Tuesday, April 9, 2019

We construct more precise and robust measures of GDP per capita using nighttime lights; we find that GDP per capita measures are less precise for middle and low income countries

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Illuminating Economic Growth. Yingyao Hu, Jiaxiong Yao. IMF Working Paper No. 19/77. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/04/0...

Space ‘colonization’ will take place and will likely be fully automated; space mining will be the primary goal of space colonies; automation may lead to a technological singularity

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Why space colonization will be fully automated. Riccardo Campa, Konrad Szocik, Martin Braddock. Technological Forecasting and Social Change,...

Male‐mediated prenatal loss can provide greater reproductive benefits to males than infanticide; compared to infanticide, male‐mediated prenatal loss may be more prevalent and of greater role in mammalian species than thought

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Male‐mediated prenatal loss: Functions and mechanisms. Matthew N. Zipple et al. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, April ...

The mu-opioid system can influence higher-level cognitive function via modulation of valuation & motivation, influencing decision making & cognitive control by increasing the subjective value of reward & reducing aversive arousal

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The role of the opioid system in decision making and cognitive control: A review. Henk van Steenbergen, Marie Eikemo, Siri Leknes. Cognitive...

We see our past good deeds as more revealing of our present self than our past bad deeds, & we make inferences about our present personality from positive past behaviors, but not from negative ones; it is different with the others

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Andreas Steimer, André Mata, and Cláudia Simão (2019). Ascribing Meaning to the Past: Self–Other Differences in Weighing Good and Bad Deeds....

Testing the potential of 50 kHz rat calls as a species-specific rat attractant for pest control

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Testing the potential of 50 kHz rat calls as a species-specific rat attractant. Nicola B. Davidson, Jane L. Hurst. PLOS, April 8, 2019. http...
Monday, April 8, 2019

Partisans who blatantly dehumanize members of the opposing party prefer greater social distance from opponents (reduced interpersonal tolerance); also associated with perceptions of greater moral distance

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Partisan Dehumanization in American Politics. Erin C. Cassese. Political Behavior, Apr 8 2019, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11...

The genetic variants associated with income are related to better mental health than those linked to educational attainment; & team was able to predict 2.5% of income differences using genetic data alone

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Genetic analysis identifies molecular systems and biological pathways associated with household income. W. David Hill, Neil M. Davies, Stuar...

Changes in life satisfaction are associated with changes in consumption, not in income; increased conspicuous consumption seems strongly associated with improved well-being than is increased nonconspicuous consumption

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Consumption Changes, Not Income Changes, Predict Changes in Subjective Well-Being. Gordon D. A. Brown, John Gathergood. Social Psychological...

From 2018: Wisdom, Foolishness, and Toxicity in Human Development

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Wisdom, Foolishness, and Toxicity in Human Development. Robert J. Sternberg. Research in Human Development, Volume 15, 2018 - Issue 3-4, Aug...

Having something to look forward to is a keystone of well-being; anticipation of a future reward can be more gratifying than the experience of reward itself; hippocampal-midbrain circuit enhances the pleasure of anticipation

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Hippocampal-midbrain circuit enhances the pleasure of anticipation in the prefrontal cortex. Kiyohito Iigaya, Tobias U. Hauser, Zeb Kurth-Ne...
Sunday, April 7, 2019

The Downsides of Minimum Wage Increases

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The Downsides of Minimum Wage Increases. Jonathan Meer. The Library of Economics and Liberty, Apr 6 2019. https://www.econlib.org/hidden-cos...

The Industry Anatomy of the Transatlantic Productivity Growth Slowdown

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The Industry Anatomy of the Transatlantic Productivity Growth Slowdown. Robert J. Gordon, Hassan Sayed. NBER Working Paper No. 25703. March ...

Empirical evidence that prospectively negative events exhibit a significant amount of shifted (i.e., positive) emotions in the corresponding social network messages, serving as antidote in negative events

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Kušen E., Strembeck M., Conti M. (2019) Emotional Valence Shifts and User Behavior on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. In: Kaya M., Alhajj R....

Rolf Degen summarizing... They super-rich are different: They found a way to transmute wit into gold.

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Wealth Generation as a Form of Expertise: An Examination from 2002-2016 of Elite Education, Cognitive Ability, and the Gender Gap Among Bill...

Decision making under risk for others vs. the self: Decisions for others are a little more risky than decisions for the self; but the little is very little

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Decision Making for Others Involving Risk: A Review and Meta-Analysis. Evan Polman, Kaiyang Wu. Journal of Economic Psychology, Apr 6 2019. ...
Saturday, April 6, 2019

Confirm that shifting discretionary spending from material goods (clothes) to experiences (concerts) will bring greater happiness, satisfaction, & gratitude, and lower levels of purchase related regret

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Barton, Belinda and Zlatevska, Natalina and van Laer, Tom, In Pursuit of Happiness: A Meta-Analysis on the Experiential Advantage (February ...

From 2018: Ordinary people think free will is a lack of constraint on choice; internal constraints limit one’s mental ability to choose; scientific/religious constraints can both reduce perceptions of free will

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Ordinary people think free will is a lack of constraint, not the presence of a soul. Andrew J. Vonasch, Roy F. Baumeister, Alfred R. Mele. C...

A Bigger Lie: Soothing Us With Small Lies, Always With the Best of Intentions

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The Way Our Culture Portrays Love Is A Lie: Your relationship will have to struggle and suffer in order to thrive. Benjamin Sledge. Heartsup...

Happy Believers and Sad Skeptics? Affective Influences on Gullibility (vulnerability to misleading information, tendency to uncritically accept interpersonal messages, detection of deception)

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Happy Believers and Sad Skeptics? Affective Influences on Gullibility. Joseph P. Forgas. Current Directions in Psychological Science, April ...

People Can Accurately (But Not Adaptively) Judge Strangers’ Antigay Prejudice from Faces

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People Can Accurately (But Not Adaptively) Judge Strangers’ Antigay Prejudice from Faces. Ravin Alaei, Nicholas O. Rule. Journal of Nonverba...
Friday, April 5, 2019

People with the greatest proclivity for a behavior choose to interact the most, leading to further feedback/amplification, overstimating peer consumption of legal & illegal drugs, yielding high consumption

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The Friendship Paradox and Systematic Biases in Perceptions and Social Norms. Matthew O. Jackson. Journal of Political Economy, Mar 18, 2019...

Moral Grandstanding in Public Discourse: Status-seeking Motives as a Potential Explanatory Mechanism in Predicting Conflict in Daily Life

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Grubbs, Joshua, Brandon Warmke, Justin Tosi, and Alicia S. James. 2019. “Moral Grandstanding in Public Discourse: Status-seeking Motives as ...

Scary sexual situations were reported by 23.9% of adult women, 10.3% of adult men, 12.5% of adolescent women, and 3.8% of adolescent men

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Feeling Scared During Sex: Findings From a U.S. Probability Sample of Women and Men Ages 14 to 60. Debby Herbenick et al. Journal of Sex ...

Death among primates: a critical review of non‐human primate interactions towards their dead and dying

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Death among primates: a critical review of non‐human primate interactions towards their dead and dying. André Gonçalves, Susana Carvalho. Bi...