Stirling BSC on Tour: Symposiums in Amsterdam (March 12) & London (March 16)

Members of the Stirling Behavioural Science Centre will be jointly presenting at two conferences this month.

Firstly, on March 12 Michael Daly, Christopher Boyce, Alex Wood and I will present at the Inaugural Conference of Psychological Science (ICPS). The topic of our symposium is:

PERSONALITY AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC EVENTS: 
TOWARDS AN INDIVIDUAL SPECIFIC ECONOMIC SCIENCE

Thursday, 12 March 2015

Chair: Michael Daly Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom

Socio-economic events such as changes in income, employment, or disability are known to affect human well-being and development. This symposium extends this work by asking: 1) do early life individual differences influence the socio-economic events people encounter throughout life, and 2) does personality shape how people react to such events.

Early life individual differences and socio-economic events across life
Michael Daly
Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
Can childhood temperament and well-being influence socioeconomic events over life? This talk presents a series of studies using data from three nationally representative cohort studies to show that early individual differences in self-control and distress predict subsequent income changes, disability, and social mobility over periods of up to five decades.

Adolescent personality and youth unemployment during an economic recession
Mark Egan
Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
Using data drawn from British and U.S. cohort we show that adolescent personality traits influence youth unemployment levels and condition how likely people are to become unemployed during two separate economic recessions. Quasi-experimental methods including sibling fixed effects and differences-in-differences models are employed and future applications of this approach discussed. 

Co-Authors: Michael Daly Ph.D & Liam Delaney Ph.D, Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling

Personality and the well-being effects of socio-economic events
Alex Wood
Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
Does personality determine how people react to socio-economic events? Across three studies using high frequency longitudinal datasets we outline how personality traits shape the well-being effects of income changes and the life satisfaction consequences of unemployment. We discuss how the inclusion of personality measures in longitudinal surveys can be used to enhance our understanding of hedonic adaptation. 

Socio-economic events and long run changes in individual difference traits
Christopher Boyce
Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom
If personality can influence resilience to socio-economic events it is important to know whether personality can change. We show that individual differences in personality and well-being change over time to the same degree as income, and that such change is linked to the experience of life events such as unemployment.

Co-Authors: Alex Wood Ph.D & Liam Delaney Ph.D, Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling

Secondly, on March 16 Michael Daly, Liam Delaney, Fionnuala O'Reilly (not a member of the Behavioural Science Centre but a former graduate of the Stirling MSc Behavioural Science and current member of the Behavioural Insights Team) and I will present at the CLS Cohort Studies conference. The topic of our symposium is:

CHILDHOOD SELF-CONTROL AND 
ADULT HEALTH & ECONOMIC OUTCOMES

Monday, 16 March 2015

Associations between childhood self-regulation and adult socioeconomic status: Evidence from the British Cohort Study

Fionnuala O'Reilly

Behavioural Insights Team

Uncovering the childhood determinants of socioeconomic status (SES) in adulthood is an important social goal. We used the British Cohort Study (N = 6,700) to test the association between self-regulation at age 10 and participant income, social class, educational attainment, home ownership and self-ratings of their financial position at age 30 and 42, controlling for parental SES and childhood intelligence and conduct problems. We found that higher self-regulation at age 10 positively predicts socioeconomic outcomes at age 30 and 42. On average, a 1 SD increase in childhood self-regulation was associated with a 0.12 SD increase in adult SES; an effect size comparable to that of a 1 SD increase in childhood cognitive ability (0.17 SD). On average, 27% of these associations were explained by educational attainment. Finally, we found that childhood self-regulation provides a medium through which individuals may attain higher social standing, both inter-generationally and throughout their own lives.

Co-Authors: Michael Daly Ph.D & Liam Delaney Ph.D, Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling

Poor childhood self-control predicts physiological dysregulation in midlife

Michael Daly 
Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom 

Childhood self-discipline emerges early, is malleable, and could contribute substantially to a healthy life. The present study examined associations between self-discipline at ages 7 and 11 and physiological dysregulation in middle age. Participants were 6,878 British adults from the National Child Development Study. Blood plasma samples and anthropometric data were collected and analysed using standard procedures at age 45 and used to produce an overall physiological dysregulation index. Higher levels of self-discipline were significantly associated with lower physiological dysregulation (B = -.073, SE = .013; ? = -.073; t = -5.80, p < .001), after controlling for sex, intelligence at age 11, and socioeconomic status at birth. This association was unaffected by further adjustment for a large set of childhood controls, physician assessed medical conditions and relative weight at age 7. These analyses provide robust evidence that childhood self-discipline is associated with long-run health effects that cannot be attributed to other psychological factors like intelligence or emotional problems or to initial health or environmental conditions. 

Co-Author: Liam Delaney Ph.D, Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling

Childhood self-control and unemployment throughout the lifespan: evidence from two British cohort studies

Liam Delaney

Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom 

The capacity for self-control may underlie successful labor-force entry and job retention, particularly in times of economic uncertainty. Analyzing unemployment data from two nationally representative British cohorts (N = 16,780), we found that low self-control in childhood was associated with the emergence and persistence of unemployment across four decades. On average, a 1-SD increase in self-control was associated with a reduction in the probability of unemployment of 1.4 percentage points after adjustment for intelligence,social class and gender. From labor-market entry to middle age, individuals with low self-control experienced 1.6 times as many months of unemployment as those with high self-control. Analysis of monthly unemployment data before and during the 1980s recession showed that individuals with low self-control experienced the greatest increases in unemployment during the recession. Our results underscore the critical role of self-control in shaping life-span trajectories of occupational success and in affecting how macroeconomic conditions affect unemployment levels in the population.

Co-Authors: Michael Daly Ph.D & Mark Egan, Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling,  
Roy Baumeister Ph.D, Florida State University.

Childhood general cognitive ability and self-regulation predict leadership role occupancy: evidence from two British cohort studies

Mark Egan 
Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, United Kingdom 

Research in the leadership literature has not yet identified links between childhood cognitive abilities and leadership potential in adulthood. We test whether early life general cognitive ability and self-regulation contribute to leadership role occupancy using a sample of 10,691 working individuals from the British Cohort Study and the National Child Development Study. We find that childhood cognitive ability and self-regulation positively predict greater leadership role occupancy over four decades: a 1 standard deviation increase in intelligence predicts a 5.6 percentage point higher probability of leadership role occupancy, whereas self-regulation predicts a 2.7 percent increased likelihood of leadership. Occupying high responsibility leadership roles, as gauged by supervising 25 or more employees, was also predicted by general cognitive ability in both cohorts. The impact of early cognitive and self-regulatory abilities on educational attainment explained over a third of these associations. The results illustrate how early individual differences in neurocognitive function shape trajectories of leadership over the lifespan.

Co-Authors: Michael Daly Ph.D, Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling,

Fionnuala O'Reilly, Behavioural Insights Team