Thursday, June 14, 2018

Key elements of the ARPA model for research funding are: organizational flexibility on an administrative level, & significant authority given to program directors to design programs, select projects & actively manage projects

Funding Breakthrough Research: Promises and Challenges of the "ARPA Model". Pierre Azoulay, Erica Fuchs, Anna Goldstein, Michael Kearney. NBER Working Paper No. 24674. http://www.nber.org/papers/w24674

Abstract: From its 1958 origin in defense, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model for research funding has, in the last two decades, spread to other parts of the US federal government with the goal of developing radically new technologies. In this paper, we propose that the key elements of the ARPA model for research funding are: organizational flexibility on an administrative level, and significant authority given to program directors to design programs, select projects and actively manage projects. We identify the ARPA model’s domain as mission-oriented research on nascent S-curves within an inefficient innovation system. Finally, we describe some of the challenges to implementing the ARPA model, and we comment on the role of ARPA in the landscape of research funding approaches.

Not Cool, Dude: Perceptions of Solicited vs. Unsolicited Sext Messages from Men and Women

Not Cool, Dude: Perceptions of Solicited vs. Unsolicited Sext Messages from Men and Women. Sarah J. Matthews et al. Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.06.014

Highlights:
•    This experimental study investigated perceptions of sext messaging situations.
•    Men and women were judged differently for the sext messages they sent.
•    When sending solicited messages, men and women were judged equally.
•    For unsolicited messages, women were judged as more appropriate than were men.
•    Our results provide evidence for the importance of consent in sext messaging.

Abstract: We examined the extent to which gender of sext message sender and type of sext message affects people’s perceptions of sext messages. As part of a 2 x 2 between-subjects design, 122 undergraduates (61 women, 61 men) at a predominantly White liberal arts university in Texas read a vignette in which either a female or a male target sent a solicited or unsolicited sext message to an opposite-sex acquaintance; participants then reported their perceptions of the situation and the sender of the sext message. As predicted, women who sent unsolicited sext messages were rated as more appropriate than were men who sent unsolicited sext messages; by contrast, women and men who sent solicited sext messages were perceived as equally appropriate. These findings suggest that hypermasculinity in the form of a man sending an unsolicited sext message to a woman may be more likely to be judged as a form of sexual harassment that makes the female receiver feel uncomfortable or threatened. By contrast, cultural ideals of hegemonic masculinity seem to dictate that men should react positively to sexual advances from women, regardless of whether such advances are solicited or not.

Keywords: sexting; sext messages; gender; solicited; unsolicited

Neuroticism was related to sexual dissatisfaction, negative emotions, & symptoms of sexual dysfunction; extraversion was related to sexual activity & risky sexual behavior; agreeableness & conscientiousness were negatively related to sexually aggressive behavior & sexual infidelity

Linking big five personality traits to sexuality and sexual health: A meta-analytic review. Allen, Mark S.,Walter, Emma E. Psychological Bulletin, Jun 07 , 2018, http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fbul0000157

This meta-analytic review addresses whether the major dimensions of trait personality relate to components of human sexuality. A comprehensive literature search identified 137 studies that met inclusion criteria (761 effect sizes; total n = 420,595). Pooled mean effects were computed using inverse-variance weighted random effects meta-analysis. Mean effect sizes from 100 separate meta-analyses provided evidence that personality relates to theoretically predicted components of sexuality and sexual health. Neuroticism was positively related to sexual dissatisfaction (r+ = .18), negative emotions (r+ = .42), and symptoms of sexual dysfunction (r+ = .16). Extraversion was positively related to sexual activity (r+ = .17) and risky sexual behavior (r+ = .18), and negatively related to symptoms of sexual dysfunction (r+ = −.17). Openness was positively related to homosexual orientation (r+ = .16) and liberal attitudes toward sex (r+ = .19). Agreeableness and conscientiousness were negatively related to sexually aggressive behavior (r+ = −.20; r+ = −.14) and sexual infidelity (r+ = −.18; r+ = −.17). Less robust evidence indicated that extraversion related negatively, and neuroticism positively, to child sexual abuse, and that openness related negatively to homophobic attitudes. Random effects metaregression identified age, gender, and study quality as important moderators of pooled mean effects. These findings might be of interest to health care professionals developing health care services that aim to promote sexually healthy societies.

People catch themselves spontaneously thinking about their secrets far more frequently than they encounter social situations that require active concealment of those; independent of concealment frequency, the frequency of mind-wandering to secrets predicts lower well-being

Slepian, M. L., Chun, J. S., & Mason, M. F. (2017). The experience of secrecy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 1-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000085

Abstract: The concept of secrecy calls to mind a dyadic interaction: one person hiding a secret from another during a conversation or social interaction. The current work, however, demonstrates that this aspect of secrecy is rather rare. Taking a broader view of secrecy as the intent to conceal information, which only sometimes necessitates concealment, yields a new psychology of secrecy. Ten studies demonstrate the secrets people have, what it is like to have a secret, and what about secrecy is related to lower well-being. We demonstrate that people catch themselves spontaneously thinking about their secrets—they mind-wander to them—far more frequently than they encounter social situations that require active concealment of those secrets. Moreover, independent of concealment frequency, the frequency of mind-wandering to secrets predicts lower well-being (whereas the converse was not the case). We explore the diversity of secrets people have and the harmful effects of spontaneously thinking about those secrets in both recall tasks and in longitudinal designs, analyzing more than 13,000 secrets across our participant samples, with outcomes for relationship satisfaction, authenticity, well-being, and physical health. These results demonstrate that secrecy can be studied by having people think about their secrets, and have implications for designing interventions to help people cope with secrecy.

Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless object

Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016. Joseph Cesario, David Johnson, William Terrill. Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618775108

Abstract: Is there evidence of a Black–White disparity in death by police gunfire in the United States? This is commonly answered by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group’s population proportion. However, adjusting for population values has questionable assumptions given the context of deadly force decisions. We benchmark 2 years of fatal shooting data on 16 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests. Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings. For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.

Keywords: deadly force, police use of force, officer-involved shootings, fatal shootings, race bias, racial disparity, Black Lives Matter