Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Financial misconduct rates differ widely between major cities, up to a factor of three; rates strongly related to other unethical behavior, involving politicians, doctors, and (potentially unfaithful) spouses, in the city

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The Geography of Financial Misconduct. Christopher A Parsons, Johan Sulaeman, Sheridan Titman. The Journal of Finance, https://doi.org/10.11...

Have women always lived so much longer than men? The answer is that they have not, only after the sharp reduction in infectious disease in the early twentieth century

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XX>XY?: The Changing Female Advantage in Life Expectancy. Claudia Goldin & Adriana Lleras-Muney. NBER Working Paper, June 2018. http:...

Movies: The contribution of at least one star was large, equalling roughly 10% of a film’s revenues; having a male star in a film generated a premium in the neighbourhood of 12%, while female star had no statistical impact on a movie’s performance

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Gender and box office performance. Julianne Treme, Lee A. Craig & Andrew Copland. Applied Economics Letters, https://doi.org/10.1080/135...

Exaggerating in order to entertain the listener while sharing previous experiences can increase interpersonal closeness in new relationships; even listeners who are provided with the actual facts will show this effect

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Exaggerating when retelling previous experiences fosters relational closeness. Holly E. Cole, Denise R. Beike. Journal of Social and Persona...

Considerable variance in parental warmth (27%) and stress (45%) was attributable to child genetic influences on parenting; incorporating child Big Five personality into the model roughly explained half of this variance

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Genetic and Environmental Associations Between Child Personality and Parenting. Mona Ayoub et al. Social Psychological and Personality Scien...

Most owners regarded cats as family members with developed socio-cognitive skills

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The socio-cognitive relationship between cats and humans – companion cats (Felis catus) as their owners see them. Péter Pongrácz, Julianna S...

Religious cognition places a “sex premium” on moral judgments, causing people to judge violations of conventional sexual morality as particularly objectionable; the premium is especially strong among highly religious people, and applies to both legal and illegal acts

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The Sex Premium in Religiously Motivated Moral Judgment. Liana Hone, Thomas McCauley, Michael McCullough. PsyArXiv Preprints, https://psyarx...
Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Self-esteem increases in early and middle childhood, remains constant in adolescence, increases strongly in young adulthood, continues to increase in middle adulthood, peaks between 60 & 70, & then declines in old age, with a sharper drop in very old age

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Orth, U., Erol, R. Y., & Luciano, E. C. (2018). Development of self-esteem from age 4 to 94 years: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studi...

Mere source attribution is sufficient to cause polarization between groups; agreement with aphorisms was high in the absence of source attribution, and substantially lower in its presence; this effect was large and not moderated by a range of variables, including education and elaboration

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The source attribution effect: Demonstrating pernicious disagreement between ideological groups on non-divisive aphorisms. Paul H.P.Hanel et...

In all technological fields, the number of patents per inventor has declined near-monotonically, except for large increases in inventor productivity in software and semiconductors in the late 1990s

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Some Facts of High-Tech Patenting. Michael Webb, Nick Short, Nicholas Bloom, Josh Lerner. NBER Working Paper No. 24793, http://www.nber.org/...

Beliefs in paranormal phenomena will lead to equal amounts of respondents identifying as democrats & republicans & these beliefs in paranormal phenomena correlate with respondents feeling more fearful when it comes to real-world threats

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Ferrari, Tyler James, "Paranormal Beliefs and their Effect on American Fears and Political Identification" (2018). Political Scien...

Those on the left and right are equally narcissistic but differ in which dimensions drive it: the entitlement facet of narcissism is related to conservative positions, whereas exhibitionism is related to liberal values

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Narcissism and Political Orientations. Peter K. Hatemi, Zoltán Fazekas. American Journal of Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps....

Questionable Research Practices prevalence in ecology: cherry picking statistically significant results 64%, p hacking 42%, and hypothesising after the results are known (HARKing) 51%. Such practices have been directly implicated in the low rates of reproducible results

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Questionable research practices in ecology and evolution. Hannah Fraser et al. PLOS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200303 Abstra...

Predictors of Distinct Types of Solitude Experiences in Daily Life

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By Myself and Liking It? Predictors of Distinct Types of Solitude Experiences in Daily Life. Jennifer C. Lay et al. Journal of Personality, ...
Monday, July 16, 2018

Necrophilia in crows: Occasional contacts, which take a variety of aggressive and sexual forms, may result from an inability to mediate conflicting stimuli

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Occurrence and variability of tactile interactions between wild American crows and dead conspecifics. Kaeli Swift, John M. Marzluff. Philoso...

Children as young as 4 years old negatively evaluate & sanction free riders. Across six studies, we showed that these tendencies are robust, large in magnitude, tuned to intentional rather than unintentional noncontribution, & generally consistent across third- & first-party cases

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In Defense of the Commons: Young Children Negatively Evaluate and Sanction Free Riders. Fan Yang et al. Psychological Science, https://doi.o...

Prestigious institutions had on average 65% higher grant application success rates & 50% larger award sizes, whereas less-prestigious institutions produced 65% more publications & had a 35% higher citation impact per dollar of funding

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High cost of bias: Diminishing marginal returns on NIH grant funding to institutions. Wayne P. Wahls. bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/36784...

The lure of death: suicide and human evolution

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Humphrey N. 2018 The lure of death: suicide and human evolution. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 373: 20170269. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2017.0...
Sunday, July 15, 2018

Contrary to theoretical models, experiences of victimization are not central to the development of sexual killers; instead, it is the adoption of various problematic behaviors in childhood that appear as most important

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Stepping stones to sexual murder: the role of developmental factors in the etiology of sexual homicide. Eric Beauregard et al. Journal of Cr...

People are consistently more sensitive to action than to outcome value in judging the praiseworthiness of good deeds, but not harmful deeds. This observation echoes the finding that people are often insensitive to outcomes in their giving behavior

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Yudkin, Daniel A., Annayah M. B. Prosser, and Molly Crockett. 2018. “Actions Speak Louder Than Outcomes in Judgments of Prosocial Behavior.”...
Saturday, July 14, 2018

In both the U.S. & Denmark intelligence failed to predict standard party choice; this is due to opposing effects of intelligence on economic and social ideology

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Different political systems suppress or facilitate the impact of intelligence on how you vote: A comparison of the U.S. and Denmark. Steven ...

We look at 3 different measures of political success—electoral success, years in office, & access to an elite political position—& find lower levels of agreeableness are systematically correlated with greater success

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Nice guys finish last: personality and political success. Jeroen Joly, Stuart Soroka, Peter Loewen. Acta Politica, https://link.springer.com...
Friday, July 13, 2018

Do we perceive fine details in the visual periphery? Here, we propose that phenomenology in the visual periphery can be characterized by an inflated sense of perceptual capacity, as observers overestimate the quality of their perceptual inputs

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Inflation versus filling-in: why we feel we see more than we actually do in peripheral vision Brian Odegaard, Min Yu Chang, Hakwan Lau, Sing...

Marital duration has a negative effect on married men’s physical pleasure of marital sex, & it has no effect on married women’s sexual satisfaction

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Liu, C. (2018). A theory of sex difference in changes in marital sexual satisfaction. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, http://dx.doi.org/10...

Unmarried men’s increased financial satisfaction was associated with decreased relationship satisfaction, and increased financial stress was associated with decreased relationship satisfaction for unmarried men and married women (actor effects)

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Totenhagen, C. J., Wilmarth, M. J., Serido, J., & Betancourt, A. E. (2018). Do day-to-day finances play a role in relationship satisfact...
Thursday, July 12, 2018

Imagining their Future Selves: Children's Attitudes to Older People and their Expectations of Life at Age 70

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Imagining their Future Selves: Children's Attitudes to Older People and their Expectations of Life at Age 70. Katrina Lloyd, Paula Devin...

Traditional sex behaviors, older age of first intercourse and fewer sex partners, are related to conservative orientations; satisfaction with sex life is related to socially conservatives; adventurous and risky sex behaviors are related more to liberals

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The relationship between sexual preferences and political orientations: Do positions in the bedroom affect positions in the ballot box? Pete...

Political-Party Affiliation as a Predictor of Usage of an Adultery Website: Democrats were least likely to use it, Libertarians were most likely, & Republicans, Greens, and unaffiliated voters were in-between

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American Political-Party Affiliation as a Predictor of Usage of an Adultery Website. Kodi B. Arfer, Jason J. Jones. Archives of Sexual Behav...

Gay & lesbian individuals are slightly more likely than heterosexual individuals to reside in more urban areas as adults but it is due to a more urban childhood contexts of gay/lesbian individuals relative to heterosexual ones

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Urban Migration of Sexual Minorities in the United States: Myth or Reality? Christopher P. Scheitle, Sara K. Guthrie. Sexuality & Cultur...

Potential brain age reversal after pregnancy: younger brains at 4-6 weeks postpartum

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Potential brain age reversal after pregnancy: younger brains at 4-6 weeks postpartum. Eileen Luders et al. Neurosciencem https://doi.org/10....

Rams are selected for genetic traits a producer desires to propagate in his flock; rams with limited interest in ewes was nearly 30% of the total number of breeding rams; cause can be a tempered reward pathway in combination with decreased vigilance and sensory processing in the amygdala

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ASAS-SSR Triennial Reproduction Symposium: Looking Back And Moving Forward—How Reproductive Physiology Has Evolved—Male reproductive behavio...

Sheep are one of the few animal models in which natural variations in male sexual preferences have been studied experimentally; approximately 8% of rams exhibit sexual preferences for male partners (male-oriented rams)

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The Volume of a Sexually Dimorphic Nucleus in the Ovine Medial Preoptic Area/Anterior Hypothalamus Varies with Sexual Partner Preference. Ch...
Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Competent individuals endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment; less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, maybe an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others’ cunning

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The Cynical Genius Illusion: Exploring and Debunking Lay Beliefs About Cynicism and Competence. Olga Stavrova, Daniel Ehlebracht. Personalit...

Contributions of dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic neurons to VTA-stimulation induced neurovascular responses in brain reward circuits

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Contributions of dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic neurons to VTA-stimulation induced neurovascular responses in brain reward circuits. Mart...

Libet’s experiment: A complex replication

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Libet’s experiment: A complex replication. Tomas Dominik et al. Consciousness and Cognition, Volume 65, October 2018, Pages 1-26. https://do...

Presence of a significant other increased facial expression of pain; presence of a stranger decreased physiological arousal; verbal support, mainly from a stranger, decreased pain and arousal; intimate relationships decreased pain through touching and viewing a romantic other

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Investigating the influence of social support on experimental pain and related physiological arousal: A systematic review and meta-analysis....

Sleep and nesting behavior in primates: The implications of nest construction for sleep quality & cognition, the tree‐to‐ground transition in early hominids, & the peculiarities of human sleep

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Sleep and nesting behavior in primates: A review. Barbara Fruth, Nikki Tagg, Fiona Stewart. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, https...
Tuesday, July 10, 2018

The likelihood of a relationship ending per unit time goes down with increased duration of search before that relationship, in accord with the foraging prediction

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Cohen, S. E., & Todd, P. M. (2018). Relationship foraging: Does time spent searching predict relationship length? Evolutionary Behaviora...

Identification of individual subjects on the basis of their brain anatomical features

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Identification of individual subjects on the basis of their brain anatomical features. Seyed Abolfazl Valizadeh, Franziskus Liem, Susan Méri...

Men purchase larger, more expensive engagement rings when imagining themselves mated to a more attractive woman; women desire larger, more expensive engagement rings when imagining themselves mated to a less attractive man

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The Effect of Mate Value Discrepancy on Hypothetical Engagement Ring Purchases. Jaime M. Cloud,    Madalyn H. Taylor. Evolutionary Psycholog...

Children’s gender-stereotypical dress and appearance might be one of the first representations of children’s emerging sense of gender identity; surprisingly, mothers’ gender-role attitudes were not significantly associated with toddlers’ gender-typed appearance

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The Roles of Self-Socialization and Parent Socialization in Toddlers’ Gender-Typed Appearance. May Ling et al. Archives of Sexual Behavior, ...

No evidence that facial attractiveness, femininity, averageness, or coloration are valid health cues in young adult women

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No evidence that facial attractiveness, femininity, averageness, or coloration are valid health cues in young adult women. Ziyi Cai et al. h...

List of the 20 most charismatic animals. The majority are large exotic, terrestrial mammals. These species were deemed charismatic, mainly because they were regarded as beautiful, impressive, or endangered

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The twenty most charismatic species. Céline Albert, Gloria M. Luque, Franck Courchamp. PLOS, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199149 ...
Monday, July 9, 2018

A representation of the space immediately surrounding the body is the peripersonal space, PPS. [As with non-defensive behaviors,] there is evidence that representations of PPS are flexible in defensive contexts [...]. Looming images of threatening stimulli (snakes & spiders) were judged as arriving sooner than [rabbits and butterflies].

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What is peripersonal space? An examination of unresolved empirical issues and emerging findings. Samuel B. Hunley, Stella F. Lourenco. Wiley...

In recent decades, dictatorships based on mass repression have largely given way to a new model based on the manipulation of information. Instead of terror, "informational autocrats" boost their popularity by convincing the public they are competent

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Guriev, Sergei M. and Treisman, Daniel, Informational Autocrats (July 5, 2018). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3208523 ...

Animal pointing: Changing trends and findings from 30 years of research

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Krause, M. A., Udell, M. A. R., Leavens, D. A., & Skopos, L. (2018). Animal pointing: Changing trends and findings from 30 years of rese...
Sunday, July 8, 2018

Just a poster, but who knows... Ease your Partner's Jealousy by Cheating Again: Jealousy Decreases as Partner Number Increases

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Poster 61.  Ease your Partner's Jealousy by Cheating Again: Jealousy Decreases as Partner Number Increases. Benjamin Gelbart, Cari M. Pi...

Humans detect valid facial cues of leadership in chimpanzees

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Humans detect valid facial cues of leadership in chimpanzees. Alexander Bor, Darren Schreiber, Sarah Brosnan, Susan Lambeth, Steven Schapiro...

Men & women more strongly blamed men for their own disadvantages, were more supportive of policies that favored women, & donated more to a female-only (vs male-only) homeless shelter. Females showed a stronger in-group bias, perceiving women's harm as more problematic

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Man up and take it: Greater concern for female than male suffering. Tania Reynolds, Hallgeir Sjåstad, Chuck Howard, Tyler Okimoto, Roy Baume...

Double Standards of the Political Mind: Results support the Alliance Theory & suggest that ideologies are less morally principled, & more strategic, than has been previously supposed

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Double Standards of the Political Mind: Empirical Support for the Alliance Theory. David Pinsof. Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 30t A...

Genes associated with homosexual behaviour are, in heterosexuals, associated with greater mating success; genes that predispose to homosexual behaviour may have been evolutionarily maintained in the population because they confer a mating advantage to heterosexual carriers

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The evolutionary genetics of homosexuality. Brendan Zietsch, Andrea Ganna, Karin Verweij, Felix Day, Michel Nivard, Robert Maier, Robbee Wed...

Mate-copying is a form of social learning in which witnessing sexual interactions biases own future mate-choice; female fruit flies can copy the choice for _mutant_ males despite the fact that mating with those induces a significant fitness cost for the observer

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Mate-copying for a costly variant in Drosophila melanogaster females. Sabine Nöbel Etienne Danchin Guillaume Isabel. Behavioral Ecology, ary...

Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, proposed less significant constitutional changes 15 months before the amendments became law & tolerated some open debate [...] The wording of Mr. Hu’s revisions was released to the public nearly three months before lawmakers approved them

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How Xi Jinping Made His Power Grab: With Stealth, Speed and Guile. Chris Buckley. The New York Times, March 7, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/...