Psychological predictors of vaping uptake among non-smokers: A longitudinal investigation of New Zealand adults.

INTRODUCTION: Demographic and health factors are known to predict vaping. Less is known about psychological predictors of vaping uptake, particularly among non-smoking adults using longitudinal designs. We aimed to model how psychological factors related to personality and mental health predicted the likelihood of vaping uptake over time in non-smoking adults ages 18+ using longitudinal data. METHODS: Longitudinal regression models utilised data from the 2018-2020 waves of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study to assess how the Big Five personality traits, mental distress and self-control predicted who began vaping over time among non-users (non-vapers and non-smokers), controlling for gender, age, ethnicity and economic deprivation. RESULTS: Analyses included 36,309 adults overall (ages 18 to 99; M = 51.0). The number of non-users who transitioned into current vaping was small (transitioned from 2018 to 2019, n = 147; 0.48%; 2019 to 2020, n = 189, 0.63%). Fully adjusted models showed that adults with higher mental distress (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.43; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09-1.88), lower self-control (aOR 0.79; 95% CI 0.69-0.89) and higher extraversion (aOR 1.09; 95% CI 1.06-1.13) were more likely to begin vaping at the next time point compared to adults who remained non-users. Higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness also predicted vaping uptake in initial models, but inclusion of mental distress and self-control superseded these traits. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Psychological factors related to mental distress, impulse control and sociability predicted who was more likely to begin vaping as non-smoking adults. Harm prevention interventions could target these factors to reduce vaping uptake in non-smokers.

The Even Shorter Almost Perfect Scale: Psychometric Evaluation and Cross-National Implications for Psychological Outcomes.

Short empirically-supported scales or individual items are preferred in comprehensive surveys, brief screeners, and experience sampling studies. To that end, we examined the Short Almost Perfect Scale (SAPS) to evaluate empirical support for the interchangeability of items to measure perfectionistic strivings (Standards) and perfectionistic concerns (Discrepancy). Based on a large and diverse sample (N = 1,103) and tests of tau-equivalence (equal factor loadings) for each respective set of items, Study 1 advanced a subset of SAPS items to measure Standards (2 items) and Discrepancy (3 items). Cross-sectional gender and race/ethnicity invariance were supported, and in structural equations analyses, the SAPS5 factors were significantly associated with depression, state anxiety, life satisfaction, and gratitude. Study 2 cross-validated Study 1 measurement and structural findings with a new U.S. sample (N = 803). The three items representing the Discrepancy (perfectionistic concerns) factor also were supported in a cross-national comparison between the U.S. sample and a scale development sample in New Zealand (N = 3,921). For the most part, across both studies and all analyses, the three Discrepancy items were empirically interchangeable indicators of perfectionistic concerns and comparably strong predictors of psychological outcomes, supporting their use in studies or other contexts with space or time restrictions for measurement.

The association between political orientation and political knowledge in 45 nations.

Political knowledge is crucial for well-functioning democracies, with most scholars assuming that people at the political extremes are more knowledgeable than those at the center. Here, we adopt a data-driven approach to examine the relationship between political orientation and political knowledge by testing a series of polynomial curves in 45 countries (N = 63,544), spread over 6 continents. Contrary to the dominant perspective, we found no evidence that people at the political extremes are the most knowledgeable about politics. Rather, the most common pattern was a fourth-degree polynomial association in which those who are moderately left-wing and right-wing are more knowledgeable than people at the extremes and center of the political spectrum. This pattern was especially, though not exclusively, prevalent in Western countries. We conclude that the relationship between political orientation and political knowledge is more context-dependent and complex than assumed, and caution against (implicit) universal conclusions in social sciences.

Examining age, period and cohort effects in attitude change to childhood vaccinations in a representative New Zealand survey: a multiyear cohort-sequential growth modelling study.

OBJECTIVES: Vaccinations are an important preventative measure in reducing the spread of infectious diseases worldwide. However, concerns of undervaccination during childhood have become increasingly common. The current study aims to investigate changes in attitudes towards childhood vaccinations prior to the COVID-19 pandemic using a national sample from New Zealand. DESIGN: Age-based, period-based, and cohort-based changes were assessed using cohort-sequential latent growth modelling in 11 overlapping birth cohorts, which spanned the ages of 23-79 years. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Data were taken from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study where 58 654 adults completed at least one wave across a 7-year period (2013 and 2015-2019). RESULTS: The period-based and cohort-based models fit the data equally well (χ2(282)=8547.93, p<0.001, comparative fit index, CFI=0.894, root mean square error of approximation, (RMSEA)=0.074, standardised root mean square residual, SRMR=0.105; χ2(273)=8514.87, p<0.001, CFI=0.894, RMSEA=0.075, SRMR=0.105, respectively) suggesting societal factors contribute to childhood vaccination attitudes. Additionally, the findings suggest attitudes towards childhood vaccinations were becoming increasingly more positive in all birth cohorts (ps<0.001), with younger and older birth cohorts exhibiting even positive attitudes compared with middle-aged cohorts. CONCLUSION: Overall, both the cohort-based and period-based models reveal changes in vaccination attitudes suggesting that even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, societal influences had an impact on attitudes towards childhood vaccination.

Fixed or Fluid? Sexual Identity Fluidity in a Large National Panel Study of New Zealand Adults.

Sexual orientation has been defined as an enduring aspect of the self, but emerging evidence reveals that people's sexual attractions, behaviors, and identities can shift over time. To examine this possibility, we present a large longitudinal analysis of sexual orientation identity fluidity among New Zealand adults (Ntotal = 45,856; age = 18-99; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority (LGB+) ns = 746-3,387). Over seven years, 5.7% of participants changed sexual identities at least once. Change was bi-directional (i.e. toward and away from LGB+ identities) and most common in people who initially reported a plurisexual identity. Although women reported higher rates of plurisexuality than men, they were not more fluid in their identities, contradicting the notion of male fixedness and female plasticity in sexuality. Moreover, openness to experience was associated with increased odds of changing from a heterosexual to a plurisexual identity, while political liberalism and lower conscientiousness were associated with increased odds of changing from a heterosexual to a plurisexual identity and more identity changes over time. Overall, our study shows that sexual identity can be fluid into adulthood and has implications for how we understand contemporary human sexuality.

Damned if she does: The subordinate male target hypothesis and discrimination of social dominant female minority members.

According to the subordinate male target hypothesis (SMTH), racism is based on an ethnicity-by-gender interaction, with a stronger link between experiencing racist discrimination and subordinate or dominant ethnic group status for men compared to women. This study reevaluates the SMTH, originally focused on objective discrimination, by applying it to self-reported active harm as a theoretically derived measure of racist discrimination and by exploring interindividual differences in female ethnic minority members' discriminatory experiences. We proposed that social dominance orientation (SDO) among female ethnic minorities would influence SMTH predictions. We tested this using multiple linear regression analyses among a sample of New Zealand Europeans as the majority in New Zealand and non-Europeans as the minority. As hypothesized, male non-Europeans reported disproportionally more active harm than female non-Europeans. Unexpectedly, not only female but also male, non-Europeans high in SDO reported more active harm than non-Europeans low in SDO. Therefore, applied to self-reported racist experiences, oppression of ethnic minorities is driven by interindividual differences rather than by gender. Together, these findings provide evidence that the SMTH cannot be unreservedly extended to reports of racist discrimination and that other processes may underlie these subjective experiences of discrimination that need to be considered in more detail.

Barriers to Biculturalism: Historical Negation and Symbolic Exclusion Predict Longitudinal Increases in Bicultural Policy Opposition.

The colonial ideologies of historical negation and symbolic exclusion (i.e., the "Dark Duo") promote inequality between settler colonizers and Indigenous peoples by denying the contemporary relevance of past injustices and excluding Indigenous culture from the nation's identity, respectively. Although their correlates are established, the temporal ordering of the relationship between the Dark Duo and bicultural policy opposition is unclear. We address this oversight by utilizing nine annual waves of panel data from a nationwide random sample of New Zealand adults (N = 31,104) to estimate two multigroup RI-CLPMs using the Dark Duo to predict symbolic and resource-based policy opposition (and vice versa). Results revealed that within-person increases in historical negation and symbolic exclusion predicted subsequent increases in symbolic and resource-based bicultural policy opposition for both majority and minority ethnic groups. These relationships were, however, bidirectional, demonstrating a self-perpetuating cycle, whereby the Dark Duo undermines biculturalism and antibiculturalism strengthens the Dark Duo.

Thinking twice: examining gender differences in repetitive negative thinking across the adult lifespan.

Background: A wealth of literature shows that women report greater levels of repetitive negative thinking, particularly rumination, than men in adolescence and adulthood. However, little research has examined how these gender differences develop or change across the entire adult lifespan. Methods: The present study addresses these oversights using a nationwide longitudinal probability sample of adults over 12 annual assessment points (N = 64,901; Mage = 42.50, range 18-81; 62.9% women) and a single-item measure of global repetitive negative thinking. Critically, we use multigroup cohort-sequential latent growth modeling to determine whether changes in this construct over time are due to (a) normative aging, (b) generational differences associated with the historical period one was born and raised in, or (c) a combination of these processes. Results: Our results reveal that rumination peaks in young adulthood for both women and men but declines steadily thereafter, reaching its lowest levels at the end of the adult lifespan. That said, some gender and cohort differences emerged, with young women-particularly young cohorts-reporting higher levels of rumination than their male counterparts and older birth cohorts. Discussion: Our study suggests that gender differences in rumination may be most prevalent among young birth cohorts, though future research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying these processes.

Examining the indirect effect of income on well-being via individual-based relative deprivation: Longitudinal mediation with a random intercept cross-lagged panel model.

Although the positive relationship between income and well-being is well established, the psychological mechanisms underlying this process are less understood. One underexplored explanation is that objective wealth (or lack thereof) fosters relative comparisons, which, in turn, predicts well-being. Extant work has, however, mostly focused on objective indicators of relative deprivation rather than on how people perceive their societal status. We address this oversight by examining the longitudinal indirect effects of income on well-being via perceived individual-based relative deprivation (IRD) using traditional and random intercept cross-lagged panel models. Averaged across 10 annual assessments in a nationwide longitudinal panel sample of adults (N = 66,560), our results revealed reliable indirect effects of income on well-being via IRD. Specifically, within-person increases in income predicted within-person decreases in IRD, which then predicted within-person increases in personal well-being over time. Our results replicated across robustness checks, including one using a general life satisfaction measure. We thus extend previous work by highlighting the need to consider one's perceptions of their relative societal position as a mechanism underlying the effects of income on well-being over time.

Perceived Relative Deprivation Across the Adult Lifespan: An Examination of Aging and Cohort Effects.

Despite being a core psychological construct for over 70 years, research has yet to examine how perceptions of deprivation relative to other individuals and/or groups develop across adulthood. As such, this preregistered study uses cohort-sequential latent growth modeling to examine changes in individual- and group-based relative deprivation (IRD and GRD, respectively) across the adult lifespan. Across 10 annual assessments of a nationwide random sample of adults (Ntotal = 58,878; ethnic minority n = 11,927; 62.7% women; ages 21-80), mean levels of IRD trended downward across the lifespan, whereas mean levels of GRD generally increased from young-to-middle adulthood before declining across late adulthood. Subtle cohort effects emerged for both constructs, although both IRD and GRD largely followed a normative aging process. Critically, the development of GRD-but not IRD-differed between ethnic groups, providing insights into how one's objective status may shape subjective (dis)advantage over time.

Long-term causal effects of far-right terrorism in New Zealand.

The Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019, committed by a radical right-wing extremist, resulted in the tragic loss of 51 lives. Following these events, there was a noticable rise in societal acceptance of Muslim minorities. Comparable transient reactions have been observed elsewhere. However, the critical questions remain: can these effects endure? Are enduring effects evident across the political spectrum? It is challenging to answer such questions because identifying long-term causal effects requires estimating unobserved attitudinal trajectories without the attacks. Here, we use six preattack waves of Muslim acceptance responses from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) to infer missing counterfactual trajectories (NZAVS cohort 2012, N=4,865; replicated in 2013 cohort, N=7,894). We find (1) the attacks initially boosted Muslim acceptance; (2) the magnitude of the initial Muslim acceptance boost was similar across the political spectrum; (3) no changes were observed in negative control groups; and (4) two- and three-year effects varied by baseline political orientation: liberal acceptance was stable, conservative acceptance grew relative to the counterfactual trend. Overall, the attacks added five years of growth in Muslim acceptance, with no regression to preattack levels over time. Continued growth among conservatives highlights the attack's failure to divide society. These results demonstrate the utility of combining methods for causal inference with national-scale panel data to answer psychological questions of basic human concern.

Exposure to automation explains religious declines.

The global decline of religiosity represents one of the most significant societal shifts in recent history. After millennia of near-universal religious identification, the world is experiencing a regionally uneven trend toward secularization. We propose an explanation of this decline, which claims that automation-the development of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)-can partly explain modern religious declines. We build four unique datasets composed of more than 3 million individuals which show that robotics and AI exposure is linked to 21st-century religious declines across nations, metropolitan regions, and individual people. Key results hold controlling for other technological developments (e.g., electricity grid access and telecommunications development), socioeconomic indicators (e.g., wealth, residential mobility, and demographics), and factors implicated in previous theories of religious decline (e.g., individual choice norms). An experiment also supports our hypotheses. Our findings partly explain contemporary trends in religious decline and foreshadow where religiosity may wane in the future.

Ethnic group differences in patient satisfaction with GP services: findings from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study.

AIM: To identify key predictors of general practitioner (GP) satisfaction and increase insight into the mechanisms behind ethnic health inequities in New Zealand. METHOD: Regression analyses were conducted using data from the 2019 New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (n=38,465). RESULTS: Initially, Maori and Asian peoples showed lower, and Pasifika peoples showed no significant difference in GP satisfaction level relative to New Zealand (NZ) Europeans. However, after accounting for differences in patient-perceived GP cultural respect and GP ethnic similarity, Maori and Pasifika peoples showed higher and Asian peoples showed no difference in GP satisfaction level relative to NZ Europeans. These effects continued to hold when adjusting for a range of demographic factors. Subsequent regression analyses were conducted to investigate the impact of GP perceptions, GP satisfaction and demographic factors on healthcare access satisfaction and health status across ethnic groups. For all ethnic groups, GP satisfaction was the strongest predictor of satisfaction with access to healthcare. Higher GP satisfaction was also a significant predictor of higher self-rated health and lower psychological distress. CONCLUSION: Lack of GP cultural respect is a key contributor to lower GP satisfaction among ethnic minorities, which can further exacerbate inequities in healthcare access and health outcomes. Interventions to enhance GPs' provision of culturally respectful and safe healthcare services may help reduce ethnic health inequities and improve population health.

The socialization of perceived discrimination in ethnic minority groups.

Contact with members of one's own group (ingroup) and other groups (outgroups) shapes individuals' beliefs about the world, including perceptions of discrimination against one's ingroup. Research to date indicates that, among members of disadvantaged groups, contact with an advantaged outgroup is associated with less perceived discrimination, while contact with the disadvantaged ingroup is associated with more perceived discrimination. Past studies, however, considered ingroup and outgroup contact in isolation and overlooked the various processes that could explain these associations. We addressed these issues by examining whether disadvantaged-group members' perceptions of discrimination are shaped by how much contact they have with ingroup and outgroup members (contact effects) or by those ingroup and outgroup members' perceptions of discrimination (socialization effects) while controlling for their tendency to affiliate with similar others (selection effects). Three studies (total N = 5,866 ethnic minority group members) assessed participants' positive contact, friendships, and perceived discrimination and applied longitudinal and social network analyses to separate and simultaneously test contact, socialization, and selection processes. In contrast to previous studies, we found no evidence that contact with members of the advantaged outgroup precedes perceived discrimination. Instead, we found that friendships with members of the disadvantaged ingroup longitudinally predict perceived discrimination through the process of socialization-disadvantaged-group members' perceptions of discrimination became more similar to their ingroup friends' perceptions of discrimination over time. We conclude that perceptions of discrimination should be partly understood as a socialized belief about a shared reality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of vaping on uptake and cessation of smoking: Longitudinal analysis in Aotearoa New Zealand adults.

INTRODUCTION: Globally, the use of vapes, or e-cigarettes, is increasing. While vaping is less harmful than smoking and may help smokers to quit, there is also the possibility that vaping may lead to smoking. The current study aimed to determine the prevalence of vaping and smoking in Aotearoa New Zealand and explore longitudinal pathways between smoking status and vape use. METHOD: Data related to smoking and vaping status was analysed from Times 10, 11 and 12 across 2018-2020 of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values study, a large, representative, multi-wave study of adults living in New Zealand. Weighted descriptive analyses were used to determine prevalence rates of vaping and smoking and a generalised linear modelling approach was used to examine the likelihood of changing to, or taking up, the other behaviour in the transition between time points. RESULTS: Broadly, the prevalence of smoking was found to be decreasing over time while the prevalence of vaping was increasing. Despite these general trends, no differences were observed in the likelihood of transitioning from smoking to vaping or from vaping to smoking, indicating that either pathway was equally as likely. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The current findings demonstrate that vaping appeared to be just as likely to have a gateway effect to smoking as it was to have a cessation effect. This highlights the need for greater consideration regarding vaping-related policies and restrictions.

Age and gender differences in narcissism: A comprehensive study across eight measures and over 250,000 participants.

Age and gender differences in narcissism have been studied often. However, considering the rich history of narcissism research accompanied by its diverging conceptualizations, little is known about age and gender differences across various narcissism measures. The present study investigated age and gender differences and their interactions across eight widely used narcissism instruments (i.e., Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale, Dirty Dozen, Psychological Entitlement Scale, Narcissistic Personality Disorder Symptoms from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Version IV, Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire-Short Form, Single-Item Narcissism Scale, and brief version of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory). The findings of Study 1 (N = 5,736) revealed heterogeneity in how strongly the measures are correlated. Some instruments loaded clearly on one of the three factors proposed by previous research (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Antagonism), while others cross-loaded across factors and in distinct ways. Cross-sectional analyses using each measure and meta-analytic results across all measures (Study 2) with a total sample of 270,029 participants suggest consistent linear age effects (random effects meta-analytic effect of r = -.104), with narcissism being highest in young adulthood. Consistent gender differences also emerged (random effects meta-analytic effect was -.079), such that men scored higher in narcissism than women. Quadratic age effects and Age × Gender effects were generally very small and inconsistent. We conclude that despite the various conceptualizations of narcissism, age and gender differences are generalizable across the eight measures used in the present study. However, their size varied based on the instrument used. We discuss the sources of this heterogeneity and the potential mechanisms for age and gender differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The psychological causes and societal consequences of authoritarianism.

Over the past two decades, citizens' political rights and civil liberties have declined globally. Psychological science can play an instrumental role in both explaining and combating the authoritarian impulses that underlie these attacks on personal autonomy. In this Review, we describe the psychological processes and situational factors that foster authoritarianism, as well as the societal consequences of its apparent resurgence within the general population. First, we summarize the dual process motivational model of ideology and prejudice, which suggests that viewing the world as a dangerous, but not necessarily competitive, place plants the psychological seeds of authoritarianism. Next, we discuss the evolutionary, genetic, personality and developmental antecedents to authoritarianism and explain how contextual threats to safety and security activate authoritarian predispositions. After examining the harmful consequences of authoritarianism for intergroup relations and broader societal attitudes, we discuss the need to expand the ideological boundaries of authoritarianism and encourage future research to investigate both right-wing and left-wing variants of authoritarianism.

Cooperative and conformist behavioural preferences predict the dual dimensions of political ideology.

Decades of research suggest that our political differences are best captured by two dimensions of political ideology. The dual evolutionary framework of political ideology predicts that these dimensions should be related to variation in social preferences for cooperation and group conformity. Here, we combine data from a New Zealand survey and a suite of incentivised behavioural tasks (n = 991) to test whether cooperative and conformist preferences covary with a pair of widely used measures of the two dimensions of political ideology-Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)-and related policy views. As predicted, we find that cooperative behaviour is negatively related to SDO and economically conservative policy views, while conformist behaviour in the form of social information use is positively related to RWA and socially conservative policy views. However, we did not find the predicted relationships between punitive and rule following behaviours and RWA or socially conservative views, raising questions about the interpretation of punishment and rule following tasks and the nature of authoritarian conformist preferences. These findings reveal how cooperative and conformist preferences that evolved to help us navigate social challenges in our ancestral past continue to track our political differences even today.

Does intergroup contact foster solidarity with the disadvantaged? A longitudinal analysis across 7 years.

Contact theory is a well-established paradigm for improving intergroup relations-positive contact between groups promotes social harmony by increasing intergroup warmth. A longstanding critique of this paradigm is that contact does not necessarily promote social equality. Recent research has blunted this critique by showing that contact correlates positively with political solidarity expressed by dominant groups toward subordinate groups, thus furthering the goal of equality. However, this research precludes causal inferences because it conflates within-person change (people with higher contact subsequently expressing higher solidarity) and between-person stability (people with chronically high contact simultaneously expressing chronically high solidarity, and vice versa). We addressed this problem in a highly powered, seven-wave study using two different measures of contact and three different measures of political solidarity (N = 22,646). Results showed no within-person change over a 1-year period (inconsistent with a causal effect), but significant between-person stability (consistent with third-variable explanations). This reinforces doubts about contact as a strategy for promoting equality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The political system through a partisan lens: Within-person changes in support for political parties precede political system attitudes.

Although political party support and attitudes towards the political system are closely related, the temporal ordering of these associations is unclear. Indeed, prior research identifies both partisan-led change in system attitudes and system attitude-led change in party support. Using a ten-year (2010-2020) national probability sample of New Zealand adults (N = 66,359), we test these associations by modelling the within-person cross-lagged effects between conservative and liberal party support, and political system justification. During conservative-led governments, increases in conservative party support predicted increases in political system justification more strongly than vice versa. The 2017 shift to a liberal-led government was met with an immediate reversal of the effects of party support on system justification, but the effect of system justification on party support took a full year to reverse. These results demonstrate people's perceptions of the fairness of the political system depend on their support for the party in power.