Monday, October 12, 2020

The salubrious effects of prosocial behavior in the short term are not likely due to the inhibition of cellular aging (at least as indexed by telomere length)

Fritz, Megan M., Lisa C. Walsh, Steve Cole, Elissa Epel, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. 2020. “Kindness and Cellular Aging: A Pre-registered Experiment Testing the Effects of Prosocial Behavior on Telomere Length and Well-being.” PsyArXiv. October 12. doi:10.31234/osf.io/d6wtn

Abstract

Objective: Prosocial behavior can improve psychological well-being and physical health. However, the underlying biological mechanisms that mediate the relationship between prosociality and health remain unclear. In this pre-registered experiment, we tested whether a 4-week kindness intervention could slow leukocyte telomere shortening and increase well-being.

Methods: Community adults (N = 230) were randomly assigned to complete 1 of 3 activities, each week for 4 weeks: to perform 3 kind acts for other people, to perform 3 kind acts for themselves, or to list daily activities. At baseline and post-intervention, participants came to the lab to provide a small dried blood spot (DBS) sample via finger prick for analysis of telomere length. Participants completed psychological measures (e.g., loneliness, life satisfaction) at baseline, post-intervention, and at the 2-week follow up.

Results: Participants who performed kind acts for others did not demonstrate hypothesized changes in telomere length, nor in well-being, relative to controls. Exploratory analyses revealed that, relative to controls, participants who did kind acts for others showed reductions in loneliness through the 2-week follow up.

Conclusions: The salubrious effects of prosocial behavior in the short term are not likely due to the inhibition of cellular aging (at least as indexed by telomere length). However, extending kindness to others holds promise as a plausible intervention to alleviate the public health crisis of loneliness.


China: The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between BMI and happiness, with obesity associated with happiness through physical appearance, health, and income

How is obesity associated with happiness? Evidence from China. Yiwei Liu, Ling Xu, Aaron Hagedorn. Journal of Health Psychology, October 11, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105320962268

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1315715377553444864

Abstract: Happiness is a universal goal that people pursue. Studies of the relationship between obesity and happiness have shown mixed findings. It is uncertain whether an optimum BMI level exists and at what level obesity interferes or interacts with happiness. Guided by the Circle of Discontent Theory, we examined the relationship between obesity and happiness among Chinese residents using the 2014 China Family Panel Studies data. The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between BMI and happiness, with obesity associated with happiness through physical appearance, health, and income. The socioeconomic conditions for the appropriate weight to achieve happiness are discussed.

Keywords: China, circle of discontent theory, happiness, health, income, obesity, physical appearance



People high in communion, to make others happy or to display their niceness, are particularly keen to share 'happy thoughts'

Altay, Sacha, and Hugo Mercier. 2020. “Happy Thoughts: The Role of Communion in Accepting and Sharing Epistemically Suspect Beliefs.” PsyArXiv. October 12. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3s4nr

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1315682270196490253

Abstract: Why are some epistemically suspect beliefs so popular? People high in communion, either because they want to make others happy, or because they want to display their niceness, might be particularly keen to share ‘happy thoughts,’ beliefs that might make others happy, even if they are epistemically suspect—for instance, that naturopathy works, or that heaven exists. Across six experiments (N = 1596) we found that: (i) people who self-describe as being high on communion (i.e., nice, kind) are more likely to believe and share happier epistemically suspect beliefs, by contrast with people who self-describes as being high on agency (i.e., competent, dominant); (ii) people prefer to share happier beliefs when wishing to appear nice and kind rather than competent and dominant; (iii) sharing happier beliefs does lead to being perceived as nicer and kinder; and (iv) sharing happier beliefs leads to being perceived as less dominant. We also found a consistent positive bias independent of participants’ personality, with happier beliefs being more likely to be shared and believed. Overall, these results suggest that some happy epistemically suspect beliefs could become culturally successful because they allow their sender to signal niceness and kindness.



The more-men-more-violence association holds particularly for male violence against other men, is insignificant for violence against women, & the association is significant among childless men, but not among fathers

Are skewed sex ratios associated with violent crime? A longitudinal analysis using Swedish register data. Andreas Filser et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, October 12 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.10.001

Abstract: There is widespread concern in both the popular and academic literature that a surplus of men in a population intensifies mating competition between men, particularly unpartnered men, resulting in increased violence towards both men and women. Recent contributions challenge this perspective and argue that male mating competition and levels of violence will be higher when sex ratios are female-skewed. Existing empirical evidence remains inconclusive. We argue that this empirical ambiguity results from analyses of aggregate-level data, which put inferences at risk of ecological fallacies. Our analysis circumvents such problems by using individual-level, longitudinal demographic register and police data for the Stockholm metropolitan area, Sweden (1990–2003, n = 758,498). These data allow us to investigate the association between municipality-level sex ratios and violent offending (homicide, assault, threat, and sexual crimes) while adjusting for sociodemographic factors. Results suggest that aggregated offending rates are negatively associated with male-skewed sex ratios, whereas individual-level violent offending correlates positively with male-skews. We find that the more-men-more-violence association holds particularly for male violence against other men, but is insignificant for violence against women. Moreover, the association is significant among childless men, but not among fathers. However, robustness checks question the causality of these associations. Female violent offending is positively, albeit due to a low number of cases, insignificantly associated with male-skews. Moreover, both male and female non-violent offending is higher in male-skewed municipalities. We discuss the implications with regard to the theoretical debate and problems of unobserved heterogeneity in the sex ratio literature.

Keywords: Sex ratioViolent crimeMating marketSweden


Synthetic voice composites generated by averaging multiple (same gender) individual voices (short syllables) are perceived as increasingly attractive with the number of voices averaged

Belin P. (2021) On Voice Averaging and Attractiveness. In: Weiss B., Trouvain J., Barkat-Defradas M., Ohala J.J. (eds) Voice Attractiveness. Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics. Springer, Singapore, Oct 11 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6627-1_8

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1315642311196520449

Abstract: Several experiments investigating the perceptual, acoustical and neural bases of the ‘voice attractiveness averaging phenomenon’ are briefly summarized. We show that synthetic voice composites generated by averaging multiple (same gender) individual voices (short syllables) are perceived as increasingly attractive with the number of voices averaged. This phenomenon, independent of listener or speaker gender and analogous to a similar effect in the visual domain for face attractiveness, is explained in part by two acoustical correlates of averaging: reduced ‘Distance-to-Mean’, as indexed by the Euclidean distance between a voice and its same-gender population average in f0-F1 space and increased voice ‘texture smoothness’ as indexed by increased harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). These two acoustical parameters co-vary with perceived attractiveness and manipulating them independently of one another also affects attractiveness ratings. The neural correlates of implicitly perceived attractiveness consist in a highly significant negative correlation between attractiveness and fMRI signal in large areas of bilateral auditory cortex, largely overlapping with the Temporal Voice Areas, as well as inferior prefrontal cortex: more attractive voices elicit less activity in these regions. While the correlations in auditory areas were largely explained by distance-to-mean and HNR, inferior prefrontal areas bilaterally were observed even after co-varying out variance explained by these acoustical parameters, suggesting a role as abstract voice attractiveness evaluators.

Keywords: Averageness Aperiodicity Distance-to-mean Distinctiveness Pitch Formant dispertion


Spouses’ faces are similar but do not become more similar 20-69 years later

Spouses’ faces are similar but do not become more similar with time. Pin Pin Tea‑makorn & Michal Kosinski. Scientific Reports, Oct 12 2020. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73971-8

The widely disseminated convergence in physical appearance hypothesis posits that long-term partners’ facial appearance converges with time due to their shared environment, emotional mimicry, and synchronized activities. Although plausible, this hypothesis is incompatible with empirical fndings pertaining to a wide range of other traits—such as personality, intelligence, attitudes, values, and well-being—in which partners show initial similarity but do not converge over time. We solve this conundrum by reexamining this hypothesis using the facial images of 517 couples taken at the beginning of their marriages and 20 to 69 years later. Using two independent methods of estimating their facial similarity (human judgment and a facial recognition algorithm), we show that while spouses’ faces tend to be similar at the beginning of marriage, they do not converge over time, bringing facial appearance in line with other personal characteristics.


Discussion

We do not fnd support for the widely disseminated convergence in physical appearance hypothesis: Spouses’ faces are similar but do not converge with time. Tis brings facial appearance in line with other traits—such as interests, personality, intelligence, attitudes, values, and well-being—which show initial similarity but do not converge over time.

This study has several limitations. First, we used publicly available images and thus could not control for variance in image properties and self-presentation (such as grooming, facial expression, or biases in selecting images to be publicly shared online). Yet, according to the convergence in physical appearance hypothesis, these factors should amplify the convergence rather than obscure it. Spouses’ tendency to occupy the same environments, engage in the same activities, eat the same food, and—in particular—mimic each other’s emotional expressions should result in convergence in their self-presentation behaviors, and thus more (and not less) similar public facial images. Second, we did not record or control for judges’ age and ethnicity and thus the extent to which their judgments might have been afected by the own-age36 and own-ethnicity37 biases (people’s lower sensitivity when judging the similarity of faces of other ages and ethnic groups). Yet, while the own-ethnicity bias could add noise to our measurements, it is unlikely to moderate the change in similarity over time, as participants’ ethnicity was constant. Also, while the U.S. AMT workers tend to be young38, they were as good at ranking the similarity of faces of young people (taken several decades ago) as the faces of older people (taken more recently). Furthermore, those and other risks to the judges’ accuracy were counterbalanced by the use of two independent measures of facial similarity (human judges and VGGFace2) and the relatively large sample size, enabling the detection of a change in human rankings as small as Δ=0.17 (with 80% power, α=0.001), an equivalent of one in six judges increasing a spouse’s rank by just one position. Finally, the validity of our approach and dataset are supported by the successful replication of the well-established efect of people’s tendency to marry similar others (i.e., homogamy).

While the rejection of the convergence in physical appearance hypothesis is surely not as exciting or as citeworthy as its counterfactual, it solves one of the major conundrums of psychological science and brings us closer to understanding factors predisposing people to form and maintain long-term romantic relationships.