Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Friendship jealousy is sensitive to the value of the threatened friendship, strongly calibrated to cues that one is being replaced, & ultimately motivates behavior aimed at countering third-party threats to friendship (“friend guarding”)

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Krems, J. A., Williams, K. E. G., Aktipis, A., & Kenrick, D. T. (2020). Friendship jealousy: One tool for maintaining friendships in the...

Out-of-partnership births in East and West Germany: Single women in East Germany are significantly more likely to give birth to a child than single women in West Germany, partly predating 1945

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Out-of-partnership births in East and West Germany. Uwe Jirjahn & Cornelia Chadi. Review of Economics of the Household volume 18, pages8...

Religious individuals assert superior, but false, knowledge on domains highly relevant to religiosity (e.g., international health charities, humanitarian aid organizations)

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Do Religious People Self-Enhance? Constantine Sedikides, Jochen E Gebauer. Current Opinion in Psychology, August 10 2020. https://doi.org/10...
Monday, August 10, 2020

People are somewhat conflicted in their evaluations of those smarter than they are whereas similarly and less intelligent people presented less of an apparent conflict in evaluations (which was unfavorable)

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The potentially conflicted evaluations of others based on their intelligence. Peter K. Jonason, Jamie Hughes. Personality and Individual Dif...

Sexual minority men showed statistically higher levels of body dissatisfaction than heterosexual men, with no difference among gay & bisexual men; sexual minority & heterosexual women had no difference in body dissatisfaction

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Body dissatisfaction and sexual orientations: A quantitative synthesis of 30 years research findings. Jinbo He et al. Clinical Psychology Re...

Physical characteristics of politicians such as their obesity can be used as proxy variables for political corruption when the latter are not available, for instance at a very local level

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Obesity of politicians and corruption in post‐Soviet countries. Pavlo Blavatskyy. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, July 18 ...

The presence of African American soldiers in the U.K. during World War II reduced anti-minority prejudice, a result of the positive interactions which took place between soldiers and the local population

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Shocking Racial Attitudes: Black G.I.s in Europe. David Schindler, Mark Westcott. The Review of Economic Studies, rdaa039, August 3 2020. ht...

In two studies we tested the hypothesis that observers can accurately distinguish between convicted criminals and matched controls, merely by scrutinizing facial photographs

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The face of crime: Apparent happiness differentiates criminal and non-criminal photos. Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Corcoran & Jason Trent. T...

On Aristotelian virtue, human flourishing, human sexuality & animal instinct, innocence, erotic neutralization & the view that sex is an exceptional aspect of morality

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Childhood ‘Innocence’ is Not Ideal: Virtue Ethics and Child–Adult Sex. Thomas O’Carroll. Sexuality & Culture volume 22, pages1230–1262(2...

Three different strategies used by people to place themselves within an ideologically homogeneous information environment: selective approach, selective avoidance, & the belief in the importance of silencing others

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From 2019... Personality Factors Differentiating Selective Approach, Selective Avoidance, and the Belief in the Importance of Silencing Othe...
Sunday, August 9, 2020

Evidence of a tendency to perceive bodies in static poses as more feminine and bodies in dynamic poses as more masculine; & male bodies were judged more dynamic than female bodies with the same pose

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Motion and Gender-Typing Features Interact in the Perception of Human Bodies. Giulia D’Argenio, Alessandra Finisguerra and Cosimo Urgesi. Fr...

The US has now an active force structure of just 39 maneuver brigades (Army and Marines); only about 13 are combat ready; to add more brigades would require cannibalization of about 25% of the remaining 26 active units

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Israel Versus Anyone: A Military Net Assessment of the Middle East. Kenneth S. Brower. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Mideast...

Why is welfare provision unpopular in China?

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Why is welfare provision unpopular in China? Alex C. H. Chang. Democratization, Jul 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2020.1789966 ...

Contrafreeloading is the willingness of animals to work for food when equivalent food is freely available; seen in laboratory animals (pigeons, rats) & captive wild (bears) & domestic animals (cows, pigs); no sign of contrafreeloading among domestic cats

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Contrafreeloading behavior of cats and its relation to activity. Brandon Han, Mikel Delgado, Melissa Bain. 2020 Animal Behavior Society'...

Facts and Myths about Misperceptions

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Facts and Myths about Misperceptions. Brendan Nyhan. Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 34, Number 3—Summer 2020—Pages 220–236. https:/...
Saturday, August 8, 2020

Country‐level optimism was negatively related to GDP per capita, population density, and democratic norms and positively related to income inequality and perceived corruption

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International Optimism: Correlates and Consequences of Dispositional Optimism across 61 Countries. Erica Baranski  Kate Sweeny  Gwendolyn Ga...

The Political Right Is Not More Credulous: Experimental Evidence Against Asymmetric Motivations to Believe False Political Information

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Is the Political Right More Credulous?: Experimental Evidence Against Asymmetric Motivations to Believe False Political Information. Timothy...

The unexpected small decline in Neuroticism suggests that, during the acute phase of COVID-19, feelings of anxiety and distress may be attributed more to the pandemic than to one’s personality

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Change in five-factor model personality traits during the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic. Angelina R. Sutin et al. PLoS, August 6 2...