Darda_individual_differences_cognitive_control

Abstract

Cognitive control refers to the ability of human beings to adapt flexibly and quickly to continuously changing environments. Several decades of research have identified a diverse range of mental processes that are associated with cognitive control but the extent to which shared systems underlie cognitive control in social and non-social contexts, as well as how these systems may vary across individuals, remains largely unexplored. By integrating methodological approaches from experimental and differential psychology, the current study is able to shine new light on the relationships between stable features of individuals, such as personality and sex, and the architecture of cognitive control systems using paradigms that index social (automatic imitation) and spatial processes. Across three large-sample experiments (>600 participants in total), we demonstrate that cognitive control systems are largely invariant to stable aspects of personality, but exhibit a sex difference, such that females show greater task-interference than males. Moreover, we further qualified this sex difference in two ways. First, we showed that the sex difference was unrelated to the sex of the interaction partner and therefore did not reflect an in-group bias based on sex. Second, we showed that the sex difference was tied to a form of spatial interference control rather than social (imitative) control and therefore it does not reflect a specialised mechanism for guiding social interactions exclusively. Instead, our findings suggest that a robust sex difference exists in the system (or set of subsystems) that operate in resolving a form of spatial interference control, and that such systems are unaffected by social factors such as the sex of the interaction partner. The results highlight the value of integrating approaches from experimental and differential psychology by providing a deeper understanding of the structure of cognitive control systems, whilst also providing new dimensions to incorporate into theories and models of social and non-social control.

Automatic imitation does not predict levels of prosocial behaviour in a modified dictator game

“…This conclusion corroborates recent work on automatic imitation challenging its relationship to social cognition. As reviewed in the introduction: Cracco et al's (2018a) meta-analysis found no significant association between AIT effects and empathy/ASD, Newey et al (2019) found that prosocial priming (e.g., Leighton et al, 2010) did not influence AIT effects (although see Cracco et al, 2018b, experiments and 3), and Butler et al (2015) and Darda et al (2019) have shown that, in large-scale samples, there seems to be no evidence of a link between AIT effects and stable personality traits (e.g., Narcissism). All of this is to say that it is possible that automatic imitation (indexed via the AIT), and perhaps self-other control more generally, may not play such a central role in social cognitive function as often presumed.…”

“…Even more recent work by Newey et al (2019) found that prosocial priming (e.g., Leighton et al, 2010) did not influence AIT effects (although see Cracco et al, 2018b, experiments 2 and 3). Lastly, work by Butler et al (2015) and Darda et al (2019) have shown that, in large-scale samples, there seems to be no evidence of a link between AIT effects and stable personality traits (e.g., Narcissism).…”

“…Of course, given the reviewed null results questioning the link between AIT effects and social cognitive factors (Cracco et al, 2018a;Newey et al, 2019;Butler et al, 2015;Darda et al, 2019), it is also possible that AIT effects will show no association with DG scores. Furthermore, in a recent study, Genschow et al (2017) had their participants complete both a motor mimicry task and the AIT, and while they successfully found the expected results in each paradigm, participants' performance in both tasks did not correlate with one another; however, it should be noted that, while the AIT showed high internal reliability, the motor mimicry task did not.…”