Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, proposed less significant constitutional changes 15 months before the amendments became law & tolerated some open debate [...] The wording of Mr. Hu’s revisions was released to the public nearly three months before lawmakers approved them

How Xi Jinping Made His Power Grab: With Stealth, Speed and Guile. Chris Buckley. The New York Times, March 7, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-party-term-limit.html

BEIJING — Some 200 senior Communist Party officials gathered behind closed doors in January to take up a momentous political decision: whether to abolish presidential term limits and enable Xi Jinping to lead China for a generation.

In a two-day session in Beijing, they bowed to Mr. Xi’s wish to hold onto power indefinitely. But a bland communiqué issued afterward made no mention of the weighty decision, which the authorities then kept under wraps for more than five weeks.

That meeting of the party’s Central Committee was the culmination of months of secretive discussions that are only now coming to light — and show how Mr. Xi maneuvered with stealth, swiftness and guile to rewrite China’s Constitution.

The decision was abruptly announced only last week, days before the annual session of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. The delay was apparently an effort to prevent opposition from coalescing before formal approval of the change by the legislature’s nearly 3,000 members.

The congress is all but certain to approve the change and other constitutional amendments — the first since 2004 — in a vote on Sunday, sweeping away a rule that restricts presidents to two five-year terms and has been in the Constitution for 35 years. The congress alone has the power to amend the Constitution, by a two-thirds vote, but lawmakers, picked by the party, have always passed proposals presented to them.

Even those who thought that they had taken the full measure of Mr. Xi’s ambition are surprised by how fast he has moved.

“I always thought Xi would seek to stay for three or four terms, and could even introduce a new presidential system after his terms were finished. But I never thought the Constitution would be revised so quickly,” said Wu Wei, a former official who advised Zhao Ziyang, the party leader ousted during the mass protests of 1989 in Tiananmen Square.

“For such a major revision to an important clause of the Constitution, the views of the whole public nationwide should have been more broadly sought,” he added, pausing to contain his emotion.

Mr. Xi deployed speed, secrecy and intimidation to smother potential opposition inside and outside the party. He swept past the consensus-building conventions that previous leaders used to amend the Constitution. He installed loyalists to draft and support the amendments. And he kept the whole process under the tight control of the party, allowing little debate, even internally.

Soon after China’s Communist Party announced a plan to end presidential term limits, its censors and propaganda machine kicked into high gear. Here’s how it unfolded.Published OnFeb. 28, 2018CreditImage by Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Xi first formally proposed amending the Constitution little more than five months ago, at a Sept. 29 meeting of the Politburo, a council of 25 party leaders more powerful than the Central Committee, according to an official account issued at the congress on Monday.

But he did not immediately raise the possibility of removing the term limit, said a retired official, citing a senior serving official. To avoid being seen as dictating changes, Mr. Xi let loyal provincial and city leaders quietly promote the idea in his stead, the retired official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of punishment for describing internal discussions.

At that same meeting, the Politburo agreed to purge one of its own members, Sun Zhengcai, who had once been considered a potential successor to Mr. Xi, on corruption charges — a warning to other party officials that needed little elaboration.

Previous rounds of constitutional amendments in China took much longer and involved at least the trappings of public discussion.

Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, proposed less significant constitutional changes 15 months before the amendments became law and tolerated some open debate, including forums held by liberal intellectuals. The wording of Mr. Hu’s revisions was released to the public nearly three months before lawmakers approved them in March 2004.

By contrast, Mr. Xi first announced that he wanted to make constitutional changes in December, without specifying what they would be. The full details of the amendments, including the abolition of his term limit, were released to the public only eight days before the National People’s Congress convened.

Mr. Xi kept a tight lid on his machinations. After the Politburo meeting in late September, he entrusted the task of revising the Constitution to just three officials: the chairman of the congress, Zhang Dejiang, and two close allies, Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning, both of whom were elevated last year into the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top body.

Mr. Wang has long been sympathetic to the authoritarian argument that China needs a strongman to maintain social order while pushing through painful policies, such as closing down inefficient factories.

“If somewhere lacks a central authority, or central authority is in decline, the country falls into a state of rupture and turmoil,” he said in an interview published in 1995.

In recent speeches, Mr. Xi has echoed that theme, arguing that China faces unprecedented risks and opportunities. “Our party was born under a sense of peril, grew up under a sense of peril and matured under a sense of peril,” he told a meeting of senior officials in December.

Momentum for ending the term limit built in November, when the party began secretly seeking suggestions on possible constitutional changes, according to the official account issued at the congress. Mr. Xi’s allies began an effort to support the change, and in a clue of their effectiveness, the official account said there was “consistent approval for issuing new rules on the term of office of the president.”

Still, Mr. Xi needed to win approval for his plan at the January meeting of the Central Committee, and when and how he did so have been the subject of dispute.

Reuters, citing two unnamed sources, has reported that the Central Committee failed to reach a consensus at the January meeting and convened its next meeting earlier than usual.

But four party insiders — two retired officials, a party newspaper editor and a businessman with family links to the leadership — told The New York Times that Mr. Xi prevailed in January, essentially confirming the official timeline.

Any committee members with misgivings were unlikely to speak out, given the array of punishment they could face, and party elders who may have once opposed such a move — including Mr. Hu and another former president, Jiang Zemin — are too old or too cowed by Mr. Xi’s anticorruption investigations to muster resistance, party insiders said.

Mr. Xi gained the Central Committee’s backing for ending the term limit just three months after winning his second term as party leader, his other main title, and before starting his second term as president.

“It demonstrates Xi’s penchant for rule-breaking,” said Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s slowly, slowly, slowly, and then when no one’s looking, he turns around and does something big. I think it comes back to the political shock and awe that really dates back to his arrival.”

Several experts and former party officials who have met Mr. Xi said he appears to be driven to overturn the term limit out of a confluence of confidence and anxiety.

He is confident that he has eliminated potential rivals in the elite and enjoys broad public support after cracking down on corruption. But he is worried that a crisis such as an economic slump or a war over North Korea could weaken his authority, they said.

Even with victory in sight, Mr. Xi appears wary of a potential public backlash. Online commentary on ending the term limit has been heavily censored.

After the official Xinhua news agency first announced the proposal on Twitter, which is blocked in China, the journalist who issued the bulletin in English was punished. A colleague, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials apparently thought it was too bluntly worded.

Critics said the imperious way in which Mr. Xi scored his constitutional coup was a foretaste of how his power could swell into dangerous hubris. Mr. Xi demolished a political convention that for decades has helped to shield China from the succession struggles that convulsed politics under the earlier leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, they said.

The legislature will go through the motions of debating the constitutional changes, but there is virtually no chance that the handpicked delegates will oppose them in large numbers when they vote.

On Monday, delegates broke into applause twice when a legislative official read out the proposal to end Mr. Xi’s term limit.

“I think we should give Xi 20 years to accomplish the Chinese dream and give us back a strong China,” said Jiao Yun, a congress delegate from northeast China who is chairman of a coal processing company. “The previous 10-year limit doesn’t mesh with China’s long-term development.”

Keith Bradsher and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting. Adam Wu, Ailin Tang and Zoe Mou contributed research.

Follow Chris Buckley on Twitter: @ChuBailiang.

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Behind Xi’s Power Grab: Stealth, Speed and Guile.

Revisiting Perceiver & Target Gender Effects in Deception Detection: Female targets were easier to “read” (i.e., greater sensitivity) by both sexes & were called liars more frequently than male targets

Revisiting Perceiver and Target Gender Effects in Deception Detection. E. Paige Lloyd, Kevin M. Summers, Kurt Hugenberg, Allen R. McConnell. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10919-018-0283-6

Abstract: Existing research is inconclusive regarding the influence of perceiver gender and target gender on lie detection. Researchers have offered a number of conclusions regarding gender effects in deception detection (e.g., women are better at lie detection than men, participant and target gender interact in predicting deception detection accuracy, there are no gender effects in deception detection). In the current work, we revisit the question of whether and how gender influences lie detection, employing a large database of controlled stimuli, a large sample size, and the analytical advantages provided by signal detection theory. Participants viewed videos of male and female targets telling truths and lies about interpersonal relationships, and after each video, they rendered a truth or lie judgment. Female targets were easier to “read” (i.e., greater sensitivity) and were called liars more frequently than male targets. No effects of participant gender were observed. This work sheds light on an important issue in the lie detection literature (i.e., does gender matter?), and it identifies important considerations for understanding gender biases and cross-gender social interactions.

Trained male rats to associate copulation with wearing a [Velcro jacket]. After training, males were sexually aroused by being fitted with the jacket, and even showed reduced sexual activity when exposed unclothed to females

Evaluation and hedonic value in mate choice. Gil G Rosenthal. Current Zoology, zoy054, https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoy054

Abstract: Mating preferences can show extreme variation within and among individuals even when sensory inputs are conserved. This variation is a result of changes associated with evaluative mechanisms that assign positive, neutral, or negative hedonic value to stimuli – that is, label them as attractive, uninteresting, or unattractive. There is widespread behavioral evidence for differences in genes, environmental cues, or social experience leading to marked changes in the hedonic value of stimuli. Evaluation is accomplished through an array of mechanisms that are readily modifiable through genetic changes or environmental inputs, and that may often result in the rapid acquisition or loss of behavioral preferences. Reversals in preference arising from “flips” in hedonic value may be quite common. Incorporating such discontinuous changes into models of preference evolution may illuminate our understanding of processes like trait diversification, sexual conflict, and sympatric speciation.

Keywords: associative learning, mating preference, sensory biology, assortative mating, valence

---
Indeed, animals can be trained to develop fetishes: striong, specific preferences for arbitrary stimuly. Pfaus and colleagues trained male rats to associate copulation with wearing a [Velcro jacket]. After training, males were sexually aroused by being fitted with the jacket, and even showed reduced sexual activity when exposed unclothed to females.

Greater national gender inequality significantly predicts greater gender differences in job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction

A Meta-Analysis of Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being: Estimating Effect Sizes and Associations With Gender Inequality. Cassondra Batz-Barbarich et al. Psychological Science, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618774796

Abstract: Despite global gender inequalities, findings on gender differences in subjective well-being have been inconsistent. We conducted a meta-analysis on gender differences in subjective well-being to account for the type of subjective-well-being measure, sampling variability, and levels of national gender inequality from which samples are gathered. Based on 281 effect sizes for life satisfaction (N = 1,001,802) and 264 for job satisfaction (N = 341,949), results showed no significant gender differences in both types of subjective well-being. Supplementary meta-analyses found significantly lower job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction, in women for studies that used both life-satisfaction and job-satisfaction measures, and studies that relied on measures that previously demonstrated measurement equivalence. Using the Gender Inequality Index, we found that greater national gender inequality significantly predicts greater gender differences in job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction. We discuss the implications of these findings and the use of subjective well-being as a measure of societal progress.

Keywords: gender differences, subjective well-being, life satisfaction, job satisfaction, inequality

The importance given to appearance was lower among uninvolved (“single”) persons; & single men and women were more dissatisfied with their overall appearance than adults who were romantically involved but not currently cohabitating

Body image and the role of romantic relationships. Maria Fernanda Laus, Sebastião S. Almeida & Lori A. Klos. Cogent Psychology, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23311908.2018.1496986

Abstract: A variety of sociocultural factors have been recognized as important influences on appearance-related issues but little research has examined the intersection between romantic relationships and body image among adults. This study examined whether self-evaluative and motivational investment in appearance, overweight preoccupation, and body satisfaction differ between men and women who were involved (or not) in a romantic relationship. Moreover, we investigated the associations between relationship experiences (relationship type, relationship length, commitment, passion, and intimacy) and body image. To that, 423 men (Mage = 45.32 ± 13.86 years) and 505 women (Mage = 43.52 ± 13.07 years) completed an online survey through the SurveyMonkey Audience database in the United States, including several measures of body image and relationship functioning. Our results demonstrated that the importance given to appearance was lower among uninvolved (“single”) participants; overweight preoccupation did not differ between men and women who were involved or not in a romantic relationship; and that single men and women were more dissatisfied with their overall appearance than adults who were romantically involved but not currently cohabitating. For men and women, romantic involvement plays a pivotal role in promoting and maintaining a less negative body image. The type of relationship and its functioning are also important aspects related to body image. This study provides some context for understanding the importance of romantic situation on one’s body image.

Keywords: romantic relationships, body image, appearance investment, overweight concerns, body satisfaction, relationship quality

No evidence for attention bias towards threat in clinical anxiety: a meta-analysis of baseline bias in attention bias modification RCTs

No evidence for attention bias towards threat in clinical anxiety: a meta-analysis of baseline bias in attention bias modification RCTs. Anne-Wil Kruijt, Sam Parsons, Elaine Fox. Pre-print 10.31234/osf.io/rfjup

Abstract

Background: Considerable effort and funding are spent on developing Attention Bias Modification (ABM) as a treatment for anxiety disorders. ABM is theorized to exert therapeutic effects through reduction of an increased attentional bias towards threat. Yet, the available meta-analytical evidence for the common assertion that clinical anxiety is characterised by this treat-related attentional bias is thin: the largest meta-analysis to date included n=337 clinically anxious individuals. We propose that baseline measurements in clinical ABM RCTs constitute a hitherto not assessed additional body of data on magnitude of biased attention in clinically anxious samples.

Method: We meta-analysed baseline dot-probe assessed bias for 1005 clinically anxious individuals enrolled in ABM RCTs.

Results: REML analysis indicated no evidence that mean bias index (BI) differs from zero (k= 13, n= 1005, mean BI = 1.8 ms, SE = 1.26 ms, p = .144, 95% CI [-0.6 - 4.3]. Additional Bayes factor analyses also supported the traditional point-nil hypothesis (BF10 = .23), whereas additional interval-based analysis indicated it unlikely that mean bias in clinical anxiety extends beyond the 0 to 5 ms interval. 

Discussion: We discuss our findings with respect to strengths (larger samples, possible bypassing of publication bias), limitations (lack of control comparison, repurposing data), and theoretical and practical context. We suggest that it may be prudent to no longer classify anxious samples as being characterized by bias.

Conclusion: Clinically anxious individuals enrolled in RCTs for Attention Bias Modification are not characterized by attentional bias towards threat at baseline.

Neuronal Mechanisms Recording the Stream of Consciousness–A Reappraisal of Wilder Penfield’s (1891–1976) Concept of Experiential Phenomena Elicited by Electrical Stimulation of the Human Cortex

Neuronal Mechanisms Recording the Stream of Consciousness–A Reappraisal of Wilder Penfield’s (1891–1976) Concept of Experiential Phenomena Elicited by Electrical Stimulation of the Human Cortex. R Nitsch, F W Stahnisch. Cerebral Cortex, bhy085, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhy085

Abstract: Research on memory has been a major focus in the neurosciences over the past decades. An important advance was achieved by Wilder Penfield at the Montreal Neurological Institute, who reported from the 1930s to the 1950s about experiential phenomena induced by electrical brain stimulation in humans, implying neuronal causation of memory. Since then, neuroscientists have addressed the topic of memory from a range of subdisciplines; however, these reports by Penfield and his group as well as those on patient H. M. by Brenda Milner at the same institution continue to be referenced as groundbreaking. Further experimental work by Nobel laureates Eric Kandel and John O’Keefe, as well as by Edvard and May-Britt Moser related Penfield’s patient documentation to experiential phenomena. However, our reassessment of Penfield’s original patient documentation questions the stance that he had uncovered the “storehouse of memories.” Human memory must be regarded more as context sensitive and as representative of an active reconstructive process, than as a simple recording of events. Hence, strategies aiming at naturalizing all phenomena of mind (including memory) to cellular and molecular mechanisms cannot convincingly refer to Penfield’s electrophysiological studies alone as evidence that memories are solely caused by neuronal firing patterns.

Keywords: brain stimulation, consciousness, cortical organization, memory, temporal lobe

Openness was negatively associated with eating red meat, positively related to fish & unrelated to poultry & overall meat consumption; extraverted people had higher meat consumption of the three types & overall

Personality and meat consumption: The importance of differentiating between type of meat. Tamara M.Pfeiler, Boris Egloff. Appetite, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.07.007

Abstract: Recent research has shown that sociodemographic factors and the Big Five personality traits are related to people's overall level of meat consumption. However, there are important differences among various types of meat (e.g., red meat, poultry, and fish) that might lead to differential patterns in how the consumption of specific types of meat is associated with personality and sociodemographic factors. To disentangle these general and specific relationships, we conducted two studies using two large-scale representative samples from different countries: Germany (N = 13,062) and Australia (N = 15,036). Mostly consistent with our expectations, personality and sociodemographic variables showed specific associations with meat consumption, depending on type of meat. For example, in both studies, openness was negatively associated with red meat consumption but positively related to fish consumption, whereas it was unrelated to poultry consumption and overall meat consumption in hierarchical regression analyses in which we controlled for sociodemographic factors. By contrast, extraverted people reported both more consumption of each individual type of meat and more overall meat consumption. In sum, results were largely consistent between the samples, but effect sizes were generally small. Taken together, these two studies underscore the importance of differentiating between meat types when examining individual differences in meat consumption. Implications and future avenues for investigating the link between personality and dietary habits are discussed.

Checking against age, father’s class, education, ethnicity, religiosity, native language & parental divorce, is higher well-being with similar partner? Seems not so.

Verbakel, Ellen, and Christiaan W. S. Monden. 2018. “Higher Well-being with Similar Partner? Testing the Similarity Hypothesis for Socio-demographic Characteristics.” SocArXiv. July 5. doi:10.31235/osf.io/ahwn6

Abstract: Studies on marriage and divorce often assume, explicitly or implicitly, that there is a positive relationship between partner similarity and well-being. We test this similarity hypothesis: do individuals who share more socio-demographic characteristics with their partners report higher well-being than individuals whose partners are less similar? We analyzed information on more than 2,300 married and cohabiting couples aged 18-50 from the UK Understanding Society wave 1 survey. Three dimensions of well-being were assessed: relationship quality, life satisfaction and psychological distress. We examined similarity on seven characteristics separately and as an index of similarity: age, father’s class, education, ethnicity, religiosity, native language, and parental divorce. The results provided no support for the similarity hypothesis: there was no evidence for a positive association between partner similarity and the three well-being measures. We discuss the implications of this finding for our understanding of partner choice and divorce.

Consistent preference for deontological over consequentialist agents: deontological agents were viewed as more moral and trustworthy, &were actually entrusted with more money in a resource distribution task.

Everett, Jim A. C., Nadira S. Faber, Julian Savulescu, and Molly Crockett. 2018. “Everett Et Al. The Cost of Being Consequentialist.” PsyArXiv. July 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/a2kx6

Abstract: Previous work has demonstrated that people are more likely to trust “deontological” agents who reject instrumentally harming one person to save a greater number than “consequentialist” agents who endorse such harm in pursuit of the greater good. It has been argued that these differential social perceptions of deontological vs. consequentialist agents could explain the higher prevalence of deontological moral intuitions. Yet consequentialism involves much more than decisions to endorse instrumental harm: another critical dimension is impartial beneficence, defined as the impartial maximization of the greater good, treating the well-being of every individual as equally important. In three studies (total N = 1,634), we investigated preferences for deontological vs. consequentialist social partners in both the domains of instrumental harm and impartial beneficence, and consider how such preferences vary across different types of social relationships. Our results demonstrate consistent preferences for deontological over consequentialist agents across both domains of instrumental harm and impartial beneficence: deontological agents were viewed as more moral and trustworthy, and were actually entrusted with more money in a resource distribution task. However, preferences for deontological agents were stronger when those preferences were revealed via aversion to instrumental harm than impartial beneficence. Finally, in the domain of instrumental harm, deontological agents were uniformly preferred across a variety of social roles, but in the domain of impartial beneficence, people prefer deontologists for roles requiring direct interaction (friend, spouse, boss) but not for more distant roles with little-to-no personal interaction (political leader).

Morality Is for Choosing Sides, not for improving the welfare of families, friends or groups or for altruism

Morality Is for Choosing Sides. Peter DeScioli, Robert Kurzban. descioli.com/papers/descioli.kurzban.morality.choosing.sides.atlas18.pdf

Arguably still worse for altruism theories are moral rules that guarantee welfare losses. Across cultures, moral rules prohibit any number of victimless, mutually profitable transactions. Historically, an obvious example is the prohibition against charging interest, which preventts mutuaally profitable loans. In India, the prohibition against killing cows has long caused substantial harms (Suri, 2015). Any number of similar rules con. tinue to undermine potential welfare gains.

We suggest that the tremendous array of data showing that people's judgments are deontological, along witlh the ubiquity of welfare-destroying moral rules, all constitute serious evidence against welfare-based theories of morality. The side-taking hypothesis does not run afoul of these problems. This theory requires that a rule is known and that its violation can be recognized by observers; because rules are for coordinated side-taking rather than welfare-enhancement, they can include a wide range of contents, including welfare-destroying contents. In short, deontological judgment is a set of observations that is, we think, fatal for welfare theories but consistent with the side-taking theory. There are several other areas of active research that provide evidence relevant to the side-taking hypothesis. First, research has found that people's tendency to moralize an issue depends on their power and alliances [...]. This evidence supports the idea that moral judgernent is a strategy that people selectively deploy depending on whether they are m1ost advantaged when others choose sides according to moral judgment, power, or alliances.  Second, the side-taking theory points to impartiality as a core feature of moral judgment because it is designed as an alternative to partial alliances. Recent work on fairness judgments points to a similar role for impartiality in suppressing alliances in the context of allocating resources (Shaw, 2013). Third, the side-taking hypothesis emphasizes variability in moral rules and also people's debates and arguments about which moral rules will structure side-taking in their community. Consistent with this idea, research shows that people actively advocate for the moral rules that most advantage them over other people [...].

Self-reports of felt emotion were delayed relative to reports of event-directed moral judgments (e.g. badness) & were no faster than person-directed moral judgments (e.g. blame), challenging theories arguing that moral judgments are made on the basis of reflecting on affective states

Cusimano, Corey J., Stuti Thapa Magar and Bertram F. Malle. “Judgment Before Emotion: People Access Moral Evaluations Faster than Affective States.” CogSci (2017). http://research.clps.brown.edu/SocCogSci/Publications/Pubs/Cusimano%20ThapaMagar%20&%20Malle%202017%20CogSci.pdf

Abstract: Theories about the role of emotions in moral cognition make different predictions about the relative speed of moral and affective judgments: those that argue that felt emotions are causal inputs to moral judgments predict that recognition of affective states should precede moral judgments; theories that posit emotional states as the output of moral judgment predict the opposite. Across four studies, using a speeded reaction time task, we found that self-reports of felt emotion were delayed relative to reports of event-directed moral judgments (e.g. badness) and were no faster than person-directed moral judgments (e.g. blame). These results pose a challenge to prominent theories arguing that moral judgments are made on the basis of reflecting on affective states.

Keywords: affect, emotion, moral judgment, reaction time

Why are animate dishes so disturbing?

Why are animate dishes so disturbing? Charles Spence. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2018.07.001

Abstract: Most foods are relatively static on the plate. Food that moves, especially if it does so in an animate manner, captures our attention in a way that would seem to play to society's growing interest with ‘food porn’. At the same time, however, most diners appear to find such movement on the plate or in the bowl rather disconcerting to say the very least. Such animacy may be aversive, ‘horrifying’, in fact, being a term that one sometimes sees used in this context. According to one suggestion, this may be because of a primordial fear of asphyxiation on eating food that still has the capacity to move of its own volition. According to others, however, there may also be something of a taboo around harming living things that many meat eaters try to mitigate by, for example, not calling the animals they eat by the name of the beast: Think steak or beef for cow and pork chop or bacon for pig. It may simply be that it is harder to suppress such thoughts related to the life that was lost, what some call the ‘meat paradox’, when food is animate. The breaking of some sort of taboo might also help to explain the excitement that some feel when they think about eating something that moves. In this article, I provide a brief historical overview of the diner's / chef's / advertiser's fascination with the visual transformation of food on the plate or in food advertising. I take a look at movement, both animate and inanimate, as well as other kinds of transformations, such as foods that change colour before the diner's very eyes. I also look at how technological advances are increasingly starting to offer the creative chef/food designer the opportunity to bring food to life in a way that doesn’t necessarily trigger any concerns with animal welfare, nor threaten the diner with asphyxiation.

Higher IQ in adolescence was related to a younger subjective age 50 years later; this association was mediated by higher openness to experience

Higher IQ in adolescence is related to a younger subjective age in later life: Findings from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Yannick Stephan et al. Intelligence, Volume 69, July–August 2018, Pages 195-199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2018.06.006

Highlights
•    Higher IQ in adolescence was related to a younger subjective age 50 years later.
•    This association was mediated by higher openness to experience.
•    Higher intelligence in adolescence is a resource that promotes subjective aging.

Abstract: Subjective age predicts consequential outcomes in old age, including risk of hospitalization, dementia, and mortality. Studies investigating the determinants of subjective age have mostly focused on aging-related factors measured in adulthood and old age. Little is known about the extent to which early life factors may contribute to later life subjective age. The present study examined the prospective association between IQ in adolescence and subjective age in later life and tested education, disease burden, adult cognition, and personality traits as potential mediators. Participants (N = 4494) were drawn from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Data on IQ were obtained in 1957 when participants were in high school. Education, disease burden, cognition, and personality were assessed in 1992–1993, and subjective age was measured in 2011 at age 71 (SD = 0.93). Accounting for demographic factors, results revealed that higher IQ in adolescence was associated with a younger subjective age in late life. Bootstrap analysis further showed that this association was mediated by higher openness. The present study suggests that how old or young individuals feel is partly influenced by lifespan developmental processes that may begin with early life cognitive ability.

Momentary increases in deprivation, hunger, and boredom increased likelihood of diatary lapse types; eating at an unintended time was the only lapse type that predicted worse weight loss outcomes

Using ecological momentary assessment to better understand dietary lapse types. Stephanie P.Goldstein et al. Appetite, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2018.07.003

Abstract: Frequency of lapsing from a diet predicts weight loss failure, however previous studies have only utilized one definition of dietary lapse. No study has examined different types of lapse behaviors among individuals with overweight/obesity. The current study uses ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine predictors of three lapse types—eating a larger portion than intended, eating an unintended type of food, and eating at an unplanned time—in adults (N = 189; MBMI = 36.93 ± 5.83 kg/m2; 82.0% female; Mage = 51.81 ± 9.76 years) enrolled in a 12-month randomized controlled trial of two behavioral weight loss treatments. Participants completed 14 days of EMA at the start of treatment during which they indicated types of lapses that occurred with time and location of the lapse. Participants also responded to questions assessing current physical (e.g., hunger, tiredness), environmental (e.g., presence of “delicious” foods), and affective (e.g., loneliness, sadness) states at each prompt. Weight change was assessed at post-treatment. Separate generalized estimating equations were used to examine whether states prospectively predicted lapse occurrence at the next survey. Results indicated that lapse types differed significantly across time and location. Momentary increases in deprivation, hunger, and boredom increased likelihood of different lapse types. Lastly, we examined the prospective association between lapse type and weight loss. Eating at an unintended time was the only lapse type that predicted worse weight loss outcomes. Results support the theory that distinct lapse types exist, and that lapse types can be predicted by both momentary conditions and individual tendencies toward certain physical and affective states. However, not all lapse types may impact weight outcomes. Future research on behaviors that constitute dietary lapse is warranted and could inform personalized weight loss treatments.