The positivity effect: a negativity bias in youth fades with age. Laura L Carstensen, Marguerite De Liema. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 19, February 2018, Pages 7-12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.07.009
Highlights
• Neural degradation and cognitive impairment cannot account for the positivity effect.
• Cognitive load reduces the positivity effect.
• Constraints on time horizons produce the positivity effect in young people.
• Selective attention to positive information may hold both advantageous and detrimental consequences for older adults.
Abstract: Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This shift from a negativity bias in younger age to a preference for positive information in later life is termed the ‘positivity effect.’ Based on nearly two decades of research and recent evidence from neuroscience, we argue that the effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline. Understanding the positivity effect, including conditions that reduce and enhance it, can inform effective public health and educational messages directed at older people.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Individuals felt on average 15% to 16% younger relative to their chronological age; those feeling older have higher mortality risk
Subjective Age and Mortality in Three Longitudinal Samples. Stephan, Yannick; Sutin, Angelina; Terracciano, Antonio. Psychosomatic Medicine: June 1, 2018 - doi: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000613
Objective: Subjective age has been implicated in a range of health outcomes. The present study extends existing research by providing new data on the relation between subjective age and mortality in three large national samples.
Methods: Participants (total N > 17,000) were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS, 2008-2014), the Midlife in the United State Survey (MIDUS, 1995-2014), and the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS, 2011-2014). Subjective age, demographic factors, disease burden, functional limitations, depressive symptoms, and physical inactivity were assessed at baseline and mortality data were tracked for up to 20 years. Cognition was also included as a covariate in the HRS and the NHATS.
Results: Individuals felt on average 15% to 16% younger relative to their chronological age. Feeling approximately 8, 11, and 13 years older in the MIDUS, HRS, and NHATS, was related to an 18%, 29% and 25% higher risk of mortality, respectively. This pattern was confirmed by a meta-analysis of the three samples (HR = 1.24; 95%CI = 1.17-1.31, p<.001). Multivariate analyses showed that disease burden, physical inactivity, functional limitations, and cognitive problems, but not depressive symptoms, accounted for the associations between subjective age and mortality.
Conclusions: The present study provides robust evidence for an association between an older subjective age and a higher risk of mortality across adulthood. These findings support the role of subjective age as a biopsychosocial marker of aging.
Objective: Subjective age has been implicated in a range of health outcomes. The present study extends existing research by providing new data on the relation between subjective age and mortality in three large national samples.
Methods: Participants (total N > 17,000) were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS, 2008-2014), the Midlife in the United State Survey (MIDUS, 1995-2014), and the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS, 2011-2014). Subjective age, demographic factors, disease burden, functional limitations, depressive symptoms, and physical inactivity were assessed at baseline and mortality data were tracked for up to 20 years. Cognition was also included as a covariate in the HRS and the NHATS.
Results: Individuals felt on average 15% to 16% younger relative to their chronological age. Feeling approximately 8, 11, and 13 years older in the MIDUS, HRS, and NHATS, was related to an 18%, 29% and 25% higher risk of mortality, respectively. This pattern was confirmed by a meta-analysis of the three samples (HR = 1.24; 95%CI = 1.17-1.31, p<.001). Multivariate analyses showed that disease burden, physical inactivity, functional limitations, and cognitive problems, but not depressive symptoms, accounted for the associations between subjective age and mortality.
Conclusions: The present study provides robust evidence for an association between an older subjective age and a higher risk of mortality across adulthood. These findings support the role of subjective age as a biopsychosocial marker of aging.
Consumption, contact and copulation: how pathogens have shaped human psychological adaptations
Consumption, contact and copulation: how pathogens have shaped human psychological adaptations. Debra Lieberman, Joseph Billingsley, Carlton Patrick. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, July 19 2018, Volume 373, issue 1751. DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0203
Abstract: Disgust is an emotion intimately linked to pathogen avoidance. Building on prior work, we suggest disgust is an output of programmes that evolved to address three separate adaptive problems: what to eat, what to touch and with whom to have sex. We briefly discuss the architecture of these programmes, specifying their perceptual inputs and the contextual factors that enable them to generate adaptive and flexible behaviour. We propose that our sense of disgust is the result of these programmes and occurs when information-processing circuitries assess low expected values of consumption, low expected values of contact or low expected sexual values. This conception of disgust differs from prior models in that it dissects pathogen-related selection pressures into adaptive problems related to consumption and contact rather than assuming just one pathogen disgust system, and it excludes moral disgust from the domain of disgust proper. Instead, we illustrate how low expected values of consumption and contact as well as low expected sexual values can be used by our moral psychology to provide multiple causal links between disgust and morality.
Check also Why do people vary in disgust? Joshua M. Tybur, Çağla Çınar, Annika K. Karinen, Paola Perone. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, July 19 2018. Volume 373, issue 1751, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/06/explanations-for-variability.html
Also Magical Contagion Effects in Consumer Contexts: It may be both negative (fly in your plate) or positive (a celebrity's dress)
The Effect of Germ Movement on the Construal of Mental States in Germs: The Moderating Role of Contamination Fear. John H. Riskind, Dylan K. Richards. Cognitive Therapy and Research, February 2018, Volume 42, Issue 1, pp 36–47. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/01/the-effect-of-germ-movement-on.html
Abstract: Disgust is an emotion intimately linked to pathogen avoidance. Building on prior work, we suggest disgust is an output of programmes that evolved to address three separate adaptive problems: what to eat, what to touch and with whom to have sex. We briefly discuss the architecture of these programmes, specifying their perceptual inputs and the contextual factors that enable them to generate adaptive and flexible behaviour. We propose that our sense of disgust is the result of these programmes and occurs when information-processing circuitries assess low expected values of consumption, low expected values of contact or low expected sexual values. This conception of disgust differs from prior models in that it dissects pathogen-related selection pressures into adaptive problems related to consumption and contact rather than assuming just one pathogen disgust system, and it excludes moral disgust from the domain of disgust proper. Instead, we illustrate how low expected values of consumption and contact as well as low expected sexual values can be used by our moral psychology to provide multiple causal links between disgust and morality.
Check also Why do people vary in disgust? Joshua M. Tybur, Çağla Çınar, Annika K. Karinen, Paola Perone. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, July 19 2018. Volume 373, issue 1751, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/06/explanations-for-variability.html
Also Magical Contagion Effects in Consumer Contexts: It may be both negative (fly in your plate) or positive (a celebrity's dress)
Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion: A Review of Contagion Effects in Consumer Contexts. Julie Y. Huang, Joshua M. Ackerman and George E. Newman. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2017, vol. 2, issue 4, 430 - 443. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/04/magical-contagion-effects-in-consumer.htmlKollareth, D., & Russell, J. A. (2018). Even unpleasant reminders that you are an animal need not disgust you. Emotion, 18(2), 304-312. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/we-tested-hypothesis-that-we-humans.html
The Effect of Germ Movement on the Construal of Mental States in Germs: The Moderating Role of Contamination Fear. John H. Riskind, Dylan K. Richards. Cognitive Therapy and Research, February 2018, Volume 42, Issue 1, pp 36–47. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/01/the-effect-of-germ-movement-on.html
Explanations for variability experiencing disgust (like parental modelling, with offspring calibrating their pathogen avoidance based on their parents' reactions; or that individuals calibrate their disgust sensitivity to the parasite stress of their) are not good.
Why do people vary in disgust? Joshua M. Tybur, Çağla Çınar, Annika K. Karinen, Paola Perone. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, July 19 2018. Volume 373, issue 1751, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0204
Abstract: People vary in the degree to which they experience disgust toward—and, consequently, avoid—cues to pathogens. Prodigious work has measured this variation and observed that it relates to, among other things, personality, psychopathological tendencies, and moral and political sentiments. Less work has sought to generate hypotheses aimed at explaining why this variation exists in the first place, and even less work has evaluated how well data support these hypotheses. In this paper, we present and review the evidence supporting three such proposals. First, researchers have suggested that variability reflects a general tendency to experience anxiety or emotional distress. Second, researchers have suggested that variability arises from parental modelling, with offspring calibrating their pathogen avoidance based on their parents' reactions to pathogen cues. Third, researchers have suggested that individuals calibrate their disgust sensitivity to the parasite stress of the ecology in which they develop. We conclude that none of these hypotheses is supported by existing data, and we propose directions for future research aimed at better understanding this variation.
Abstract: People vary in the degree to which they experience disgust toward—and, consequently, avoid—cues to pathogens. Prodigious work has measured this variation and observed that it relates to, among other things, personality, psychopathological tendencies, and moral and political sentiments. Less work has sought to generate hypotheses aimed at explaining why this variation exists in the first place, and even less work has evaluated how well data support these hypotheses. In this paper, we present and review the evidence supporting three such proposals. First, researchers have suggested that variability reflects a general tendency to experience anxiety or emotional distress. Second, researchers have suggested that variability arises from parental modelling, with offspring calibrating their pathogen avoidance based on their parents' reactions to pathogen cues. Third, researchers have suggested that individuals calibrate their disgust sensitivity to the parasite stress of the ecology in which they develop. We conclude that none of these hypotheses is supported by existing data, and we propose directions for future research aimed at better understanding this variation.
Vanilla extract becomes more expensive than silver; synthetic flavour from petroleum, coal tar is spurned in favor of non-synthetic options
Crop uncertainty drives vanilla price back to record level. Emiko Terazono, The Financial Times, March 25, 2018
Foodmakers turn to alternatives as flavour extract becomes more expensive than silverhttps://www.ft.com/content/1c810c2a-286f-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0
Ice cream and cake makers hoping for cheaper vanilla will be disappointed as uncertainty about this year’s crop in the world’s top grower Madagascar has driven the price of the spice back to record levels.
Vanilla prices soared to its record $600 a kilogramme last year after a cyclone hit the tropical island off the south-east coast of Africa, sending buyers scrambling to secure supplies of the flavouring extract.
Prices eased off below $550/kg at the end of last year on hopes of a good crop in 2018, but are now back at $600 amid uncertainty over crop levels.
The flowering period of the vanilla orchid, which produces vanilla beans, has ended and the pods are now growing.
“We won’t know the production [levels] until June,” said Mélanie Legris at Eurovanille, the French trading company.
Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron and at current levels is more expensive than silver, which is trading just above $530/kg. Madagascar supplies 75 to 80 per cent of the world vanilla bean market, and other producers including Indonesia and India do not grow enough to make up for sudden fluctuations in Madagascan vanilla pod production.
The squeeze on vanilla beans has also pushed up the price of by-products of the beans.
The price of “spent” vanilla specks — ground vanilla made from used beans that are then dried, ground and sterilised — has jumped from about $40 a kilogramme to $150, said traders.
In most cases, the spent specks are used as a “visual enhancement” said Naushad Lalani at Sentrex Ingredients, a US maker of essences and food flavouring ingredients.
Using spent beans allows foodmakers to list vanilla beans as an ingredient and put a picture of a vanilla pod or flower on the packaging, although the actual flavour may come from a non-vanilla bean source.
Some artisanal ice cream makers were forced to stop producing vanilla ice cream last year as they could not get hold of affordable vanilla bean supplies, while others raised prices or switched to vanilla flavouring made from other sources.
Vanilla is one of the world’s most popular flavours, but only about 1 per cent of the extracts used in food and cosmetics come from real pods. Vanillin, the flavour molecule found in vanilla beans, is also extracted from petroleum, coal tar and wood as well as natural food sources such as rice bran and clove oil.
Demand for artificial vanilla flavouring is rising. There has been “a positive shift in demand for our bio-based sustainable vanillin product”, said Tone Horvei Bredal at Borregaard, the Norwegian group that makes vanillin from wood.
Vanilla pod prices were on the rise before the cyclone hit Madagascar, as leading foodmakers such as Unilever and Nestlé pledged to use natural ingredients in their products, spurning synthetic flavourings.
But the rising price of vanilla beans is forcing users away to natural alternatives. Demand destruction is a concern, Mr Lalani said. “People have migrated to natural alternatives. Will they ever come back to pure vanilla?”
Foodmakers turn to alternatives as flavour extract becomes more expensive than silverhttps://www.ft.com/content/1c810c2a-286f-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0
Ice cream and cake makers hoping for cheaper vanilla will be disappointed as uncertainty about this year’s crop in the world’s top grower Madagascar has driven the price of the spice back to record levels.
Vanilla prices soared to its record $600 a kilogramme last year after a cyclone hit the tropical island off the south-east coast of Africa, sending buyers scrambling to secure supplies of the flavouring extract.
Prices eased off below $550/kg at the end of last year on hopes of a good crop in 2018, but are now back at $600 amid uncertainty over crop levels.
The flowering period of the vanilla orchid, which produces vanilla beans, has ended and the pods are now growing.
“We won’t know the production [levels] until June,” said Mélanie Legris at Eurovanille, the French trading company.
Vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron and at current levels is more expensive than silver, which is trading just above $530/kg. Madagascar supplies 75 to 80 per cent of the world vanilla bean market, and other producers including Indonesia and India do not grow enough to make up for sudden fluctuations in Madagascan vanilla pod production.
The squeeze on vanilla beans has also pushed up the price of by-products of the beans.
The price of “spent” vanilla specks — ground vanilla made from used beans that are then dried, ground and sterilised — has jumped from about $40 a kilogramme to $150, said traders.
In most cases, the spent specks are used as a “visual enhancement” said Naushad Lalani at Sentrex Ingredients, a US maker of essences and food flavouring ingredients.
Using spent beans allows foodmakers to list vanilla beans as an ingredient and put a picture of a vanilla pod or flower on the packaging, although the actual flavour may come from a non-vanilla bean source.
Some artisanal ice cream makers were forced to stop producing vanilla ice cream last year as they could not get hold of affordable vanilla bean supplies, while others raised prices or switched to vanilla flavouring made from other sources.
Vanilla is one of the world’s most popular flavours, but only about 1 per cent of the extracts used in food and cosmetics come from real pods. Vanillin, the flavour molecule found in vanilla beans, is also extracted from petroleum, coal tar and wood as well as natural food sources such as rice bran and clove oil.
Demand for artificial vanilla flavouring is rising. There has been “a positive shift in demand for our bio-based sustainable vanillin product”, said Tone Horvei Bredal at Borregaard, the Norwegian group that makes vanillin from wood.
Vanilla pod prices were on the rise before the cyclone hit Madagascar, as leading foodmakers such as Unilever and Nestlé pledged to use natural ingredients in their products, spurning synthetic flavourings.
But the rising price of vanilla beans is forcing users away to natural alternatives. Demand destruction is a concern, Mr Lalani said. “People have migrated to natural alternatives. Will they ever come back to pure vanilla?”
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