The role of self-esteem, optimism, deliberative thinking and self-control in shaping the financial behavior and financial well-being of young adults.

The sustainable financial behavior and financial well-being have been a key concern among the developing societies; thereby encompassing the various psychological factors which play a role in influencing individual's positive financial behavior and financial well-being, this study is conducted. Research focusing on the psychological aspect of human financial behavior and well-being is scarce, focusing more on the cognitive side such as financial literacy and numeracy. The aim of this research study is to find the role played by the non-cognitive factors such as self-esteem, self-control, optimism and deliberative thinking, in forming the financial behavior and financial well-being of the young adults. A sample of 429 university students from public and private sector was collected via an online and field survey using purposive sampling technique. The survey contained measures for demographics, self-esteem, optimism, deliberative thinking, self-control, general financial behavior and financial well-being. SPSS and PLS-SEM tools were used for the exploration of the relationships among dependent and independent variables. The results of PLS path analysis demonstrate that among the non-cognitive factors, self-control and deliberative thinking show a significant association with both financial behavior, and financial security. Self-esteem plays no significant role in forming the financial behavior of the young adults when all the variables are taken together but it exhibits a significant association with financial well-being (financial security and financial anxiety). Optimism on the other hand exhibits no significant association with both financial behavior and financial well-being (financial security and financial anxiety). The results of this study complement the previous studies and also put forth new outcomes. This research is unique as it is the first of its kind conducted in a consumption-oriented economy like Pakistan. In addition to the previous studies which have often established the link of self-esteem with general well-being, this study goes further by analyzing the association between self-esteem and financial well-being and by the identification of the role played by non-cognitive factors like self-esteem, optimism, deliberative thinking and self-control together on the financial behavior and financial well-being of the individuals using PLS-SEM approach.

Effect of disclosing the relation between effort and unit reliability on system reliability: An economic experiment.

The purpose is to experimentally examine the effect of disclosing the risk probability of each unit in a production system on human behavior and the resulting system reliability. We used an economic experiment based on the theoretical model of Hausken (2002) to evaluate the effect of disclosing the relation between effort and unit reliability. We conducted first the non-disclosed-risk experiment and then the disclosed-risk experiment within subjects in both series and parallel systems. Our experimental results show that disclosing the relation between effort and unit reliability has two positive effects. First, subjects succeeded in improving the system reliability while cutting back on efforts to reduce the risk of their units when the risk probability was disclosed. In each system, the disclosed-risk condition achieves significantly higher system reliability on average than does the non-disclosed-risk condition, although the average level of effort is significantly lower under the disclosed-risk condition than under the non-disclosed-risk condition. Second, disclosing the risk probability simplified the subjects' decision-making process and reduced its cost because subjects made their decisions on the amount of effort to exert based only on the risk probability information without considering other factors, such as the number of accidents.

Do sex hormones at birth predict later-life economic preferences? Evidence from a pregnancy birth cohort study.

Economic preferences may be shaped by exposure to sex hormones around birth. Prior studies of economic preferences and numerous other phenotypic characteristics use digit ratios (2D : 4D), a purported proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure, whose validity has recently been questioned. We use direct measures of neonatal sex hormones (testosterone and oestrogen), measured from umbilical cord blood (n = 200) to investigate their association with later-life economic preferences (risk preferences, competitiveness, time preferences and social preferences) in an Australian cohort (Raine Study Gen2). We find no significant associations between testosterone at birth and preferences, except for competitiveness, where the effect runs opposite to the expected direction. Point estimates are between 0.05-0.09 percentage points (pp) and 0.003-0.14 s.d. We similarly find no significant associations between 2D : 4D and preferences (n = 533, point estimates 0.003-0.02 pp and 0.001-0.06 s.d.). Our sample size allows detecting effects larger than 0.11 pp or 0.22 s.d. for testosterone at birth, and 0.07 pp or 0.14 s.d. for 2D : 4D (α = 0.05 and power = 0.90). Equivalence tests show that most effects are unlikely to be larger than these bounds. Our results suggest a reinterpretation of prior findings relating 2D : 4D to economic preferences, and highlight the importance of future large-sample studies that permit detection of small effects.

How technical progress reshaped behavioral neuroendocrinology during the last 50 years and some methodological remarks.

The first issue of Hormones and Behavior was published 50 years ago in 1969, a time when most of the techniques we currently use in Behavioral Endocrinology were not available. Researchers have during the last 5 decades developed techniques that allow measuring hormones in small volumes of biological samples, identify the sites where steroids act in the brain to activate sexual behavior, characterize and quantify gene expression correlated with behavior expression, modify this expression in a specific manner, and manipulate the activity of selected neuronal populations by chemogenetic and optogenetic techniques. This technical progress has considerably transformed the field and has been very beneficial for our understanding of the endocrine controls of behavior in general, but it did also come with some caveats. The facilitation of scientific investigations came with some relaxation of methodological exigency. Some critical controls are no longer performed on a regular basis and complex techniques supplied as ready to use kits are implemented without precise knowledge of their limitations. We present here a selective review of the most important of these new techniques, their potential problems and how they changed our view of the hormonal control of behavior. Fortunately, the scientific endeavor is a self-correcting process. The problems have been identified and corrections have been proposed. The next decades will obviously be filled with exciting discoveries in behavioral neuroendocrinology.

Towards Mixed-Initiative Human-Robot Interaction: Assessment of Discriminative Physiological and Behavioral Features for Performance Prediction.

The design of human-robot interactions is a key challenge to optimize operational performance. A promising approach is to consider mixed-initiative interactions in which the tasks and authority of each human and artificial agents are dynamically defined according to their current abilities. An important issue for the implementation of mixed-initiative systems is to monitor human performance to dynamically drive task allocation between human and artificial agents (i.e., robots). We, therefore, designed an experimental scenario involving missions whereby participants had to cooperate with a robot to fight fires while facing hazards. Two levels of robot automation (manual vs. autonomous) were randomly manipulated to assess their impact on the participants' performance across missions. Cardiac activity, eye-tracking, and participants' actions on the user interface were collected. The participants performed differently to an extent that we could identify high and low score mission groups that also exhibited different behavioral, cardiac and ocular patterns. More specifically, our findings indicated that the higher level of automation could be beneficial to low-scoring participants but detrimental to high-scoring ones, and vice versa. In addition, inter-subject single-trial classification results showed that the studied behavioral and physiological features were relevant to predict mission performance. The highest average balanced accuracy (74%) was reached using the features extracted from all input devices. These results suggest that an adaptive HRI driving system, that would aim at maximizing performance, would be capable of analyzing such physiological and behavior markers online to further change the level of automation when it is relevant for the mission purpose.

Generalised free energy and active inference.

Active inference is an approach to understanding behaviour that rests upon the idea that the brain uses an internal generative model to predict incoming sensory data. The fit between this model and data may be improved in two ways. The brain could optimise probabilistic beliefs about the variables in the generative model (i.e. perceptual inference). Alternatively, by acting on the world, it could change the sensory data, such that they are more consistent with the model. This implies a common objective function (variational free energy) for action and perception that scores the fit between an internal model and the world. We compare two free energy functionals for active inference in the framework of Markov decision processes. One of these is a functional of beliefs (i.e. probability distributions) about states and policies, but a function of observations, while the second is a functional of beliefs about all three. In the former (expected free energy), prior beliefs about outcomes are not part of the generative model (because they are absorbed into the prior over policies). Conversely, in the second (generalised free energy), priors over outcomes become an explicit component of the generative model. When using the free energy function, which is blind to future observations, we equip the generative model with a prior over policies that ensure preferred (i.e. priors over) outcomes are realised. In other words, if we expect to encounter a particular kind of outcome, this lends plausibility to those policies for which this outcome is a consequence. In addition, this formulation ensures that selected policies minimise uncertainty about future outcomes by minimising the free energy expected in the future. When using the free energy functional-that effectively treats future observations as hidden states-we show that policies are inferred or selected that realise prior preferences by minimising the free energy of future expectations. Interestingly, the form of posterior beliefs about policies (and associated belief updating) turns out to be identical under both formulations, but the quantities used to compute them are not.

The Assessment of Visual Function and Functional Vision.

The complete assessment of vision-related abilities should consider visual function (the performance of components of the visual system) and functional vision (visual task-related ability). Assessment methods are highly dependent upon individual characteristics (eg, the presence and type of visual impairment). Typical visual function tests assess factors such as visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, color, depth, and motion perception. These properties each represent an aspect of visual function and may impact an individual's level of functional vision. The goal of any functional vision assessment should be to measure the visual task-related ability under real-world scenarios. Recent technological advancements such as virtual reality can provide new opportunities to improve traditional vision assessments by providing novel objective and ecologically valid measurements of performance, and allowing for the investigation of their neural basis. In this review, visual function and functional vision evaluation approaches are discussed in the context of traditional and novel acquisition methods.

Stress and Illness: A Role for Specific Emotions.

Research on stress and disease has often afforded an important role to emotion, typically conceptualized in broad categories (e.g., negative emotions), viewed as playing a causal role (e.g., anger contributing to pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease), and measured using self-report inventories. In this article, I argue for the value of evaluating specific emotions, considering bidirectional causal influences, and assessing actual emotional responding when considering the role that emotions play in the stress-disease relationship. In terms of specificity, specific emotions (e.g., anger, sadness, and embarrassment) can be linked with particular health outcomes (e.g., cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal disease). In terms of bidirectionality, the influences of emotions on disease as well as the influences of disease on emotional functioning can be considered. In terms of assessing actual emotional responding, emotions can be studied in vivo under controlled conditions that allow behavioral, physiological, and subjective responses to be measured during different kinds of emotional functioning (e.g., responding to emotional stimuli, interacting with relationship partners, and downregulating emotional responses). With these considerations in mind, I review early theories and empirical studies in psychosomatic medicine that considered the role of specific emotions and emotion-related behaviors. Studies from our laboratory are presented that illustrate a) differences in patterns of autonomic nervous system responding associated with specific emotions, b) relationships between specific emotions and particular health outcomes in the context of social relationships, c) age as a moderator of the relationship between specific emotions and well-being, d) bidirectional influences (emotions influencing disease and disease influencing emotional functioning), and e) impact of changes in emotional functioning in individuals with neurodegenerative diseases on the health of familial caregivers.

Sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics associated with blood donation in the United States: a population-based study.

BACKGROUND: Contemporary population-based data on characteristics associated with blood donation in the United States (U.S.) are limited. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: A cross-sectional analysis was performed among 28,739 persons aged 18 years and older who participated in the 2016 National Health Interview Survey, a household survey of the noninstitutionalized U.S. civilian population. Analyses were weighted and accounted for the complex survey design. Adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR) were estimated by multivariable log-binomial regression. RESULTS: The percentage of individuals reporting a past-year history of blood donation was 5.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 5.3%-6.1%) and was highest in the youngest age group (18-24 years, 8.4%). A past-year history of blood donation was more common in males compared to females (6.3% vs. 5.1%; aPR, 1.12 [95% CI, 0.99-1.27]) and those born in the U.S. compared to individuals born outside the U.S. (6.4% vs. 2.4%; aPR, 1.92 [95% CI, 1.49-2.47]). The percentage of individuals with a past-year history of blood donation was significantly lower in blacks (3.9%; aPR, 0.60 [95% CI, 0.47-0.75]) and Hispanics (3.0%; aPR, 0.63 [95% CI, 0.48-0.83]) in comparison to whites (6.9%). Being a college graduate, being employed, being physically active, and never being a cigarette smoker were factors positively associated with blood donation. The percentage of individuals with a past-year history of blood donation varied by geographic census region, with prevalence being higher in the Midwest (7.3%) and South (6.0%) compared to the Northeast (4.7%) and West (4.4%). CONCLUSION: Continued differences in the blood donor population with reference to the U.S. population underscore the need to understand barriers or deterrents to blood donation. Evidence-based donor recruitment and related policies remain imperative to ensure that there is a sustainable blood supply.

The Introduction of Emotions and Behavior in the Assessment of Neurological Patients.

In neurology and neuropsychology, behavior refers to the way human beings act and make decisions in contact with their environment. Behavioral impairment is therefore defined as a pathology, following brain lesion, that impacts the interactions between the brain-lesioned individual and his/her surrounding social world. First descriptions of behavioral disorders, including neuroanatomical correlates, date back to the mid-19th century. However, attempts towards their systematic identification and analysis only began at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. In this chapter, we shall span 3 main themes by introducing the first case reports based on thorough clinical descriptions, dating back to the 19th century. We then examine the emergence of checklist questionnaires and their application to large cohorts of individuals starting after World War II. Finally, we outline how, over the last 3 decades, the pace has significantly accelerated in the pursuit of defining the fine-grained processes underlying behavioral functioning, as well as the development of new and more complex measures, along with the emergence of the social cognition and social brain concepts. As the assessment tools have expanded and become more specific, an increasing complexity of mechanisms underlying behavior has begun to emerge.

You don't have to be rich to save money: On the relationship between objective versus subjective financial situation and having savings.

Saving is an important financial behavior that provides an individual with psychological security and boosts his/her overall sense of well-being. For this reason, scientists and practitioners have attempted to understand why some people save when others do not. One of the most common explanations for this phenomenon is that those individuals who earn more should be more willing to save their money. In line with this logic, people who have more money should be more likely to have savings. Considering the results of prior research, we expected objective financial situation (income) to be positively linked to having savings (i.e., propensity to have savings and the exact amount of savings). At the same time, however, we assumed that subjective financial situation (perception) should also be positively related to these variables. To test our assumptions, we conducted a nationwide representative survey (N = 1048) among Polish respondents, asking them about their objective and subjective financial situation. The results of a regression analysis showed that objective financial situation was indeed significantly positively related to having savings. However, subjective financial situation was also positively correlated with having savings (even when we controlled for objective financial situation and demographic variables). We discuss the implications of the links between objective versus subjective financial situations and having savings.

Psychiatric Assessment in Patients with Mild Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.

OBJECTIVES: The findings of previous studies focused on personality disorders in epileptic patients are difficult to interpret due to nonhomogeneous samples and noncomparable methods. Here, we aimed at studying the personality profile in patients with mild temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) with psychiatric comorbidity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-five patients with mTLE (22 males, mean age 40.7 ± 12.1) underwent awake and sleep EEG, 3T brain MRI, and an extensive standardized diagnostic neuropsychiatric battery: Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised (TCI-R), Beck Depression Inventory-2, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Drug history was collected in detail. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis was performed on TCI-R data, while all other clinical and psychological variables were compared across the resulting clusters. RESULTS: Scores of Harm Avoidance (HA), Reward Dependence (RD), Persistence (P), Cooperativeness (C), and Self-Transcendence (ST) allowed the identification of two clusters, describing different personality subtypes. Cluster 1 was characterized by an early onset, more severe anxiety traits, and combined drug therapy (antiepileptic drug and Benzodiazepine/Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) compared to Cluster 2. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that different personality traits may play a role in determining the clinical outcome in patients with mTLE. Specifically, lower scores of HA, RD, P, C, and ST were associated with worse clinical outcome. Thus, personality assessment could serve as an early indicator of greater disease severity, improving the management of mTLE.

Neurocognitive assessment in obsessive compulsive disorder patients: Adherence to behavioral decision models.

In economics, models of decision-making under risk are widely investigated. Since many empirical studies have shown patterns in choice behavior that classical models fail to predict, several descriptive theories have been developed. Due to an evident phenotypic heterogeneity, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients have shown a general deficit in decision making when compared to healthy control subjects (HCs). However, the direction for impairment in decision-making in OCD patients is still unclear. Hence, bridging decision-making models widely used in the economic literature with mental health research may improve the understanding of preference relations in severe patients, and may enhance intervention designs. We investigate the behavior of OCD patients with respect to HCs by means of decision making economic models within a typical neuropsychological setting, such as the Cambridge Gambling Task. In this task subjects have to decide the amount of their initial wealth to invest in each risky decision. To account for heterogenous preferences, we have analyzed the micro-level data for a more informative analysis of the choices made by the subjects. We consider two influential models in economics: the expected value (EV), which assumes risk neutrality, and a multiple reference points model, an alternative formulation of Disappointment theory. We find evidence that (medicated) OCD patients are more consistent with EV than HCs. The former appear to be more risk neutral, namely, less sensitive to risk than HCs. They also seem to base their decisions on disappointment avoidance less than HCs.

Reference-point centering and range-adaptation enhance human reinforcement learning at the cost of irrational preferences.

In economics and perceptual decision-making contextual effects are well documented, where decision weights are adjusted as a function of the distribution of stimuli. Yet, in reinforcement learning literature whether and how contextual information pertaining to decision states is integrated in learning algorithms has received comparably little attention. Here, we investigate reinforcement learning behavior and its computational substrates in a task where we orthogonally manipulate outcome valence and magnitude, resulting in systematic variations in state-values. Model comparison indicates that subjects' behavior is best accounted for by an algorithm which includes both reference point-dependence and range-adaptation-two crucial features of state-dependent valuation. In addition, we find that state-dependent outcome valuation progressively emerges, is favored by increasing outcome information and correlated with explicit understanding of the task structure. Finally, our data clearly show that, while being locally adaptive (for instance in negative valence and small magnitude contexts), state-dependent valuation comes at the cost of seemingly irrational choices, when options are extrapolated out from their original contexts.

Childhood socioeconomic status and executive function in childhood and beyond.

Socioeconomic status (SES) predicts health, wellbeing, and cognitive ability, including executive function (EF). A body of recent work has shown that childhood SES is positively related to EF, but it is not known whether this disparity grows, diminishes or holds steady over development, from childhood through adulthood. We examined the association between childhood SES and EF in a sample ranging from 9-25 years of age, with six canonical EF tasks. Analyzing all of the tasks together and in functionally defined groups, we found positive relations between SES and EF, and the relations did not vary by age. Analyzing the tasks separately, SES was positively associated with performance in some but not all EF measures, depending on the covariates used, again without varying by age. These results add to a growing body of evidence that childhood SES is associated with EF abilities, and contribute novel evidence concerning the persistence of this association into early adulthood.

Preferences and beliefs about financial risk taking mediate the association between anterior insula activation and self-reported real-life stock trading.

People differ greatly in their financial risk taking behaviour. This heterogeneity has been associated with differences in brain activity, but only in laboratory settings using constrained behaviours. However, it is important to understand how these measures transfer to real life conditions, because the willingness to invest in riskier assets has a direct and considerable effect on long-term wealth accumulation. In a large fMRI study of 157 working age men (39.0 ± 6.4 SD years), we first show that activity in the anterior insula during the assessment of risky vs. safe choices in an investing task is associated with self-reported real-life active stock trading. We then show that this association remains intact when we control for financial constraints, education, the understanding of financial matters, and cognitive abilities. Finally, we use comprehensive measures of preferences and beliefs about risk taking to show that these two channels mediate the association between brain activation in the anterior insula and real-life active stock trading.

A Nutritionist's Perspective on Behavioral Assessment.

The perspective shared here is that of a nutritionist who has been collaborating with a behavioral scientist for 20 years. Examples will be related to long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, the subject of our collaboration. While it is well accepted that nutrition is key to optimal human health and development, nutrition intervention trials in populations and randomized controlled trials of specific nutrients that have measured these outcomes have occurred relatively recently. Studies of nutrition and behavior are even less common - the first appears to have been a protein intervention that began in 1969 in Guatemala that involved developmental follow-up to adulthood. When results of multiple trials are available, findings of individual trials frequently range from no effect to benefit, making it difficult to make decisions about policy and practice. A meta-analysis that combines the results of all randomized trials of a nutrient is considered the highest level of evidence for drug trials. For studies of nutrient supplementation, however, meta-analyses can err on the side of no effect and lead to assumptions that a nutrient is adequate in populations with deficient or marginal status. In studies that assess behavior, collaboration with a behavioral scientist is necessary to determine the behavioral outcome(s) to assess, ensure the proper administration of the outcome, and analyze and interpret the results. The goal of the paper is to offer insight into issues common to all nutrition research, but especially issues unique to studies that assess behavior. As noted, industry, governments, health organizations, journals, as well as scientists have roles to play.

Clinical Assessment of Prefrontal Lobe Functions.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Whereas it was previously thought that there was a single overarching frontal lobe syndrome, it is now clear that several distinct cognitive and behavioral processes are mediated by the frontal lobes. This article reviews these processes and the underlying neuroanatomy and provides an approach to the assessment of prefrontal lobe functions at the bedside. RECENT FINDINGS: Cognitive and behavioral frontal lobe functions are mediated by the prefrontal regions rather than the frontal lobes as a whole. At least five separate prefrontal functions have been defined: energization, task setting, monitoring, behavioral/emotional regulation, and metacognition. Energization is mediated by the superior medial prefrontal cortices bilaterally, task setting by the left lateral frontal cortex, monitoring by the right lateral prefrontal cortex, behavioral/emotional regulation by the orbitofrontal cortex, and metacognition by the frontal poles. Only task setting and monitoring are considered executive functions. SUMMARY: Distinct cognitive and behavioral processes are mediated by different parts of the frontal lobe. Lesions in these areas result in characteristic clinical deficits that are discussed in this article. Key messages are that prefrontal regions mediate the higher cortical functions (as opposed to the frontal lobes in general) and that prefrontal functions are not equivalent to executive functions.