Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Congenital amusia (tone deafness) is a lifelong musical disorder that affects 4% of the population (single estimate based on a single test from 1980); it is more 1.5pct of pop. and is highly heritable

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Peretz, Isabelle, and Dominique T. Vuvan. 2020. “Prevalence of Congenital Amusia.” PsyArXiv. February 12. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2017.15 Abstract:...

Domestic cats spontaneously discriminate between the number and size of potential prey in a way that can be interpreted as adaptive for a lone-hunting, obligate carnivore, and show complex levels of risk–reward analysis

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Revisiting more or less: influence of numerosity and size on potential prey choice in the domestic cat. Jimena Chacha, Péter Szenczi, Daniel...

Non-reproducible: Evidence that social network index is associated with gray matter volume from a data-driven investigation

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No strong evidence that social network index is associated with gray matter volume from a data-driven investigation. Chujun Lin et al. Corte...

Racial slurs “reclaimed” by the targeted group convey affiliation rather than derogation; authors found that the intergroup use of reappropriated slurs was perceived quite positively by both White and Black individuals

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Perceptions of Racial Slurs Used by Black Individuals Toward White Individuals: Derogation or Affiliation? Conor J. O’Dea, Donald A. Saucier...

Calling into question that contagious yawning is a signal of empathy: No evidence of familiarity, gender or prosociality biases in dogs

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Contagious yawning is not a signal of empathy: no evidence of familiarity, gender or prosociality biases in dogs. Patrick Neilands et al. ...

Of what they thought were 4 important predictors of subjective well-being (marriage, employment, prosociality, & life meaning), marriage showed only very small effects, & employment had larger effects that peaked around age 50 years

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Subjective Well-Being Around the World: Trends and Predictors Across the Life Span. Andrew T. Jebb. Psychological Science, February 11, 20...

You may be more original than you think: Predictable biases in self-assessment of originality

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You may be more original than you think: Predictable biases in self-assessment of originality. Yael Sidi et al. Acta Psychologica, Volume 20...

Contrary to common views, use of social media and online portals fosters more visits to news sites and a greater variety of news sites visited

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How social network sites and other online intermediaries increase exposure to news. Michael Scharkow, Frank Mangold, Sebastian Stier, and Jo...
Tuesday, February 11, 2020

We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did nonreligious people; but in nonreligious cultural contexts, religiosity conferred no such longevity

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Ebert, T., Gebauer, J. E., Talman, J. R., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2020). Religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts: A ...

Managing Systemic Financial Crises: New Lessons and Lessons Relearned

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Managing Systemic Financial Crises: New Lessons and Lessons Relearned. Marina Moretti; Marc C Dobler; Alvaro Piris. IMF Departmental Paper N...

Those who share our musical taste are likely to be regarded as in-group members and will be subject to in-group favoritism according to our self-esteem and how strongly we identify with our fellow music fans

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Musical taste, in-group favoritism, and social identity theory: Re-testing the predictions of the self-esteem hypothesis. Adam J Lonsdale. P...

The higher the participants rated their own IQ, the higher their own ratings of EQ (EmotionalQ), attractiveness, and health; men overestimated more their IQ, attractiveness & health than women did, but not their EQ

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Correlates of Self-Estimated Intelligence. Adrian Furnham and Simmy Grover. J. Intell. 2020, 8(1), 6; February 10 2020. https://www.mdpi.com...

Non-reproducible: About a decade ago, a study documented that conservatives have stronger physiological responses to threatening stimuli than liberals

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Conservatives and liberals have similar physiological responses to threats. Bert N. Bakker, Gijs Schumacher, Claire Gothreau & Kevin Arc...

People rated their own faces as more attractive than others rated them, no matter if original or artificially rendered more masculine or feminine

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Influence of sexual dimorphism on the attractiveness evaluation of one’s own face. Zhaoyi Li, Zhiguo Hu, Hongyan Liu. Vision Research, Volum...

We examined perceptions of the Dark Triad traits in 6 occupations; participants believed musicians & lawyers should be high in the Dark Triad, and teachers should be high in narcissism, but low in Machiavellianism & psychopathy

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Insert a joke about lawyers: Evaluating preferences for the Dark Triad traits in six occupations. Cameron S. Kay, Gerard Saucier. Personalit...

Cultured meat safety: Unlike conventional meat, cultured muscle cells may be safer, without any adjacent digestive organs; but with this high level of cell multiplication, some dysregulation is likely as happens in cancer cells

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The Myth of Cultured Meat: A Review. Sghaier Chriki and Jean-François Hocquette. Front. Nutr., February 7 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut...
Monday, February 10, 2020

Mexican drug cartels: We see a positive connection between cartel presence & better socioeconomic outcomes at the municipality level; results help understand why drug lords have great support in the communities in which they operate

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Following the poppy trail: Origins and consequences of Mexican drug cartels. Tommy E. Murphy, Martín A. Rossi. Journal of Development Econom...

Increasingly, evidence suggests aggressive video games have little impact on player behavior in the realm of aggression and violence, but most professional guild policy statements failed to reflect these data

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Aggressive Video Games Research Emerges from its Replication Crisis (Sort of). Christopher J Ferguson. Current Opinion in Psychology, Februa...

The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake: Loneliness, lack of support, fragility

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The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake. David Brooks. The Atlantic. Mar 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-fam...

Human populations vary substantially & unexpectedly in both the range and pattern of facial sexually dimorphic traits; European & South American populations display larger levels of facial sexual dimorphism than African populations

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Kleisner, Karel, Petr Tureček, S. Craig Roberts, Jan Havlicek, Jaroslava V. Valentova, Robert M. Akoko, Juan David Leongómez, et al. 2020. “...

Caffeine improved global processing, without effect on local information processing, alerting, spatial attention & executive or phonological functions; also was accompanied by faster text reading speed of meaningful sentences

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Caffeine improves text reading and global perception. Sandro Franceschini et al. Journal of Psychopharmacology, October 3, 2019. https://doi...

Unbearable psychological pain and hopelessness are overwhelmingly important motivations for suicidal behavior, both for men and women

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Motivations for Suicide: Converging Evidence from Clinical and Community Samples. Alexis M. May, Mikayla C. Pachkowski, E. David Klonsky. Jo...

Minimal Relationship between Local Gyrification (wrinkles in the cerebral cortex) and General Cognitive Ability in Humans

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Minimal Relationship between Local Gyrification and General Cognitive Ability in Humans. Samuel R Mathias et al. Cerebral Cortex, bhz319, Fe...

Those who consumed 200 mg of caffeine showed significantly enhanced problem-solving abilities; caffeine had no significant effects on creative generation or on working memory

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Zabelina, Darya, and Paul Silvia. 2020. “Percolating Ideas: The Effects of Caffeine on Creative Thinking and Problem Solving.” PsyArXiv. Feb...