Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Bullshit-receptivity (perceived meaningfulness of bullshit sentences) & profoundness-receptivity (perceived meaningfulness of genuinely profound sentences) are negatively/positively linked to prosocial behavior

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Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior. Arvid Erlandsson et al. PLOS, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201474 Abstract: Bulls...

How an individual interprets a relationship social comparison have implications for the self and one’s relationship; we studied the effects on relationship satisfaction & commitment, satisfaction with life, & happiness for both dating & married individuals

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Rolf Degen summarizing: People compare their romantic relationships to those of others in ways that make their own look better. https://twit...
Tuesday, July 31, 2018

1 in 4 people preferred the perceptual concept of dark over the perceptual concept of light; these people scored higher in neuroticism, experienced greater depressive feelings in daily life; dark preferences shared relationship with generalised anxiety symptoms

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Hello darkness my old friend: preferences for darkness vary by neuroticism and co-occur with negative affect. Michelle R. Persich, Jessica L...

Pettiness, or intentional attentiveness to trivial details of resource exchanges harms communal-sharing relationships by making (even objectively generous) exchanges feel transactional

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Kim, T., Zhang, T., & Norton, M. I. (2018). Pettiness in social exchange. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online pu...

In both sexes, hormone levels play an important role by increasing the sensitivity towards the sexual signals emitted by the potential partners & determining the expression of sexual signals that allows the potential partner or intra-sexual competitor to identify the reproductive status

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Sexual Incentive and Choice. Armando Ferreira-Nuño et al. Current Sexual Health Reports, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11930-...

Did China think Donald Trump was bluffing on trade? How Beijing got it wrong

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Did China think Donald Trump was bluffing on trade? How Beijing got it wrong. Wendy Wu Kristin Huang. South China Morning Post, Jul 31, 2018...

Emotional Function During Aging, Chapter 20 Of The Wiley Handbook on the Aging Mind and Brain

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Emotional Function During Aging. Kuan‐Hua Chen, Steven Anderson. Chapter 20, The Wiley Handbook on the Aging Mind and Brain. https://doi.org...

Localization of an epileptic orgasmic feeling to the right amygdala, using intracranial electrodes

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Localization of an epileptic orgasmic feeling to the right amygdala, using intracranial electrodes. Laurence Chatona et al. Cortex, https://...

Mapping sweetness preference across the lifespan for culturally different societies: unlike most western societies, Hadza and Tsimane’ show no decline in sweet preference with age; may be related to high energy expenditure

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Mapping sweetness preference across the lifespan for culturally different societies. Robert Pellegrino et al. Journal of Environmental Psych...

Brain training, mindset, grit, deliberate practice, and the bilingual advantage are premised on the idea that environmental factors are the overwhelming determinants of success in real-world pursuits; none of them help significatively

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Moreau, David, Brooke N. Macnamara, and Zach Hambrick. 2018. “Overstating the Role of Environmental Factors in Success: A Cautionary Note.” ...
Monday, July 30, 2018

Grieving Orca Carries Dead Calf for More Than 3 Days

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Grieving Orca Carries Dead Calf for More Than 3 Days: ‘She’s Just Not Letting Go.’ Mihir Zaveri. The New York Times, Jul 27 2018. https://ww...

Why are you cheating on Tinder? Between 18-25% of Tinder users is in a committed relationship while on Tinder; non-single Tinder users are more likely to report casual sexual behavior; personality differences were found between non-single users & other groups

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Why are you cheating on Tinder? Exploring users’ motives and (dark) personality traits. Elisabeth Timmermans, Elien De Caluwé, Cassandra Ale...

Red-fronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons) anoint their perianal-genital areas & tails with chewed millipedes, likely to self-medicate against gastrointestinal parasite infections by Oxyuridae nematodes, providing both prophylactic & therapeutic effects

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Potential self-medication using millipede secretions in red-fronted lemurs: combining anointment and ingestion for a joint action against ga...
Sunday, July 29, 2018

I am violent because I don't feel sexy: Violent individuals of both sexes are the ones that report significantly lower levels of mate value, and other undesirable traits

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Poster 49. I am violent because I don't feel sexy .Ana Maria Fernandez, Jose Muñoz-Reyes, Oriana Figueroa, Paula Pavez, Maryanne Fisher....

Alcohol, Generosity and Empathy: There was a negative association between generosity & reported alcohol consumption, & no significant association between empathy & alcohol consumption

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Alcohol, Generosity and Empathy. David Fielding, Stephen Knowles, Kirsten Robertson. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, https...

Rolf Degen summarizing: For singles, the ideal partner should combine the right mix of similarity and superiority in personality, but when push comes to shove, they settle for less

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Similar to and/or Better than Oneself? Singles' Ideal Partner Personality Descriptions. Jie Liu et al. European Journal of Personality, ...

Awe has traditionally been considered a religious or spiritual emotion; but the disposition to experience awe predicts a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, & rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly

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Awe as a Scientific Emotion. Sara Gottlieb, Dacher Keltner, Tania Lombrozo. Cognitive Science, https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12648 Abstract: ...

We study gender differences in altruistic behaviour and in expected altruism; women are significantly more altruistic than men; & both women and men expect women to be more altruistic than men

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Gender differences in altruism on Mechanical Turk: Expectations and actual behaviour. Pablo Brañas-Garza, Valerio Capraro, Ericka Rascón-Ram...
Saturday, July 28, 2018

NYT Very Surprised That "A Fear of Lawsuits Really Does Seem to Result in Extra Medical Tests"

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Defensive Medicine: Evidence from Military Immunity. Michael D. Frakes, Jonathan Gruber. NBER Working Paper No. 24846, July 2018. http://www...

Cognitive neuroscience of person identification: Comparing the processes by which people are identified through face & voice, find that face recognition accuracy suffers little or no cost with increases in set size; voice recognition accuracy declines markedly beyond a handful of possibilities

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The cognitive neuroscience of person identification. Irving Biederman et al. Neuropsychologia, Volume 116, Part B, 31 July 2018, Pages 205-2...

Trigger warnings may inadvertently undermine some aspects of emotional resilience: They increase peoples' perceived emotional vulnerability to trauma, the belief that trauma survivors are vulnerable, & increase anxiety to written material perceived as harmful

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Trigger warning: Empirical evidence ahead. Benjamin W.Bellet, Payton J.Jones, Richard J. McNally. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experiment...

When comparing ideal partner preferences, continually-coupled individuals rated Warmth/Trustworthiness and Vitality lower than newly-coupled individuals: Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according to their actual partner

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Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according to their actual partner. Radka Kučerová, Zsófia Csajbók, Jan Havlíček. Per...

Against the widespread belief that modern-day loneliness is inevitable, negative, and universal, loneliness is relatively recent invention, dating from around 1800 that needs to be understood firstly as an “emotion cluster” composed of a variety of affective states

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This “Modern Epidemic”: Loneliness as an Emotion Cluster and a Neglected Subject in the History of Emotions. Fay Bound Alberti. Emotion Revi...
Friday, July 27, 2018

Malicious poisonings: Agent choice was found to differ between experts & non-experts (depending on whether the event was a threat or a genuine contamination incident); attacks by poison experts were found to be no more deadly than attacks perpetrated by non-experts

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Poisoning expertise and outcomes in malicious contamination incidents. Sarah Kilbane. Journal of Criminal Psychology, https://www.emeraldins...

Rolf Degen summarizing: Neuroscientists failed to pinpoint the brain correlate of boredom, arguably because many people find their own thoughts so entertaining that they are not easily bored

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Finding Consistency in Boredom by Appreciating its Instability. Caitlin Mills, Kalina Christoff. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.o...

1932: The electoral sway of the Depression was quite limited, the government was not seen by most voters (including FDR ones) as the major culprit or as having been ineffective in alleviating it; moreover, there was no widespread “doom and gloom” about the future

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The American Voter in 1932: Evidence from a Confidential Survey. Helmut Norpoth. PS: Political Science & Politics, https://doi.org/10.10...

After deciding among moral (but not nonmoral) options, people (in Western cultures) tend to choose more variety in an unrelated task, likely because choosing more variety helps them reassert their sense of choice

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Kouchaki, M., Smith, I. H., & Savani, K. (2018). Does deciding among morally relevant options feel like making a choice? How morality co...

Musical activity during waking seems related to a higher amount of music dreams: About 6% of all remembered dreams contained music, & frequency was significantly higher when the participants spent time with music activities in waking (singing, playing an instrument)

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König, N., Fischer, N., Friedemann, M., Pfeiffer, T., Göritz, A. S., & Schredl, M. (2018). Music in dreams and music in waking: An onlin...

In professional settings gossipers are more likely to share positive and non-malicious gossip than negative and malicious one; gossipers tend to purposely plan the content to be shared by considering the target-receiver interpersonal closeness

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Are we truly wicked when gossiping at work? The role of valence, interpersonal closeness and social awareness. Vito Tassiello, Sara Lombardi...

How our brains may change as a function of systematic changes in our environments: We offer some initial predictions for changes in neural structure and function that may occur in the coming decades

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Varnum, Michael E. W., PhD, and Ryan S. Hampton. 2018. “Cultural Changes in Neural Structure and Function.” PsyArXiv. July 27. doi:10.31234/...
Thursday, July 26, 2018

Unintended Consequences of Eliminating Tax Havens: Shifting investment abroad, reducing domestic employment

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Unintended Consequences of Eliminating Tax Havens. Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato. NBER Working Paper No. 24850, July 2018. www.nber.org/papers/...

Happiness Scales: The findings in the literature are highly dependent on one's beliefs about the underlying distribution of happiness in society, or the social welfare function chosen; any conclusions derived rely on the assumption that all individuals report their happiness in the same way

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The Sad Truth About Happiness Scales: Empirical Results. Timothy N. Bond, Kevin Lang. NBER Working Paper No. 24853, July 2018. www.nber.org/...

Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Correlates among Males

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Postcoital Dysphoria: Prevalence and Correlates among Males. Joel Maczkowiack & Robert D Schweitzer. Journal of Sex & Marital Therap...

Most Recent Sexual Event: Respondents younger than 30 were significantly more likely to indicate they did not kiss because kissing would have been too intimate with their partner

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Kissing, Cuddling, and Massage at Most Recent Sexual Event: Findings from a U.S. Nationally Representative Probability Sample. Debby Herbeni...

Sexual behavior/experience was predicted by body fat percentage; in men, fantasy was related to total self-concept; sexual behavior/experience was related to likeability; in women, arousal was predicted by cardiovascular endurance; total self-concept was related to both orgasm and sex drive/desire

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An investigation of the relationship between physical fitness, self-concept, and sexual functioning. LM Jiannine, J Educ Health Promot. 2018...

Perceived physical strength in men is attractive to women but may come at a cost to ejaculate quality

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Perceived physical strength in men is attractive to women but may come at a cost to ejaculate quality. Yong Zhi Foo et al. Animal Behaviour,...
Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Children by the age of 6 begin to value ideas over labor; adults value the contribution of the laborer more than the contribution of the idea giver, even when examiners were idea givers; laborers receive more praise for positive outcomes, but less blame for negative outcomes, relative to idea givers

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Burgmer, P., Forstmann, M., & Stavrova, O. (2018). Ideas are cheap: When and why adults value labor over ideas. Journal of Experimental ...

Mate Choice Copying in Humans: Women were more likely to rate male targets as more desirable when presented alongside a female while no obvious effects were detected with male choice

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Mate Choice Copying in Humans: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Amany Gouda-Vossos et al. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, http...

The more positive (excited, interested, or happy) participants felt after one speed-dating interaction partner, the less attracted they were toward a new interaction partner, & the more negative they felt (irritated or bored), the more attracted they were

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The impact of emotions on romantic judgments. Sequential effects in a speed-dating study. Laura Sels et al. Journal of Social and Personal R...

Women are more likely to use social media in a conformist and protective way whereas men have a higher probability to be provocative; subjective life satisfaction more powerfully predicts provocative use compared to age or education

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Exploring Selective Exposure and Selective Avoidance Behavior in Social Media. Sanna Malinen, Aki Koivula, Teo Keipi, Ilkka Koiranen. SMSoci...
Monday, July 23, 2018

I Can Smell Them: People with more extreme political attitudes are better in inferring political affiliation from politicians' faces, regardless whether the politicians and perceivers are from the same or different countries

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Interpersonal accuracy in a political context is moderated by the extremity of one's political attitudes. Dominique Muller, Florian Delm...

Extramarital affairs tend to make people happy, helping to be in love & to have at least biweekly sexual events with the outside partner; and even after the outside partnership ends, there is a higher life satisfaction rating than before the outside partnership

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Having Your Cake and Eating It, Too: Factors Impacting Perception of Life Satisfaction During Outside Partnerships. Alicia M. Walker. Sexual...

Female Eye Attractiveness – Where Beauty Meets Science

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Female Eye Attractiveness – Where Beauty Meets Science. Martin Gründl et al. Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery, https://doi.org/10.101...

Participants (n = 103) interact with a researcher in a testing room that imposed low or high perceptual load. Midway through the conversation, the researcher was replaced by another person. Thirty‐nine percent of participants failed to detect the change

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Perceptual load affects change blindness in a real‐world interaction. Gillian Murphy, Lisa Murphy. Applied Cognitive Psychology, https://doi...

People consistently remember being more generous in the past than they actually were; when people perceive their own actions as selfish, they can remember having acted more equitably, thus minimizing guilt and preserving their self-image

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Motivated misremembering: Selfish decisions are more generous in hindsight. Ryan W Carlson et al. https://psyarxiv.com/7ck25/ Significance s...
Sunday, July 22, 2018

The anger group showed higher levels of aggression and status seeking, with the moderator effect of anger intensity; also showed higher dominance scores, differing significantly from the fear, sadness, and/or control groups

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Effects of anger on dominance-seeking and aggressive behaviors. João Carlos Centurion Cabral, Rosa Maria Martins de Almeida. Evolution and H...

Why do angry people overestimate their intelligence? Neuroticism as a suppressor of the association between Trait-Anger and subjectively assessed intelligence

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Why do angry people overestimate their intelligence? Neuroticism as a suppressor of the association between Trait-Anger and subjectively ass...

Living in human environments help to develop motor skills, embodied cognition, & the use of objects to extend cognition in the animals, so the time needed for foraging for food is reduced, & furnishes opportunities for social learning, including emulation

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Cheng, K., & Byrne, R. W. (2018). Why human environments enhance animal capacities to use objects: Evidence from keas (Nestor notabilis)...
Saturday, July 21, 2018

Gains vs Losses: Anticipation is associated with time preference, such that the more people enjoy anticipating an event, the more they prefer to delay it, & the more they dread it, the more they prefer to accelerate it

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Kisses vs. shocks: Anticipation asymmetries explain time preferences for gains vs. losses. David J. Hardisty, Shane Frederick, Elke U. Weber...

Maternal pregnancy exposures are assumed to affect offspring health; other factors like paternal & postnatal exposures are also likely to be important, but maternal ones are assumed to be most important; we need to retain a critical perspective regarding this assumption

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It's the mother!: How assumptions about the causal primacy of maternal effects influence research on the developmental origins of health...

Rabbits may be able to detect conspecifics in their predators’ scats, thus leading them to, in the short term, avoid areas in which their terrestrial predators’ diet is based on conspecifics, probably as the result of them perceiving a higher risk of predation

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European rabbits recognise conspecifics in their predators’ diets. Laura M. Prada, José Guerrero-Casado, Francisco S. Tortosa. acta ethologi...

Males reversed their initial preference for larger females in the presence of a conspecific audience male because they recognized the audience male as a competitor and tried to deceive that male about their real mating preference

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Test of the Deception Hypothesis in Atlantic Mollies Poecilia mexicana —Does the Audience Copy a Pretended Mate Choice of Others? Klaudia Wi...