Sunday, August 12, 2018

Grooming helps animals remove dirt, parasites and other contaminants from skin and hair & may positively influence the animals’ affective state; cows spend about fivefold more time grooming compared with when brushes are not available

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Emilie McConnachie, Anne Marieke C. Smid, Alexander J. Thompson, Daniel M. Weary, Marek A. Gaworski, Marina A. G. von Keyserlingk: Cows are ...

Social behavior in mouse models of autism spectrum disorder normalized when investigators triggered the release of a specific signaling substance, serotonin, in a single part of the animals' brains

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5-HT release in nucleus accumbens rescues social deficits in mouse autism model. Jessica J. Walsh, Daniel J. Christoffel, Boris D. Heifets, ...

Gossip Drives Vicarious Learning and Facilitates Robust Social Connections

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Jolly, Eshin, and Luke J. Chang. 2018. “Gossip Drives Vicarious Learning and Facilitates Robust Social Connections.” PsyArXiv. August 11. do...

We designed a mobile video game to test spatial ability & tested more than 2.5 million people from every country; spatial ability of the population is correlated with country economic wealth, & gender inequality of a country is predictive of gender differences in navigation ability

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Global Determinants of Navigation Ability. Antoine Coutrot et al. Current Biology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.009 Highlights •...

People are averse to machines making morally-relevant driving, legal, medical, and military decisions, and that this aversion is mediated by the perception that machines can neither fully think nor feel

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People are averse to machines making moral decisions. Yochanan E. Bigman, Kurt Gray. Cognition, Volume 181, December 2018, Pages 21-34. http...
Saturday, August 11, 2018

Women preferred stoic men who worked even though they were experiencing health problems as long-term mates, disregarding the male's facial symmetry and physique; in short-term mate choice, disregarded stoicism

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Female Choice and Male Stoicism. Susan G. Brown, Susan Shirachi, and Danielle Zandbergen. Journal of Evolutionary Medicine, https://www.ashd...

Masturbation with a Tool by an Infant Male Chimpanzee

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Masturbation with a Tool by an Infant Male Chimpanzee. Michio Nakamura. Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Japan. http://mahale.m...

Sex and age preferences: Why is age so important in human mating?

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Conroy-Beam, D., & Buss, D. M. (2018). Why is age so important in human mating? Evolved age preferences and their influences on multiple...
Thursday, August 9, 2018

Pakistan's pivot to coal: Plan to spend $35bn loan from China on new power stations looks set to continue under Khan

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Pakistan’s pivot to coal to boost energy gets critics fired up. Kiran Stacey in Lahore July 31, 2018. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/c...

Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1·2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: More exercise was not always better

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Association between physical exercise and mental health in 1·2 million individuals in the USA between 2011 and 2015: a cross-sectional study...

By 2050, stringent climate mitigation policy, if implemented evenly across all sectors & regions, would have a greater negative impact on global hunger & food consumption than the direct impacts of climate change due to indirect impacts on prices/supplies of agri commodities

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Risk of increased food insecurity under stringent global climate change mitigation policy. Tomoko Hasegawa, Shinichiro Fujimori, Petr Havlík...

Testosterone & self-perceived mate value increased following a manipulated “victory” in a sporting competition & were associated with heightened sociosexuality, & increased expectations toward approaching attractive women

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Tandem Androgenic and Psychological Shifts in Male Reproductive Effort Following a Manipulated “Win” or “Loss” in a Sporting Competition. Da...

Strong negative effects are attributed to sex dolls both in public & academic debates; sparse research points to strong positive outcomes as well: sex dolls can provide a lot of sexual & emotional satisfaction, create feelings of comfort, peace & even love

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Sex toys, sex dolls, sex robots: Our under-researched bed-fellows. N. Döring, S. Pöschl. Sexologies, Volume 27, Issue 3, July–September 2018...
Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Markers of Narcissism

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Holtzman, Nicholas S., Allison M. Tackman, Albrecht Kuefner, Fenne große Deters, Mitja Back, Brent Donnellan, James W. Pennebaker, et al. 20...

Participants lie significantly more in the random-draw task than in the real-effort task, leading to the conclusion lying about luck is intrinsically less costly than lying about performance

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Lying about luck versus lying about performance. Agne Kajackaite. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 153, September 201...

We study whether face-to-face group deliberation changes other-regarding preferences; social interactions do indeed change individuals’ preferences; specifically, individuals whose preferences are extremely egoistic and also unchanging tend to influence others the most

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Social interactions and the influence of “extremists”. Crawford Donna Harris. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 153, S...

Intersectional Escape: Older Women Elude Agentic Prescriptions More Than Older Men

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Intersectional Escape: Older Women Elude Agentic Prescriptions More Than Older Men. Ashley E. Martin, Michael S. North, Katherine W. Phillip...

In Western societies, a substantial proportion of the adult population does not have an intimate partner. Why? Evidence from Reddit

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Why Men Stay Single? Evidence from Reddit. Menelaos Apostolou. Evolutionary Psychological Science, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...

High price, brand label, the use of invasive placebos & high placebo dose increase the expectations toward the beneficial effect of a placebo treatment, which in turn boost the placebo effect; neuroimaging let us peek at mechanisms underlying these effects

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Are Blue Pills Better Than Green? How Treatment Features Modulate Placebo Effects. Karin Meissner, Klaus Linde. International Review of Neur...

Handedness predicts Conservative-Republican preference and eliminates relations of Big Five personality to political orientation using the 48 contiguous American states as analytical units

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Handedness predicts Conservative-Republican preference and eliminates relations of Big Five personality to political orientation using the 4...
Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Higher levels of childhood intelligence predict increased support for economic conservatism in adulthood; this link was partially mediated by educational attainment & achieved social class/income

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Higher levels of childhood intelligence predict increased support for economic conservatism in adulthood. Gary J.Lewis, Timothy C.Bates. Int...

Exploring the Impact of Personal and Partner Traits on Sexuality: Sexual Excitation, Sexual Inhibition, and Big Five Predict Sexual Function in Couples

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Exploring the Impact of Personal and Partner Traits on Sexuality: Sexual Excitation, Sexual Inhibition, and Big Five Predict Sexual Function...

When consumers self-create a product, they appreciate it to a greater degree, are likely to consume it more mindfully, & experience greater domain-specific & general well-being; private self-consciousness strengthens the effect

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The self-creation effect: making a product supports its mindful consumption and the consumer’s well-being. Johanna Brunneder, Utpal Dholakia...

Children were taught how to deceive to win a game; these children deceived better than control children, & improved their executive function & theory of mind skills; claim it is the 1st experiment to show learning to deceive enhances cognitive skills in children

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Learning to deceive has cognitive benefits. Xiao Pan Ding et al. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 176, December 2018, Pages ...
Monday, August 6, 2018

Big gender differences in reported intensity of arousal associated with one’s own as compared to a partner’s body: males reported significantly stronger arousal whilst touching or looking at a partner’s body, whereas females rated it as more arousing for own body to be touched or looked at

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Tsakiris, Manos, Lara Maister, Aikaterini Fotopoulou, and Oliver Turnbull. 2018. “The Erogenous Mirror: Intersubjective and Multisensory Map...

Participants consumed an average of 110 unique foods over 28 days; females consumed more unique foods than did males over most all eating occasions; participants were generally satisfied with the amount of variety they selected

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Variety in the diets of free-living, food-secure adults. Lauren E. Wisdorf et al. Food Quality and Preference, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foo...

Brain: Some proteins are surprisingly long lived & resist proteasome decay, leading in pathological cases to prion disorders such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease; how this works at molecular levels & relates to age-related cellular burden in neurons that never “rejuvenate” through cell division?

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Chapter 3. Prahlad & Chikka: Aging and the brain. In The Wiley Handbook on the Aging Mind and Brain. https://doi.org/10.1002/97811187720...

Social networks, social relationships, and their effects on the aging mind and brain

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Chapter 2. Ashida & Schafer: Social networks, social relationships, and their effects on the aging mind and brain. In The Wiley Handbook...

During early adolescence, boys receiving school-based sex education had more immature sexual beliefs than those who had not; later this is corrected

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Let Us Talk About Sexual Immaturity in Adolescence: Implications for School-Based Sex Education. Anneliese C. Bolland et al. Sexuality Resea...
Sunday, August 5, 2018

Symptom misinformation: Participants were provided with feedback for some symptoms (targets), misleadingly suggesting that a slight majority of their peers experienced these targets on a regular basis; symptom ratings went down for control but not for target symptoms

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Merckelbach, H., Dalsklev, M., van Helvoort, D., Boskovic, I., & Otgaar, H. (2018). Symptom self-reports are susceptible to misinformati...

The effects of color bands on zebra finch behavior, physiology, life history, and fitness: Common knowledge that is NON-REPRODUCIBLE

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Irreproducible text‐book “knowledge”: The effects of color bands on zebra finch fitness. Daiping Wang. Wolfgang Forstmeier, Malika Ihle, Meh...
Saturday, August 4, 2018

Research has predominantly focused on the negative effects of adversity on health and well-being; but under certain circumstances, adversity may have the potential for positive outcomes, such as increased resilience and thriving (steeling effect)

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A Salutogenic Perspective on Adverse Experiences. The Curvilinear Relationship of Adversity and Well-Being. Jan Höltge et al. European Journ...

The Status Signals Paradox: When making new friends, people tend to think that displaying high-status markers will make them more attractive to others, but they are found to be less attractive

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The Status Signals Paradox. Stephen M. Garcia, Kimberlee Weaver, Patricia Chen.Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org...

Peripheral Factors Affecting the Evaluation of Artworks: When described as created by famous artists, the works were liked more and judged more interesting & beautiful & participants (n = 309), all art nonexperts, also were willing to pay more to see the works

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Peripheral Factors Affecting the Evaluation of Artworks. Stefano Mastandrea, William D. Crano. Empirical Studies of the Arts, https://doi.or...

Male Testosterone Does Not Adapt to the Partner's Menstrual Cycle

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Ström JO, Ingberg E, Slezak JK, et al. Male Testosterone Does Not Adapt to the Partner's Menstrual Cycle. The Journal of Sexual Medicine...

Big fires in California are less frequent and area burnt is smaller since at least 1970

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Different historical fire–climate patterns in California. Jon E. Keeley and Alexandra D. Syphard. International Journal of Wildland Fire 26(...