Feel Good about It
Endogenous Treatment Models with Social Interactions: An Application to the Impact of Exercise on Self-Esteem
Zhongjian Lin & Francis Vella
Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We address the estimation of endogenous treatment models with social interactions in both the treatment and outcome equations. We model the interactions between individuals via a game theoretic approach based on discrete Bayesian games. We employ a nested pseudo joint likelihood algorithm when obtaining the model’s parameters and provide relevant treatment effects and procedures for their estimation. Our empirical application examines the impact of an individual’s exercise frequency on their level of self-esteem. We find that an individual’s exercise frequency is influenced by their expectation of their friends’ exercise frequency. Moreover, an individual’s level of self-esteem is affected by their level of exercise and, at relatively lower levels of self-esteem, by the expectation of their friends’ self-esteem.
Depression-Reframing: Recognizing the Strength in Mental Illness Improves Goal Pursuit Among People Who Have Faced Depression
Christina Bauer et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Widespread narratives frame mental illness as a sign of inherent personal weakness -- an alleged weakness that would permanently undermine people’s ability to pursue goals in life. Do these narratives have self-fulfilling consequences? To test this hypothesis, and to attain a practical way to support people in realizing their strengths, we developed a brief (~20 min), highly scalable exercise that highlights the strengths people show when contending with depression. Three experiments (Ntotal = 748) show that this depression-reframing-exercise enhanced the confidence of people who had experienced depression to pursue their goals in life, 0.30≤ ds ≤0.68 (Ns = 158, 419, and 171); and, over 2 weeks, the progress they reported making towards a valued personal goal by 49% (from 43% reported completion to 64%), d = 0.47 (Experiment 3). While default inherent-weakness-narratives harm goal pursuit among people with depression, efforts to reframe depression can help people with depression recognize and access their strengths.
Social Psychology’s Empty-Self Metaphor and the Replication Crisis
Jack Klein & William Swann
Perspectives on Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Since the early 20th century, an emphasis on the causal power of situations in social psychology has fostered the view that the self is an empty vessel filled by the contents of the situation. We label this the “empty-self metaphor,” with incarnations including situationism and elements of theories of self-presentation, self-perception, social identity, the dramaturgical movement, and others. The persistence of this metatheoretical assumption has led to an underappreciation of an enduring, unique self and to the development of contemporary paradigms (e.g., social priming and embodied cognition) that have hinged on the implicit premise that the self is empty or passive. The self is not empty, of course, and new preliminary evidence we have collected indicates that research predicated on the empty-self metaphor is far less likely to replicate. Although we emphasize that the power of the situation has yielded important theoretical and practical insights, we propose that the field would be strengthened by better accounting for the chronic, dispositional motivations that emanate from an enduring self. We offer suggestions — both theoretical and methodological — that can help social psychologists achieve this goal.
Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour
Gavin Touponse et al.
Nature, forthcoming
Abstract:
Effort is costly: given a choice, we tend to avoid it. However, in many cases, effort adds value to the ensuing rewards. From ants to humans, individuals prefer rewards that had been harder to achieve. This counterintuitive process may promote reward seeking even in resource-poor environments, thus enhancing evolutionary fitness. Despite its ubiquity, the neural mechanisms supporting this behavioural effect are poorly understood. Here we show that effort amplifies the dopamine response to an otherwise identical reward, and this amplification depends on local modulation of dopamine axons by acetylcholine. High-effort rewards evoke rapid acetylcholine release from local interneurons in the nucleus accumbens. Acetylcholine then binds to nicotinic receptors on dopamine axon terminals to augment dopamine release when reward is delivered. Blocking the cholinergic modulation blunts dopamine release selectively in high-effort contexts, impairing effortful behaviour while leaving low-effort reward consumption intact. These results reconcile in vitro studies, which have long demonstrated that acetylcholine can trigger dopamine release directly through dopamine axons, with in vivo studies that failed to observe such modulation, but did not examine high-effort contexts. Our findings uncover a mechanism that drives effortful behaviour through context-dependent local interactions between acetylcholine and dopamine axons.
Cortisol and C-reactive Protein Interact to Predict Depressive Symptoms
Stacey Doan, Dylan Hoell & Thomas Fuller-Rowell
Psychoneuroendocrinology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing literature has sought to characterize the physiological correlates of depression, particularly with respect to inflammatory hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal functioning and inflammation. These systems are intricately interrelated, but in relation to depression, have primarily been investigated independently. This study examined interactions between C-reactive protein (CRP), a widely studied inflammatory biomarker, and salivary cortisol in relation to depressive symptoms in a non-clinical sample of 18- to 25-year-olds. We analyzed data from 186 participants (Mage = 19.43 years, SDage = 1.11, 59.8% female) who provided dried blood spot and saliva samples, assayed for CRP and cortisol concentrations, respectively. Salivary cortisol was collected across the Trier Social Stress Task. Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory. Covariate-adjusted linear regression models were used to test for main and interaction effects between cortisol and CRP on depressive symptoms. Controls included sex, age, parent income, race/ethnicity, BMI, and study site. In our sample, neither cortisol (b = -.01, SE b =.01, p =.17) nor CRP (b = -1.25, SE =.92, p =.18) were related to depressive symptom severity. However, there was a significant interaction effect (b =.04, SE b =.01, p =.001), such that cortisol reactivity was inversely related to depression among participants with low, but not moderate or high levels of CRP. Cortisol reactivity to moderate stressors appears to be beneficial, but our results suggest these benefits are attenuated by high inflammation. This indicates that inflammatory activity is an important contextual factor shaping the relationship between cortisol and depression, highlighting the utility of multi-system approaches to studying the physiological correlates of depression.