Asymmetric Causal Attributions to Environmental Influences for Prosocial Versus Antisocial Behavior.

Several recent studies have explored how people may favor different explanations for others' behavior depending on the moral or evaluative valence of the behavior in question. This research tested whether people would be less willing to believe that a person's environment played a role in causing her to exhibit antisocial (as compared to prosocial) behavior. In three experiments, participants read a description of a person engaging in either antisocial or prosocial behavior. Participants were less willing to endorse environmental causes of antisocial (versus prosocial) behavior when the environmental influence in question was witnessing others behaving similarly, either during childhood (Experiment 1) or recently (Experiment 2), or being directly encouraged by others to engage in the behavior described (Experiment 3). These results could be relevant to understanding why people resist attributing wrongdoing to causes outside of individual control in some cases.

The Ethics of Risk Prediction for Psychosis and Suicide Attempt in Youth Mental Health.

OBJECTIVE: To identify potential clinical utility of polygenic risk scores (PRS) and exposomic risk scores (ERS) for psychosis and suicide attempt in youth and assess the ethical implications of these tools. STUDY DESIGN: We conducted a narrative literature review of emerging findings on PRS and ERS for suicide and psychosis as well as a literature review on the ethics of PRS. We discuss the ethical implications of the emerging findings for the clinical potential of PRS and ERS. RESULTS: Emerging evidence suggests that PRS and ERS may offer clinical utility in the relatively near future but that this utility will be limited to specific, narrow clinical questions, in contrast to the suggestion that population-level screening will have sweeping impact. Combining PRS and ERS might optimize prediction. This clinical utility would change the risk-benefit balance of PRS, and further empirical assessment of proposed risks would be necessary. Some concerns for PRS, such as those about counseling, privacy, and inequities, apply to ERS. ERS raise distinct ethical challenges as well, including some that involve informed consent and direct-to-consumer advertising. Both raise questions about the ethics of machine-learning/artificial intelligence approaches. CONCLUSIONS: Predictive analytics using PRS and ERS may soon play a role in youth mental health settings. Our findings help educate clinicians about potential capabilities, limitations, and ethical implications of these tools. We suggest that a broader discussion with the public is needed to avoid overenthusiasm and determine regulations and guidelines for use of predictive scores.

Asymmetrical genetic attributions for the presence and absence of health problems.

OBJECTIVE: Recent research has suggested that people more readily make genetic attributions for positively valenced or desirable traits than for negatively valenced or undesirable traits-an asymmetry that may be mediated by perceptions that positive characteristics are more 'natural' than negative ones. This research sought to examine whether a similar asymmetry in genetic attributions would emerge between positive and negative health outcomes. DESIGN: Across seven experiments, participants were randomly assigned to read a short vignette describing an individual experiencing a health problem (e.g. hypertension) or a corresponding healthy state (e.g. normal blood pressure). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: All participants provided ratings of naturalness and genetic attributions for the outcome described in their assigned vignette. RESULTS: For diagnoses other than addictive disorders, participants rated the presence of a diagnosis as less genetically caused than its absence; for addictive disorders, the presence of a diagnosis was rated as more genetically caused than its absence. Participants consistently rated the presence of a health problem as less natural than its absence. CONCLUSION: Even within a single domain of health, people ascribe differing degrees of 'naturalness' and genetic causation to positive versus negative health outcomes, which could impact their preferences for treatment and prevention strategies.

Asymmetric genetic attributions for one's own prosocial versus antisocial behavior.

People tend to rate prosocial or positive behavior as more strongly influenced by the actor's genes than antisocial or negative behavior. The current study tested whether people would show a similar asymmetry when rating the role of genes in their own behavior, and if so, what variables might mediate this difference. Participants were prompted to think about an example of their own behavior from the past year that was either prosocial or antisocial. Those in the prosocial condition rated the role of genetics in causing the behavior as significantly greater than did those in the antisocial condition. A mediation analysis suggested that this asymmetry could be accounted for by a tendency to view prosocial behavior as more natural and more aligned with one's true self than antisocial behavior. These findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that people's reasoning about genetics may be influenced by evaluative judgments.

Experimentally exploring the potential behavioral effects of personalized genetic information about marijuana and schizophrenia risk.

Marijuana use may increase schizophrenia risk, and this effect may be genetically moderated. We investigated how hypothetical genetic test results indicating the presence or absence of heightened schizophrenia risk in reaction to marijuana use would affect attitudes toward marijuana use. In two experiments, participants were randomized to hypothetical scenarios in which genetic testing showed the presence or absence of a predisposition for marijuana use to increase their schizophrenia risk, or to a control condition with no mention of genetic testing. Experiment 1 used a sample of 801 U.S. young adults recruited via Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk platform. Experiment 2 replicated the same procedures with a nationally representative sample of 800 U.S. adults aged 18-30. In Experiment 1, those in the predisposition condition, compared to the control condition, rated the likelihood and importance of their avoiding marijuana as significantly higher, whereas those in the no-predisposition condition rated both as significantly lower. In experiment 2, these findings were largely replicated for the predisposition condition but not the no-predisposition condition, and prior marijuana use was a significant moderator, with the effects of the predisposition condition confined to participants who reported having used marijuana. If these results are predictive of responses to actual genetic testing, they suggest that genetic test results indicating that marijuana use will increase one's schizophrenia risk may incentivize abstinence, especially for those with prior marijuana use. Future research could further investigate whether genetic test results indicating the absence of such a predisposition might disincentivize abstinence from marijuana use.

Genetic attributions and perceptions of naturalness are shaped by evaluative valence.

Genetic influences on human behavior are increasingly well understood, but laypeople may endorse genetic attributions selectively; e.g., they appear to make stronger genetic attributions for prosocial than for antisocial behavior. We explored whether this could be accounted for by the relationship of genetic attributions to perceptions of naturalness. Participants read about positively or negatively valenced traits or behaviors and rated naturalness and genetic causation. Positively valenced phenotypes were rated significantly more natural and significantly more genetically influenced than negatively valenced phenotypes, and the former asymmetry significantly mediated the latter (Experiments 1 and 2). Participants' interpretation of what "natural" meant was not synonymous with valence or genetic attributions (Experiment 3). People ascribe differing degrees of genetic influence to the same phenotype depending on whether it is expressed in socially favored or disfavored ways, potentially representing a significant threat to public understanding of genetics.

Relationships of biomedical beliefs about depression to treatment-related expectancies in a treatment-seeking sample.

Like other mental disorders, major depression is increasingly explained as a biomedical illness. We examined, in a treatment-seeking sample, whether attributing one's depression to biomedical causes would be associated with pessimistic psychotherapy treatment expectancies. Individuals seeking psychotherapy for depression rated their endorsement of biomedical explanations for their symptoms, expectations regarding treatment outcome, and expectations about forming a working alliance with a therapist. We found that treatment seekers' endorsement of biomedical explanations for their symptoms was associated with pessimism about treatment being successful. This pessimism was, in turn, associated with holding more negative expectancies about one's ability to form a strong therapeutic alliance with a therapist. Given the ascendancy of biomedical explanations for depression and the influence of patient expectancies on clinical outcomes, strategies for disassociating biomedical attributions from pessimistic expectancies may be needed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Implications of Genetic and Other Biological Explanations for Thinking about Mental Disorders.

Given the rise of genetic etiological beliefs regarding psychiatric disorders, a growing body of research has focused on trying to elucidate the effects that such explanatory frameworks might be having on how mental disorders are perceived by patients, clinicians, and the general public. Genetic and other biomedical explanations of mental disorders have long been seen as a potential tool in the efforts to destigmatize mental disorders, given the harshness of the widespread negative attitudes about them and the important negative clinical and social impacts of this stigma. The conventional wisdom has appeared to be that because the effects of genes are seen as falling outside individual control, conceiving of mental disorders as caused by genes casts patients as blameless, thereby reducing stigmatization. Indeed, the results of experimental and correlational research have now robustly linked genetic and other biomedical explanations for mental disorders with reductions in the extent to which people are blamed for their psychiatric symptoms. However, research examining the impact of genetic and other biomedical explanations of mental disorders has also suggested that they can have significant downsides. The most consistently observed negative effect of these kinds of explanations is that they can apparently lead to the assumption that mental disorders are unlikely to improve or abate. Genetic and other biomedical explanations of mental disorders can also increase people's confidence in the effectiveness of biomedical treatments (such as pharmacotherapy) but decrease their confidence in the effectiveness of "nonbiomedical" treatments (such as psychotherapy).

Asymmetrical genetic attributions for prosocial versus antisocial behaviour.

Genetic explanations of human behaviour are increasingly common. While genetic attributions for behaviour are often considered relevant for assessing blameworthiness, it has not yet been established whether judgements about blameworthiness can themselves impact genetic attributions. Across six studies, participants read about individuals engaging in prosocial or antisocial behaviour, and rated the extent to which they believed that genetics played a role in causing the behaviour. Antisocial behaviour was consistently rated as less genetically influenced than prosocial behaviour. This was true regardless of whether genetic explanations were explicitly provided or refuted. Mediation analyses suggested that this asymmetry may stem from people's motivating desire to hold wrongdoers responsible for their actions. These findings suggest that those who seek to study or make use of genetic explanations' influence on evaluations of, for example, antisocial behaviour should consider whether such explanations are accepted in the first place, given the possibility of motivated causal reasoning.

Behavioral Genetics and Attributions of Moral Responsibility.

While considerable research has examined how genetic explanations for behavior impact assessments of moral responsibility, results across studies have been inconsistent. Some studies suggest that genetic accounts diminish ascriptions of responsibility, but others show no effect. Nonetheless, conclusions from behavior genetics are increasingly mobilized on behalf of defendants in court, suggesting a widespread intuition that this sort of information is relevant to assessments of blameworthiness. In this paper, we consider two sorts of reasons why this kind of intuition, if it exists, is not consistently revealed in empirical studies. On the one hand, people may have complex and internally conflicting intuitions about the relationship between behavior genetics and moral responsibility. On the other hand, it may be that people are motivated to think about the role of genetics in behavior differently depending on the moral valence of the actions in question.

Correction to: Behavioral Genetics and Attributions of Moral Responsibility.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a few mistakes in the Introduction section.

Biomedical Explanations of Psychopathology and Their Implications for Attitudes and Beliefs About Mental Disorders.

Mental disorders are increasingly conceptualized as biomedical diseases, explained as manifestations of genetic and neurobiological abnormalities. Here, we discuss changes in the dominant explanatory accounts of psychopathology that have occurred over time and the driving forces behind these shifts, lay out some real-world evidence for the increasing ascendancy of biomedical explanations, and provide an overview of the types of attitudes and beliefs that may be affected by them. We examine theoretical and conceptual models that are relevant to understanding how biomedical conceptualizations might affect attitudes and beliefs about mental disorders, and we review some empirical evidence that bears on this question. Finally, we examine possible strategies for combatting potential negative effects of biomedical explanations and discuss important conclusions and directions for future research.

Blue Genes? Understanding and Mitigating Negative Consequences of Personalized Information about Genetic Risk for Depression.

Personalized genetic testing for vulnerability to mental disorders is expected to become increasingly common. It is therefore important to understand whether learning about one's genetic risk for a mental disorder has negative clinical implications, and if so, how these might be counteracted. Among participants with depressive symptoms, we administered a sham biochemical test purportedly revealing participants' level of genetic risk for major depression. Participants told that they carried a genetic predisposition to depression expressed significantly lower confidence in their ability to cope with depressive symptoms than participants told they did not carry this predisposition. A short intervention providing education about the non-deterministic nature of genes' effects on depression fully mitigated this negative effect, however. Given the clinical importance of patient expectancies in depression, the notion that pessimism about one's ability to overcome symptoms could be exacerbated by genetic information-which will likely become ever more widely available-represents cause for concern. Education and counseling about the malleability of genetic effects may be an important tool for counteracting clinically deleterious beliefs that can be evoked by genetic test results. Genetic counselors may be able to help patients avoid becoming demoralized by learning they have a genetic predisposition to depression by providing education about the non-deterministic role of biology in depression, and a brief audiovisual intervention appears to be an effective approach to delivering such education.

An experiment assessing effects of personalized feedback about genetic susceptibility to obesity on attitudes towards diet and exercise.

As increasing attention is paid to possible genetic influences on susceptibility to obesity, recent studies have examined how genetic attributions can impact laypeople's weight-related attitudes and eating behavior. Little consideration, however, has been devoted to understanding the potential effects of learning that one does not have a genetic predisposition to obesity. The present study investigated the possibility that such feedback might bring about negative consequences by making people feel invulnerable to weight gain, which is termed a genetic invincibility effect. After conducting a saliva test disguised as genetic screening, participants were randomly assigned to be told that there was either a very high or very low chance that they carried genes known to increase one's risk of developing obesity. Participants who were told that they were not genetically predisposed to obesity judged the efficacy of healthy diet and exercise habits to be significantly lower than did those who were told that they were genetically predisposed and those who did not receive any genetic feedback. When prompted to select a meal from a menu of options, participants who were told that they were not genetically predisposed to obesity were also more likely than others to select unhealthy foods. These findings demonstrate the existence of a genetic invincibility effect, suggesting that personalized feedback indicating the absence of a genetic liability could have negative psychological consequences with substantial health-related implications.

Testing positive for a genetic predisposition to depression magnifies retrospective memory for depressive symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: Depression, like other mental disorders and health conditions generally, is increasingly construed as genetically based. This research sought to determine whether merely telling people that they have a genetic predisposition to depression can cause them to retroactively remember having experienced it. METHOD: U.S. adults (men and women) were recruited online to participate (Experiment 1: N = 288; Experiment 2: N = 599). After conducting a test disguised as genetic screening, we randomly assigned some participants to be told that they carried elevated genetic susceptibility to depression, whereas others were told that they did not carry this genetic liability or were told that they carried elevated susceptibility to a different disorder. Participants then rated their experience of depressive symptoms over the prior 2 weeks on a modified version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II. RESULTS: Participants who were told that their genes predisposed them to depression generally reported higher levels of depressive symptomatology over the previous 2 weeks, compared to those who did not receive this feedback. CONCLUSIONS: Given the central role of self-report in psychiatric diagnosis, these findings highlight potentially harmful consequences of personalized genetic testing in mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record

Beneficial and detrimental effects of genetic explanations for addiction.

BACKGROUND: Addictions are highly stigmatized and increasingly construed as biomedical diseases caused by genes, partly to reduce stigma by deflecting blame. However, genetic explanations may have negative effects, which have been understudied in the context of addiction. How the effects of genetic explanations might differ for substance addictions versus behavioral addictions is also unknown. AIMS: This study examined the impact of genetic explanations for addiction on measures of treatment expectancies, blame, and perceived agency and self-control, as well as whether these varied depending on whether the addiction was to a substance or a behavior. METHODS: Participants read about a person ('Charlie') with either alcohol use disorder or gambling disorder, receiving either a genetic or nongenetic explanation of Charlie's problem. They rated how much they blamed Charlie for his disorder, his likelihood of benefitting from medication or psychotherapy, and how much agency and self-control they ascribed to him. RESULTS: Compared to the nongenetic explanation, the genetic explanation reduced blame and increased confidence in the effectiveness of pharmacotherapy. However, it also decreased the expected effectiveness of psychotherapy and reduced ascriptions of agency and self-control. CONCLUSION: Genetic explanations for addiction appear to be a 'double-edged sword', with beneficial effects that come at a cost.

Using Personification and Agency Reorientation to Reduce Mental-Health Clinicians' Stigmatizing Attitudes Toward Patients.

People with mental disorders are strongly stigmatized. Among mental-health professionals, stigmatizing attitudes often manifest as desire for social distance from people with mental disorders. Currently ascendant biomedical conceptualizations of psychopathology could exacerbate this problem by engendering dehumanization, which is linked to prejudice. Given the clinical implications of such an occurrence, the present research tested a possible mitigation strategy. In an online study of 216 U.S. mental-health clinicians, two strategies for mitigating dehumanization in healthcare were tested-personification, highlighting personal traits of people with mental disorders rather than presenting them as malfunctioning brains, and agency reorientation, underscoring people's ability to make choices and decisions. This approach yielded significantly less desire for social distance, among clinicians, from a person with depression whose symptoms were explained biologically. These findings may suggest an avenue for decreasing stigma in clinical practice.

Effects of Biological Versus Psychosocial Explanations on Stigmatization of Children With ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: Previous studies have found biological conceptualizations of psychopathology to be associated with stigmatizing attitudes and prognostic pessimism. This research investigated how biological and psychosocial explanations for a child's ADHD symptoms differ in affecting laypeople's stigmatizing attitudes and prognostic beliefs. METHOD: Three experiments were conducted online with U.S. adults, using vignettes that described a child with ADHD and attributed his symptoms to either biological or psychosocial causes. Dependent measures gauged social distance and expectations about the child's prognosis. RESULTS: Across all three studies, the biological explanation yielded more doubt about treatability but less social distance-a result that diverges from previous research with other disorders. Differences in the amount of blame ascribed to the child mediated the social distance effect. CONCLUSION: The effects of biological explanations on laypeople's views of ADHD seem to be a "double-edged sword," reducing social rejection but exacerbating perceptions of the disorder as relatively untreatable.

Stigmatization of ADHD: A Developmental Review.

OBJECTIVE: In recent years, the stigmatization faced by people with mental disorders has received considerable attention in the empirical literature. However, individuals with different disorders are subject to distinct types of negative attitudes, necessitating examinations of stigma that treat specific disorders individually. METHOD: This article reviews recent empirical literature concerning the stigmatization of ADHD. Further specificity is achieved by taking a developmental perspective, reviewing studies of stigmatizing attitudes as a function of the age of the target and perceiver. RESULTS: Findings from nationally representative data sets, experimental investigations, surveys, and qualitative studies indicate that individuals of all ages who exhibit symptoms of ADHD are the recipients of substantial stigmatization. CONCLUSION: Although the stigmatizing attitudes of children and adolescents appear to differ in some ways from those of adults, negative perceptions toward people with ADHD appear to generally be present at all stages of development.

Emphasizing Malleability in the biology of depression: Durable effects on perceived agency and prognostic pessimism.

Biological attributions for depression, which are currently ascendant, can lead to prognostic pessimism-the perception that symptoms are relatively immutable and unlikely to abate (Kvaale, Haslam, & Gottdiener, 2013; Lebowitz, Ahn, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2013). Among symptomatic individuals, this may have important clinical ramifications, as reduced confidence in one's own ability to overcome depression carries the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Previous research (Lebowitz, Ahn, et al., 2013) has demonstrated that educational interventions teaching symptomatic individuals about how the effects of genetic and neurobiological factors involved in depression are malleable and can be modified by experiences and environmental factors can reduce prognostic pessimism. While previous research demonstrated such effects only in the immediate term, the present research extends these findings by testing whether such benefits persist six weeks after the intervention. Indeed, among individuals who initially considered biological factors to play a major role in influencing their levels of depression, exposure to malleability-focused psychoeducation reduced levels of depression-related prognostic pessimism and stronger belief in their ability to regulate their moods. Critically, this benefit persisted six weeks after the intervention. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.