Sunday, September 23, 2018

What Fantasies Can Do to Your Relationship & The Effects of Sexual Fantasies on Couple Interactions: Dyadic fantasizing was associated with heightened desire & increased engagement in relationship-promoting behaviors

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What Fantasies Can Do to Your Relationship: The Effects of Sexual Fantasies on Couple Interactions. Gurit E. Birnbaum et al. Personality and...

Why are some societies more religious than others? One answer is religious coping: Individuals turn to religion to deal with unpredictable life events, like natural disasters, even though the effect decreases after a while

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Acts of God? Religiosity and Natural Disasters Across Subnational World Districts. Jeanet Sinding Bentzen. University of Copenhagen. http://...

Hawkish leaders face fewer domestic barriers than doves when it comes to pursuing reconciliation with foreign enemies. Two causal mechanisms: Voters are more confident in rapprochement when it is pursued by a hawk & are more likely to view those hawks as moderates

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Hawks, Doves, and Peace: An Experimental Approach. Michaela Mattes, Jessica L. P. Weeks. American Journal of Political Science, https://doi....

Our results are the opposite of the good genes hypothesis prediction and suggest that in western, healthy populations, human mate preferences for more symmetric bodies are not related to immune competence

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Human body symmetry and immune efficacy in healthy adults. Boguslaw Pawlowski et al. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, https://doi....

Driving near-accidents: People evaluated the consequences of an unexpected turn of events to be more extreme when it was presented as a counterfactual possibility rather than an actual occurrence

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Learning from what might have been – judgments and evaluations of counterfactual outcomes. Jens Andreas Terum. PhD dissertation. The Artic U...

Oil Sanctions Against Iran Prove Potent: “The president is doing the opposite of what the experts said, and it seems to be working out”

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Oil Sanctions Against Iran Prove Potent. Clifford Krauss. TNYT, Sep 19 2018.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/business/energy-environment...

Luxury goods are beneficial signals that bestow social benefits like positive evaluations & compliance, but there can be high costs when it comes to warmth; costs appear to be driven by impression management concerns rather than envy

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The Dark Side of Luxury: Social Costs of Luxury Consumption. Christopher Cannon, Derek D. Rucker. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin...
Saturday, September 22, 2018

Machiavellianism & psychopathy predicted narrow AI risk perception above what other traits/characteristics do; in individuals with self-reported knowledge of AI, the Dark Triad traits were associated with risk perception

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Individual Differences in Risk Perception of Artificial Intelligence. Benno G. Wissing and Marc-André Reinhard. Swiss Journal of Psychology,...

Oxytocin administration increased men's attraction to unfaithful women & wanting short-term relationships, whereas women became more averse to unfaithful men & exhibited an even greater preference for having long-term relationships with faithful ones

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Oxytocin amplifies sex differences in human mate choice. Lei Xu, Benjamin Becker, Ruixue Luo, Xiaoxiao Zheng, Weihua Zhao, Qiong Zhang, Keit...

Liberals and conservatives have mainly moved further apart on a wide variety of policy issues; the divergence is substantial quantitatively and in its plausible political impact: intra party moderation has become increasingly unlikely

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Peltzman, Sam, Polarizing Currents within Purple America (August 20, 2018). SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3235867 Abstract: The ideol...
Friday, September 21, 2018

Genital Piercing: Childhood and Adolescent Behaviors That Serve as Predictors and Scores on Scales Measuring Hypersexuality and Risky Sexual Behavior, Sexual Orientation, Depression, Conflict, Intimacy, & Sexual Satisfaction

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Genital Piercing: Childhood and Adolescent Behaviors That Serve as Predictors and Scores on Scales Measuring Hypersexuality and Risky Sexual...

Sister-brother Incest: Findings were consistent with other reports of early and persistent hyper-eroticization of incest victims

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Sister-brother Incest: Data from Anonymous Computer Assisted Self Interviews. Stephen L. O'Keefe, Keith W. Beard, Sam Swindell, Sandra S...

Adult Women: 10.6% had exposed themselves in public, 5.1% reported having urges to expose themselves in public, 5.9% had engaged in some sort of sex with underage males, & 2.4% reported they had sexual intercourse with underage males

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Exhibitionism and Sex with Underage Males in Adult Women. Sandra S. Stroebel et al. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, https://doi.org/10....

Smartphones reduce smiles between strangers

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Smartphones reduce smiles between strangers. Kostadin Kushlev et al. Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.09.023 ...

World-class athletes are perceived as more facially attractive than amateur athletes, with women athletes perceived as more facially attractive than men, & these findings generally occur to a greater extent for female than male respondents

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Facial Attractiveness as a Function of Athletic Prowess. Richard P. Bagozzi et al. Evolutionary Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1177/14747049...

Marital satisfaction and mortality in the United States adult population: Reducing marital dissatisfaction may increase longevity

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Whisman, M. A., Gilmour, A. L., & Salinger, J. M. (2018). Marital satisfaction and mortality in the United States adult population. Heal...

Contagion theory, including the nature of essence & its relation to conceptions of the soul and self, backward contagion, the process of transmission & whether contact is necessary or sufficient for it to occur, relation between positive & negative contagion

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Carol Nemeroff and Paul Rozin, "Back in Touch with Contagion: Some Essential Issues," Journal of the Association for Consumer Rese...
Thursday, September 20, 2018

Public Health in a Cross-National Lens: The Surprising Strength of the American System Compared to France and the UK

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Public Health in a Cross-National Lens: The Surprising Strength of the American System. Michael S. Sparer, Anne-Laure Beaussier. J Health Po...

Costly female appearance-enhancement provides cues of short-term mating effort: The case of cosmetic surgery

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Costly female appearance-enhancement provides cues of short-term mating effort: The case of cosmetic surgery. Hannah K. Bradshaw et al. Pers...

Reimagining of Schrödinger’s cat breaks quantum mechanics — and stumps physicists: In a multi-‘cat’ experiment, the textbook interpretation of quantum theory seems to lead to contradictory pictures of reality, physicists claim

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Reimagining of Schrödinger’s cat breaks quantum mechanics — and stumps physicists. Davide Castelvecchi. Nature https://www.nature.com/articl...

In mice: Clearance of senescent glial cells prevents tau-dependent pathology and cognitive decline

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Clearance of senescent glial cells prevents tau-dependent pathology and cognitive decline. Tyler J. Bussian, Asef Aziz, Charlton F. Meyer, B...

Self-assessed intelligence & relations with constructs associated with intelligence, tendencies & opportunities to develop intelligence, constructs associated with biased self-assessments, & positive states and life achievements

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The “Other” Relationships of Self-Assessed Intelligence: A Meta-Analysis. Matt C. Howard, Joshua Cogswell. Journal of Research in Personalit...

People possess a functionally integrated mental system to detect conspiracies that in all likelihood has been shaped in an ancestral human environment in which hostile coalitions—that is, conspiracies that truly existed—were a frequent cause of misery

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Conspiracy Theories: Evolved Functions and Psychological Mechanisms. Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Mark van Vugt. Perspectives on Psychological S...

Vegans view their diets as more central to their identity, take more pride in their diets, feel more stigmatized for following their diets, have stronger dietary motivations, & judge omnivorous dieters more harshly than do vegetarians

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A Comparison of Dietarian Identity Profiles Between Vegetarians and Vegans. Daniel L. Rosenfeld. Food Quality and Preference, https://doi.or...

Volunteering improves subjective well-being, offsetting 20-53pct of W-B losses from unemployment & 16-30pct of W-B losses from long-term health conditions, benefitting the most unhappy; don't last beyond a year

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Does Kindness Lead to Happiness? Voluntary Activities and Subjective Well-Being. Elisabetta Magnani, Rong Zhu. Journal of Behavioral and Exp...
Wednesday, September 19, 2018

People judged that altering some moral facts was impossible—not even God could turn morally wrong acts into morally right acts; but thought that God could make physically impossible and logically impossible events occur

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Reinecke, Madeline G., and Zachary Horne. 2018. “Immutable Morality: Even God Could Not Change Some Moral Facts.” PsyArXiv. September 19. do...

Girls surpass boys in educational attainment: The best explanation is boys' greater dispersion of academic achievement

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What Explains the Gender Gap Reversal in Education? The Role of the Tail Hypothesis. Laurent Bossavie, Ohto Kanninen. Policy  Research  Work...

Canada Health System: The status quo represents a compromise struck decades ago between payers & physicians & organizations, & the current system works just well enough for those who both need it & vote; but cannot readily meet the changing health care needs of a population

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Lessons From the Canadian Experience With Single-Payer Health Insurance: Just Comfortable Enough With the Status Quo. Noah Ivers et al. JAMA...

Feedback loop of environmental unpredictability and harshness which destabilizes intrauterine hormonal conditions in mothers, leading to global health problems, and nonheterosexual preferences in female offspring; bonobos and lions examples are discussed

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A Life History Approach to the Female Sexual Orientation Spectrum: Evolution, Development, Causal Mechanisms, and Health. Severi Luoto, Indr...

Lead us not into temptation: The seven deadly sins as a taxonomy of temptations

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Lead us not into temptation: The seven deadly sins as a taxonomy of temptations. Edward Burkley, Melissa Burkley, Jessica Curtis, Thomas Hat...

Difficult to know if the effects of alcohol consumption on mate-selection are due to social factors or cohabitation leading to becoming more similar over time; found that genetic variants related to alcohol may, via effect on alcohol behaviour, influence mate selection

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Alcohol consumption and mate choice in UK Biobank: comparing observational and Mendelian randomization estimates. Laurence J Howe, Dan J Law...

Living longer with help from others: Seeking advice lowers mortality risk

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Living longer with help from others: Seeking advice lowers mortality risk. Rebecca K Delaney, Nicholas A Turiano, JoNell Strough. Journal of...

“Bad” agents are identified more quickly & accurately than benign ones; but incorrectly attributing bad character to good people damages existing relationships; cognitive mechanism permits flexible updating of beliefs to forgive sooner

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Siegel, Jenifer, Christoph Mathys, Robb Rutledge, and Molly Crockett. 2018. “Beliefs About Bad People Are Volatile.” PsyArXiv. September 17....

“Happiness pie” (approx 50% of differences are due to genetic factors, 10pct to life circumstances, & 40% available to be changed via volition) is a defective theory; & it is not clear how we can influence substantially our own happiness level

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Brown, Nicholas J. L., and Julia M. Rohrer. 2018. “Re-slicing the “happiness Pie”: A Re-examination of the Determinants of Well-being” PsyAr...
Tuesday, September 18, 2018

The Real Story of Those Empty New York City Storefronts : Retail employment is rising, in part, because of job growth outside of Manhattan; overall, the number of retail establishments in NYC is up 15% since 2007

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The Real Story of Those Empty New York City Storefronts. Michael Mandel. Progressive Policy Institute Blog, Sep 10 2018. https://www.progres...

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Psychological trauma and its relationship to enhanced memory control

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Hulbert, J. C., & Anderson, M. C. (2018). What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Psychological trauma and its relationship to enhance...

Should we men in search of girls feel lonely? Neil Shinhababu says we shouldn't, there are "Possible Girls" somewhere (although it is not really somewhere)

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Possible Girls. Neil Shinhababu. 2008. https://philpapers.org/archive/SINPG Abstract: I argue that if David Lewis’ modal realism is true, ...

Avoiding sedentary behaviors requires more cortical resources than avoiding physical activity: An EEG study

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Avoiding sedentary behaviors requires more cortical resources than avoiding physical activity: An EEG study. Boris Cheval et al. Neuropsycho...

Lucid nightmares: A survey of their frequency, features, and factors in lucid dreamers

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Stumbrys, T. (2018). Lucid nightmares: A survey of their frequency, features, and factors in lucid dreamers. Dreaming, 28(3), 193-204. http:...

Immunocompetence Handicap Hypothesis fails; but a context-dependent tradeoff between energetic investment in male reproductive effort and some aspects of immune function (complex interactions between physical characteristics, physiological processes, and immune activity)

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Life History Tradeoffs Between Testosterone and Immune Function Among Shuar Forager-Horticulturalists of Amazonian Ecuador. Theresa E. Gildn...

Arising out of the experience that other people see the world differently: The others, for some basic intellectual and moral defect, are unable to see things “as they really are” and to react to them in a “normal way”

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From the Fundamental Attribution Error to the Truly Fundamental Attribution Error and Beyond: My Research Journey. Lee Ross. Perspectives on...
Monday, September 17, 2018

Approximately 16% of all participants were classified as having illusory mental health, & scored significantly lower on scales indicative of interpersonal problems and structural personality dysfunctions

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Patients with illusory mental health: A challenge for psychotherapeutic treatment and empirical research in psychotherapy. Carsten Spitzer, ...

Inconsistent with the original study, participants' distrust of atheists (and gays and lesbians) did not vary by secular authority reminders

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Crawford, Jarret. 2018. “Replication of Gervais & Norenzayan (2012) Study 3.” PsyArXiv. September 17. doi:10.31234/osf.io/th9bp Abstract...

The upright walking posture group showed significantly improved psychological states including less low arousal negative affect, less sleepiness, less pain & marginally greater feelings of power than the slumped walking posture group

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The effects of walking posture on affective and physiological states during stress. Jessie Hackford, Anna Mackey, Elizabeth Broadbent. Journ...

There was a honeymoon effect during the marriage year; happiness levels were significantly higher than the baseline within 3 years of marriage; marriage, on average, enhances happiness more and longer for women than for men

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Marriage and Happiness: Evidence from Taiwan. Hung-Lin Tao. Journal of Happiness Studies, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-0...

While the predicted correlation does not replicate for every single available measure of support for inequality, the overall data pattern strongly suggests that for males, but not females, upper‐body strength correlates positively with support for inequality

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Upper‐Body Strength and Political Egalitarianism: Twelve Conceptual Replications. Michael Bang Petersen, Lasse Laustsen. Political Psycholog...
Sunday, September 16, 2018

Taxes matter for innovation: higher personal and corporate income taxes negatively affect the quantity, quality, and location of inventive activity at the macro and micro levels; at the macro level, there are cross-state spillovers or business-stealing

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Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century. Ufuk Akcigit, John Grigsby, Tom Nicholas, Stefanie Stantcheva. NBER Working Paper No. 24982, Se...