Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Despite their limited optical resolution, Drosophila melanogaster’s neuronal architecture has the capability to extract & encode a rich feature set that allows flies to re-identify individual conspecifics with surprising accuracy

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Schneider J, Murali N, Taylor GW, Levine JD (2018) Can Drosophila melanogaster tell who’s who? PLoS ONE 13(10): e0205043. https://doi.org/10...

Voters appear to be sorting on non-political neighborhood attributes that covary with partisan preferences rather than explicitly seeking politically congruent neighbors; location must have some influence on political preference, rather than the other way around

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Does residential sorting explain geographic polarization? Gregory J. Martin & Steven W. Webster. Political Science Research and Methods,...

Jackdaws delayed longest in entering their nest-box after encountering a stimulus that should not move independently, suggesting they recognized the movement as unexpected

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Wild jackdaws are wary of objects that violate expectations of animacy. Alison L. Greggor, Guillam E. McIvor, Nicola S. Clayton, Alex Thornt...

Canada: Secularized women are found to have lower fertility rates compared with the actively religious; the strictly seculars, a proxy identifier for the atheists, have the lowest fertility & the highest likelihood of remaining childless

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Religiosity, Secularity and Fertility in Canada. Maryam Dilmaghani. European Journal of Population, https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...

The experience of a childhood trauma increases a person’s ability to take the perspective of another and to understand their mental and emotional states, & this impact is long-standing

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Elevated empathy in adults following childhood trauma. David M. Greenberg et al. PLOS One, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203886 Abst...

Abstinence from social media increased time spent engaged in browsing the Internet, working, childcare, and cooking/cleaning; time in social media was negatively associated with quality of day

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Where does the time go? An experimental test of what social media displaces and displaced activities’ associations with affective well-being...
Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Local Competition Amplifies the Corrosive Effects of Inequality: Inequality is at its most damaging when it arises between close competitors

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Local Competition Amplifies the Corrosive Effects of Inequality. D. B. Krupp, Thomas R. Cook. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177...

Academic gains of students enrolled in public schools compared to students of private BIP-creativity elementary schools (that aim to promote the development of talent, intelligence & personality): no differences at the end of fourth grade

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Who is ahead at the end of elementary school? Student achievement gains in private BIP-Creativity schools and public schools. Frank Lipowsky...

The Heritability of Self-control: Meta-analysis based on a sample size of >100.000 individuals, published between 1996 and 2018, reveal that heritability is around 60%

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Willems, Yayouk, Nicky Boesen, Jian-Bin Li, Meike Bartels, and Catrin Finkenauer. 2018. “The Heritability of Self-control: A Meta-analysis.”...

Vegetarians reported lower self-esteem, lower psychological adjustment, less meaning in life, & more negative moods than semi-vegetarians & omnivores; also reported more negative social experiences than omnivores & semi-vegetarians

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Relationships between Vegetarian Dietary Habits and Daily Well-Being. John B. Nezlek, Catherine A. Forestell & David B. Newman. Ecology ...

The five stages in coping with dying & bereavement does not measure up to the standards of a sound theory in contemporary thinking, can actually do damage when misapplied or applied too rigidly, & should be set aside

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The ‘five stages’ in coping with dying and bereavement: strengths, weaknesses and some alternatives. Charles A. Corr. Mortality, https://www...

Longevity might increase together with numbers of cortical neurons through their impact on three main factors: delay of sexual maturity, which postpones the onset of aging; lengthening of

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Longevity and sexual maturity vary across species with number of cortical neurons, and humans are no exception. Suzana Herculano‐Houzel. Jou...

Early humans, rather than being "killer apes” in the Pleistocene and early Holocene, lived as relatively peaceful hunter-gathers for some 15,000 generations, from the emergence of modern Homo sapiens up until the invention of agriculture

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Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution: New Light on Old Debates. Richard B. Lee. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 47:513-531 (Volume publi...
Monday, October 22, 2018

Ventral pallidum encodes relative reward value earlier and more robustly than nucleus accumbens, challenging the existing model of information flow in the ventral basal ganglia

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Ventral pallidum encodes relative reward value earlier and more robustly than nucleus accumbens. David Ottenheimer, Jocelyn M. Richard &...

Personality-trait profiles were predicted reliably from a subset of the body-shape features; extraversion & conscientiousness were predicted with the highest consensus, followed by openness traits

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First Impressions of Personality Traits From Body Shapes. Ying Hu, Connor J. Parde, Matthew Q. Hill, Naureen Mahmood, Alice J. O’Toole. Psyc...

Effects of paracetamol on empathy-like behavior in Sprague Dawley rats: It reduced empathy-like behavior, with rats helping less drowning conspecifics

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Acetaminophen (paracetamol) affects empathy-like behavior in rats: Dose-response relationship. Sevim Kandis et al. Pharmacology Biochemistry...

Cichocka et al. (2016) report evidence that conservatism (specifically social conservatism) is associated with noun preference. This study replicates the finding.

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Crawford, Jarret. 2018. “Examining the Effects of Political Orientation on Noun Preference: A Replication of Cichocka Et Al. (2016).” PsyArX...

Our results suggest that childhood trauma in humans is associated with changes in cortical fields that are implicated in the perception or processing of the abuse

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Psychobiological Consequences of Child Maltreatment. Christine Heim. The Biology of Early Life Stress. In  Child Maltreatment Solutions Netw...

Century of Decline in General Intelligence? Testing Predictions from the Genetic Selection and Neurotoxin Hypotheses authors found that this last did not significantly predict variance of g factor

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What Caused over a Century of Decline in General Intelligence? Testing Predictions from the Genetic Selection and Neurotoxin Hypotheses. Mic...

Studies confirmed the existence of a social norm that one cannot simultaneously support two competing groups or teams

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You Can’t Root for Both Teams!: Convergent Evidence for the Unidirectionality of Group Loyalty. Daniel J. Kruger et al. Evolutionary Psychol...

Examining Cross‐Cultural Differences in Academic Faking in 41 Nations: Faking was positively related to the cultural dimensions of gender egalitarianism, humane orientation, and in‐group collectivism

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Examining Cross‐Cultural Differences in Academic Faking in 41 Nations. Clemens B. Fell, Cornelius J. König. Applied Psychology, https://doi....
Sunday, October 21, 2018

Our findings challenge the notion of pervasive biases towards female‐biased infection immunity and the role of testosterone in driving these differences

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Sexual dimorphism in immunity across animals: a meta‐analysis. Clint D. Kelly et al. Ecology Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13164 Abst...

Children -but not chimpanzees- exhibit ‘over-imitation’, i.e. they show a propensity for faithfully copying demonstrated actions, even when these actions are irrelevant for achieving a demonstrated outcome

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The social side of imitation in human evolution and development: Shared intentionality and imitation games in chimpanzees and 6-month old in...

Users use flattering interaction information such as “Likes” for social comparison; downward comparison elicits positive & upward comparison negative emotional affect; likability of the other more strongly predicted decisions to give a “Like” than comparison outcome

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“Likes” as social rewards: Their role in online social comparison and decisions to like other People's selfies. Astrid M. Rosenthal-von ...
Saturday, October 20, 2018

About the modifications that the neurocognitive system undergoes when mastering mathematical knowledge

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What Expertise Can Tell About Mathematical Learning and Cognition. Francesco Sella, Roi Cohen Kadosh. Mind, Brain, and Education, https://do...

Icelanders bought 47% fewer books in 2017 than they did in 2010, a very sharp decrease in a matter of only six years

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Can the language of the Vikings fight off the invasion of English? Ragnar Jonasson. The Guardian, Oct 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/book...

Bodies and BDSM: Redefining Sex Through Kinky Erotics

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Bodies and BDSM: Redefining Sex Through Kinky Erotics. Daniel Cardoso. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, July 2018Volume 15, Issue 7, Pages 93...
Friday, October 19, 2018

Gender & age information emerged significantly earlier than identity information, followed by a late signature of familiarity; gender & identity representations were enhanced for familiar faces early during processing

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How face perception unfolds over time. Katharina Dobs, Leyla Isik, Dimitrios Pantazis, Nancy Kanwisher. bioaRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/44...

Association between Social Class, Greed, and Unethical Behaviour: A Replication Study

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Clerke, A. S., Brown, M., Forchuk, C., & Campbell, L. (2018). Association between Social Class, Greed, and Unethical Behaviour: A Replic...

Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality

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Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality. Armin Falk, Johannes Hermle. Science, Vol. 36...
Thursday, October 18, 2018

High-SES undergraduates were more likely than peers to use marijuana, choose varied drugs, consume alcohol frequently, & use alcohol and substances to cope with stress; but race & marriage were stronger predictors

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Martin, Chris C. 2018. “Socioeconomic Status Predicts Substance Use and Alcohol Consumption in U.S. Undergraduates.” PsyArXiv. October 18. d...

Pairing abstract art pieces with randomly generated pseudo-profound titles enhanced the perception of profoundness in those art pieces; being under a verbal working memory load enhanced the perception of profoundness of abstract art separately

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Bullshit Makes the Art Grow Profounder: Evidence for False Meaning Transfer Across Domains. Martin Harry Turpin. MA Thesis, Waterloo Univ., ...

Restaurants receive lower online customer ratings when they eliminate tipping, & decline more when tipping is replaced with service-charges than when it is replaced with service-inclusive-pricing

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A within-restaurant analysis of changes in customer satisfaction following the introduction of service inclusive pricing or automatic servic...
Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Alleviating Global Poverty: Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Economic Growth

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Alleviating Global Poverty: Labor Mobility, Direct Assistance, and Economic Growth. Lant Pritchett. Center for Global Development Working Pa...

Pursuing Sex with an Ex: Does It Hinder Breakup Recovery? It seems it doesn't.

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Pursuing Sex with an Ex: Does It Hinder Breakup Recovery? Stephanie S. Spielmann, Samantha Joel, Emily A. Impett. Archives of Sexual Behavio...

Party Animals: Asymmetric Ideological Constraint among Democratic and Republican Party Activists

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Party Animals: Asymmetric Ideological Constraint among Democratic and Republican Party Activists. Robert N. Lupton, William M. Myers, Judd R...

Sensory Perception Is Not a One-Way Street. Tübingen Neuroscientists decipher the pathways by which the brain alters its own perception of the outside world

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Cortical modulation of sensory flow during active touch in the rat whisker system. Shubhodeep Chakrabarti & Cornelius Schwarz. Nature Co...

70% of participants found at least 1 aggressive or humiliating sexual play desirable; 50% found at least 3 acts desirable; men desired to engage more than women; aggressive & humiliating sexual play seems a normal variation in sexual desire

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Aggressive and Humiliating Sexual Play: Occurrence Rates and Discordance Between the Sexes. Menelaos Apostolou, Michalis Khalil. Archives of...

Why people engage in costly helping; empathy is one mechanism; moral outrage is a second one, a critical force for collective action

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The Upside of Outrage. Victoria L. Spring, Daryl Cameron, Mina Cikar. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.09.0...
Tuesday, October 16, 2018

After attending economics training, judges use more economics language, render more conservative verdicts in economics cases, rule against regulatory agencies more often, & render longer criminal sentences

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Ideas Have Consequences:  The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice. Elliott Ash, Daniel L. Chen, Suresh Naidu. July 16, 2018, htt...

Hugs and kisses – the role of motor preferences and emotional lateralization for hemispheric asymmetries in human social touch

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Hugs and kisses – the role of motor preferences and emotional lateralization for hemispheric asymmetries in human social touch. Sebastian Oc...

Dishonest people seek a partner who will also lie—a “partner in crime” ; honest people, by contrast, engage in ethical free riding: They refrain from lying but also from leaving dishonest partners, taking advantage of their partners’ lies

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Ethical Free Riding: When Honest People Find Dishonest Partners. Jörg Gross et al. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618...

Jealousy evolved & has its own unique motivational state aimed at preventing others from usurping important relationships; has a core form that exists in infants and nonhuman animals and an elaborated form in humans that emerges as cognitive sophistication develops

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Jealousy as a Specific Emotion: The Dynamic Functional Model. Mingi Chung, Christine R. Harris. Emotion Review, https://doi.org/10.1177/1754...

Intergenerational transmission of paternal trauma among US Civil War ex-POWs: Severe paternal hardship as a prisoner of war led to high mortality among sons, but not daughters, born after the civil war who survived to the age of 45; adequate maternal nutrition countered the effect

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Intergenerational transmission of paternal trauma among US Civil War ex-POWs. Dora L. Costa, Noelle Yetter, and Heather DeSomer. Proceedings...

Moral conviction stems from a distinctive mode of mental processing that is tied to automatic affective reactions; conviction about political objects positively predicts arousal evoked by the objects, while attitude extremity and importance do not

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Fired Up by Morality: The Unique Physiological Response Tied to Moral Conviction in Politics. Kristin N. Garrett. Political Psychology, http...

Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power; only about 8% of studies have adequate power (using Cohen’s 80% convention); the good news is that we find only a small amount of average residual reporting bias

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Stanley, T. D., Carter, E. C., & Doucouliagos, H. (2018). What meta-analyses reveal about the replicability of psychological research. P...

Respondents in same‐sex relationships experience similar levels of commitment, satisfaction, & emotional intimacy as their counterparts in different‐sex relationships; relationship of males is sexually less exclusive

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The Qualities of Same‐Sex and Different‐Sex Couples in Young Adulthood. Kara Joyner, Wendy Manning, Barbara Prince. Journal of Marriage and ...

Proof of pluralistic ignorance about what is considered attractive in the gay community; & of a significant association between pluralistic ignorance & body image concerns, particularly among men not in committed relationships

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Pluralistic Ignorance of Physical Attractiveness in the Gay Male Community. Daniel E. Flave-Novak & Jill M. Coleman. Journal of Homosexu...
Monday, October 15, 2018

Conservatives’ individual-level attitudes toward diverse political issues (e.g., abortion, gun control, welfare) were more dispersed across the political spectrum than were liberals’ attitudes due to to having several moral foundations

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Pyszczynski, Tom, Pelin Kesebir, Matt Motyl, Andrea Yetzer, and Jacqueline M. Anson. 2018. “Ideological Consistency, Political Orientation, ...

Observed negative impact of socioeconomic status on olfactory function could reflect differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors

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Relationship of socioeconomic status to olfactory function. Aurélio Fornazieri et al. Physiology & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.p...

We like to be scared: After voluntary arousing negative experiences, reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored, or stressed prior to the experience

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Kerr, M., Siegle, G. J., & Orsini, J. (2018). Voluntary arousing negative experiences (VANE): Why we like to be scared. Emotion. http://...

This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability

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Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank. Richard Murphy, Felix Weinhardt. NBER Working Paper No. 24958. http://www.nber.org/papers/...

Democracy's Unique Advantage in Promoting Economic Growth: Quantitative Evidence for a New Institutional Theory

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Democracy's Unique Advantage in Promoting Economic Growth: Quantitative Evidence for a New Institutional Theory. Rui Tang, Shiping Tang....

Humans exhibit important shifts in this aspect of our social cognition: younger individuals attend more to negative stimuli, whereas older adults tend to focus on positive information; rhesus monkeys show an increasing negativity bias with age

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Developmental shifts in social cognition: socio-emotional biases across the lifespan in rhesus monkeys. Alexandra G. Rosati, Alyssa M. Arre,...
Sunday, October 14, 2018

Harming animals and massacring humans: Characteristics of public mass and active shooters who abused animals

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Harming animals and massacring humans: Characteristics of public mass and active shooters who abused animals. Arnold Arluke, Adam Lankford, ...

We discovered hundreds of genes that, when their activity is enhanced, suppressed, or turned off, lengthen life & enhance health under laboratory conditions; does this support George Williams’ 1957 paper aobut antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis of aging?

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Is Antagonistic Pleiotropy Ubiquitous in Aging Biology? Steven N Austad Jessica M Hoffman.  Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, eoy033, ...

Strong discrepancy between stated and revealed behavior: given a natural setting, people may actually behave inconsistently with the way in which they otherwise “brand” themselves; this is a big problem for predictability of survey answers

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Why (field) experiments on unethical behavior are important: Comparing stated and revealed behavior. Yonas Alema et al. Journal of Economic ...

Antisocial behavior is heritable, but heritability varies by subtype and age; adversity predicts antisocial behavior directly & moderates genetic effects; we need genome-wide association studies of antisocial behavior with larger sample sizes

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Genetic influences on antisocial behavior: recent advances and future directions. Arianna M Gard, Hailey L Dotterer, Luke W Hyde. Current Op...
Saturday, October 13, 2018

The high regard of organic food is a meme; not in genetic terms, but as a cultural artefact that spreads, affects social cognition, & propagates in the social environment as a true statement to be believed

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Organic Food Appeals to Intuition and Triggers Stereotypes. Marjaana Lindeman, Joonas Anttila. International Journal of Psychological Studie...

Dopaminergic basis for signaling belief updates, but not surprise, and the link to paranoia

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Dopaminergic basis for signaling belief updates, but not surprise, and the link to paranoia. Matthew M. Nour, Tarik Dahoun, Philipp Schwarte...