Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Raising mice in an enriched environment (better opportunities for social interaction, voluntary physical exercise & explorative behaviour) boosts cortical plasticity & now ocular dominance plasticity

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Transgenerational transmission of enhanced ocular dominance plasticity from enriched mice to their non-enriched offspring. Evgenia Kalogerak...

Fake News & Ideological (a)symmetries in Perceptions of Media Legitimacy: Partisans are motivated to believe fake news & dismiss true news that contradicts their position as fake news

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Harper, Craig A., and Thom Baguley. 2019. ““you Are Fake News”: Ideological (a)symmetries in Perceptions of Media Legitimacy” PsyArXiv. Janu...

There were to Neanderthals two effective methods of minimizing C vitamin loss and prevent scurvy: eating meat raw (fresh or frozen); and eating the meat after it has been putrefied

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Neanderthals, vitamin C, and scurvy. John D.Speth. Quaternary International, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.11.042 Abstract: This pap...

Many animals show evidence of culture (innovations in multiple domains whose frequencies are influenced by social learning), but only humans show strong evidence of complex, cumulative culture. Why?

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Teaching and curiosity: sequential drivers of cumulative cultural evolution in the hominin lineage. Carel P. van Schaik, Gauri R. Pradhan, C...

Short periods of unoccupied waking rest can facilitate consolidation in a manner similar to that proposed to occur during sleep

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Memory Consolidation during Waking Rest. Erin J. Wamsley. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.12.007 Abstrac...
Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Emotion Perception in Members of Mensa: Better at differentiating emotion, above all anger; the positive manifold extends also to social cognition, & runs counter to the concept of a cost to giftedness

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Emotion Perception in Members of Norwegian Mensa. Jens Egeland. Front. Psychol., Jan 23 2019, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00027 Abstr...

Supermarket Access and Childhood Bodyweight: Supermarket openings reduce the weight of low-income children, although by little

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Supermarket Access and Childhood Bodyweight: Evidence from Store Openings and Closings. Di Zeng et al. Economics & Human Biology, https:...

Sexual arousal was associated with reduced disgust & reduced judgments of disease risk, & with enhanced willingness to have sex with all (risky & non-risky) targets; trait disgust was a predictor

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The Role of Disgust in Male Sexual Decision-Making. Megan Oaten et al. Front. Psychol., Jan 22 2019, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0260...

Mistaken belief that genetic influence implies genetic essentialism, and is therefore tantamount to prejudice, is raised as possible reason why heritability is often ignored in the social sciences

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Nature vs. nurture is nonsense: On the necessity of an integrated genetic, social, developmental, and personality psychology. Fiona Kate Bar...

Monty Hall Dilemmas in capuchin monkeys, rhesus macaques, and humans

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Monty Hall Dilemmas in capuchin monkeys, rhesus macaques, and humans. Watzek, Julia, Whitham, Will, Washburn, David A, Brosnan, Sarah. Inter...

On the associations between indicators of resting arousal levels, physiological reactivity, sensation seeking, and psychopathic traits

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On the associations between indicators of resting arousal levels, physiological reactivity, sensation seeking, and psychopathic traits. Nich...

Extensive comparison 22 kHz vocalizations in rats with human cry: 76% of common features; vocalizations may be an evolutionary vocal homolog of human crying, expressing anxiety, not depression

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Emission of 22 kHz vocalizations in rats as an evolutionary equivalent of human crying: Relationship to depression. Stefan M. Brudzynski. Be...
Monday, January 21, 2019

In Canada, the gap in Atheism prevalence of men and women is widening

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The evolution of the gender religiosity gap among the Canadian-born. Maryam Dilmaghani. Review of Social Economy, https://doi.org/10.1080/00...

Is Meat Sexy? Meat symbolizes status both evolutionarily & in modern times; men’s sexual motivation system might increase preference for meat; women, when are sexually motivated, might have less meat

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Is Meat Sexy? Meat Preference as a Function of the Sexual Motivation System. Eugene Y.Chan, Natalina Zlatevska. Food Quality and Preference,...

Demographic, phenotypic, and genetic characteristics of centenarians in Okinawa and Japan: Part 1—centenarians in Okinawa

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Demographic, phenotypic, and genetic characteristics of centenarians in Okinawa and Japan: Part 1—centenarians in Okinawa. Bradley J. Willco...

Republicans have greater longevity compared to Democrats, adjusting for demographics; partly explained by Republican's higher socioeconomic status, & partly by their personal responsibility ethos

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Political parties and mortality: The role of social status and personal responsibility. Viji Diane Kannan et al. Social Science & Medic...

Sexual Activity the Night Before Exercise Does Not Affect Various Measures of Physical Exercise Performance; the more pleasurable the orgasm, the lower the systolic blood pressure on the day after

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Zavorsky GS, Vouyoukas E, Pfaus JG. Sexual Activity the Night Before Exercise Does Not Affect Various Measures of Physical Exercise Performa...
Sunday, January 20, 2019

From 2018: Predicting sex from brain rhythms with deep learning

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Predicting sex from brain rhythms with deep learning. Michel J. A. M. van Putten, Sebastian Olbrich & Martijn Arns. Scientific Reports, ...

Cruelty against minorities, in writing, in a public forum: Calling them uneducated minds (???)

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As a comment to this question ( https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/01/is-female-brain-diffrent-from-males-and.html ), someone says: h...

Is the female brain diffrent from male's ? and which gender is more likely to have a psychological disorder

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Someone asked: Is the female brain diffrent from male's ? and which gender is more likely to have a psychological disorder (statisticly ...

Conservatives prefer political ideas that connect to the past; the preference is so strong, that they can be convinced of any idea, including liberal ones, if framed to connect to the past

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Political conservatism as preference for the past.  Joris Lammers, Matt Baldwin. 51. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, Fr...

In comparatively religious counties religious individuals (i.e., persons buried in graves with religious imagery) lived longer than non-religious individuals did; no such an effect in comparatively secular counties

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What the dead tell us about the living: Regionally varying associations between religiosity and longevity based on gravestone inscriptions. ...

An Evolutionary Perspective on Why Food Overconsumption Impairs Cognition

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An Evolutionary Perspective on Why Food Overconsumption Impairs Cognition. Mark P. Mattson. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10...

The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017

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The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017. Naomi Ellemers et al. Personality a...
Saturday, January 19, 2019

Patients who lost their ability to retrieve episodic facts (severe head injury, Alzheimer’s, stroke) were able to describe their traits despite inability to remember their lives' details

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Robinson, M. D., & Sedikides, C. (in press). Personality and The Self. In P. Corr & G. Matthews (Eds.), Cambridge University Press h...

Other consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain: Attenuated repair intentions after having read a scenario in which participants caused harm to a friend & attenuated intentions to change bad eating habits

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Potential negative consequences of mindfulness in the moral domain. Simon Schindler, Stefan Pfattheicher, Marc-Andre Reinhard. To appear in ...

Political ideology shapes the amplification of the accomplishments of disadvantaged vs. advantaged group members

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Political ideology shapes the amplification of the accomplishments of disadvantaged vs. advantaged group members. Nour S. Kteily, Matthew D....

Removing Hand Information Specifically Impairs Emotion Recognition for Fearful and Angry Body Stimuli

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Ross, Paddy, and Tessa Flack. 2019. “Removing Hand Information Specifically Impairs Emotion Recognition for Fearful and Angry Body Stimuli.”...
Friday, January 18, 2019

Massive redundancy: The great majority of nerve cells in the intact brain are permanently silent, in inhibited state at high energetic costs, until stress and disease attack, developing psychiatric symptoms

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The dark matter of the brain. Saak V. Ovsepian. Brain Structure and Function, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-019-01835-7 ...

It is often claimed that 97 per cent of scientists conclude that humans are causing global warming. Is that really true? No. It is a zombie statistic.

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Ian Plimer: 97% Of Scientists Agree On Nothing. The Australian, January 17 2019. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/climate-debate-97p...

Early adoption of recusant identities & oppositional agencies leading to a polarized choice: Either seek self-verification elsewhere by avoiding institutions such as schools, labor markets, & marriage or intensely engage them

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Jaynes, Gerald D., A Behavioral Interpretation of the Origins of African American Family Structure (November 30, 2018). Cowles Foundation Di...

Cerebellar modulation of the reward circuitry and social behavior: Deep cerebellar nuclei implicated in addictive behavior and autism spectrum disorder, cognitive affective syndrome, and schizophrenia

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Cerebellar modulation of the reward circuitry and social behavior. Ilaria Carta et al. Science Jan 18 2019:Vol. 363, Issue 6424, eaav0581. D...

Elders were less likely to recollect their original judgment than young adults, & had to reconstruct it more frequently; & outcome knowledge distorted more the reconstruction of original judgment in elders

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Groß, J., & Pachur, T. (2019). Age differences in hindsight bias: A meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag00...

Aggression in mice is differentially predicted by the volumes of anterior and midcingulate cortex

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Aggression in BALB/cJ mice is differentially predicted by the volumes of anterior and midcingulate cortex. Sabrina van Heukelum et al. Brain...

Is Language Required to Represent Others’ Mental States? Language does not form an essential part of the process of reasoning online (“in the moment”) about false beliefs

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Is Language Required to Represent Others’ Mental States? Evidence From Beliefs and Other Representations. Steven Samuel et al. Cognitive Sci...

Both numerical magnitude & order processing were uniquely related to arithmetic achievement, beyond domain‐general factors (intellectual ability, working memory, inhibitory control, & non‐numerical ordering)

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Disentangling the Mechanisms of Symbolic Number Processing in Adults’ Mathematics and Arithmetic Achievement. Josetxu Orrantia et al. Cognit...

When the Muses Strike: Creative Ideas of Physicists and Writers Routinely Occur During Mind Wandering

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When the Muses Strike: Creative Ideas of Physicists and Writers Routinely Occur During Mind Wandering. Shelly L. Gable, Elizabeth A. Hopper,...

Disgust, sushi consumption, benefits, religion, and other predictors of acceptance of insects as food by Americans and Indians

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Disgust, sushi consumption, and other predictors of acceptance of insects as food by Americans and Indians. Matthew B. Ruby, Paul Rozin. Foo...

Investigating gender differences in school burnout from a self-worth perspective: Girls take school too seriously

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Do girls take school too seriously? Investigating gender differences in school burnout from a self-worth perspective. Julia Herrmann, Karoli...
Thursday, January 17, 2019

The Minds of God(s) and Humans: Differences in Mind Perception in Fiji and North America; mind perception is shaped by culturally defined social expectations

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The Minds of God(s) and Humans: Differences in Mind Perception in Fiji and North America. Aiyana K. Willard, Rita A. McNamara. Cognitive Sci...