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- EEG/ERP (3)
- Neuroenhancement (3)
- anti-doping (2)
- cognitive enhancement (2)
- deception (2)
- doping (2)
- ego depletion (2)
- faking (2)
- implicit association test (IAT) (2)
- indirect tests (2)
There is an ongoing debate about how to test and operationalize self-control. This limited understanding is in large part due to a variety of different tests and measures used to assess self-control, as well as the lack of empirical studies examining the temporal dynamics during the exertion of self-control. In order to track changes that occur over the course of exposure to a self-control task, we investigate and compare behavioral, subjective, and physiological indicators during the exertion of self-control. Participants completed both a task requiring inhibitory control (Go/No-Go task) and a control task (two-choice task). Behavioral performance and pupil size were measured during the tasks. Subjective vitality was measured before and after the tasks. While pupil size and subjective vitality showed similar trajectories in the two tasks, behavioral performance decreased in the inhibitory control-demanding task, but not in the control task. However, behavioral, subjective, and physiological measures were not significantly correlated. These results suggest that there is a disconnect between different measures of self-control with high intra- and interindividual variability. Theoretical and methodological implications for self-control theory and future empirical work are discussed.
The effect of implicitly incentivized faking on explicit and implicit measures of doping attitude
(2015)
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) aims to measure participants' automatic evaluation of an attitude object and is useful especially for the measurement of attitudes related to socially sensitive subjects, e.g. doping in sports. Several studies indicate that IAT scores can be faked on instruction. But fully or semi-instructed research scenarios might not properly reflect what happens in more realistic situations, when participants secretly decide to try faking the test. The present study is the first to investigate IAT faking when there is only an implicit incentive to do so. Sixty-five athletes (22.83 years +/- 2.45; 25 women) were randomly assigned to an incentive-to-fake condition or a control condition. Participants in the incentive-to-fake condition were manipulated to believe that athletes with lenient doping attitudes would be referred to a tedious 45-minute anti-doping program. Attitudes were measured with the pictorial doping brief IAT (BIAT) and with the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS). A one-way MANOVA revealed significant differences between conditions after the manipulation in PEAS scores, but not in the doping BIAT. In the light of our hypothesis this suggests that participants successfully faked an exceedingly negative attitude to doping when completing the PEAS, but were unsuccessful in doing so on the reaction time-based test. This study assessed BIAT faking in a setting that aimed to resemble a situation in which participants want to hide their attempts to cheat. The two measures of attitude were differentially affected by the implicit incentive. Our findings provide evidence that the pictorial doping BIAT is relatively robust against spontaneous and naive faking attempts. (B) IATs might be less prone to faking than implied by previous studies.
Background:
Deception can distort psychological tests on socially sensitive topics. Understanding the cerebral
processes that are involved in such faking can be useful in detection and prevention of deception. Previous research
shows that faking a brief implicit association test (BIAT ) evokes a characteristic ERP response. It is not yet known
whether temporarily available self-control resources moderate this response. We randomly assigned 22 participants
(15 females, 24.23
±
2.91
years old) to a counterbalanced repeated-measurements design. Participants first com-
pleted a Brief-IAT (BIAT ) on doping attitudes as a baseline measure and were then instructed to fake a negative dop
-
ing attitude both when self-control resources were depleted and non-depleted. Cerebral activity during BIAT perfor
-
mance was assessed using high-density EEG.
Results:
Compared to the baseline BIAT, event-related potentials showed a first interaction at the parietal P1,
while significant post hoc differences were found only at the later occurring late positive potential. Here, signifi-
cantly decreased amplitudes were recorded for ‘normal’ faking, but not in the depletion condition. In source space,
enhanced activity was found for ‘normal’ faking in the bilateral temporoparietal junction. Behaviorally, participants
were successful in faking the BIAT successfully in both conditions.
Conclusions:
Results indicate that temporarily available self-control resources do not affect overt faking success on
a BIAT. However, differences were found on an electrophysiological level. This indicates that while on a phenotypical
level self-control resources play a negligible role in deliberate test faking the underlying cerebral processes are markedly different.
Drugs as instruments
(2016)
Neuroenhancement (NE) is the non-medical use of psychoactive substances to produce a subjective enhancement in psychological functioning and experience. So far empirical investigations of individuals' motivation for NE however have been hampered by the lack of theoretical foundation. This study aimed to apply drug instrumentalization theory to user motivation for NE. We argue that NE should be defined and analyzed from a behavioral perspective rather than in terms of the characteristics of substances used for NE. In the empirical study we explored user behavior by analyzing relationships between drug options (use over-the-counter products, prescription drugs, illicit drugs) and postulated drug instrumentalization goals (e.g., improved cognitive performance, counteracting fatigue, improved social interaction). Questionnaire data from 1438 university students were subjected to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to address the question of whether analysis of drug instrumentalization should be based on the assumption that users are aiming to achieve a certain goal and choose their drug accordingly or whether NE behavior is more strongly rooted in a decision to try or use a certain drug option. We used factor mixture modeling to explore whether users could be separated into qualitatively different groups defined by a shared "goal X drug option" configuration. Our results indicate, first, that individuals decisions about NE are eventually based on personal attitude to drug options (e.g., willingness to use an over-the-counter product but not to abuse prescription drugs) rather than motivated by desire to achieve a specific goal (e.g., fighting tiredness) for which different drug options might be tried. Second, data analyses suggested two qualitatively different classes of users. Both predominantly used over-the-counter products, but "neuroenhancers" might be characterized by a higher propensity to instrumentalize over-the-counter products for virtually all investigated goals whereas "fatigue-fighters" might be inclined to use over-the-counter products exclusively to fight fatigue. We believe that psychological investigations like these are essential, especially for designing programs to prevent risky behavior.
Neuroenhancement (NE), the use of substances as a means to enhance performance, has garnered considerable scientific attention of late. While ethical and epidemiological publications on the topic accumulate, there is a lack of theory-driven psychological research that aims at understanding psychological drivers of NE. In this perspective article we argue that self-control strength offers a promising theory-based approach to further understand and investigate NE behavior. Using the strength model of self-control, we derive two theory-driven perspectives on NE-self-control research. First, we propose that individual differences in state/trait self-control strength differentially affect NE behavior based on one's individual experience of NE use. Building upon this, we outline promising research questions that (will) further elucidate our understanding of NE based on the strength model's propositions. Second, we discuss evidence indicating that popular NE substances (like Methylphenidate) may counteract imminent losses of self-control strength. We outline how further research on NE's effects on the ego-depletion effect may further broaden our understanding of the strength model of self-control.
Direct assessment of attitudes toward socially sensitive topics can be affected by deception attempts. Reaction-time based indirect measures, such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), are less susceptible to such biases. Neuroscientific evidence shows that deception can evoke characteristic ERP differences. However, the cerebral processes involved in faking an IAT are still unknown. We randomly assigned 20 university students (15 females, 24.65 +/- 3.50 years of age) to a counterbalanced repeated-measurements design, requesting them to complete a Brief-IAT (BIAT) on attitudes toward doping without deception instruction, and with the instruction to fake positive and negative doping attitudes. Cerebral activity during BIAT completion was assessed using high-density EEG. Event-related potentials during faking revealed enhanced frontal and reduced occipital negativity, starting around 150 ms after stimulus presentation. Further, a decrease in the P300 and LPP components was observed. Source analyses showed enhanced activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus between 150 and 200 ms during faking, thought to reflect the suppression of automatic responses. Further, more activity was found for faking in the bilateral middle occipital gyri and the bilateral temporoparietal junction. Results indicate that faking reaction-time based tests alter brain processes from early stages of processing and reveal the cortical sources of the effects. Analyzing the EEG helps to uncover response patterns in indirect attitude tests and broadens our understanding of the neural processes involved in such faking. This knowledge might be useful for uncovering faking in socially sensitive contexts, where attitudes are likely to be concealed.
Background: Healthy university students have been shown to use psychoactive substances, expecting them to be functional means for enhancing their cognitive capacity, sometimes over and above an essentially proficient level. This behavior called Neuroenhancement (NE) has not yet been integrated into a behavioral theory that is able to predict performance. Job Demands Resources (JD-R) Theory for example assumes that strain (e.g. burnout) will occur and influence performance when job demands are high and job resources are limited at the same time. The aim of this study is to investigate whether or not university students’ self-reported NE can be integrated into JD-R Theory’s comprehensive approach to psychological health and performance.
Methods: 1,007 students (23.56 ± 3.83 years old, 637 female) participated in an online survey. Lifestyle drug, prescription drug, and illicit substance NE together with the complete set of JD-R variables (demands, burnout, resources, motivation, and performance) were measured. Path models were used in order to test our data’s fit to hypothesized main effects and interactions.
Results: JD-R Theory could successfully be applied to describe the situation of university students. NE was mainly associated with the JD-R Theory’s health impairment process: Lifestyle drug NE (p < .05) as well as prescription drug NE (p < .001) is associated with higher burnout scores, and lifestyle drug NE aggravates the study demands-burnout interaction. In addition, prescription drug NE mitigates the protective influence of resources on burnout and on motivation.
Conclusion: According to our results, the uninformed trying of NE (i.e., without medical supervision) might result in strain. Increased strain is related to decreased performance. From a public health perspective, intervention strategies should address these costs of non-supervised NE. With regard to future research we propose to model NE as a means to reach an end (i.e. performance enhancement) rather than a target behavior itself. This is necessary to provide a deeper understanding of the behavioral roots and consequences of the phenomenon.
Background: Knowing and, if necessary, altering competitive athletes' real attitudes towards the use of banned performance-enhancing substances is an important goal of worldwide doping prevention efforts. However athletes will not always be willing to reporting their real opinions. Reaction time-based attitude tests help conceal the ultimate goal of measurement from the participant and impede strategic answering. This study investigated how well a reaction time-based attitude test discriminated between athletes who were doping and those who were not. We investigated whether athletes whose urine samples were positive for at least one banned substance (dopers) evaluated doping more favorably than clean athletes (non-dopers).
Methods: We approached a group of 61 male competitive bodybuilders and collected urine samples for biochemical testing. The pictorial doping Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT) was used for attitude measurement. This test quantifies the difference in response latencies (in milliseconds) to stimuli representing related concepts (i.e. doping-dislike/like-[health food]).
Results: Prohibited substances were found in 43% of all tested urine samples. Dopers had more lenient attitudes to doping than non-dopers (Hedges's g = -0.76). D-scores greater than -0.57 (CI95 = -0.72 to -0.46) might be indicative of a rather lenient attitude to doping. In urine samples evidence of administration of combinations of substances, complementary administration of substances to treat side effects and use of stimulants to promote loss of body fat was common.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates that athletes' attitudes to doping can be assessed indirectly with a reaction time-based test, and that their attitudes are related to their behavior. Although bodybuilders may be more willing to reveal their attitude to doping than other athletes, these results still provide evidence that the pictorial doping BIAT may be useful in athletes from other sports, perhaps as a complementary measure in evaluations of the effectiveness of doping prevention interventions.