Guy Madison

Umeå University | UMU · Department of Psychology

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent neuropsychiatric disorder in the world. Currently, the diagnosis is based mainly on interviews, resulting in uncertainties in the clinical assessment. While some neuropsychological tests are used, their specificity and selectivity are low, and more reliable biomarkers are desirab...

Sex differences in human performance have been documented across a wide array of human endeavours. Males tend to exhibit higher performance in intellectually demanding and competitive domains, and this difference tends to be more pronounced the higher the level of performance. Here, we analyse publishing performance for the whole population of asso...

Performances on tests of creativity have been found to be in decline in the USA. Here, we explore scores on divergent thinking tests in private schools in Khartoum State in Sudan by comparing a 2005 and a 2018 administration of the Torrance Standardized Circles test to 8- to 12-year-olds of both sexes. We find a decline across the period in all thr...

Malevolent creativity refers to employing creative processes for one's own selfish gain, often combined with detrimental effects on others. Sex differences in malevolent or negative creativity are to be expected due to the established finding that males are higher in the Dark Triad traits. However, the only previous study of this issue, using a sam...

Occupations are segregated with respect to sex, even in modern, egalitarian societies. There are strong pressures to eliminate segregation and therefore strong reasons to correctly theorize why segregation persists. The dominant view underpinning most public policies is essentially that environmental factors nudge women and men into different occup...

Timely dissemination of knowledge is essential and fosters development of knowledge both within academe and the wider society, not least for knowledge that serves practises outside of academia. Here, we compare six disciplines which provide health-related knowledge that serve the health and social services. Most previous research compares the size...

Background Anxiety and depression are amongst the most prevalent mental health problems. Their pattern of comorbidity may inform about their etiology and effective treatment, but such research is sparse. Here, we document long-term prognosis of affective caseness (high probability of being a clinical case) of anxiety and depression, their comorbidi...

Music often evokes a regular beat and a pleasurable sensation of wanting to move to that beat called groove. Recent studies show that a rhythmic pattern’s ability to evoke groove increases at moderate levels of syncopation, essentially, when some notes occur earlier than expected. We present two studies that investigate that effect of syncopation i...

Real-life outcomes for men and women suggest the existence of cognitive sex differences, but the evidence for a sex difference in general intelligence is equivocal. Here, we examine the role of spatial ability for IQ test performance, in light of the developmental hypothesis that male performance increases more than female across adolescence. Using...

Schizophrenia is correlated with religious delusions but, heretofore, the relationship between schizophrenia prevalence and religiosity has not been explored at the national level. Examining this relationship, we find that national level schizophrenia prevalence is correlated with national level religiosity and strongly negatively correlated with n...

Several countries have mandated sex quotas on corporate boards of directors. We systematically reviewed empirical studies that compared company profitability and financial performance before and after introducing legislated quotas. The search yielded 348 unique hits and nine studies were retained, including 20 effects. Four were null, 11 were negat...

IntroductionGender dysphoria (GD) is associated with several psychiatric conditions, but the causal links are not known. We note that some of these conditions are associated with physiological masculinisation.Methods Here, we explore this association through a series of systematic reviews, using Google Scholar, on original studies that test the rel...

It has been demonstrated that the worst performance rule (WPR) effect can occur as a result of statistical dependencies in the data. Here, we examine whether this might also be the case for Spearman's law of diminishing returns (SLODR). Two proposed SLODR criteria are the skewness of the estimated latent ability factor and the correlation between t...

A number of very eminent and highly creative individuals are often claimed to have been born prematurely, and the idea that widely recognised scientific geniuses such as Newton, Kepler, and Darwin were preterm has become a cultural meme through the popular press, and through popular and academic science books. This potentially raises very important...

According to the worst performance rule (WPR), the correlations between intelligence and sorted performances, for example on reaction time tasks, should strengthen from the best to the worst performance. A commonly proposed explanation for the WPR is that poor performances reflect lapses of attention that are particularly strongly related to intell...

We developed a cascade model to reconstruct the hypothesized developmental progression from (a) increased resource instability during childhood to (b) decreased maternal sensitivity during childhood to (c) social vulnerability cognitive schemata to (d) faster Life History strategies to (e) decreased behavioral regulation to (f) more pronounced “Dar...

Invariance of surveys across different groups means that the respondents interpret the items in the same way, as reflected in similar factor loadings, for example. Invariance can be assessed using various statistical procedures, such as Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis. However, these analyses require access to raw data. Here, we introduce...

Corporal punishment of children is common across human history, and the specific practice of striking the buttocks, known as spanking, seems to have developed independently across a number of separate cultures. This pattern suggests adaptive value, posing a paradox in view of the many reviews stating that spanking has purely negative outcomes on fu...

It has been demonstrated that the worst performance rule (WPR) effect can occur as a result of statistical dependencies in the data. Here, we examine whether this might also be the case for Spearman’s law of diminishing returns (SLODR). Two proposed SLODR criteria are the skewness of the estimated latent ability factor and the correlation between t...

Behavioral data are increasingly collected over the Internet. This is particularly useful when participants’ own computers can be used as they are, without any modification that relies on their technical skills. However, the temporal accuracy in these settings is generally poor, unknown, and varies substantially across different hard- and software...

Numerous studies have found a negative relationship between religiousness and IQ. It is in the region of − 0.2, according to meta-analyses. The reasons for this relationship are, however, unknown. It has been suggested that higher intelligence leads to greater attraction to science, or that it helps to override evolved cognitive dispositions such a...

According to the worst performance rule (WPR), the correlations between intelligence and sorted performances, for example on reaction time tasks, should strengthen from the best to the worst performance. A commonly proposed explanation for the WPR is that poor performances reflect lapses of attention that are particularly strongly related to intell...

The worst performance rule (WPR) states that participants’' worst performances on multi-trial tasks, e.g. in reaction time, are more predictive of their general intelligence than are better performances. A common interpretation of the WPR is that poor performances reflect momentary lapses in attention and executive control, which occur more frequen...

Associations between cognitive and motor timing performance are documented in hundreds of studies. A core finding is a correlation of about − 0.3 to − 0.5 between psychometric intelligence and time interval production variability and reaction time, but the nature of the relationship remains unclear. Here, we investigated whether this relation is su...

The proportion of women tends to decrease the higher the academic rank, following a global pattern. Sweden has taken comprehensive measures to decrease this gap across 30 years, and many countries are following a similar path. Yet today only 27% of faculty with the rank of professor in Sweden are female. A common explanation is that academia is bia...

Synonyms Crying diversity; Crying versatility Definition Qualitatively different forms of weeping and/or shedding tears. The range of expressions of emotion associated with shedding of tears from the eyes.

The drive to learn and engage in music varies among individuals. Global motivation to do something can be intrinsic, for example, the joy and satisfaction in an activity. But motivation behind our action can also be extrinsic, such as the desire for fame, status or increased financial resources. The type of motivation probably influences to what de...

Previous research has attempted to understand why countries with relatively favorable conditions and high estimated average IQs (such as Finland and Japan) have a relatively low per capita number of scientific Nobel prizes. In the present study, we examine whether there is a relationship between national schizophrenia and left‐handedness prevalence...

Graphical depiction of model training, testing, and validation.

Quotas are employed or proposed in several European countries as a means to decrease differences in outcomes across groups. Quotas belong to a family of biased selection and treatment measures based on group membership, rather than individual ability. The effects of such measures depend on the underlying model of the relevant variables and their re...

BACKGROUND: Low adherence to recommended treatments is a multifactorial problem for patients in rehabilitation after myocardial infarction (MI). In a nationwide trial of internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (iCBT) for the high-risk subgroup of patients with MI also reporting symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both (MI-ANXDEP), adherence w...

Industrialisation leads to relaxed selection and thus the accumulation of fitness-damaging genetic mutations. We argue that religion is a selected trait that would be highly sensitive to mutational load. We further argue that a specific form of religiousness was selected for in complex societies up until industrialisation based around the collectiv...

BACKGROUND: Psychotherapeutic treatment for the subgroup of patients with MI that also suffer from comorbid symptoms of anxiety and/or depression (MI-ANXDEP) is part of cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Adherence to a range of treatments and lifestyle advice is crucial for risk reduction in these patients. Understanding the relative importance of predic...

Patterns of adoption behaviour are starkly asymmetric across populations. To better understand this phenomenon we conducted a systematic review of transracial adoption and adoption in general. We found six quantitative studies from the USA (with representative samples comprising a total of 117,000 participants) which had examined sex, race, and SES...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive ability is substantially hereditary and predicts socioeconomic status (SES), health behaviours, physical health, and longevity. The robustness and mediation of the CA – mortality association is however insufficiently understood. Our previous findings suggest that the effect of early-in-life CA on later-in-life mortality also h...

BACKGROUND: Low adherence to recommended treatments is a multifactorial problem in rehabilitation for patients with myocardial infarction (MI). In a nationwide trial of internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (iCBT) for the high-risk subgroup of patients with MI also reporting symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both (MI-ANXDEP), adherence wa...

There are national differences in scientific activity that are not well accounted for by economic and intellectual factors alone. We examine the novel hypothesis that androgen levels may also play a role. Androgens are often referred to as male hormones, but are present in both men and women, and have been linked to performance in other domains, su...

The field of gender studies has faced criticism for poor scholarship and methodology, both from within and outside academia. Here, we compare indicators of scientific quality across three samples of peer-reviewed journal articles with more, less and no gender perspective, on the assumption that gender studies tend to apply a gender perspective. The...

Frost and Harpending, Evolutionary Psychology, 13 (2015), have argued that the increasing use of capital punishment across the Middle Ages in Europe altered the genotype, helping to create a less violent and generally more law-abiding population. Developing this insight, we hypothesise that the same system of violent punishments would also have hel...

Previous research indicates that the typical increase in IQ during childhood is greater in European countries than in Arab countries. A systematic literature review of age-dependent IQ in Arab countries is conducted, yielding relevant studies for 12 countries that fulfil the inclusion criteria. In almost all of these studies, Arab children exhibit...

Previous research indicates that the typical increase in IQ during childhood is greater in European countries than in Arab countries. A systematic literature review of age-dependent IQ in Arab countries is conducted, yielding relevant studies for 12 countries that fulfil the inclusion criteria. In almost all of these studies, Arab children exhibit...

Background Musical aptitude and ability to handle emotions are hypothesized to be important predictors of creative work. Methods The associations between musical aptitude, alexithymia, and having a creative occupation were assessed with linear multiple regression for men and women separately. Participants in the Swedish Twin Registry participat...

One of the techniques used to induce trance state in shamanic ceremonies is monotonous drumming. According to previous EEG research, certain patterns of drumming cause an increase in power of alpha and theta frequencies of the listener. Present study aimed to determine, if suggestion to experience trance state could increase the relative alpha and...

Isochrony is crucial to the rhythm of human music. Some neural, behavioral and anatomical traits underlying rhythm perception and production are shared with a broad range of species. These may either have a common evolutionary origin, or have evolved into similar traits under different evolutionary pressures. Other traits underlying rhythm are rare...

Music is a human universal, which suggests a biological adaptation. Several evolutionary explanations have been proposed, covering the entire spectrum of natural, sexual, and group selection. Here we consider the hypothesis that musical behaviour constitutes a reliable or even costly signal of fitness, and thus may have evolved as a human trait thr...

Compared to best performances, worst performances on multi-trial psychometric tests often show stronger correlations with other g-loaded cognitive tests, which is known as the Worst Performance Rule (WPR). While worst performances may be more sensitive or specific to cognitive decline, clinical psychometric research and neuropsychological practice...

BACKGROUND: Machine learning algorithms hold potential for improved prediction of all-cause mortality in cardiovascular patients, yet have not previously been developed with high-quality population data. This study compared four popular machine learning algorithms trained on unselected, nation-wide population data from Sweden to solve the binary cl...

Nothing is presently known about the relationship between individual differences in fertility and life history (LH) speed, as measured by the K-Factor. To examine this relationship, the correlation between LH speed and the number of children was examined in two, large samples (MIDUS II and the Swedish STAGE dataset). Their association was positive...

BACKGROUND: Psychosocial stress might trigger myocardial infarction (MI). Increased MI incidence coincides with recurrent time-periods during the year perceived as particularly stressful in the population. METHODS: A stress-triggering hypothesis on the risk of MI onset was investigated with Swedish population data on MI hospital admission date an...

Gender studies (GS) has been challenged on epistemological grounds. Here, we compare samples of peer-reviewed academic journal publications written by GS authors and authors from closely related disciplines in the social sciences. The material consisted of 2805 statements from 36 peer-reviewed journal articles, sampled from the Swedish Gender Studi...

Psychological and aesthetic theories predict that music is appreciated at optimal, peak levels of familiarity and complexity, and that appreciation of music exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with familiarity as well as complexity. Because increased familiarity conceivably leads to improved processing and less perceived complexity, we test...

Why is social bias and its depressing effects on low-status or low-performing groups exaggerated? We show that the higher intelligence of academics has at best a very weak effect on reducing their bias, facilitates superficially justifying their biases, and may make them better at understanding the benefits of social conformity in general and compe...

Male and female Finns who contracted cross-national marriages had spouses from very different countries. We tested the possibility that this might reflect sexual selection, with nationality being a proxy for certain kinds of social status. It is predicted from evolutionary theory that females tend to sexually select for status to a greater extent t...

The nature of the relationship between timing and cognition remains poorly understood. Cognitive control is known to be involved in discrete timing tasks involving durations above 1 s, but has not yet been demonstrated for repetitive motor timing below 1 s. We examined the latter in two continuation tapping experiments, by varying the cognitive loa...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive ability (CA) is positively related to later health, health literacy, health behaviours and longevity. Accordingly, a lower CA is expected to be associated with poorer adherence to medication. We investigated the long-term role of CA in adherence to prescribed statins in male patients after a first myocardial infarction (MI)....

Some Western countries contemplate, or have already implemented, legislative means to counter group differences. Here, I consider the arguments for, and consequences of, sex quotas. I find that it is logically incoherent to impose selection based on group membership, such as quotas, unless one acknowledges that there is a group difference in some t...

Background: General cognitive ability (CA) is positively associated with later physical and mental health, health literacy, and longevity. We investigated whether CA estimated approximately 30 years earlier in young adulthood predicted lifestyle-related risk factors and two-year survival in first myocardial infarction (MI) male patients. Methods:...

Poster presentation + abstract.

INTRODUCTION: General cognitive ability (CA) estimated early in life is positively associated with later physical and mental health, health literacy, and longevity. METHODS: We investigated young adulthood CA as a long-term risk indicator for the lifestyle factors smoking, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and two-year mortality in the largest samp...

The aims of the study were (1) to investigate the effects of participation in low impact body conditioning classes on physical fitness in sedentary women at different ages and (2) to examine the correspondence between physical self-concept and participation in, and fitness change after, the participation. Ninety-two sedentary women (mean age 44.2 y...

We conducted a review of factors associated with individual and group level differences in positive ethnocentrism (PE) and negative ethnocentrism (NE). We inter-correlated datasets on national differences in these factors with data from the World Values Survey with regard to national differences in measures of PE and NE. The two different survey it...

Introduction and purpose: Psychological stress may trigger a cardiovascular event, such as acute myocardial infarction (MI). Increased MI incidence coincides with recurrent time ­periods during the year perceived as particularly stressful. We evaluated an Artificial Time­-Constraint (ATC) model which postulates that the incidence of cardiovascular...

There are indications that simple reaction time might have slowed in Western populations, based on both cohort- and multi-study comparisons. A possible limitation of the latter method in particular is measurement error stemming from methods variance, which results from the fact that instruments and experimental conditions change over time and betwe...

There is evidence that Finland's Swedish-speaking minority (Finland-Swedes) may have a distinct intelligence-personality profile from the Finnish-speaking Finns (Finns). We test this through an examination of the two groups' PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment) scores (which assesses representative samples of 15 year olds from OECD...

Objectives To investigate the ability of work-related measurements, body composition, physical activity, and fitness levels to predict neck/shoulder pain (upper body pain, UBP) at the age of 52 years. Another aim was to investigate the cross-sectional relationships between UBP, work-related factors, and individual factors at the age of 52 years. M...

We reply to the comment by Lundgren, Shildrick and Lawrence on our article on gender studies bibliometrics and argue that it does not challenge any of our main results. Their points of criticism concerned that we had not compiled exactly all scholarly gender production, that the gender studies field had changed during the period, that the definitio...

Earlier studies suggest that individual differences in flow experiences depend on both situational variables, e.g. the environmental opportunities to engage in flow promoting activities, and personal traits. Here, we present results of phenotypic analyses of associations between flow proneness and five major modalities of individual differences, i....

Males and females score differently on some personality traits, but the underlying etiology of these differences is not well understood. This study examined genetic, environmental, and prenatal hormonal influences on individual differences in personality masculinity–femininity (M-F). We used Big-Five personality inventory data of 9,520 Swedish twin...

The gods of monotheistic religions, which began amongst pastoralists and defeated exiles, are closer to Big Gods than those associated with ancient city-based polities. The development of Big Gods is contingent upon a need to reduce uncertainty and negative feelings in combination with a relatively high level of prosociality, rather than a need to...

Life history speed has been argued to differ across the three main races, with Sub-Saharan Africans adopting the fastest (most r) strategy, Northeast Asians adopting the slowest (most K) strategy and Caucasians being intermediate, but closer to Northeast Asians (Rushton, 1995). Differential-K theory would predict that puberty begins earlier in the...

Studies reporting sex differences in intelligence among the Swedish adult population were systematically reviewed. Five studies from 1959 to 2008 fulfilled the inclusion criteria, and were supplemented with three studies from 1988 to 2015 using nonrepresentative but large samples. The analyses comprise 37 subtest effects that yielded a total of 57...

The relationship between IQ and completed fertility among a sample of 3520 Americans from MIDUS II (1960's birth cohorts) is examined using a common factor comprised of eight cognitive ability measures, in order to determine the rate of phenotypic IQ loss due to genetic selection. Negative correlations are present in both the male and female subsam...