Intergenerational transmission of paternal trauma among US Civil War ex-POWs: Severe paternal hardship as a prisoner of war led to high mortality among sons, but not daughters, born after the civil war who survived to the age of 45; adequate maternal nutrition countered the effect

Intergenerational transmission of paternal trauma among US Civil War ex-POWs. Dora L. Costa, Noelle Yetter, and Heather DeSomer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803630115

Significance: Understanding whether paternal trauma is transmitted to children to affect their longevity, the mechanisms behind any transmission, and the reversibility of paternal trauma can inform health interventions and increase our understanding of the persistence of health within families. We show that severe paternal hardship as a prisoner of war (POW) led to high mortality among sons, but not daughters, born after the war who survived to the age of 45 but that adequate maternal nutrition countered the effect of paternal POW trauma in a manner most consistent with epigenetic explanations. We are not aware of any large sample studies in human populations that examine the reversibility of paternal trauma nor the long-term impact of paternal ex-POW status on children.

Abstract: We study whether paternal trauma is transmitted to the children of survivors of Confederate prisoner of war (POW) camps during the US Civil War (1861–1865) to affect their longevity at older ages, the mechanisms behind this transmission, and the reversibility of this transmission. We examine children born after the war who survived to age 45, comparing children whose fathers were non-POW veterans and ex-POWs imprisoned in very different camp conditions. We also compare children born before and after the war within the same family by paternal ex-POW status. The sons of ex-POWs imprisoned when camp conditions were at their worst were 1.11 times more likely to die than the sons of non-POWs and 1.09 times more likely to die than the sons of ex-POWs when camp conditions were better. Paternal ex-POW status had no impact on daughters. Among sons born in the fourth quarter, when maternal in utero nutrition was adequate, there was no impact of paternal ex-POW status. In contrast, among sons born in the second quarter, when maternal nutrition was inadequate, the sons of ex-POWs who experienced severe hardship were 1.2 times more likely to die than the sons of non-POWs and ex-POWs who fared better in captivity. Socioeconomic effects, family structure, father-specific survival traits, and maternal effects, including quality of paternal marriages, cannot explain our findings. While we cannot rule out fully psychological or cultural effects, our findings are most consistent with an epigenetic explanation.

Moral conviction stems from a distinctive mode of mental processing that is tied to automatic affective reactions; conviction about political objects positively predicts arousal evoked by the objects, while attitude extremity and importance do not

Fired Up by Morality: The Unique Physiological Response Tied to Moral Conviction in Politics. Kristin N. Garrett. Political Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12527

Abstract: Studies provide mounting evidence that morally convicted attitudes elicit passionate and unyielding political responses. Questions remain, however, whether these effects occur because moral conviction is another strong, versus a distinctly moral dimension of attitude strength. Building on work in moral psychology and neuroscience, I argue that moral conviction stems from a distinctive mode of mental processing that is tied to automatic affective reactions. Testing this idea using a lab experiment designed to capture self‐reported moral conviction and physiological arousal, I find that conviction about political objects positively predicts arousal evoked by the objects, while attitude extremity and importance do not. These findings suggest that moral conviction items do tap into moral processing, helping to validate the conviction measure. They also illustrate the value of using physiological indicators to study politics, help explain why morally convicted attitudes trigger such fervent responses, and raise normative questions about political conflict and compromise.

Psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power; only about 8% of studies have adequate power (using Cohen’s 80% convention); the good news is that we find only a small amount of average residual reporting bias

Stanley, T. D., Carter, E. C., & Doucouliagos, H. (2018). What meta-analyses reveal about the replicability of psychological research. Psychological Bulletin, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000169

Abstract: Can recent failures to replicate psychological research be explained by typical magnitudes of statistical power, bias or heterogeneity? A large survey of 12,065 estimated effect sizes from 200 meta-analyses and nearly 8,000 papers is used to assess these key dimensions of replicability. First, our survey finds that psychological research is, on average, afflicted with low statistical power. The median of median power across these 200 areas of research is about 36%, and only about 8% of studies have adequate power (using Cohen’s 80% convention). Second, the median proportion of the observed variation among reported effect sizes attributed to heterogeneity is 74% (I2). Heterogeneity of this magnitude makes it unlikely that the typical psychological study can be closely replicated when replication is defined as study-level null hypothesis significance testing. Third, the good news is that we find only a small amount of average residual reporting bias, allaying some of the often-expressed concerns about the reach of publication bias and questionable research practices. Nonetheless, the low power and high heterogeneity that our survey finds fully explain recent difficulties to replicate highly regarded psychological studies and reveal challenges for scientific progress in psychology.

Respondents in same‐sex relationships experience similar levels of commitment, satisfaction, & emotional intimacy as their counterparts in different‐sex relationships; relationship of males is sexually less exclusive

The Qualities of Same‐Sex and Different‐Sex Couples in Young Adulthood. Kara Joyner, Wendy Manning, Barbara Prince. Journal of Marriage and Family, https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12535

Abstract

Objective: The recognition of sexual minorities in social science research is growing, and this study contributes to knowledge on this population by comparing the qualities of same‐sex and different‐sex relationships among young adults.

Background: The findings of studies on this topic may not be generalizable because they are limited to coresidential unions and based on convenience samples. This study extends prior research by examining multiple relationship qualities among a nationally representative sample of males and females in dating and cohabiting relationships.

Method: The authors ; compare young adults in same‐sex and different‐sex relationships with respect to relationship quality (commitment, satisfaction, and emotional intimacy) and sexual behavior (sexual frequency and sexual exclusivity). Drawing on the 4th wave of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health ( http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth), they use multiple regression to compare: male respondents with different‐sex partners, male respondents with same‐sex partners, female respondents with different‐sex partners, and female respondents with same‐sex partners.

Results: Consistent with previous research, the authors find that respondents in same‐sex relationships experience similar levels of commitment, satisfaction, and emotional intimacy as their counterparts in different‐sex relationships. They also corroborate the finding that male respondents in same‐sex relationships are less likely than other groups of respondents to indicate that their relationship is sexually exclusive.

Conclusion: This study provides an empirical basis for understanding the relationships of sexual minority young adults.

Proof of pluralistic ignorance about what is considered attractive in the gay community; & of a significant association between pluralistic ignorance & body image concerns, particularly among men not in committed relationships

Pluralistic Ignorance of Physical Attractiveness in the Gay Male Community. Daniel E. Flave-Novak & Jill M. Coleman. Journal of Homosexuality, https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1522811

ABSTRACT: Researchers have found that a disproportionate percentage of men diagnosed with eating disorders identify as gay, and there is extensive evidence that gay men have significantly more body image concerns than heterosexual men (Bosley, 2011). The current studies investigated whether pluralistic ignorance exists about what is considered attractive in the gay community. It was hypothesized that gay males would privately reject the notion that only a mesomorphic (thin and muscular) body type is attractive, yet incorrectly assume that their peers are attracted primarily to a mesomorphic body type. The studies found evidence for the existence of pluralistic ignorance about what is considered attractive in the gay community. Further, there was evidence for a significant association between pluralistic ignorance and body image concerns, particularly among men who were not in committed romantic relationships.

KEYWORDS: Body image, gay men, norms, physical attractiveness

Conservatives’ individual-level attitudes toward diverse political issues (e.g., abortion, gun control, welfare) were more dispersed across the political spectrum than were liberals’ attitudes due to to having several moral foundations

Pyszczynski, Tom, Pelin Kesebir, Matt Motyl, Andrea Yetzer, and Jacqueline M. Anson. 2018. “Ideological Consistency, Political Orientation, and Variability Across Moral Foundations.” PsyArXiv. October 10. doi:10.31234/osf.io/qgmsc

Abstract: We conceptualized ideological consistency as the extent to which an individual’s attitudes toward diverse political issues are coherent among themselves from an ideological standpoint. Four studies compared the ideological consistency of self-identified liberals and conservatives. Across diverse samples, attitudes, and consistency measures, liberals were more ideologically consistent than conservatives. In other words, conservatives’ individual-level attitudes toward diverse political issues (e.g., abortion, gun control, welfare) were more dispersed across the political spectrum than were liberals’ attitudes. Study 4 demonstrated that variability across commitments to different moral foundations predicted ideological consistency and mediated the relationship between political orientation and ideological consistency.

Observed negative impact of socioeconomic status on olfactory function could reflect differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors

Relationship of socioeconomic status to olfactory function. Aurélio Fornazieri et al. Physiology & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.10.011

Highlights
•    This research employs data from the largest clinical study of olfaction ever performed outside of North America and Europe.
•    Lower education levels and economic status were independently associated with an adverse influence on standardized olfactory test scores.
•    The observed negative impact of socioeconomic status on olfactory function could reflect differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors.

Abstract: Socioeconomic status can significantly impact health. To what degree education and other socioeconomic factors influence the chemical sense of olfaction is not clear. Most studies that have assessed such influences come from countries lacking large disparities in education and income and generally view such measures as nuisance variables to be controlled for statistically. In this study, we evaluated the influences of education and income on odor identification in a diverse sample of subjects from Brazil, a society where large disparities in both income and education are present. The 40-item University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) was administered to 1572 healthy Brazilian citizens with no self-reported olfactory or gustatory deficits and for whom detailed socioeconomic and educational status data were obtained. Univariate and multivariate models were employed to examine the influence of socioeconomic status on the test scores. After controlling for age, sex, ethnicity, and smoking behavior, income and educational level were positively and independently related to the olfactory test scores (respective ps < 0.001 & 0.01). Both linear and quadratic functions described the relationship between the UPSIT scores and the levels of education and socioeconomic status. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status performed significantly worse than those of higher socioeconomic status on 20 of the 40 odorant items. This study demonstrates socioeconomic status is significantly associated with influence the ability to identify odors. The degree to which this reflects differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors requires further investigation.

We like to be scared: After voluntary arousing negative experiences, reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored, or stressed prior to the experience

Kerr, M., Siegle, G. J., & Orsini, J. (2018). Voluntary arousing negative experiences (VANE): Why we like to be scared. Emotion. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000470

Abstract: This study examined survey data and neural reactivity associated with voluntarily engaging in high arousal negative experiences (VANE). Here we suggest how otherwise negative stimuli might be experienced as positive in the context of voluntary engagement. Participants were recruited from customers who had already purchased tickets to attend an “extreme” haunted attraction. Survey data measuring self-report affect, expectations, and experience was collected from 262 adults (139 women and 123 men; age M = 27.5 years, SD = 9.3 years) before and after their experience. Changes in electroencephalographic (EEG) indices of reactivity to cognitive and emotional tasks were further assessed from a subsample of 100 participants. Results suggested that participants’ reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored, or stressed prior to the experience. Among those whose moods improved, neural reactivity decreased in response to multiple tasks. Together, these data suggest that VANE reduces neural reactivity following stress. This result could explain post-VANE euphoria and may be adaptive in that it could help individuals to cope with subsequent stressors. To the extent that this phenomenon replicates in clinical situations, it could inform clinical interventions by using VANE principles to reduce neural reactivity to subsequent stressors.

This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability

Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank. Richard Murphy, Felix Weinhardt. NBER Working Paper No. 24958. http://www.nber.org/papers/w24958

Abstract: This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability. Using data on the universe of English school students, we exploit naturally occurring differences in achievement distributions across primary school classes to estimate the impact of class rank conditional on relative achievement. We find large effects on test scores, confidence and subject choice during secondary school, where students have a new set of peers and teachers who are unaware of the students’ prior ranking. The effects are especially large for boys, contributing to an observed gender gap in end-of-high school STEM subject choices. Using a basic model of student effort allocation across subjects, we derive and test a hypothesis to distinguish between learning and non-cognitive skills mechanisms and find support for the latter.

Democracy's Unique Advantage in Promoting Economic Growth: Quantitative Evidence for a New Institutional Theory

Democracy's Unique Advantage in Promoting Economic Growth: Quantitative Evidence for a New Institutional Theory. Rui Tang, Shiping Tang. Kyklos, https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12184

Summary: Bringing together the classic defense of liberty and democracy, the political economy of hierarchy, endogenous growth theory, and the new institutional economics on growth, we propose a new institutional theory that identifies democracy's unique advantage in prompting economic growth. We contend that the channel of liberty‐to‐innovation is the most critical channel in which democracy holds a unique advantage over autocracy in promoting growth, especially during the stage of growth via innovation. Our theory thus predicts that democracy holds a positive but indirect effect upon growth via the channel of liberty‐to‐innovation, conditioned by the level of economic development. We then present quantitative evidence for our theory. To our best knowledge, we are the first to propose such an indirect and conditional effect of democracy upon economic development and provide systematic evidence. Our study promises to integrate and reconcile many seemingly unrelated and often contradictory theories and evidence regarding regime and growth, including providing a possible explanation for the inconclusive results from regressing overall regime score against the rate of economic growth or change in level of GDP per capita.

Humans exhibit important shifts in this aspect of our social cognition: younger individuals attend more to negative stimuli, whereas older adults tend to focus on positive information; rhesus monkeys show an increasing negativity bias with age

Developmental shifts in social cognition: socio-emotional biases across the lifespan in rhesus monkeys. Alexandra G. Rosati, Alyssa M. Arre, Michael L. Platt, Laurie R. Santos. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-018-2573-8

Abstract: Humans exhibit a suite of developmental changes in social cognition across the lifespan. To what extent are these developmental patterns unique? We first review several social domains in which humans undergo critical ontogenetic changes in socio-cognitive processing, including social attention and theory of mind. We then examine whether one human developmental transition—a shift in socio-emotional preferences—also occurs in non-human primates. Specifically, we experimentally measured socio-emotional processing in a large population of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) ranging from infancy to old age. We tested whether macaques, like humans, also exhibited developmental shifts from a negativity bias at younger ages, indicating preferential attention to negative socio-emotional stimuli, to a positivity bias at older ages. We first assessed monkeys’ (n = 337) responses to negative socio-emotional stimuli by comparing their duration of looking towards photos of negative conspecific signals (threat displays) versus matched neutral expressions. In contrast to the pattern observed in humans, we found that older monkeys were more attentive to negative emotional stimuli than were younger monkeys. In a second study, we used the same method to examine monkeys’ (n = 132) attention to positive (affiliative displays) versus matched neutral expressions. Monkeys did not exhibit an overall preference for positive stimuli, nor major age-related changes in their attention. These results indicate that while monkeys show robust ontogenetic shifts in social preferences, they differ from humans by exhibiting an increasing negativity bias with age. Studies of comparative cognitive development can therefore provide insight into the evolutionary origins of human socio-cognitive development.

Significance statement: Humans are characterized by complex and flexible social behavior. Understanding the proximate psychological mechanisms and developmental processes that underpin these social behaviors can shed light on the evolutionary history of our species. We used a comparative developmental approach to identify whether a key component of human social cognition, responses to emotionally-charged social stimuli, are shared with other primates. Humans exhibit important shifts in this aspect of our social cognition: younger individuals attend more to negative stimuli, whereas older adults tend to focus on positive information. These shifts are thought to appropriately tailor our age-dependent social goals. We found that, unlike humans, rhesus monkeys show an increasing negativity bias with age. By examining primate cognition across the lifespan, this work can help disentangle how complex forms of social behavior emerge across species.

Keywords: Social cognition Comparative development Primates Socio-emotional biases Emotional signals

Harming animals and massacring humans: Characteristics of public mass and active shooters who abused animals

Harming animals and massacring humans: Characteristics of public mass and active shooters who abused animals. Arnold Arluke, Adam Lankford, Eric Madfis. Behavioral Sciences and the Law , https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.2385

Abstract: Researchers have extensively studied the tendency of certain violent criminals to hurt or torture animals, primarily focusing on domestic abusers and serial killers. However, little is known about the extent or nature of prior animal abuse among active shooters and public mass shooters. Public mass and active shooters essentially represent a single offender type: they are people who commit rampage attacks in public places and attempt to harm multiple victims beyond a single target. The only difference is that “mass” shootings are traditionally defined as cases resulting in the death of four or more victims, while “active” shootings have no minimum threshold. This study aimed to identify all publicly reported cases of active and mass shooters who engaged in animal cruelty, describe the nature of their violence toward animals and humans, and examine how they differ from other perpetrators without this history. Overall, this study found 20 cases of offenders with a publicly reported history of animal abuse. Comparisons between offenders with and without this history indicated that animal‐abusing offenders were more likely to be young and White, less likely to die at the crime scene, and more likely to kill and wound a large number of victims. While this finding supports the idea that animal abuse might be a warning sign for a small but deadly minority of mostly youthful offenders, it is likely not a robust signal of future shooters in general because animal abuse is rarely reported in this population of offenders at large.

We discovered hundreds of genes that, when their activity is enhanced, suppressed, or turned off, lengthen life & enhance health under laboratory conditions; does this support George Williams’ 1957 paper aobut antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis of aging?

Is Antagonistic Pleiotropy Ubiquitous in Aging Biology? Steven N Austad Jessica M Hoffman.  Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, eoy033, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoy033

Abstract: George Williams’ 1957 paper developed the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis of aging, which had previously been hinted at by Peter Medawar. Antagonistic pleiotropy, as it applies to aging, hypothesizes that animals possess genes that enhance fitness early in life but diminish it in later life and that such genes can be favored by natural selection because selection is stronger early in life even as they cause the aging phenotype to emerge. No genes of the sort hypothesized by Williams were known sixty years ago, but modern molecular biology has now discovered hundreds of genes that, when their activity is enhanced, suppressed, or turned off, lengthen life and enhance health under laboratory conditions. Does this provide strong support for Williams’ hypothesis? What are the implications of Williams’ hypothesis for the modern goal of medically intervening to enhance and prolong human health? Here we briefly review the current state of knowledge on antagonistic pleiotropy both under wild and laboratory conditions. Overall, whenever antagonistic pleiotropy effects have been seriously investigated, they have been found. However, not all trade-offs are directly between reproduction and longevity as is often assumed. The discovery that antagonistic pleiotropy is common if not ubiquitous implies that a number of molecular mechanisms of aging may be widely shared among organisms and that these mechanisms of aging can be potentially alleviated by targeted interventions.

Topic: aging phenotype genes longevity molecular biology reproductive physiological process pleiotropism elderly

Strong discrepancy between stated and revealed behavior: given a natural setting, people may actually behave inconsistently with the way in which they otherwise “brand” themselves; this is a big problem for predictability of survey answers

Why (field) experiments on unethical behavior are important: Comparing stated and revealed behavior. Yonas Alema et al. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.08.026

Highlights
•    Field experiment on unethical behavior.
•    Comparison of stated behavior and revealed behavior.
•    Experiment induces reciprocity and guilt in two treatments.
•    Result 1: strong discrepancy between stated and revealed behavior.
•    Result 2: inducing reciprocity and guilt reduces unethical behavior compared to control.

Abstract: Understanding unethical behavior is essential to many phenomena in the real world. We carry out a field experiment in a unique setting that varies the levels of reciprocity and guilt in an ethical decision. A survey more than one year before the field experiment allows us to compare at the individual level stated unethical behavior with revealed behavior in the same situation in the field. Our results indicate a strong discrepancy between stated and revealed behavior, regardless of the specific treatment in the field experiment. This suggests that, given a natural setting, people may actually behave inconsistently with the way in which they otherwise “brand” themselves. Our findings raise caution about the interpretation of stated behavioral measures commonly used in research on unethical behavior. In addition, we show that inducing reciprocity and guilt leads to a decrease in unethical behavior.

Antisocial behavior is heritable, but heritability varies by subtype and age; adversity predicts antisocial behavior directly & moderates genetic effects; we need genome-wide association studies of antisocial behavior with larger sample sizes

Genetic influences on antisocial behavior: recent advances and future directions. Arianna M Gard, Hailey L Dotterer, Luke W Hyde. Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 27, June 2019, Pages 46-55, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.07.013

Highlights
•    The heterogeneity of antisocial behavior needs to be considered in genetic studies.
•    Antisocial behavior is heritable, but heritability varies by subtype and age.
•    Adversity predicts antisocial behavior directly and moderates genetic effects.
•    Genome-wide association studies of antisocial behavior with larger sample sizes are needed.
•    Polygenic risk scores may capture cumulative genetic effects on antisocial behavior.
•    Neurogenetics links genes to behavior via the brain.

Abstract: Understanding the etiology of antisocial behavior (i.e. violence, criminality, rule-breaking), is essential to the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies. We provide a summary of the genetic correlates of antisocial behavior, drawing upon findings from behavioral, molecular, and statistical genetics. Across methodologies, our review highlights the centrality of environmental moderators of genetic effects, and how behavioral heterogeneity in antisocial behavior is an important consideration for genetic studies. We also review novel analytic techniques and neurogenetic approaches that can be used to examine how genetic variation predicts antisocial behavior. Finally, to illustrate how findings may converge across approaches, we describe pathways from genetic variability in oxytocin signaling to subtypes of antisocial behavior.