution remains a challenge; it faces the difficulty of characterizing adequately what ‘emergence’ amounts to. Here, I present a ...pragmatic account of individuality in which I take up this challenge. Following this account, individuals that emerge from an evolutionary transition in individuality are coarse-grained entities: entities that are summaries of lower-level evolutionary processes. Although this account may
prima facie
appear to ultimately rely on epistemic considerations, I show that it can be used to vindicate the emergence of individuals in a quasi-ontological sense. To this end, I discuss a recent account of evolutionary transitions in individuality proposed by Godfrey-Smith and Kerr (Brit J Philos Sci 64(1):205–222, 2013) where a transition occurs through several stages, each with an accompanying model. I focus on the final stage where higher-level entities are ascribed a separate fitness parameter, while they were not in the previous stages. In light of my account, I provide some justification for why such a change in parameters is necessary and cannot be dismissed as merely epistemic.
A new conceptualization and measurement of social dominance orientation-individual differences in the preference for group based hierarchy and inequality-is introduced. In contrast to previous ...measures of social dominance orientation that were designed to be unidimensional, the new measure (SDO7) embeds theoretically grounded subdimensions of SDO-SDO-Dominance (SDO-D) and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E). SDO-D constitutes a preference for systems of group-based dominance in which high status groups forcefully oppress lower status groups. SDO-E constitutes a preference for systems of group-based inequality that are maintained by an interrelated network of subtle hierarchy-enhancing ideologies and social policies. Confirmatory factor and criterion validity analyses confirmed that SDO-D and SDO-E are theoretically distinct and dissociate in terms of the intergroup outcomes they best predict. For the first time, distinct personality and individual difference bases of SDO-D and SDO-E are outlined. We clarify the construct validity of SDO by strictly assessing a preference for dominance hierarchies in general, removing a possible confound relating to support for hierarchy benefitting the ingroup. Consistent with this, results show that among members of a disadvantaged ethnic minority group (African Americans), endorsement of SDO7 is inversely related to ingroup identity. We further demonstrate these effects using nationally representative samples of U.S. Blacks and Whites, documenting the generalizability of these findings. Finally, we introduce and validate a brief 4-item measure of each dimension. This article importantly extends our theoretical understanding of one of the most generative constructs in social psychology, and introduces powerful new tools for its measurement.
A robust empirical literature suggests that individual differences in the thematic and structural aspects of life narratives are associated with and predictive of psychological well-being. However, 1 ...limitation of the current field is the multitude of ways of capturing these narrative features, with little attention to overarching dimensions or latent factors of narrative that are responsible for these associations with well-being. In the present study we uncovered a reliable structure that accommodates commonly studied features of life narratives in a large-scale, multi-university collaborative effort. Across 3 large samples of emerging and midlife adults responding to various narrative prompts (N = 855 participants, N = 2,565 narratives), we found support for 3 factors of life narratives: motivational and affective themes, autobiographical reasoning, and structural aspects. We also identified a "functional" model of these 3 factors that reveals a reduced set of narrative features that adequately captures each factor. Additionally, motivational and affective themes was the factor most reliably related to well-being. Finally, associations with personality traits were variable by narrative prompt. Overall, the present findings provide a comprehensive and robust model for understanding the empirical structure of narrative identity as it relates to well-being, which offers meaningful theoretical contributions to the literature, and facilitates practical decision making for researchers endeavoring to capture and quantify life narratives.
Significant individual differences in the trajectories of cognitive aging and in age-related changes of brain structure and function have been reported in the past half-century. In some individuals, ...significant pathological changes in the brain are observed in conjunction with relatively well-preserved cognitive performance. Multiple constructs have been invoked to explain this paradox of resilience, including brain reserve, cognitive reserve, brain maintenance, and compensation. The aim of this session of the Cognitive Aging Summit III was to examine the overlap and distinctions in definitions and measurement of these constructs, to discuss their neural and behavioral correlates and to propose plausible mechanisms of individual cognitive resilience in the face of typical age-related neural declines.
•People vary in their ability to maintain good cognition despite significant neuropathology.•Reserve, maintenance, and compensation may explain the paradox of resilience.•These constructs may have passive (structural) or active (functional) brain basis.•Identification of reliable reflective indicators will boost validity of reserve construct.•Progress requires integrating animal and human neuroimaging in longitudinal designs.
Research focusing on among‐individual differences in behaviour (‘animal personality’) has been blooming for over a decade. Central theories explaining the maintenance of such behavioural variation ...posits that individuals expressing greater “risky” behaviours should suffer higher mortality. Here, for the first time, we synthesize the existing empirical evidence for this key prediction. Our results did not support this prediction as there was no directional relationship between riskier behaviour and greater mortality; however there was a significant absolute relationship between behaviour and survival. In total, behaviour explained a significant, but small, portion (5.8%) of the variance in survival. We also found that risky (vs. “shy”) behavioural types live significantly longer in the wild, but not in the laboratory. This suggests that individuals expressing risky behaviours might be of overall higher quality but the lack of predation pressure and resource restrictions mask this effect in laboratory environments. Our work demonstrates that individual differences in behaviour explain important differences in survival but not in the direction predicted by theory. Importantly, this suggests that models predicting behaviour to be a mediator of reproduction‐survival trade‐offs may need revision and/or empiricists may need to reconsider their proxies of risky behaviours when testing such theory.
Individual variation in behaviour is predicted to be related to differences in individual fitness components such as survival and longevity. Using meta‐analytic techniques, we were able to show that there is indeed a significant relationship between behaviour and survival, with behavioural variation explaining about 6% of the variance in survival. However, this relationship was not in the direction predicted by the key models, implying that current theoretical predictions are not capturing the whole complexity of the phenomenon.
Abstract
Inferring reciprocal effects or causality between variables is a central aim of behavioral and psychological research. To address reciprocal effects, a variety of longitudinal models that ...include cross-lagged relations have been proposed in different contexts and disciplines. However, the relations between these cross-lagged models have not been systematically discussed in the literature. This lack of insight makes it difficult for researchers to select an appropriate model when analyzing longitudinal data, and some researchers do not even think about alternative cross-lagged models. The present research provides a unified framework that clarifies the conceptual and mathematical similarities and differences between these models. The unified framework shows that existing longitudinal models can be effectively classified based on whether the model posits unique factors and/or dynamic residuals and what types of common factors are used to model changes. The latter is essential to understand how cross-lagged parameters are interpreted. We also present an example using empirical data to demonstrate that there is great risk of drawing different conclusions depending on the cross-lagged models used.
Translational Abstract
In behavioral and psychological research, inferring longitudinal relations between variables (e.g., how does change in one variable affect change in another variable?) is often a focused issue. Various longitudinal cross-lagged models can address the presence, magnitude, and direction of this relation through the cross-lagged parameters. However, these cross-lagged models have been proposed in different contexts and disciplines, and the relations between models have not been systematically discussed in the literature. The present research provides a unified framework, which is characterized by three kinds of equations, to clarify the conceptual and mathematical similarities and differences between these models. This framework is useful for understanding the potential of longitudinal models to assess causal effects. We also present an example using empirical data to demonstrate that there is great risk of drawing different conclusions about longitudinal relations and causality depending on the cross-lagged models that are used.
Psychological sciences have identified a wealth of cognitive processes and behavioral phenomena, yet struggle to produce cumulative knowledge. Progress is hamstrung by siloed scientific traditions ...and a focus on explanation over prediction, two issues that are particularly damaging for the study of multifaceted constructs like self-regulation. Here, we derive a psychological ontology from a study of individual differences across a broad range of behavioral tasks, self-report surveys, and self-reported real-world outcomes associated with self-regulation. Though both tasks and surveys putatively measure self-regulation, they show little empirical relationship. Within tasks and surveys, however, the ontology identifies reliable individual traits and reveals opportunities for theoretic synthesis. We then evaluate predictive power of the psychological measurements and find that while surveys modestly and heterogeneously predict real-world outcomes, tasks largely do not. We conclude that self-regulation lacks coherence as a construct, and that data-driven ontologies lay the groundwork for a cumulative psychological science.
The imprecise nature of psychiatric nosology restricts progress towards characterizing and treating mental health disorders. One issue is the ‘heterogeneity problem’: different causal mechanisms may ...relate to the same disorder, and multiple outcomes of interest can occur within one individual. Our review tackles this heterogeneity problem, providing considerations, concepts, and approaches for investigators examining human cognition and mental health. We highlight the difficulty of pure dimensional approaches due to ‘the curse of dimensionality’. Computationally, we consider supervised and unsupervised statistical approaches to identify putative subtypes within a population. However, we emphasize that subtype identification should be linked to a particular outcome or question. We conclude with novel hybrid approaches that can identify subtypes tied to outcomes, and may help advance precision diagnostic and treatment tools.
The heterogeneity problem limits efforts to characterize typical and atypical cognitive phenomenon.Multidimensional approaches to overcome the heterogeneity problem are promising, but also limited by the curse of dimensionality.Identification of subpopulations through supervised and unsupervised methods offers an alternative approach toward characterizing heterogeneity.Supervised and unsupervised approaches toward characterizing heterogeneity are limited in that subpopulations are not tied to specific questions of interest.Hybrid methods that combine both supervised and unsupervised methods, such as FRF and SVA, are able to identify subpopulations tied to specific questions of interest (e.g., cognitive performance or treatment outcome), and may ultimately help refine psychiatric nosology.
To date, fMRI research has been concerned primarily with evincing generic principles of brain function through averaging data from multiple subjects. Given rapid developments in both hardware and ...analysis tools, the field is now poised to study fMRI-derived measures in individual subjects, and to relate these to psychological traits or genetic variations. We discuss issues of validity, reliability and statistical assessment that arise when the focus shifts to individual subjects and that are applicable also to other imaging modalities. We emphasize that individual assessment of neural function with fMRI presents specific challenges and necessitates careful consideration of anatomical and vascular between-subject variability as well as sources of within-subject variability.
The dominant paradigm for inference in psychology is a null-hypothesis significance testing one. Recently, the foundations of this paradigm have been shaken by several notable replication failures. ...One recommendation to remedy the replication crisis is to collect larger samples of participants. We argue that this recommendation misses a critical point, which is that increasing sample size will not remedy psychology’s lack of strong measurement, lack of strong theories and models, and lack of effective experimental control over error variance. In contrast, there is a long history of research in psychology employing small-
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designs that treats the individual participant as the replication unit, which addresses each of these failings, and which produces results that are robust and readily replicated. We illustrate the properties of small-
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and large-
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designs using a simulated paradigm investigating the stage structure of response times. Our simulations highlight the high power and inferential validity of the small-
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design, in contrast to the lower power and inferential indeterminacy of the large-
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design. We argue that, if psychology is to be a mature quantitative science, then its primary theoretical aim should be to investigate systematic, functional relationships as they are manifested at the individual participant level and that, wherever possible, it should use methods that are optimized to identify relationships of this kind.
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