Monday, January 1, 2018

Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that “consciousness” contains no top-down control processes and that “consciousness” involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it. The experience of consciousness is a passive accompaniment to the non-conscious processes of internal broadcasting and the creation of the personal narrative. Though it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal broadcasting.

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Chasing the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being. David A. Oakley and Peter W. Halligan. Front. Psychol., November 14 2017. https://do...

Bayesian Occam's razor: People's judgments penalize hypotheses as a function not only of their numbers of free parameters but also as a function of the size of the parameter space, and they penalize those hypotheses even when their parameters can be “tuned” to fit the data better than comparatively simpler hypotheses

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Blanchard, T., Lombrozo, T. and Nichols, S. (2017), Bayesian Occam's Razor Is a Razor of the People. Cogn Sci. doi:10.1111/cogs.12573 Ab...

Through employing more than 3000 workers, usage of Corporate Social Responsibility increases employee misbehavior — 20% more employees act detrimentally toward our firm by shirking on their primary job duty

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When Corporate Social Responsibility Backfires: Theory and Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment. John A. List, Fatemeh Momeni. NBER Work...

Updated: Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-term Trends

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Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-term Trends. Gerald Auten, David Splinter. November 12, 2017. http://...

Using deep learning and Google Street View to estimate the demographic makeup of neighborhoods across the United States

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Using deep learning and Google Street View to estimate the demographic makeup of neighborhoods across the United States. Timnit Gebru et al....

Closing Your Eyes to Follow Your Heart: Avoiding Information to Protect a Strong Intuitive Preference

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Closing Your Eyes to Follow Your Heart: Avoiding Information to Protect a Strong Intuitive Preference. Woolley, Kaitlin, and Risen, Jane L. ...

Personality, IQ, and Lifetime Earnings: The payoffs to personality traits display a concave life-cycle pattern, with the largest effects between the ages of 40 and 60

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Personality, IQ, and Lifetime Earnings. Miriam Gensowski. Labour Economics, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2017.12.004 Highlights •    Thi...

Liars failed to simulate the truthtellers' pattern of forgetting & reported similar amounts of detail when interviewed without or after a delay, demonstrating a stability bias in reporting

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A stability bias effect among deceivers. Harvey, Adam Charles, Vrij, Aldert, Hope, Lorraine, Leal, Sharon, and Mann, Samantha. Law and Human...

Public Response to a Near-Miss Nuclear Accident Scenario Varying in Causal Attributions and Outcome Uncertainty

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Cui, J., Rosoff, H. and John, R. S. (2017), Public Response to a Near-Miss Nuclear Accident Scenario Varying in Causal Attributions and Outc...

Overconfidence Among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing?

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Overconfidence Among Beginners: Is a Little Learning a Dangerous Thing? Sanchez, Carmen, and Dunning, David. Journal of Personality and Soci...
Sunday, December 31, 2017

The “hostile media effect” occurs when opposing partisans perceive identical news coverage of a controversial issue as biased against their own side

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The Hostile Media Effect. Lauren Feldman. Chapter in  The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, edited by Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hal...

Can political cookies leave a bad taste in one’s mouth?: Political ideology influences taste

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Aner Tal, Yaniv Gvili, Moty Amar, Brian Wansink, (2017) "Can political cookies leave a bad taste in one’s mouth?: Political ideology in...

Frequency of sexual intercourse tends to be lower among Japanese couples compared to couples overseas, or are having more extramarital sex

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Proximate Determinants of Fertility in Japan. Shoko Konishi, Emi Tamaki.. Biodemography of Fertility in Japan pp 13-42, https://link.springe...
Saturday, December 30, 2017

People in last place were more than 4 times more likely to renege from queues, altogether giving up on the service for which they were queuing; this behavior is partially explained by the inability to make a downward social comparison

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Last Place Aversion in Queues. Ryan W. Buell. Harvard Business School, https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/18-053.html Abstract: This paper...

Lack of erotic thoughts, fear & desire to have a baby are the main predictors of the level of sexual desire. Energy-fatigue, depression, premature ejaculation severity, sexual distress, compatibility, subjective sexual response, & sexual conservatism had a weaker effect on sexual desire

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Nimbi FM, Tripodi F, Rossi R, Simonelli C. Expanding the Analysis of Psychosocial Factors of Sexual Desire in Men. J Sex Med 2017;XX:XXX–XXX...

As in previous findings, the blind have lower REMs density. However the ability of dream recall in congenitally blind and sighted controls is identical. In both groups visual dream recall is associated with an increase in REM bursts and density

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Rapid Eye Movements (REMs) and visual dream recall in both congenitally blind and sighted subjects. Helder Bértolo et al. Proceedings of SPI...
Friday, December 29, 2017

Impact of resources on ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females: Higher economic status can offset lower physical attractiveness in men much more easily than in women

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Different impacts of resources on opposite sex ratings of physical attractiveness by males and females. Guanlin Wang et al. Evolution and Hu...

Children's feelings about spending and saving can be measured from an early age and relate to their behavior with money when adults

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Smith, C. E., Echelbarger, M., Gelman, S. A., and Rick, S. I. (2017) Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Childhood: Feelings about Spending Predic...
Thursday, December 28, 2017

Women perceived a deontological man as more interested in long-term bonds, of more long-term mating quality, and less prone to infidelity, relative to a utilitarian man

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Is pulling the lever sexy? Deontology as a downstream cue to long-term mate quality. Mitch Brown, Donald F. Sacco. Journal of Social and Per...

Chimpanzees greet emphatically but show no leave-taking behaviour — Do they see a future? Seems not...

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“Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, But Only For Humans? William C. McGrew & Lucy Baehren. Human Ethology Bulletin, Volume 31, No 4, 5-14, p...

Self-enhancement, righteous anger, and moral grandiosity — The findings illustrate tactical self-enhancement: the instrumental use of one’s negative emotions for self-enhancement purposes.

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Self-enhancement, righteous anger, and moral grandiosity. Jeffrey D. Green, Constantine Sedikides, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Anna M. C. Behler ...
Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Cumulative culture in nonhumans: overlooked findings from Japanese monkeys? Food-washing behaviors (e.g., of sweet potato tubers and wheat grains) seem to have increased in complexity and efficiency over time

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Cumulative culture in nonhumans: overlooked findings from Japanese monkeys? Daniel P. Schofield et al. Primates, https://link.springer.com/a...

Anti-vaccination movement on Facebook: Present-day discourses centre around moral outrage and structural oppression by institutional government & the media, suggesting a strong logic of ‘conspiracy-style’ beliefs and thinking. Furthermore, the vast majority of participants are women

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Mapping the anti-vaccination movement on Facebook. Naomi Smith & Tim Graham. Information, Communication & Society, https://doi.org/1...

Using a foreign language reduces mental imagery; this partially explains why using foreign languages changes moral choices

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Using a foreign language reduces mental imagery. Sayuri Hayakawa, Boaz Keysar. Cognition, Volume 173, April 2018, Pages 8–15. https://doi.or...

The neuroendocrinology of sexual attraction: Olfactory stimuli are necessary but not sufficient for sexual attraction in rodents; visual stimuli, like the sexual skin, are crucial in primates; and the responsiveness to sexual attractants depends on gonadal hormones

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The neuroendocrinology of sexual attraction. Olivia Le Moëne, Anders Ågmo. Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yfrne....

Is envy harmful to a Society's psychological health and wellbeing? A longitudinal study of 18,000 adults

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Is envy harmful to a Society's psychological health and wellbeing? A longitudinal study of 18,000 adults. Redzo Mujcic, Andrew J. Oswald...

Pathogen Avoidance: We drink significantly less water when we believe it came from pathogen-prevalent environments (e.g., restrooms) and rated the water from pathogen-prevalent environments as lower in cleanliness, crispness, quality, and other characteristics when compared

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Belief Influences Gustation: Evidence of a Psychophysical Pathogen Avoidance Mechanism. Carey J. Fitzgerald etal. Evolutionary Psychological...
Tuesday, December 26, 2017

While a great deal is known about how people respond to influence tactics that are used on them, almost nothing is known about whether people understand these tactics and strategically use them to influence others

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Default neglect in attempts at social influence. Julian J. Zlatev et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114 no. 52, p...

Seven myths of memory

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Seven myths of memory. Nicola S. Clayton, , Clive Wilkins. Behavioural Processes, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2017.12.018 Highlights • ...
Monday, December 25, 2017

Disadvantageous inequity-aversion (“envy”) is stronger under time pressure

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Exploring the Role of Deliberation Time in Non-Selfish Behavior: the Double Response Method. Michał Krawczyk, , Marta Sylwestrzak. Journal o...

The cyclic sexual & reproductive behavior of human populations is mostly driven by culture & this interest in sex is associated with specific emotions, characteristic of major cultural & religious celebrations

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Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods. Ian B. Wood, Pedro L. Varela, Johan Bollen, Luis M. Rocha & Joana ...
Sunday, December 24, 2017

China Bullies Mr. Moon. Beijing wants South Korea to remove its missile defenses without helping with North Korea

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China Bullies Mr. Moon.  By The Editorial Board Beijing wants South Korea to remove its missile defenses. The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 22, ...

Higher social class consistently related to lower levels of wise reasoning across different levels of analysis, including regional and individual differences

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Social class and wise reasoning about interpersonal conflicts across regions, persons and situations. Justin P. Brienza, Igor Grossmann. Pro...

Correlation between gut microbiota and personality in adults: a cross-sectional study

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Correlation between gut microbiota and personality in adults: a cross-sectional study. Han-Na Kim et al. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, http...

Political attitudes display interspousal correlations that are among the strongest of all social and biometric traits

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The Politics of Mate Choice. John R. Alford et al. The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 2, April 2011, Pp. 362–379, doi:10.1017/S0022381611...
Saturday, December 23, 2017

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization

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Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization. Pe...

Regional ambient temperature is associated with human personality

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Regional ambient temperature is associated with human personality. Wenqi Wei, et al. Nature Human Behaviour 1, 890–895 (2017). doi:10.1038/s...

Parents and Children Who Are Estranged in Adulthood: A Review and Discussion of the Literature + NYTimes article about this

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Blake, L. (2017), Parents and Children Who Are Estranged in Adulthood: A Review and Discussion of the Literature. J Fam Theory Rev, 9: 521–5...
Friday, December 22, 2017

Distinguishing Polemic From Commentary in Science: Some Guidelines Illustrated With the Case of Sage and Burgio (2017)

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Grimes, D. R. and Bishop, D. V. M. (2017), Distinguishing Polemic From Commentary in Science: Some Guidelines Illustrated With the Case of S...

Watching Without Seeing: Determinants and Mechanisms of Inattentional Blindnes

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Watching Without Seeing: Determinants and Mechanisms of Inattentional Blindness / Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst: Determinanten und Mecha...

The Economist On Sexual Harassment, Nov 2017

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In The Economist, Friday November 17th 2017: Sexual haras...