Sunday, February 2, 2020

Liberian experiment: After one academic year, students in outsourced schools scored 0.18 σ higher in English and mathematics

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Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia. Mauricio Romero, Justin Sandefur, and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz. American Economic Re...

Unwantedness across birth order explains a substantial part of the documented birth order effects in education & employment; we find no birth order effects in families who have more control over their fertility

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Birth order and unwanted fertility. Wanchuan Lin, Juan Pantano, Shuqiao Sun. Journal of Population Economics, April 2020, Volume 33, Issue 2...

The growth of behavioural complexity as well as the ex-vivo accumulation of human behaviour (non-genetically inherited behaviourome), cannot be explained by genetic/epigenetic mechanisms of inheritance

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Mechanisms of a near-orthogonal ultra-fast evolution of human behaviour as a source of culture development. Christian P. Müller. Behavioural...

The "diversity equity and inclusion statement" required of anyone hired by the University of California: Only those statements scoring high enough are passed on for scholarly review

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Wokeademia. John Cochrane. Thursday, January 30, 2020. https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/01/wokeademia.html I'm working on an ec...

When facing others who hold beliefs different from our own, we do not find these encounters disturbing because of the different beliefs per se, but because we are convinced that others hold false beliefs

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The Othello Effect: People are more disturbed by others' wrong beliefs than by different beliefs. Andras Molnar, George Loewenstein. Car...

How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Do high turnout levels mobilize or discourage citizens to vote? We argue that it depends on individuals’ degree of conformity

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Conformity and Individuals’ Response to Information About Aggregate Turnout. André Blais, Rafael Hortala-Vallve. Political Behavior, Februar...

Macaques in the wild cooperating for copulation: Males actively shared the mating opportunities, i.e., a male copulated with a female, while his ally waited his turn and guarded them

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Cooperation for copulation: a novel ecological mechanism underlying the evolution of coalition for sharing mating opportunities. Aru Toyoda,...
Saturday, February 1, 2020

Policy interventions aimed at correcting self-servingly biased misperceptions are unlikely to be effective in the long run due to people’s ability to forget or suppress information that threatens their desired views

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The Dynamics of Motivated Beliefs. Florian Zimmermann. American Economic Review. Feb 2020, Vol. 110, No. 2: Pages 337-363. https://pubs.aeaw...

Kissing frequency was a strong indicator of both specific sexual quality & global relationship connectivity, barometer of the more immediate quality of sexual relationships & the overall relationship quality

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A kiss is not just a kiss: kissing frequency, sexual quality, attachment, and sexual and relationship satisfaction. Dean M. Busby,Veronica H...

Small-scale societies: Divinatory statements provide a version of the situation that most participants are motivated to agree with, providing efficient coordination at a minimal cost for almost all participants

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Why Divination? Evolved Psychology and Strategic Interaction in the Production of Truth. Pascal Boyer. Current Anthropology, Jan 14, 2020. h...

Despite motivation to alleviate discomfort and to maintain a morally good self-concept, more severe moral transgressions are actually remembered more frequently, more vividly, and with more detail

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The phenomenology of remembering our moral transgressions. Shenyang Huang, Matthew L. Stanley Felipe De Brigard. Memory & Cognition, Jan...

British football leagues: Male height is positively associated with social dominance; but the ‘Napoleon complex’/‘small man syndrome’ suggests that smaller males are more assertive & punitive to compensate

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Referee height influences decision making in British football leagues. Dane McCarrick, Gayle Brewer, Minna Lyons, Thomas V. Pollet & Nic...

Rolf Degen summarizing... People are reluctant to adopt low-carbon behaviors as long as "the rich" and the “egoistic people” are not doing their part

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Revisiting the Psychology of Denial Concerning Low-Carbon Behaviors: From Moral Disengagement to Generating Social Change. Susanne Stoll-Kle...

All religious, etchnic, and racial groups appear to make use of pornography; its use is associated with greater health, knowledge, and standard of living, and lower homophobia

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Pornography Use: What Do Cross-Cultural Patterns Tell Us? David L. Rowland, Dudbeth Uribe. In: Cultural Differences and the Practice of Sexu...

Our expressed virtue judgments of specific traits may function, in part, as self-interested propaganda, by influencing the social value assigned by local others to the traits we happen to possess

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Morality and the Modular Mind: Propagandistic Self-Interest and Perceptions of Virtue. Schwab, Leon T. California State University, Fullerto...

1985-2017: Media representations of climate change have become increasingly politicized, whereby political actors are increasingly featured and scientific actors less so

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Politicization and Polarization in Climate Change News Content, 1985-2017. Sedona Chinn, P. Sol Hart, Stuart Soroka. Science Communication, ...

The Smartphone as a Pacifying Technology: In moments of stress, engaging with one’s smartphone provides greater stress relief than one’s laptop or a similar smartphone belonging to someone else

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The Smartphone as a Pacifying Technology. Shiri Melumad, Michel Tuan Pham. Journal of Consumer Research, ucaa005, January 27 2020. https://d...

Exaggerated psychological stress reactivity linked to increase in risk factors for cardiovascular disease; blunted reactivity predicted future increased obesity, greater illness frequency, poorer cognitive ability

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Psychological stress reactivity and future health and disease outcomes: A systematic review of prospective evidence. Anne I. Turner et al . ...

When honest people cheat, and cheaters are honest: Cognitive control processes override our moral default

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When honest people cheat, and cheaters are honest: Cognitive control processes override our moral default. Sebastian P.H. Speer, Ale Smidts,...

Highly educated parents are more able to preserve their family's elite status in the next generation

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The social and genetic inheritance of educational attainment: Genes, parental education, and educational expansion. Meng-Jung Lin. Social Sc...

People do not realize that failures contain useful information; therefore, people undershare failures in and beyond organizations settings

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Hidden failures. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Volume 157, March 2020, Page...

Pseudo-profound statement attributed to the Dalai Lama seems even more profound: "We are non‐local beings that localize as a dot then inflate to become non‐local again. The universe is mirrored in us."

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“Who said it?” How contextual information influences perceived profundity of meaningful quotes and pseudo‐profound bullshit. Vukašin Gligori...
Friday, January 31, 2020

Lying to appear honest: People may lie to appear honest in cases where the truth is highly favorable to them, such that telling the truth might make them appear dishonest to others

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Choshen-Hillel, S., Shaw, A., & Caruso, E. M. (2020). Lying to appear honest. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Jan 2020. htt...

Sexual orientation explains < 1% of the variation in consumption-favoring behaviors; the common belief of a stylish & extremely wealthy gay consumer must be questioned; differences decrease with age

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Sexual orientation and consumption: Why and when do homosexuals and heterosexuals consume differently? Martin Eisend, Erik Hermann. Internat...

The art of flirting: What are the traits that make it effective?

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The art of flirting: What are the traits that make it effective? Menelaos Apostolou, Christoforos Christoforou. Personality and Individual D...

Search for meaning is positively associated with presence of meaning only for those with greater maladaptive traits; & the search for meaning in adverse circumstances appears to be more effective than in benign conditions

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Is the Search for Meaning Related to the Presence of Meaning? Moderators of the Longitudinal Relationship. Steven Tsun-Wai Chu & Helene ...

Drug makers feel burned: By the time the vaccine was ready—after the peak of the outbreak—public fear of the new flu had subsided; many people didn’t want the vaccine, and some countries refused to take their full orders

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From 2018... Who will answer the call in the next outbreak? Drug makers feel burned by string of vaccine pleas. Helen Branswell. Stat News, ...

Predictive Pattern Classification Can Distinguish Gender Identity Subtypes (the subjective perception of oneself belonging to a certain gender) from Behavior and Brain Imaging

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Predictive Pattern Classification Can Distinguish Gender Identity Subtypes from Behavior and Brain Imaging. Benjamin Clemens, Birgit Derntl,...
Thursday, January 30, 2020

The youngest students in a class are less satisfied with their life, have worse general health, more frequent psychosomatic complaints and are more likely overweight

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Younger, Dissatisfied, and Unhealthy - Relative Age in Adolescence. L. Fumarco, S. Baert, F. Sarracino. Economics & Human Biology, Janua...

Neanderthal genes might have helped Homo sapiens adjust to life beyond Africa, influencing skin pigmentation towards fairer skin & then increased life expectancy (at a cost of more skin cancer)

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Women with fair phenotypes seem to confer a survival advantage in a low UV milieu. A nested matched case control study. Pelle G. Lindqvist e...