Intrasexually selected weapons. Alejandro Rico‐Guevara, Kristiina J. Hurme. Biological Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12436
ABSTRACT: We propose a practical concept that distinguishes the particular kind of weaponry that has evolved to be used in combat between individuals of the same species and sex, which we term intrasexually selected weapons (ISWs). We present a treatise of ISWs in nature, aiming to understand their distinction and evolution from other secondary sex traits, including from ‘sexually selected weapons’, and from sexually dimorphic and monomorphic weaponry. We focus on the subset of secondary sex traits that are the result of same‐sex combat, defined here as ISWs, provide not previously reported evolutionary patterns, and offer hypotheses to answer questions such as: why have only some species evolved weapons to fight for the opposite sex or breeding resources? We examined traits that seem to have evolved as ISWs in the entire animal phylogeny, restricting the classification of ISW to traits that are only present or enlarged in adults of one of the sexes, and are used as weapons during intrasexual fights. Because of the absence of behavioural data and, in many cases, lack of sexually discriminated series from juveniles to adults, we exclude the fossil record from this review. We merge morphological, ontogenetic, and behavioural information, and for the first time thoroughly review the tree of life to identify separate evolution of ISWs. We found that ISWs are only found in bilateral animals, appearing independently in nematodes, various groups of arthropods, and vertebrates. Our review sets a reference point to explore other taxa that we identify with potential ISWs for which behavioural or morphological studies are warranted. We establish that most ISWs come in pairs, are located in or near the head, are endo‐ or exoskeletal modifications, are overdeveloped structures compared with those found in females, are modified feeding structures and/or locomotor appendages, are most common in terrestrial taxa, are frequently used to guard females, territories, or both, and are also used in signalling displays to deter rivals and/or attract females. We also found that most taxa lack ISWs, that females of only a few species possess better‐developed weapons than males, that the cases of independent evolution of ISWs are not evenly distributed across the phylogeny, and that animals possessing the most developed ISWs have non‐hunting habits (e.g. herbivores) or are faunivores that prey on very small prey relative to their body size (e.g. insectivores). Bringing together perspectives from studies on a variety of taxa, we conceptualize that there are five ways in which a sexually dimorphic trait, apart from the primary sex traits, can be fixed: sexual selection, fecundity selection, parental role division, differential niche occupation between the sexes, and interference competition. We discuss these trends and the factors involved in the evolution of intrasexually selected weaponry in nature.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Moral character of similar persons (in social beliefs) was perceived as much higher than that of dissimilar ones (effect was large); similar persons were perceived as more trustworthy than dissimilar ones (also large effect)
The mere liking effect: Attitudinal influences on attributions of moral character. Konrad Bocian et al. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 79, November 2018, Pages 9–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.06.007
Highlights
• The article bridges two classic areas of psychology: moral judgments and attitudes.
• Attitudes strongly influence judgments of moral character.
• These influences are entirely mediated by changes in liking of the judged persons.
• Changes in mood do not play such a role.
• Attitudinal influences might lay at the core of moral character perceptions.
Abstract: People believe that their moral judgments are well-justified and as objective as scientific facts. Still, dual-process models of judgment provide strong theoretical reasons to expect that in reality moral judgments are substantially influenced by highly subjective factors such as attitudes. In four experiments (N = 645) we provide evidence that similarity-dissimilarity of beliefs, mere exposure, and facial mimicry influence judgments of moral character measured in various ways. These influences are mediated by changes in liking of the judged persons, suggesting that attitudinal influences lay at the core of moral character perceptions. Changes in mood do not play such a role. This is the first line of studies showing that attitudes influence moral judgments in addition to frequently studied discrete emotions. It is also the first research evidencing the affective influences on judgments of moral character.
Keywords: Moral judgments; Moral character; Attitudes; Attribution
h/t: Rolf Degen https://twitter.com/DegenRolf
Highlights
• The article bridges two classic areas of psychology: moral judgments and attitudes.
• Attitudes strongly influence judgments of moral character.
• These influences are entirely mediated by changes in liking of the judged persons.
• Changes in mood do not play such a role.
• Attitudinal influences might lay at the core of moral character perceptions.
Abstract: People believe that their moral judgments are well-justified and as objective as scientific facts. Still, dual-process models of judgment provide strong theoretical reasons to expect that in reality moral judgments are substantially influenced by highly subjective factors such as attitudes. In four experiments (N = 645) we provide evidence that similarity-dissimilarity of beliefs, mere exposure, and facial mimicry influence judgments of moral character measured in various ways. These influences are mediated by changes in liking of the judged persons, suggesting that attitudinal influences lay at the core of moral character perceptions. Changes in mood do not play such a role. This is the first line of studies showing that attitudes influence moral judgments in addition to frequently studied discrete emotions. It is also the first research evidencing the affective influences on judgments of moral character.
Keywords: Moral judgments; Moral character; Attitudes; Attribution
h/t: Rolf Degen https://twitter.com/DegenRolf
The Myth of the Liberal Order, by Graham Allison
The Myth of the Liberal Order: From Historical Accident to Conventional Wisdom. Graham Allison. Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-06-14/myth-liberal-order
Among the debates that have swept the U.S. foreign policy community since the beginning of the Trump administration, alarm about the fate of the liberal international rules-based order has emerged as one of the few fixed points. From the international relations scholar G. John Ikenberry’s claim that “for seven decades the world has been dominated by a western liberal order” to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s call in the final days of the Obama administration to “act urgently to defend the liberal international order,” this banner waves atop most discussions of the United States’ role in the world.
About this order, the reigning consensus makes three core claims. First, that the liberal order has been the principal cause of the so-called long peace among great powers for the past seven decades. Second, that constructing this order has been the main driver of U.S. engagement in the world over that period. And third, that U.S. President Donald Trump is the primary threat to the liberal order—and thus to world peace. The political scientist Joseph Nye, for example, has written, “The demonstrable success of the order in helping secure and stabilize the world over the past seven decades has led to a strong consensus that defending, deepening, and extending this system has been and continues to be the central task of U.S. foreign policy.” Nye has gone so far as to assert: “I am not worried by the rise of China. I am more worried by the rise of Trump.”
Although all these propositions contain some truth, each is more wrong than right. The “long peace” was the not the result of a liberal order but the byproduct of the dangerous balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States during the four and a half decades of the Cold War and then of a brief period of U.S. dominance. U.S. engagement in the world has been driven not by the desire to advance liberalism abroad or to build an international order but by the need to do what was necessary to preserve liberal democracy at home. And although Trump is undermining key elements of the current order, he is far from the biggest threat to global stability.
These misconceptions about the liberal order’s causes and consequences lead its advocates to call for the United States to strengthen the order by clinging to pillars from the past and rolling back authoritarianism around the globe. Yet rather than seek to return to an imagined past in which the United States molded the world in its image, Washington should limit its efforts to ensuring sufficient order abroad to allow it to concentrate on reconstructing a viable liberal democracy at home.
CONCEPTUAL JELL-O
The ambiguity of each of the terms in the phrase “liberal international rules-based order” creates a slipperiness that allows the concept to be applied to almost any situation. When, in 2017, members of the World Economic Forum in Davos crowned Chinese President Xi Jinping the leader of the liberal economic order—even though he heads the most protectionist, mercantilist, and predatory major economy in the world—they revealed that, at least in this context, the word “liberal” has come unhinged.
What is more, “rules-based order” is redundant. Order is a condition created by rules and regularity. What proponents of the liberal international rules-based order really mean is an order that embodies good rules, ones that are equal or fair. The United States is said to have designed an order that others willingly embrace and sustain.
Many forget, however, that even the UN Charter, which prohibits nations from using military force against other nations or intervening in their internal affairs, privileges the strong over the weak. Enforcement of the charter’s prohibitions is the preserve of the UN Security Council, on which each of the five great powers has a permanent seat—and a veto. As the Indian strategist C. Raja Mohan has observed, superpowers are “exceptional”; that is, when they decide it suits their purpose, they make exceptions for themselves. The fact that in the first 17 years of this century, the self-proclaimed leader of the liberal order invaded two countries, conducted air strikes and Special Forces raids to kill hundreds of people it unilaterally deemed to be terrorists, and subjected scores of others to “extraordinary rendition,” often without any international legal authority (and sometimes without even national legal authority), speaks for itself.
COLD WAR ORDER
The claim that the liberal order produced the last seven decades of peace overlooks a major fact: the first four of those decades were defined not by a liberal order but by a cold war between two polar opposites. As the historian who named this “long peace” has explained, the international system that prevented great-power war during that time was the unintended consequence of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. In John Lewis Gaddis’ words, “Without anyone’s having designed it, and without any attempt whatever to consider the requirements of justice, the nations of the postwar era lucked into a system of international relations that, because it has been based upon realities of power, has served the cause of order—if not justice—better than one might have expected.”
During the Cold War, both superpowers enlisted allies and clients around the globe, creating what came to be known as a bipolar world. Within each alliance or bloc, order was enforced by the superpower (as Hungarians and Czechs discovered when they tried to defect in 1956 and 1968, respectively, and as the British and French learned when they defied U.S. wishes in 1956, during the Suez crisis). Order emerged from a balance of power, which allowed the two superpowers to develop the constraints that preserved what U.S. President John F. Kennedy called, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the “precarious status quo.”
What moved a country that had for almost two centuries assiduously avoided entangling military alliances, refused to maintain a large standing military during peacetime, left international economics to others, and rejected the League of Nations to use its soldiers, diplomats, and money to reshape half the world? In a word, fear. The strategists revered by modern U.S. scholars as “the wise men” believed that the Soviet Union posed a greater threat to the United States than Nazism had. As the diplomat George Kennan wrote in his legendary “Long Telegram,” the Soviet Union was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi.” Soviet Communists, Kennan wrote, believed it was necessary that “our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power [was] to be secure.”
Before the nuclear age, such a threat would have required a hot war as intense as the one the United States and its allies had just fought against Nazi Germany. But after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, in 1949, American statesmen began wrestling with the thought that total war as they had known it was becoming obsolete. In the greatest leap of strategic imagination in the history of U.S. foreign policy, they developed a strategy for a form of combat never previously seen, the conduct of war by every means short of physical conflict between the principal combatants.
To prevent a cold conflict from turning hot, they accepted—for the time being—many otherwise unacceptable facts, such as the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. They modulated their competition with mutual constraints that included three noes: no use of nuclear weapons, no overt killing of each other’s soldiers, and no military intervention in the other’s recognized sphere of influence.
American strategists incorporated Western Europe and Japan into this war effort because they saw them as centers of economic and strategic gravity. To this end, the United States launched the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, founded the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and negotiated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to promote global prosperity. And to ensure that Western Europe and Japan remained in active cooperation with the United States, it established NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance.
Each initiative served as a building block in an order designed first and foremost to defeat the Soviet adversary. Had there been no Soviet threat, there would have been no Marshall Plan and no NATO. The United States has never promoted liberalism abroad when it believed that doing so would pose a significant threat to its vital interests at home. Nor has it ever refrained from using military force to protect its interests when the use of force violated international rules. Had there been no Soviet threat, there would have been no Marshall Plan and no Nato.
Nonetheless, when the United States has had the opportunity to advance freedom for others—again, with the important caveat that doing so would involve little risk to itself—it has acted. From the founding of the republic, the nation has embraced radical, universalistic ideals. In proclaiming that “all” people “are created equal,” the Declaration of Independence did not mean just those living in the 13 colonies.
It was no accident that in reconstructing its defeated adversaries Germany and Japan and shoring up its allies in Western Europe, the United States sought to build liberal democracies that would embrace shared values as well as shared interests. The ideological campaign against the Soviet Union hammered home fundamental, if exaggerated, differences between “the free world” and “the evil empire.” Moreover, American policymakers knew that in mobilizing and sustaining support in Congress and among the public, appeals to values are as persuasive as arguments about interests.
In his memoir, Present at the Creation, former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of the postwar effort, explained the thinking that motivated U.S. foreign policy. The prospect of Europe falling under Soviet control through a series of “‘settlements by default’ to Soviet pressure” required the “creation of strength throughout the free world” that would “show the Soviet leaders by successful containment that they could not hope to expand their influence throughout the world.” Persuading Congress and the American public to support this undertaking, Acheson acknowledged, sometimes required making the case “clearer than truth.”
UNIPOLAR ORDER
In the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s campaign to “bury communism,”Americans were understandably caught up in a surge of triumphalism. The adversary on which they had focused for over 40 years stood by as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and Germany reunified. It then joined with the United States in a unanimous UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to throw the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. As the iron fist of Soviet oppression withdrew, free people in Eastern Europe embraced market economies and democracy. U.S. President George H. W. Bush declared a “new world order.” Hereafter, under a banner of “engage and enlarge,” the United States would welcome a world clamoring to join a growing liberal order.
Writing about the power of ideas, the economist John Maynard Keynes noted, “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” In this case, American politicians were following a script offered by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his best-selling 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama argued that millennia of conflict among ideologies were over. From this point on, all nations would embrace free-market economics to make their citizens rich and democratic governments to make them free. “What we may be witnessing,” he wrote, “is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In 1996, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went even further by proclaiming the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”: “When a country reaches a certain level of economic development, when it has a middle class big enough to support a McDonald’s, it becomes a McDonald’s country, and people in McDonald’s countries don’t like to fight wars; they like to wait in line for burgers.”
This vision led to an odd coupling of neoconservative crusaders on the right and liberal interventionists on the left. Together, they persuaded a succession of U.S. presidents to try to advance the spread of capitalism and liberal democracy through the barrel of a gun. In 1999, Bill Clinton bombed Belgrade to force it to free Kosovo. In 2003, George W. Bush invaded Iraq to topple its president, Saddam Hussein. When his stated rationale for the invasion collapsed after U.S. forces were unable to find weapons of mass destruction, Bush declared a new mission: “to build a lasting democracy that is peaceful and prosperous.” In the words of Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser at the time, “Iraq and Afghanistan are vanguards of this effort to spread democracy and tolerance and freedom throughout the Greater Middle East.” And in 2011, Barack Obama embraced the Arab Spring’s promise to bring democracy to the nations of the Middle East and sought to advance it by bombing Libya and deposing its brutal leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi. Few in Washington paused to note that in each case, the unipolar power was using military force to impose liberalism on countries whose governments could not strike back. Since the world had entered a new chapter of history, lessons from the past about the likely consequences of such behavior were ignored. The end of the Cold War produced a unipolar moment, not a unipolar era.
As is now clear, the end of the Cold War produced a unipolar moment, not a unipolar era. Today, foreign policy elites have woken up to the meteoric rise of an authoritarian China, which now rivals or even surpasses the United States in many domains, and the resurgence of an assertive, illiberal Russian nuclear superpower, which is willing to use its military to change both borders in Europe and the balance of power in the Middle East. More slowly and more painfully, they are discovering that the United States’ share of global power has shrunk. When measured by the yardstick of purchasing power parity, the U.S. economy, which accounted for half of the world’s GDP after World War II, had fallen to less than a quarter of global GDP by the end of the Cold War and stands at just one-seventh today. For a nation whose core strategy has been to overwhelm challenges with resources, this decline calls into question the terms of U.S. leadership.
This rude awakening to the return of history jumps out in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, released at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, respectively. The NDS notes that in the unipolar decades, “the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain.” As a consequence, “we could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.” But today, as the NSS observes, China and Russia “are fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely.” Revisionist powers, it concludes, are “trying to change the international order in their favor.”
THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
During most of the nation’s 242 years, Americans have recognized the necessity to give priority to ensuring freedom at home over advancing aspirations abroad. The Founding Fathers were acutely aware that constructing a government in which free citizens would govern themselves was an uncertain, hazardous undertaking.
Among the hardest questions they confronted was how to create a government powerful enough to ensure Americans’ rights at home and protect them from enemies abroad without making it so powerful that it would abuse its strength.
Their solution, as the presidential scholar Richard Neustadt wrote, was not just a “separation of powers” among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches but “separated institutions sharing power.” The Constitution was an “invitation to struggle.” And presidents, members of Congress, judges, and even journalists have been struggling ever since. The process was not meant to be pretty. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis explained to those frustrated by the delays, gridlock, and even idiocy these checks and balances sometimes produce, the founders’ purpose was “not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.”
From this beginning, the American experiment in self-government has always been ...
Among the debates that have swept the U.S. foreign policy community since the beginning of the Trump administration, alarm about the fate of the liberal international rules-based order has emerged as one of the few fixed points. From the international relations scholar G. John Ikenberry’s claim that “for seven decades the world has been dominated by a western liberal order” to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s call in the final days of the Obama administration to “act urgently to defend the liberal international order,” this banner waves atop most discussions of the United States’ role in the world.
About this order, the reigning consensus makes three core claims. First, that the liberal order has been the principal cause of the so-called long peace among great powers for the past seven decades. Second, that constructing this order has been the main driver of U.S. engagement in the world over that period. And third, that U.S. President Donald Trump is the primary threat to the liberal order—and thus to world peace. The political scientist Joseph Nye, for example, has written, “The demonstrable success of the order in helping secure and stabilize the world over the past seven decades has led to a strong consensus that defending, deepening, and extending this system has been and continues to be the central task of U.S. foreign policy.” Nye has gone so far as to assert: “I am not worried by the rise of China. I am more worried by the rise of Trump.”
Although all these propositions contain some truth, each is more wrong than right. The “long peace” was the not the result of a liberal order but the byproduct of the dangerous balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States during the four and a half decades of the Cold War and then of a brief period of U.S. dominance. U.S. engagement in the world has been driven not by the desire to advance liberalism abroad or to build an international order but by the need to do what was necessary to preserve liberal democracy at home. And although Trump is undermining key elements of the current order, he is far from the biggest threat to global stability.
These misconceptions about the liberal order’s causes and consequences lead its advocates to call for the United States to strengthen the order by clinging to pillars from the past and rolling back authoritarianism around the globe. Yet rather than seek to return to an imagined past in which the United States molded the world in its image, Washington should limit its efforts to ensuring sufficient order abroad to allow it to concentrate on reconstructing a viable liberal democracy at home.
CONCEPTUAL JELL-O
The ambiguity of each of the terms in the phrase “liberal international rules-based order” creates a slipperiness that allows the concept to be applied to almost any situation. When, in 2017, members of the World Economic Forum in Davos crowned Chinese President Xi Jinping the leader of the liberal economic order—even though he heads the most protectionist, mercantilist, and predatory major economy in the world—they revealed that, at least in this context, the word “liberal” has come unhinged.
What is more, “rules-based order” is redundant. Order is a condition created by rules and regularity. What proponents of the liberal international rules-based order really mean is an order that embodies good rules, ones that are equal or fair. The United States is said to have designed an order that others willingly embrace and sustain.
Many forget, however, that even the UN Charter, which prohibits nations from using military force against other nations or intervening in their internal affairs, privileges the strong over the weak. Enforcement of the charter’s prohibitions is the preserve of the UN Security Council, on which each of the five great powers has a permanent seat—and a veto. As the Indian strategist C. Raja Mohan has observed, superpowers are “exceptional”; that is, when they decide it suits their purpose, they make exceptions for themselves. The fact that in the first 17 years of this century, the self-proclaimed leader of the liberal order invaded two countries, conducted air strikes and Special Forces raids to kill hundreds of people it unilaterally deemed to be terrorists, and subjected scores of others to “extraordinary rendition,” often without any international legal authority (and sometimes without even national legal authority), speaks for itself.
COLD WAR ORDER
The claim that the liberal order produced the last seven decades of peace overlooks a major fact: the first four of those decades were defined not by a liberal order but by a cold war between two polar opposites. As the historian who named this “long peace” has explained, the international system that prevented great-power war during that time was the unintended consequence of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. In John Lewis Gaddis’ words, “Without anyone’s having designed it, and without any attempt whatever to consider the requirements of justice, the nations of the postwar era lucked into a system of international relations that, because it has been based upon realities of power, has served the cause of order—if not justice—better than one might have expected.”
During the Cold War, both superpowers enlisted allies and clients around the globe, creating what came to be known as a bipolar world. Within each alliance or bloc, order was enforced by the superpower (as Hungarians and Czechs discovered when they tried to defect in 1956 and 1968, respectively, and as the British and French learned when they defied U.S. wishes in 1956, during the Suez crisis). Order emerged from a balance of power, which allowed the two superpowers to develop the constraints that preserved what U.S. President John F. Kennedy called, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the “precarious status quo.”
What moved a country that had for almost two centuries assiduously avoided entangling military alliances, refused to maintain a large standing military during peacetime, left international economics to others, and rejected the League of Nations to use its soldiers, diplomats, and money to reshape half the world? In a word, fear. The strategists revered by modern U.S. scholars as “the wise men” believed that the Soviet Union posed a greater threat to the United States than Nazism had. As the diplomat George Kennan wrote in his legendary “Long Telegram,” the Soviet Union was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi.” Soviet Communists, Kennan wrote, believed it was necessary that “our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power [was] to be secure.”
Before the nuclear age, such a threat would have required a hot war as intense as the one the United States and its allies had just fought against Nazi Germany. But after the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, in 1949, American statesmen began wrestling with the thought that total war as they had known it was becoming obsolete. In the greatest leap of strategic imagination in the history of U.S. foreign policy, they developed a strategy for a form of combat never previously seen, the conduct of war by every means short of physical conflict between the principal combatants.
To prevent a cold conflict from turning hot, they accepted—for the time being—many otherwise unacceptable facts, such as the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. They modulated their competition with mutual constraints that included three noes: no use of nuclear weapons, no overt killing of each other’s soldiers, and no military intervention in the other’s recognized sphere of influence.
American strategists incorporated Western Europe and Japan into this war effort because they saw them as centers of economic and strategic gravity. To this end, the United States launched the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, founded the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and negotiated the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to promote global prosperity. And to ensure that Western Europe and Japan remained in active cooperation with the United States, it established NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance.
Each initiative served as a building block in an order designed first and foremost to defeat the Soviet adversary. Had there been no Soviet threat, there would have been no Marshall Plan and no NATO. The United States has never promoted liberalism abroad when it believed that doing so would pose a significant threat to its vital interests at home. Nor has it ever refrained from using military force to protect its interests when the use of force violated international rules. Had there been no Soviet threat, there would have been no Marshall Plan and no Nato.
Nonetheless, when the United States has had the opportunity to advance freedom for others—again, with the important caveat that doing so would involve little risk to itself—it has acted. From the founding of the republic, the nation has embraced radical, universalistic ideals. In proclaiming that “all” people “are created equal,” the Declaration of Independence did not mean just those living in the 13 colonies.
It was no accident that in reconstructing its defeated adversaries Germany and Japan and shoring up its allies in Western Europe, the United States sought to build liberal democracies that would embrace shared values as well as shared interests. The ideological campaign against the Soviet Union hammered home fundamental, if exaggerated, differences between “the free world” and “the evil empire.” Moreover, American policymakers knew that in mobilizing and sustaining support in Congress and among the public, appeals to values are as persuasive as arguments about interests.
In his memoir, Present at the Creation, former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, an architect of the postwar effort, explained the thinking that motivated U.S. foreign policy. The prospect of Europe falling under Soviet control through a series of “‘settlements by default’ to Soviet pressure” required the “creation of strength throughout the free world” that would “show the Soviet leaders by successful containment that they could not hope to expand their influence throughout the world.” Persuading Congress and the American public to support this undertaking, Acheson acknowledged, sometimes required making the case “clearer than truth.”
UNIPOLAR ORDER
In the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s campaign to “bury communism,”Americans were understandably caught up in a surge of triumphalism. The adversary on which they had focused for over 40 years stood by as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and Germany reunified. It then joined with the United States in a unanimous UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to throw the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. As the iron fist of Soviet oppression withdrew, free people in Eastern Europe embraced market economies and democracy. U.S. President George H. W. Bush declared a “new world order.” Hereafter, under a banner of “engage and enlarge,” the United States would welcome a world clamoring to join a growing liberal order.
Writing about the power of ideas, the economist John Maynard Keynes noted, “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” In this case, American politicians were following a script offered by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his best-selling 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama argued that millennia of conflict among ideologies were over. From this point on, all nations would embrace free-market economics to make their citizens rich and democratic governments to make them free. “What we may be witnessing,” he wrote, “is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In 1996, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman went even further by proclaiming the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”: “When a country reaches a certain level of economic development, when it has a middle class big enough to support a McDonald’s, it becomes a McDonald’s country, and people in McDonald’s countries don’t like to fight wars; they like to wait in line for burgers.”
This vision led to an odd coupling of neoconservative crusaders on the right and liberal interventionists on the left. Together, they persuaded a succession of U.S. presidents to try to advance the spread of capitalism and liberal democracy through the barrel of a gun. In 1999, Bill Clinton bombed Belgrade to force it to free Kosovo. In 2003, George W. Bush invaded Iraq to topple its president, Saddam Hussein. When his stated rationale for the invasion collapsed after U.S. forces were unable to find weapons of mass destruction, Bush declared a new mission: “to build a lasting democracy that is peaceful and prosperous.” In the words of Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser at the time, “Iraq and Afghanistan are vanguards of this effort to spread democracy and tolerance and freedom throughout the Greater Middle East.” And in 2011, Barack Obama embraced the Arab Spring’s promise to bring democracy to the nations of the Middle East and sought to advance it by bombing Libya and deposing its brutal leader, Muammar al-Qaddafi. Few in Washington paused to note that in each case, the unipolar power was using military force to impose liberalism on countries whose governments could not strike back. Since the world had entered a new chapter of history, lessons from the past about the likely consequences of such behavior were ignored. The end of the Cold War produced a unipolar moment, not a unipolar era.
As is now clear, the end of the Cold War produced a unipolar moment, not a unipolar era. Today, foreign policy elites have woken up to the meteoric rise of an authoritarian China, which now rivals or even surpasses the United States in many domains, and the resurgence of an assertive, illiberal Russian nuclear superpower, which is willing to use its military to change both borders in Europe and the balance of power in the Middle East. More slowly and more painfully, they are discovering that the United States’ share of global power has shrunk. When measured by the yardstick of purchasing power parity, the U.S. economy, which accounted for half of the world’s GDP after World War II, had fallen to less than a quarter of global GDP by the end of the Cold War and stands at just one-seventh today. For a nation whose core strategy has been to overwhelm challenges with resources, this decline calls into question the terms of U.S. leadership.
This rude awakening to the return of history jumps out in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, released at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, respectively. The NDS notes that in the unipolar decades, “the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain.” As a consequence, “we could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.” But today, as the NSS observes, China and Russia “are fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely.” Revisionist powers, it concludes, are “trying to change the international order in their favor.”
THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
During most of the nation’s 242 years, Americans have recognized the necessity to give priority to ensuring freedom at home over advancing aspirations abroad. The Founding Fathers were acutely aware that constructing a government in which free citizens would govern themselves was an uncertain, hazardous undertaking.
Among the hardest questions they confronted was how to create a government powerful enough to ensure Americans’ rights at home and protect them from enemies abroad without making it so powerful that it would abuse its strength.
Their solution, as the presidential scholar Richard Neustadt wrote, was not just a “separation of powers” among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches but “separated institutions sharing power.” The Constitution was an “invitation to struggle.” And presidents, members of Congress, judges, and even journalists have been struggling ever since. The process was not meant to be pretty. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis explained to those frustrated by the delays, gridlock, and even idiocy these checks and balances sometimes produce, the founders’ purpose was “not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.”
From this beginning, the American experiment in self-government has always been ...
To overcome the feeling of eeriness of own-voice recordings, some have suggested equalization of the recorded voice with various types of filters; but there is no general filter that can represent own voice for everyone, and the uncanny valley does not exist for own voice, specifically
Auditory traits of "own voice". Marino Kimura, Yuko Yotsumoto. PLOS June 26, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199443
Abstract: People perceive their recorded voice differently from their actively spoken voice. The uncanny valley theory proposes that as an object approaches humanlike characteristics, there is an increase in the sense of familiarity; however, eventually a point is reached where the object becomes strangely similar and makes us feel uneasy. The feeling of discomfort experienced when people hear their recorded voice may correspond to the floor of the proposed uncanny valley. To overcome the feeling of eeriness of own-voice recordings, previous studies have suggested equalization of the recorded voice with various types of filters, such as step, bandpass, and low-pass, yet the effectiveness of these filters has not been evaluated. To address this, the aim of experiment 1 was to identify what type of voice recording was the most representative of one’s own voice. The voice recordings were presented in five different conditions: unadjusted recorded voice, step filtered voice, bandpass filtered voice, low-pass filtered voice, and a voice for which the participants freely adjusted the parameters. We found large individual differences in the most representative own-voice filter. In order to consider roles of sense of agency, experiment 2 investigated if lip-synching would influence the rating of own voice. The result suggested lip-synching did not affect own voice ratings. In experiment 3, based on the assumption that the voices used in previous experiments corresponded to continuous representations of non-own voice to own voice, the existence of an uncanny valley was examined. Familiarity, eeriness, and the sense of own voice were rated. The result did not support the existence of an uncanny valley. Taken together, the experiments led us to the following conclusions: there is no general filter that can represent own voice for everyone, sense of agency has no effect on own voice rating, and the uncanny valley does not exist for own voice, specifically.
Abstract: People perceive their recorded voice differently from their actively spoken voice. The uncanny valley theory proposes that as an object approaches humanlike characteristics, there is an increase in the sense of familiarity; however, eventually a point is reached where the object becomes strangely similar and makes us feel uneasy. The feeling of discomfort experienced when people hear their recorded voice may correspond to the floor of the proposed uncanny valley. To overcome the feeling of eeriness of own-voice recordings, previous studies have suggested equalization of the recorded voice with various types of filters, such as step, bandpass, and low-pass, yet the effectiveness of these filters has not been evaluated. To address this, the aim of experiment 1 was to identify what type of voice recording was the most representative of one’s own voice. The voice recordings were presented in five different conditions: unadjusted recorded voice, step filtered voice, bandpass filtered voice, low-pass filtered voice, and a voice for which the participants freely adjusted the parameters. We found large individual differences in the most representative own-voice filter. In order to consider roles of sense of agency, experiment 2 investigated if lip-synching would influence the rating of own voice. The result suggested lip-synching did not affect own voice ratings. In experiment 3, based on the assumption that the voices used in previous experiments corresponded to continuous representations of non-own voice to own voice, the existence of an uncanny valley was examined. Familiarity, eeriness, and the sense of own voice were rated. The result did not support the existence of an uncanny valley. Taken together, the experiments led us to the following conclusions: there is no general filter that can represent own voice for everyone, sense of agency has no effect on own voice rating, and the uncanny valley does not exist for own voice, specifically.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Parents were more likely than their daughters to choose an unattractive, but wealthy mate for the daughters, but they also tended to shy away from a wealthy plus attractive mate
Parent–offspring conflict over mate choice: An experimental study in China. Jeanne Bovet et al. British Journal of Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12319
Abstract: Both parents and offspring have evolved mating preferences that enable them to select mates and children‐in‐law to maximize their inclusive fitness. The theory of parent–offspring conflict predicts that preferences for potential mates may differ between parents and offspring: individuals are expected to value biological quality more in their own mates than in their offspring's mates and to value investment potential more in their offspring's mates than in their own mates. We tested this hypothesis in China using a naturalistic ‘marriage market’ where parents actively search for marital partners for their offspring. Parents gather at a public park to advertise the characteristics of their adult children, looking for a potential son or daughter‐in‐law. We presented 589 parents and young adults from the city of Kunming (Yunnan, China) with hypothetical mating candidates varying in their levels of income (proxy for investment potential) and physical attractiveness (proxy for biological quality). We found some evidence of a parent–offspring conflict over mate choice, but only in the case of daughters, who evaluated physical attractiveness as more important than parents. We also found an effect of the mating candidate's sex, as physical attractiveness was deemed more valuable in a female potential mate by parents and offspring alike.
Rolf Degen summarizing (https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1011602601840906240): Parents were more likely than their daughters to choose an unattractive, but wealthy mate for the daughters, but they also tended to shy away from a wealthy plus attractive mate
Abstract: Both parents and offspring have evolved mating preferences that enable them to select mates and children‐in‐law to maximize their inclusive fitness. The theory of parent–offspring conflict predicts that preferences for potential mates may differ between parents and offspring: individuals are expected to value biological quality more in their own mates than in their offspring's mates and to value investment potential more in their offspring's mates than in their own mates. We tested this hypothesis in China using a naturalistic ‘marriage market’ where parents actively search for marital partners for their offspring. Parents gather at a public park to advertise the characteristics of their adult children, looking for a potential son or daughter‐in‐law. We presented 589 parents and young adults from the city of Kunming (Yunnan, China) with hypothetical mating candidates varying in their levels of income (proxy for investment potential) and physical attractiveness (proxy for biological quality). We found some evidence of a parent–offspring conflict over mate choice, but only in the case of daughters, who evaluated physical attractiveness as more important than parents. We also found an effect of the mating candidate's sex, as physical attractiveness was deemed more valuable in a female potential mate by parents and offspring alike.
Rolf Degen summarizing (https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1011602601840906240): Parents were more likely than their daughters to choose an unattractive, but wealthy mate for the daughters, but they also tended to shy away from a wealthy plus attractive mate
Self-perceived effects of pornography consumption among heterosexual men
Miller, D. J., Hald, G. M., & Kidd, G. (2018). Self-perceived effects of pornography consumption among heterosexual men. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 19(3), 469-476. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/men0000112
Abstract: Pornography has been identified as playing an increasingly important role in the sexual socialization of men. However, relatively little attention has been paid to men’s perceptions of their own pornography consumption. This study investigated self-perceived effects of pornography consumption among an online sample of heterosexual men (N = 312). The study used a short form version of the Pornography Consumption Effects Scale (PCES–SF). The PCES–SF measures both self-perceived positive and negative effects of pornography consumption across the domains of sex life, attitudes toward sex, life in general, perceptions, and attitudes toward the opposite gender, and sexual knowledge. Level of pornography use (measured in terms of frequency of use and average length of use) was positively predictive of both self-perceived positive and negative effects of pornography consumption. Those who indicated that they had never been regular users of pornography reported more negative effects than regular users. Older participants reported fewer negative effects than younger participants, even after controlling for level of pornography use. However, the relationship between age and perceived positive effects was nonsignificant. Religiosity was positively predictive of perceived negative effects, but unrelated to actual level of use. Overall, the sample perceived pornography to have a significantly greater positive than negative effect on their lives. This research is part of a growing body of literature that suggests that most men consider pornography to have a positive impact on their sexual self-schema and lives more generally.
Abstract: Pornography has been identified as playing an increasingly important role in the sexual socialization of men. However, relatively little attention has been paid to men’s perceptions of their own pornography consumption. This study investigated self-perceived effects of pornography consumption among an online sample of heterosexual men (N = 312). The study used a short form version of the Pornography Consumption Effects Scale (PCES–SF). The PCES–SF measures both self-perceived positive and negative effects of pornography consumption across the domains of sex life, attitudes toward sex, life in general, perceptions, and attitudes toward the opposite gender, and sexual knowledge. Level of pornography use (measured in terms of frequency of use and average length of use) was positively predictive of both self-perceived positive and negative effects of pornography consumption. Those who indicated that they had never been regular users of pornography reported more negative effects than regular users. Older participants reported fewer negative effects than younger participants, even after controlling for level of pornography use. However, the relationship between age and perceived positive effects was nonsignificant. Religiosity was positively predictive of perceived negative effects, but unrelated to actual level of use. Overall, the sample perceived pornography to have a significantly greater positive than negative effect on their lives. This research is part of a growing body of literature that suggests that most men consider pornography to have a positive impact on their sexual self-schema and lives more generally.
Psychology of Men & Masculinity: Eating meat makes you sexy / Conformity to dietary gender norms and attractiveness
Timeo, S., & Suitner, C. (2018). Eating meat makes you sexy: Conformity to dietary gender norms and attractiveness. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 19(3), 418-429. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/men0000119
Abstract: Past research has highlighted links between meat consumption and masculine gender role norms such that meat consumers are generally attributed more masculine traits than their vegetable-consuming counterparts. However, the direct link between gender roles and men’s food choices has been somewhat neglected in the literature. Three studies conducted in Italy investigated this link between meat and masculinity. Studies 1 and 2 analyzed female mating preference for vegetarian and omnivorous partners, confirming that women preferred omnivorous men (Study 1 and 2), rated them as more attractive (Study 1 and 2), and felt more positive about them (Study 1) than vegetarians. Moreover Study 2 showed that the attribution of masculinity mediated this relationship, such that vegetarian men were considered less attractive because they were perceived as less masculine. Study 3 tested the relationship between the endorsement of food-related gender norms and food choices in a sample of Italian men. The results showed that men who perceived vegetarianism as feminine preferred meat-based dishes for themselves and expected their female partners to choose vegetarian dishes. Together, these findings show that gender role norms prescribing that men eat meat are actively maintained by both women and men and do in fact guide men’s food choices.
Abstract: Past research has highlighted links between meat consumption and masculine gender role norms such that meat consumers are generally attributed more masculine traits than their vegetable-consuming counterparts. However, the direct link between gender roles and men’s food choices has been somewhat neglected in the literature. Three studies conducted in Italy investigated this link between meat and masculinity. Studies 1 and 2 analyzed female mating preference for vegetarian and omnivorous partners, confirming that women preferred omnivorous men (Study 1 and 2), rated them as more attractive (Study 1 and 2), and felt more positive about them (Study 1) than vegetarians. Moreover Study 2 showed that the attribution of masculinity mediated this relationship, such that vegetarian men were considered less attractive because they were perceived as less masculine. Study 3 tested the relationship between the endorsement of food-related gender norms and food choices in a sample of Italian men. The results showed that men who perceived vegetarianism as feminine preferred meat-based dishes for themselves and expected their female partners to choose vegetarian dishes. Together, these findings show that gender role norms prescribing that men eat meat are actively maintained by both women and men and do in fact guide men’s food choices.
Low knowledge about autism is associated with thinking one knows more than experts; “overconfidence” is associated with anti-vaccine policy attitudes and with support for non-experts’ role in policymaking
Knowing less but presuming more: Dunning-Kruger effects and the endorsement of anti-vaccine policy attitudes. Matthew Motta, Timothy Callaghan, Steven Sylvester. Social Science & Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.06.032
Highlights
• Low knowledge about autism is associated with thinking one knows more than experts.
• “Overconfidence” is associated with anti-vaccine policy attitudes.
• Overconfidence is also associated with support for non-experts’ role in policymaking.
Abstract
Objective: Although the benefits of vaccines are widely recognized by medical experts, public opinion about vaccination policies is mixed. We analyze public opinion about vaccination policies to assess whether Dunning-Kruger effects can help to explain anti-vaccination policy attitudes.
Rationale: People low in autism awareness – that is, the knowledge of basic facts and dismissal of misinformation about autism – should be the most likely to think that they are better informed than medical experts about the causes of autism (a Dunning-Kruger effect). This “overconfidence” should be associated with decreased support for mandatory vaccination policies and skepticism about the role that medical professionals play in the policymaking process.
Method: In an original survey of U.S. adults (N = 1310), we modeled self-reported overconfidence as a function of responses to a knowledge test about the causes of autism, and the endorsement of misinformation about a link between vaccines and autism. We then modeled anti-vaccination policy support and attitudes toward the role that experts play in the policymaking process as a function of overconfidence and the autism awareness indicators while controlling for potential confounding factors.
Results: More than a third of respondents in our sample thought that they knew as much or more than doctors (36%) and scientists (34%) about the causes of autism. Our analysis indicates that this overconfidence is highest among those with low levels of knowledge about the causes of autism and those with high levels of misinformation endorsement. Further, our results suggest that this overconfidence is associated with opposition to mandatory vaccination policy. Overconfidence is also associated with increased support for the role that non-experts (e.g., celebrities) play in the policymaking process.
Conclusion: Dunning-Kruger effects can help to explain public opposition to vaccination policies and should be carefully considered in future research on anti-vaccine policy attitudes.
Keywords: Vaccines; Dunning-kruger effects; Anti-vax; Political psychology; Health policy
Highlights
• Low knowledge about autism is associated with thinking one knows more than experts.
• “Overconfidence” is associated with anti-vaccine policy attitudes.
• Overconfidence is also associated with support for non-experts’ role in policymaking.
Abstract
Objective: Although the benefits of vaccines are widely recognized by medical experts, public opinion about vaccination policies is mixed. We analyze public opinion about vaccination policies to assess whether Dunning-Kruger effects can help to explain anti-vaccination policy attitudes.
Rationale: People low in autism awareness – that is, the knowledge of basic facts and dismissal of misinformation about autism – should be the most likely to think that they are better informed than medical experts about the causes of autism (a Dunning-Kruger effect). This “overconfidence” should be associated with decreased support for mandatory vaccination policies and skepticism about the role that medical professionals play in the policymaking process.
Method: In an original survey of U.S. adults (N = 1310), we modeled self-reported overconfidence as a function of responses to a knowledge test about the causes of autism, and the endorsement of misinformation about a link between vaccines and autism. We then modeled anti-vaccination policy support and attitudes toward the role that experts play in the policymaking process as a function of overconfidence and the autism awareness indicators while controlling for potential confounding factors.
Results: More than a third of respondents in our sample thought that they knew as much or more than doctors (36%) and scientists (34%) about the causes of autism. Our analysis indicates that this overconfidence is highest among those with low levels of knowledge about the causes of autism and those with high levels of misinformation endorsement. Further, our results suggest that this overconfidence is associated with opposition to mandatory vaccination policy. Overconfidence is also associated with increased support for the role that non-experts (e.g., celebrities) play in the policymaking process.
Conclusion: Dunning-Kruger effects can help to explain public opposition to vaccination policies and should be carefully considered in future research on anti-vaccine policy attitudes.
Keywords: Vaccines; Dunning-kruger effects; Anti-vax; Political psychology; Health policy
In conservative cultures, individuals are likely to face costs such as punishment for short-term mating. Conservatives over-perceived hypothetical mates as long-term investing partners, despite their lack of commitment-compatible traits.
You’re Not My Type: Do Conservatives Have a Bias for Seeing Long-Term Mates? Naomi K. Muggleton, Corey L. Fincher. Evolution and Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.06.009
Abstract: When choosing a mate, humans favour genetic traits (attractiveness, high sex drive) for short-term relationships and parental traits (warmth, high status) for long-term relationships. These preferences serve to maximise fitness of future offspring. But this model neglects the role of social norms in shaping evolved mating strategies. In conservative cultures, individuals are likely to face costs such as punishment for short-term mating. Here we show that conservatives over-perceive some mates’ suitability as long-term partners. Study 1 found that conservatives were less likely to use a short-term strategy that was distinctive from their long-term strategy. Study 2 showed that conservatives over-perceived hypothetical mates as long-term investing partners, despite their lack of commitment-compatible traits. Conservatism was measured at the regional- (India, USA, UK) and individual-level. Our results demonstrate how social norms may bias behaviour to reduce costs. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for more sophisticated models, drawing on developments from evolutionary and social psychology.
Keywords: Mate choice; Conservatism; Behavioural ecology; Cross-cultural psychology; Sex differences
Abstract: When choosing a mate, humans favour genetic traits (attractiveness, high sex drive) for short-term relationships and parental traits (warmth, high status) for long-term relationships. These preferences serve to maximise fitness of future offspring. But this model neglects the role of social norms in shaping evolved mating strategies. In conservative cultures, individuals are likely to face costs such as punishment for short-term mating. Here we show that conservatives over-perceive some mates’ suitability as long-term partners. Study 1 found that conservatives were less likely to use a short-term strategy that was distinctive from their long-term strategy. Study 2 showed that conservatives over-perceived hypothetical mates as long-term investing partners, despite their lack of commitment-compatible traits. Conservatism was measured at the regional- (India, USA, UK) and individual-level. Our results demonstrate how social norms may bias behaviour to reduce costs. We anticipate our findings to be a starting point for more sophisticated models, drawing on developments from evolutionary and social psychology.
Keywords: Mate choice; Conservatism; Behavioural ecology; Cross-cultural psychology; Sex differences
Evolutionary Theory: Male and Female Nipples as a Test Case for the Assumption that Functional Features Vary Less than Nonfunctional Byproducts
Male and Female Nipples as a Test Case for the Assumption that Functional Features Vary Less than Nonfunctional Byproducts. Ashleigh J. Kelly et al. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-018-0096-1
Abstract
Objectives: Evolutionary researchers have sometimes taken findings of low variation in the size or shape of a biological feature to indicate that it is functional and under strong evolutionary selection, and have assumed that high variation implies weak or absent selection and therefore lack of function.
Methods: To test this assumption we compared the size variation (using a mean-adjusted measure of absolute variability) of the functional human female nipple (defined as the nipple-areola complex) with that of the non-functional human male nipple.
Results: We found that female nipples were significantly more variable than male nipples, even after controlling for body mass index, testing-room temperature, bust size in women, and chest size in men.
Conclusions: Morphological variation in a feature should not be used by itself to infer whether or not the feature is functional or under selection.
Abstract
Objectives: Evolutionary researchers have sometimes taken findings of low variation in the size or shape of a biological feature to indicate that it is functional and under strong evolutionary selection, and have assumed that high variation implies weak or absent selection and therefore lack of function.
Methods: To test this assumption we compared the size variation (using a mean-adjusted measure of absolute variability) of the functional human female nipple (defined as the nipple-areola complex) with that of the non-functional human male nipple.
Results: We found that female nipples were significantly more variable than male nipples, even after controlling for body mass index, testing-room temperature, bust size in women, and chest size in men.
Conclusions: Morphological variation in a feature should not be used by itself to infer whether or not the feature is functional or under selection.
Women with more hook ups were more likely to experience a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction & a greater likelihood of receiving oral sex; women desire more reciprocity, oral and manual sex, and orgasms during their hook ups with men
What Happens in a Hook Up?: Young Women’s Behaviors, Emotions, and Pleasures. Sarah N. Bell PhD Thesis. Michigan Univ., 2018. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/144134/sarahnb_1.pdf
Abstract: “Hook ups” are common among adolescents and young adults on college campuses. Prior research positions women as risking a lot when they hook up, including physical, emotional, and social costs, while they stand to benefit little from hook ups. Additionally, research shows that women do not often experience orgasms during hook ups, but little is known about women’s pleasure in hook ups outside their rates of orgasm. The current studies sought to better understand what women’s experiences in hook ups consist of in terms of behaviors, emotions, and pleasures. Study 1 (discussed in Chapter 3) asked young women (N=23) to perform a card-sort in relation to their actual and desired behaviors and emotions in their most recent hook up. Results from Study 1 show that women reported desiring more oral and manual sex and more orgasms from a variety of sexual activities. Study 2 (discussed in Chapter 4) asked young college women (N=23) to participate in in-depth interviews regarding their sexual pleasure during hook ups with men. Results from Study 2 revealed that women reported that they experienced a range of different pleasures in their hook ups with men, including but not limited to orgasm. Women in Study 2 also discussed how the norms of hook up culture impacted their ability to prioritize or pursue their own sexual pleasure, and how men violated the norm of reciprocity. Study 3 (discussed in Chapter 5) surveyed young college women (N=102) about their behaviors, emotions, and pleasures in hook ups. Results from Study 3 revealed that a typical hook up involved a range of sexual behaviors; women reported giving oral sex more often than they received it. Women in Study 3 also reported frequent positive emotions in relation to their hook-ups and fewer negative emotions in contrast to prior research. Results from Study 3 also showed that while a typical hook up included men’s orgasm, women rarely experienced orgasm in their hook ups. Women who reported engaging in a greater number of hook ups in Study 3 were more likely to experience a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and a greater likelihood of receiving oral sex from their partner. Across the three studies, women reported positive emotions in relation to their hook ups, but reported greater desire for more reciprocity, oral and manual sex, and orgasms during their hook ups with men. Results are discussed in relation to women’s sexual freedom to prioritize their own pleasure amidst a sexual milieu that privileges men’s pleasure during sexual encounters.
Abstract: “Hook ups” are common among adolescents and young adults on college campuses. Prior research positions women as risking a lot when they hook up, including physical, emotional, and social costs, while they stand to benefit little from hook ups. Additionally, research shows that women do not often experience orgasms during hook ups, but little is known about women’s pleasure in hook ups outside their rates of orgasm. The current studies sought to better understand what women’s experiences in hook ups consist of in terms of behaviors, emotions, and pleasures. Study 1 (discussed in Chapter 3) asked young women (N=23) to perform a card-sort in relation to their actual and desired behaviors and emotions in their most recent hook up. Results from Study 1 show that women reported desiring more oral and manual sex and more orgasms from a variety of sexual activities. Study 2 (discussed in Chapter 4) asked young college women (N=23) to participate in in-depth interviews regarding their sexual pleasure during hook ups with men. Results from Study 2 revealed that women reported that they experienced a range of different pleasures in their hook ups with men, including but not limited to orgasm. Women in Study 2 also discussed how the norms of hook up culture impacted their ability to prioritize or pursue their own sexual pleasure, and how men violated the norm of reciprocity. Study 3 (discussed in Chapter 5) surveyed young college women (N=102) about their behaviors, emotions, and pleasures in hook ups. Results from Study 3 revealed that a typical hook up involved a range of sexual behaviors; women reported giving oral sex more often than they received it. Women in Study 3 also reported frequent positive emotions in relation to their hook-ups and fewer negative emotions in contrast to prior research. Results from Study 3 also showed that while a typical hook up included men’s orgasm, women rarely experienced orgasm in their hook ups. Women who reported engaging in a greater number of hook ups in Study 3 were more likely to experience a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and a greater likelihood of receiving oral sex from their partner. Across the three studies, women reported positive emotions in relation to their hook ups, but reported greater desire for more reciprocity, oral and manual sex, and orgasms during their hook ups with men. Results are discussed in relation to women’s sexual freedom to prioritize their own pleasure amidst a sexual milieu that privileges men’s pleasure during sexual encounters.
Democrats/liberals tended to smoke cigarettes and drink excessively; Republicans/conservatives tended to eat poorly, exercise less, not get the flu shot; ideology based variation in cognitive-motivational styles might explain this
Political orientation, political environment, and health behaviors in the United States. Viji Diane Kannan, Peter J. Veazie. Preventive Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2018.06.011
Highlights
• Individual and ecological political measures are related to health behaviors.
• Democrats/liberals tended to smoke cigarettes and drink excessively.
• Republicans/conservatives tended to eat poorly, exercise less, not get the flu shot.
• Republican regions had more flu shots, more cigarette smoking, and poorer diets.
• Ideology based variation in cognitive-motivational styles might explain results.
Abstract: Political orientation (Republican/Democrat and conservative/liberal) and political environment (geo-spatial political party affiliated voting patterns) are both associated with various health outcomes, including mortality. Modern disease etiology in the U.S. suggests that many of our health outcomes derive from behaviors and lifestyle choices. Thus, we examine the associations of political orientation and political environment with health behaviors. We used the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey (ANHCS) data, which is a nationally representative U.S. survey fielded continuously from 2005 through 2012. The health behaviors studied include health information search, flu vaccination, excessive alcohol consumption, tobacco consumption, exercise, and dietary patterns. Democrats/liberals had higher odds of cigarette smoking and excessive drinking compared to Republicans/conservatives. Whereas, Republicans/conservatives ate fewer servings and fewer varieties of fruit and vegetables; ate more high fat and processed foods; and engaged in less in-depth health information searches compared to Democrats/liberals. Also, conservatives had lower odds of exercise participation than liberals; whereas Republicans had lower odds of flu vaccination. Greater Republican vote share in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections at the state and/or county levels was associated with higher odds of flu vaccination and smoking cigarettes and lower odds of avoiding fat/calories, avoiding fast/processed food, eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and eating more servings of fruit. We use the distinct cognitive-motivational styles attributed to political orientation in discussing the findings. Health communication strategies could leverage these relationships to produce tailored and targeted messages as well as to develop and advocate for policy.
Keywords: Health behavior; Politics; Psychology; Exercise; Diet, food, and nutrition; Flu vaccine; Tobacco smoking; Alcohol drinking; Health information
Highlights
• Individual and ecological political measures are related to health behaviors.
• Democrats/liberals tended to smoke cigarettes and drink excessively.
• Republicans/conservatives tended to eat poorly, exercise less, not get the flu shot.
• Republican regions had more flu shots, more cigarette smoking, and poorer diets.
• Ideology based variation in cognitive-motivational styles might explain results.
Abstract: Political orientation (Republican/Democrat and conservative/liberal) and political environment (geo-spatial political party affiliated voting patterns) are both associated with various health outcomes, including mortality. Modern disease etiology in the U.S. suggests that many of our health outcomes derive from behaviors and lifestyle choices. Thus, we examine the associations of political orientation and political environment with health behaviors. We used the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey (ANHCS) data, which is a nationally representative U.S. survey fielded continuously from 2005 through 2012. The health behaviors studied include health information search, flu vaccination, excessive alcohol consumption, tobacco consumption, exercise, and dietary patterns. Democrats/liberals had higher odds of cigarette smoking and excessive drinking compared to Republicans/conservatives. Whereas, Republicans/conservatives ate fewer servings and fewer varieties of fruit and vegetables; ate more high fat and processed foods; and engaged in less in-depth health information searches compared to Democrats/liberals. Also, conservatives had lower odds of exercise participation than liberals; whereas Republicans had lower odds of flu vaccination. Greater Republican vote share in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections at the state and/or county levels was associated with higher odds of flu vaccination and smoking cigarettes and lower odds of avoiding fat/calories, avoiding fast/processed food, eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and eating more servings of fruit. We use the distinct cognitive-motivational styles attributed to political orientation in discussing the findings. Health communication strategies could leverage these relationships to produce tailored and targeted messages as well as to develop and advocate for policy.
Keywords: Health behavior; Politics; Psychology; Exercise; Diet, food, and nutrition; Flu vaccine; Tobacco smoking; Alcohol drinking; Health information
We study questionnaire responses to situations in which sacrificing one life may save many other lives; males are more supportive of the sacrifice than females. A source of the endorsement of sacrifice are the antisocial preferences.
Moral judgments, gender, and antisocial preferences: an experimental study. Juergen Bracht, Adam Zylbersztejn. Theory and Decision, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11238-018-9668-6
Abstract: We study questionnaire responses to situations in which sacrificing one life may save many other lives. We demonstrate gender differences in moral judgments: males are more supportive of the sacrifice than females. We investigate a source of the endorsement of the sacrifice: antisocial preferences. First, we measure individual proneness to spiteful behavior, using an experimental game with monetary stakes. We demonstrate that spitefulness can be sizable—a fifth of our participants behave spitefully—but it is not associated with gender. Second, we find that gender is consistently associated with responses even when we account for individual differences in the propensity to spitefulness.
Abstract: We study questionnaire responses to situations in which sacrificing one life may save many other lives. We demonstrate gender differences in moral judgments: males are more supportive of the sacrifice than females. We investigate a source of the endorsement of the sacrifice: antisocial preferences. First, we measure individual proneness to spiteful behavior, using an experimental game with monetary stakes. We demonstrate that spitefulness can be sizable—a fifth of our participants behave spitefully—but it is not associated with gender. Second, we find that gender is consistently associated with responses even when we account for individual differences in the propensity to spitefulness.
Rolf Degen summarizing: Hate is dislike plus moral condemnation, plus the conviction that other reasonable people should feel the same way
Van Bavel, Jay J. 2018. “The Psychology of Hate: Moral Concerns Differentiate Hate from Dislike.” PsyArXiv. June 25. doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/X9Y2P
Abstract: Theories of hate date back several thousand years, yet very few experiments have examined the psychological structure of hate. We investigated whether any differences in the psychological experience of hate and dislike were a matter of degree (i.e. hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or kind (i.e. hate is imbued with distinct cognitive, emotional, or motivational components that distinguish it from dislike). In a series of experiments, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures provided convergent evidence that hated attitude objects were not only more negative than disliked attitude objects but also more likely to be associated with moral beliefs and emotions (Study 1). Further, differences in kind (i.e., moral beliefs and emotions) held even after statistically adjusting for diffebiparrences in degree (i.e., negativity). Subsequent research confirmed that hate not only differs from dislike but also from extreme dislike—providing a more stringent test of a difference in kind (Study 2)—and this difference was observed for both person and concept attitude objects (Study 3). A content analysis of online websites found that the language used on hate websites also differed in kind (i.e., moral content), but not degree (i.e., negativity), from complaint forums (Study 4). Thus, across quantitative and qualitative indices from the lab and the field, hated attitude objects were more likely to be associated with morality than disliked objects.
Abstract: Theories of hate date back several thousand years, yet very few experiments have examined the psychological structure of hate. We investigated whether any differences in the psychological experience of hate and dislike were a matter of degree (i.e. hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or kind (i.e. hate is imbued with distinct cognitive, emotional, or motivational components that distinguish it from dislike). In a series of experiments, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures provided convergent evidence that hated attitude objects were not only more negative than disliked attitude objects but also more likely to be associated with moral beliefs and emotions (Study 1). Further, differences in kind (i.e., moral beliefs and emotions) held even after statistically adjusting for diffebiparrences in degree (i.e., negativity). Subsequent research confirmed that hate not only differs from dislike but also from extreme dislike—providing a more stringent test of a difference in kind (Study 2)—and this difference was observed for both person and concept attitude objects (Study 3). A content analysis of online websites found that the language used on hate websites also differed in kind (i.e., moral content), but not degree (i.e., negativity), from complaint forums (Study 4). Thus, across quantitative and qualitative indices from the lab and the field, hated attitude objects were more likely to be associated with morality than disliked objects.
Monday, June 25, 2018
Powerless individuals were less inclined to express their anger directly but more inclined to express it indirectly by sharing it with others; powerful participants always expected to elicit more fear than anger in the target
Powerless People Don't Yell But Tell: The Effects of Social Power on Direct and Indirect Expression of Anger. Katerina Petkanopoulou. Rosa RodrÃguez Bailón, Guillermo B. Willis, Gerben A. van Kleef. European Journal of Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2521
Abstract: Expressing anger can engender desired change, but it can also backfire. In the present research we examined how power shapes the expression of anger. In Study 1, we found that powerless individuals were less inclined to express their anger directly but more inclined to express it indirectly by sharing it with others. Powerless participants’ reluctance to express anger directly was mediated by negative social appraisals. In Study 2, we replicated the effect of power on direct anger expression in a situation in which participants had actual power (or not). Anger was evoked in the laboratory using an ecologically valid procedure, and participants were given an opportunity to express anger. Study 3 showed that powerless participants expected direct anger expression to arouse more anger than fear in the target, whereas the opposite was true for indirect anger expression. Powerful participants always expected to elicit more fear than anger in the target.
Abstract: Expressing anger can engender desired change, but it can also backfire. In the present research we examined how power shapes the expression of anger. In Study 1, we found that powerless individuals were less inclined to express their anger directly but more inclined to express it indirectly by sharing it with others. Powerless participants’ reluctance to express anger directly was mediated by negative social appraisals. In Study 2, we replicated the effect of power on direct anger expression in a situation in which participants had actual power (or not). Anger was evoked in the laboratory using an ecologically valid procedure, and participants were given an opportunity to express anger. Study 3 showed that powerless participants expected direct anger expression to arouse more anger than fear in the target, whereas the opposite was true for indirect anger expression. Powerful participants always expected to elicit more fear than anger in the target.
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