ORCID Profile
0000-0001-8632-218X
Current Organisation
CSIRO
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 04-06-2020
DOI: 10.1017/S003329172000183X
Abstract: Taxometric procedures have been used extensively to investigate whether in idual differences in personality and psychopathology are latently dimensional or categorical (‘taxonic’). We report the first meta-analysis of taxometric research, examining 317 findings drawn from 183 articles that employed an index of the comparative fit of observed data to dimensional and taxonic data simulations. Findings supporting dimensional models outnumbered those supporting taxonic models five to one. There were systematic differences among 17 construct domains in support for the two models, but psychopathology was no more likely to generate taxonic findings than normal variation (i.e. in idual differences in personality, response styles, gender, and sexuality). No content domain showed aggregate support for the taxonic model. Six variables – alcohol use disorder, intermittent explosive disorder, problem gambling, autism, suicide risk, and pedophilia – emerged as the most plausible taxon candidates based on a preponderance of independently replicated findings. We also compared the 317 meta-analyzed findings to 185 additional taxometric findings from 96 articles that did not employ the comparative fit index. Studies that used the index were 4.88 times more likely to generate dimensional findings than those that did not after controlling for construct domain, implying that many taxonic findings obtained before the popularization of simulation-based techniques are spurious. The meta-analytic findings support the conclusion that the great majority of psychological differences between people are latently continuous, and that psychopathology is no exception.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-03-2022
DOI: 10.1177/19485506221076692
Abstract: Harm-related concepts have progressively broadened their meanings to include less severe phenomena, but the implications of this expansion are unclear. Across five studies involving 1,819 American participants recruited on MTurk or Prolific, we manipulated whether participants learned about marginal, prototypical (severe), or mixed ex les of workplace bullying (Studies 1 and 3a), trauma (Studies 2 and 3b), or sexual harassment (Study 4). We hypothesized that exposure to marginal ex les of a concept would lead participants to view the harm associated with it as less serious than those exposed to prototypical ex les ( trivialization hypothesis). We also predicted that mixing marginal ex les with prototypical ex les would disproportionately reduce perceived seriousness ( threshold shift hypothesis). All studies supported the trivialization hypothesis, but threshold shift was not consistently supported. Our findings suggest that broadened concepts of harm may dilute the perceived severity and urgency of the harms they identify.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 18-08-2020
Publisher: ACM
Date: 29-11-2022
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2019
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 11-04-2022
Abstract: Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (such as COVID-19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a persons’ moral identity may influence behavior and serve to increase compliance through different mechanisms if a person sees compliance as the right thing to do (internalization) and/or if a person perceives compliance as something others will notice as the right thing to do (symbolization). We argue that in societies that are more politically polarized a person’s political ideology may interact with their moral identity to predict compliance. We hypothesized that where polarization is high (e.g., USA), moral identity should positively predict compliance for liberals to a greater extent than for conservatives. However, this effect would not occur where polarization is low (e.g., New Zealand). Moral identity, political ideology, and support for three different COVID-19 mitigation measures were assessed in both nations (N = 1980). Results show that while moral identity can influence compliance, the political context of the nation must also be taken into account.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-06-2022
DOI: 10.1111/POPS.12838
Abstract: Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (e.g., COVID‐19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases, public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a person's moral identity may influence behavior and serve to increase compliance through different mechanisms: if a person sees compliance as the right thing to do (internalization) and/or if a person perceives compliance as something others will notice as the right thing to do (symbolization). We argue that in societies that are more politically polarized, people's political ideology may interact with their moral identity to predict compliance. We hypothesized that where polarization is high (e.g., USA), moral identity should positively predict compliance for liberals to a greater extent than for conservatives. However, this effect would not occur where polarization is low (e.g., New Zealand). Moral identity, political ideology, and support for three different COVID‐19 mitigation measures were assessed in both nations ( N = 1,980). Results show that while moral identity can influence compliance, the political context of the nation must also be taken into account.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 27-02-2019
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2020
Location: Australia
No related grants have been discovered for Melanie McGrath.