Browsing by Author "McLaren, Ronnie"
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Item An Investigation of Cultural Sensitivity and Racial Bias in the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition(2023-08) McLaren, Ronnie; Sharp, Carla; Ahmed, Yusra; Babcock, Julia C.; Walton, Quenette L.Mentalizing, or one’s ability to understand the mental states of oneself and others, is vital for social functioning and is predictive of a wide range of social and psychological outcomes. Mentalizing ability develops via social learning and is dependent upon the environment in which one is raised. The Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition is a widely used and ecologically valid measure of social cognition in which participants answer multiple-choice questions about the thoughts and feelings of characters in a short movie. While we know that there are cross-cultural differences in mentalizing, no study has yet investigated the impact of race within the USA on MASC scores. Thus, the aims of the proposed study are to, in a sample of young adults (N = 1,230), 1) investigate the factor structure of the MASC, 2) evaluate the MASC for bias based on race and ethnicity by evaluating its measurement invariance across racial and ethnic groups, 3) investigate the contribution of cultural sensitivity and racial ingroup effects to any cross-group differences in MASC performance using qualitative and quantitative exploratory analyses, and 4) evaluate cross-racial differences in patterns of mentalizing. Factor analytic results support a unidimensional factor structure, and measurement invariance analysis provides evidence for racial invariance. Non-Hispanic White individuals are more likely to select the “correct” answer than other racial groups, suggesting that optimal mentalizing strategy and mentalizing values and norms may differ based on racial group membership. However, limitations of measurement invariance in assessing sources of common method variance limit the strength of these conclusions.Item The relative strength of the relationship between hypermentalizing and borderline personality disorder in the context of other disorders: A meta-analytic review(2020-08) McLaren, Ronnie; Sharp, Carla; Hopwood, Christopher J.; Gallagher, Matthew W.A hypermentalizing deficit, or a tendency to over attribute mental states to others, has been identified for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). However, associations between other disorders and hypermentalizing call the specificity of this deficit to BPD into question. The aims of the current study were to use meta-analytic methods to 1) evaluate the relative strength of the hypermentalizing deficit associated with BPD in the context of other disorders, and 2) assess the impact of moderators on the relationship between hypermentalizing and psychopathology. The Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC), an ecologically valid experimental task, was used as the measure of hypermentalizing. Meta-analyses and moderator analyses were performed with 10 studies (n = 1,471) investigating the relationship between BPD and hypermentalizing and 30 studies (n = 3,339) investigating the relationship between non-BPD psychopathology and hypermentalizing. Results indicate that the extant literature does not support the specificity of hypermentalizing to BPD as defined by a significantly stronger association for BPD (r = 0.26; 95% CI = [0.12, 0.39]) than for non-BPD psychopathology (r = 0.22; 95% CI = [0.11, 0.31]). However, overlap between BPD and the general factors of psychopathology and personality pathology indicates the possibility that the association between non-BPD psychopathology and hypermentalizing may be explained by this overlap; BPD features present in other psychopathology may be behind the association, even if the construct of BPD is completely subsumed by the general factors. Additionally, age significantly moderated the association between non-BPD psychopathology and hypermentalizing, while percent female moderated the association between BPD and hypermentalizing. Concerns regarding lack of race reporting, predominately Caucasian samples, and the MASC’s potential bias against non-Caucasian individuals limit the generalizability of current results to non-Caucasian racial groups.