Browsing by Author "Konrath, Sara H."

Now showing 1 - 10 of 43
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    Abuse-Related Post-Traumatic Stress, Coping, and Tobacco Use in Pregnancy
    (2011-07-01) Lopez, William D.; Konrath, Sara H.; Seng, Julia S.
    Objective: To examine the relationship between trauma history, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), coping, and smoking in a diverse sample of pregnant women, some of whom are active smokers. Design: Secondary analysis from a prospective study on PTSD and pregnancy outcomes. Setting: Maternity clinics at three health systems in the midwestern United States. Participants: Women age 18 or older (1,547) interviewed at gestational age fewer than 28 weeks. Methods: Participants were classified at nonsmokers, quitters (stopped smoking during pregnancy), and pregnancy smokers. Demographic, trauma, and pregnancy factors, substance use, and use of tobacco to cope were compared across groups. Logistic regression assessed the influence of these factors on being a smoker versus a nonsmoker and a quitter versus a pregnancy smoker. Results: Smokers differed from nonsmokers on all demographic risk factors (being African American, being pregnant as a teen, having lower income and less education, and living in high-crime areas), had higher rates of current and lifetime PTSD, and were more likely to report abuse as their worst trauma. Pregnancy smokers had lower levels of education, were more likely to classify their worst trauma as “extremely troubling,” and were more likely to exhibit PTSD hyperarousal symptoms. In regression models, smoking “to cope with emotions and problems” doubled the odds of continuing to smoke while pregnant even after accounting for several relevant risk factors. Conclusion: Smoking behavior in pregnancy may be influenced by the need to cope with abuse-related PTSD symptoms. Clinicians should consider using trauma-informed interventions when working with tobacco-using pregnant women.
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    Big data in the new media environment
    (2014-02) O'Donnell, Matthew Brook; Falk, Emily B.; Konrath, Sara H.
    Bentley et al. argue for the social scientific contextualization of “big data” by proposing a four-quadrant model. We suggest extensions of the east–west (i.e., socially motivated versus independently motivated) decision-making dimension in light of findings from social psychology and neuroscience. We outline a method that leverages linguistic tools to connect insights across fields that address the individuals underlying big-data media streams.
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    Can Text Messages Increase Empathy and Prosocial Behavior? The Development and Initial Validation of Text to Connect
    (PLOS, 2015-09-10) Konrath, Sara H.; Falk, Emily; Fuhrel-Forbis, Andrea; Liu, Mary; Swain, James; Tolman, Richard; Cunningham, Rebecca; Walton, Maureen; School of Philanthropy
    To what extent can simple mental exercises cause shifts in empathic habits? Can we use mobile technology to make people more empathic? It may depend on how empathy is measured. Scholars have identified a number of different facets and correlates of empathy. This study is among the first to take a comprehensive, multidimensional approach to empathy to determine how empathy training could affect these different facets and correlates. In doing so, we can learn more about empathy and its multifaceted nature. Participants (N = 90) were randomly assigned to receive either an empathy-building text message program ( Text to Connect ) or one of two control conditions (active versus passive). Respondents completed measures of dispositional empathy (i.e. self-perceptions of being an empathic person), affective empathy (i.e. motivations to help, immediate feelings of empathic concern), and prosocial behavior (i.e. self-reports and observer-reports) at baseline, and then again after the 14 day intervention period. We found that empathy-building messages increased affective indicators of empathy and prosocial behaviors, but actually decreased self-perceptions of empathy, relative to control messages. Although the brief text messaging intervention did not consistently impact empathy-related personality traits, it holds promise for the use of mobile technology for changing empathic motivations and behaviors.
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    Can text messages make people kinder?
    (Oxford UP, 2014) Konrath, Sara H.
    Empathic character is a set of interrelated dispositions, skills, motivations, emotions, and behaviors that involve a habitual responsiveness to others’ needs. It is linked to higher prosocial behavior, lower aggression, and better health. There is much research demonstrating both its consistency within people over time and its malleability in response to environmental and situational cues, including face-to-face interventions. In this paper I examine whether it is possible to increase empathic character using a mobile-based program. A large body of research in public health has used text messages to improve physical health outcomes and behaviors, but no research has examined whether text messages can be used to change traits. We conducted a study (N=90) in which participants received 6 daily empathy-building text messages for a 2 week period, versus a control group. We found that those in the empathy group showed some evidence of increased empathic character compared to control participants. The chapter ends by discussing implications of this work for a deeper understanding of empathic character, and some future directions of this research.
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    A Century of Self-Esteem
    (2011) Konrath, Sara H.; Anderson, Paul A.
    Google n-grams can be used by researchers to track changes across time in the use of specific words and phrases. N-grams includes a corpus of approximately 15 million published books (in various languages). In this chapter we use google n-grams to illustrate temporal trends in the use of the word “self-esteem” in English-language books published from 1900-2000. We first review past research on temporal trends in selfesteem and related traits. Next, we discuss some limitations of this research, and how ngrams can help to address such limitations. Finally, we use the “self-esteem” n-gram data to conduct a quantitative sociohistorical analysis of three potential factors that are hypothesized to cause societal-level shifts in self-esteem. These factors are derived from ecological models of human development (e.g. Bronfenbrenner, 1979), and range from the immediate everyday social context of individuals (e.g. family, school), to a mid-level context (e.g. community), to the broader cultural context (e.g. general political and economic environment). We present evidence for these potential causes of changes in the importance of self-esteem. Based on this evidence, we make recommendations as to the best focus of efforts to quell the rising tide of unrealistic self-esteem.
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    Critical Synthesis Package: Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)
    (2013) Konrath, Sara H.
    The IRI measures four different dimensions of dispositional empathy: 1) The Empathic Concern subscale assesses emotional empathy, or feelings of compassion for others in distress (e.g. “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.”) 2) The Perspective Taking subscale assesses cognitive empathy, or the tendency to see the world from others’ viewpoints (e.g. “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.”) 3) The Personal Distress subscale assesses self-focused responses to others’ suffering (e.g. “When I see someone who badly needs help in an emergency, I go to pieces.”) 4) The Fantasy subscale assesses empathy for fictional characters (e.g. “I really get involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel.”)
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    Development and Validation of the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS)
    (PLOS, 2014-08-05) Konrath, Sara H.; Meier, Brian P.; Bushman, Brad J.
    Main Objectives The narcissistic personality is characterized by grandiosity, entitlement, and low empathy. This paper describes the development and validation of the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS). Although the use of longer instruments is superior in most circumstances, we recommend the SINS in some circumstances (e.g. under serious time constraints, online studies). Methods In 11 independent studies (total N = 2,250), we demonstrate the SINS' psychometric properties. Results The SINS is significantly correlated with longer narcissism scales, but uncorrelated with self-esteem. It also has high test-retest reliability. We validate the SINS in a variety of samples (e.g., undergraduates, nationally representative adults), intrapersonal correlates (e.g., positive affect, depression), and interpersonal correlates (e.g., aggression, relationship quality, prosocial behavior). The SINS taps into the more fragile and less desirable components of narcissism. Significance The SINS can be a useful tool for researchers, especially when it is important to measure narcissism with constraints preventing the use of longer measures.
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    Differences in Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking Across 63 Countries
    (Sage, 2017-01) Chopik, William J.; O'Brien, Ed; Konrath, Sara H.; School of Philanthropy
    Cultural practices socialize people to relate to others in different ways. One critical way in which these interpersonal bonds are formed and maintained is via empathy, our emotional reactivity toward others’ experiences. However, the extent to which individuals from different cultures vary in their dispositional empathy, and the correlates of these differences, are relatively unknown. Thus, the current study explored cultural variation in empathy, and how this variation is related to psychological characteristics and prosocial behavior across cultures. Evidence from an original sample of 104,365 adults across 63 countries reveals that higher empathy countries also have higher levels of collectivism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, emotionality, subjective well-being, and prosocial behavior. These findings reveal that empathy is situated within a broader nomological network of other psychological characteristics, emotional expression and experiences, and prosocial behavior across cultures. The current study expands our understanding about how psychological characteristics vary across cultures and how these characteristics can manifest in broader national indicators of prosocial behavior.
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    The effects of giving on givers
    (2013) Konrath, Sara H.; Brown, Stephanie
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    Egos deflating with the Great Recession: A cross-temporal meta-analysis and within-campus analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, 1982–2016
    (Elsevier, 2021) Twenge, Jean M.; Konrath, Sara H.; Cooper, A. Bell; Foster, Joshua D.; Campbell, W. Keith; McAllister, Cooper; Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
    Scholars posit that economically prosperous times should produce higher individualism and narcissism, and economically challenging times lower individualism and narcissism. This creates the possibility that narcissism among U.S. college students, which increased between 1982 and 2009, may have declined after the Great Recession. Updating a cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to 2013 (k = 164, N = 35,095) and adding two within-campus analyses to 2015 (Study 2: UC Davis, N = 58,287) and 2016 (Study 3: U South Alabama, N = 14,319) revealed a non-monotonic pattern, with increases in NPI scores between 1982 and 2008 and declines thereafter. The decline in NPI scores during and after the recession took narcissism back to their original levels in the 1980s and 1990s. Implications for the interplay between economic conditions and personality traits are discussed.