Tuesday, September 25, 2018

The threat of punishment lowered the average quality & quantity of information processed compared to the prospect of reward or no incentive at all; also induced less cautious decision making by lowering people’s decision thresholds relative to the prospect of reward

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Ballard, Timothy, and Daniel Cosgrove. 2018. “Information processing in the face of reward versus punishment.” PsyArXiv. September 26. doi:1...

People with a conspiracy mentality perceived a drug more positively if its approval was supported by a powerless (vs. powerful) agent; there is a moderating effect of power & conspiracy mentality on drug evaluation by comparing analytic versus holistic approaches

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Powerful Pharma and Its Marginalized Alternatives? Effects of Individual Differences in Conspiracy Mentality on Attitudes Toward Medical App...

Healthy mothers showed a clear preference of the own infant's body odor, those with bonding difficulties did not; the degree of odor preference was negatively correlated to bonding difficulties; the ones with bonding difficulties could not identify their own infant's odor

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Mother-child bonding is associated with body odor perception. Ilona Croy et al. Physiology & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh...

A “twin-like” experimental design (involving genetically unrelated look-alikes) explores associations among resemblance in appearance, the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, & social attraction; appearance is not meaningfully related to personality similarity & social relatedness

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Further Tests of Personality Similarity and Social Affiliation. Nancy L. Segal, Brittney A. Hernandez, Jamie L. Graham, Ulrich Ettinger. Hum...

An entitlement effect – proposers earning the role being less generous – is believed to exist; we conduct three experiments with 1,254 participants; the effect fails to replicate in all three experiments, and in the pooled data

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The entitlement effect in the ultimatum game – does it even exist? Elif E. Demiral, Johanna Mollerstrom. Journal of Economic Behavior & ...

Italian gay father families formed by surrogacy: Parenting, stigmatization, and children’s psychological adjustment

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Carone, N., Lingiardi, V., Chirumbolo, A., & Baiocco, R. (2018). Italian gay father families formed by surrogacy: Parenting, stigmatizat...

Are Whites and minorities more similar than different? Testing the cultural similarities hypothesis on psychopathology with a second-order meta-analysis // Seems that closely alike

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Are Whites and minorities more similar than different? Testing the cultural similarities hypothesis on psychopathology with a second-order m...

Confirmed there was no significant difference in mental rotation test performance, despite people with aphantasia reporting significantly lower vividness of spatial imagery; people with aphantasia also reported lower self-efficacy in the arts

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Differences in Spatial Visualization Ability and Vividness of Spatial Imagery Between People With and Without Aphantasia. Anita Crowder. PhD...
Monday, September 24, 2018

Moderate intake of alcohol exhibited a beneficial effect on the risk of erectile disfunction, whereas regular and high consumption did not

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Alcohol intake and risk of erectile dysfunction: a dose–response meta-analysis of observational studies. Xiao-Ming Wang, Yun-Jin Bai, Yu-Bo ...

Krugman: Trump’s tariffs really are a big, bad deal. Their direct economic impact ***will be modest*** (?!), although hardly trivial

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Now, to put Krugman's words in perspective, see the first results of Google search "nytimes.com trump tariffs will damage," th...

Syverson on productivity mismeasurement and slowdown, plus effect of AI on the slowdown

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Interview with Chad Syverson. Aaron Steelman. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, June 2018, https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=28525463...

The unprecedented socioeconomic rise of African Americans at mid-century is causally related to the labor shortages induced by WWII

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World War II and African American Socioeconomic Progress. Andreas Ferrara. Warwick Univ, Sept 2018, Working Paper No. 387. https://warwick.a...

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator placement has been found to lead to apprehension to engage in physical activity, chronic anxiety, decreased physical and social functioning, a nagging fear of being shocked by the device, and the development of “phantom shocks”

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Treatment of phantom shocks: A case report. Danielle R Hairston et al. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, https://doi.org/...

Sexism, Rape Myths and Feminist Identification Explain Gender Differences in Attitudes Toward the #metoo Social Media Campaign in Two Countries

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Kunst, Jonas R., April Bailey, Claire Prendergast, and Aleksander Gundersen. 2018. “Sexism, Rape Myths and Feminist Identification Explain G...

Do People Have Reproductive Goals? Constructive Preferences and the Discovery of Desired Family Size: Desired family size may, we suggest, be a discovery rather than a goal

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Do People Have Reproductive Goals? Constructive Preferences and the Discovery of Desired Family Size. Máire Ní Bhrolcháin, Éva Beaujouan. In...

They played a task to be probabilistically rewarded based on the pattern of 3 cards that were revealed after a 5-s delay; during this, they could instead pay a cost to find out the next card’s identity immediately; and did

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Cabrero, Jose A. M. R., Jian-Qiao Zhu, and Elliot A. Ludvig. 2018. “Costly Curiosity: People Pay a Price to Resolve an Uncertain Gamble Earl...

Intergenerational Mobility at the Top of the Educational Distribution: A doctoral degree largely detaches individuals from their social origins

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Intergenerational Mobility at the Top of the Educational Distribution. Florencia Torche. Sociology of Education, https://doi.org/10.1177/003...
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...