Sex, Drugs, Alcohol & Subjective Well‐Being: Smoking & alcohol decrease subjective well‐being by 2.5% & 2.4%; by contrast, having sex with multiple partners is slightly positive (for men, not for women)

Sex, Drugs, Alcohol and Subjective Well‐Being: Selection or Causation? Dimitrios Nikolaou. Kyklos, https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12196

This paper estimates the effects of risky behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol, marijuana, risky sex) on subjective well‐being. To identify these effects from endogenous sorting, I use information from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a system of simultaneous equations for participation in four risky activities and formation of individual happiness. My results provide evidence that smoking and alcohol decrease subjective well‐being by 2.5% and 2.4%, respectively. By contrast, the relationship between having sex with multiple partners, although positive, is not statistically significant at conventional levels. Nevertheless, these effects dwindle over time until participation in any of these behaviors does not have a long‐run impact on well‐being, with the exception of smoking and alcohol consumption, which have a persistent negative impact on subjective well‐being. The results highlight the importance of controlling for endogeneity of risky behaviors and provide an explanation as to why most individuals who engage in such behaviors do not develop longer‐lasting addictions.

Lying in Bed: An Analysis of Deceptive Affectionate Messages During Sexual Activity in Young Adults’ Romantic Relationships

Lying in Bed: An Analysis of Deceptive Affectionate Messages During Sexual Activity in Young Adults’ Romantic Relationships. Margaret Bennett & Amanda Denes. Communication Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2018.1557722

Abstract: Guided by affection exchange theory, the present study examined the associations among deceptive affectionate messages (DAMs) during sexual activity and duration of post-sex affectionate behavior, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction. Two-hundred twenty-eight participants ages 18–30, the majority of whom identified as White, completed a survey assessing deceptive and sexual communication. Linear regression and serial mediation using sexual satisfaction and post-sex affectionate behavior as sequential mediators revealed that more DAMs are associated with less sexual satisfaction, less post-sex communication, and less relationship satisfaction. The findings provide a more complete picture of how DAMs affect sexual encounters and may be used to inform interventions aimed at promoting healthier sexual relationships. Additionally, the implications for affection exchange theory are discussed.

Keywords: deceptive affectionate messages, affection exchange theory, sexual communication, sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction

Some restrictive dietary patterns (paleo, vegan) are linked to more positive psychological health; seems that psychological risk factors seen in weight loss dieters are not due to the restrictive dietary regimen

The psychological characteristics of people consuming vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten free and weight loss dietary patterns. R. Norwood, T. Cruwys, V. S. Chachay, J. Sheffield. Obesity Science & Practice, https://doi.org/10.1002/osp4.325

Summary
Objective: Previous research has identified several psychological factors associated with dietary restriction, but has focused almost exclusively on the subcategory of people following a weight loss diet. Little is known about the psychological factors associated with other kinds of restrictive dieting patterns. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether the identified psychological characteristics of dieters (e.g., elevated disordered eating behaviors, poor wellbeing) are a cause of dieting, follow from calorie restriction, or are the result of cognitive restraint.

Methods: This study conducted the first direct comparison of people (N = 393) following five different restrictive dietary patterns (vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, paleo, weight loss) as well as a comparison group who were not following a specific dietary pattern.

Results: The weight loss group had more negative psychological characteristics than all other groups, reporting the highest levels of eating disorder symptoms (M = 1.50), food cravings (M = 69.39), emotional eating (M = 2.97), and negative affect (M = 19.72). By contrast, several of the other restrictive dietary groups showed a number of psychological strengths, relative to the comparison group. This was particularly apparent among the paleo group, who reported the lowest levels of eating disorder symptoms (M = 0.74), food cravings (M = 47.63), emotional eating (M = 2.30), and negative affect (M = 14.81). By contrast, people following vegetarian and gluten free diets were largely the same as the non‐restricted comparison group in their psychological characteristics.

Conclusions: People adhering to different dietary patterns showed stark differences in their psychological characteristics. Indeed, some restrictive dietary patterns (paleo; vegan) were associated with more positive psychological characteristics than seen in an unrestricted comparison group. This suggests that the psychological risk factors seen in weight loss dieters are not attributable to a restrictive dietary regimen per se.

Uncompetitive contests for grades, promotions, & job assignments (lax standards, considering only limited talent pools), are called unmeritocratic; but when contestants are strategic, selection can be meritocratic

Fang, Dawei and Noe, Thomas H., Less Competition, More Meritocracy? (October 16, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3282723

Abstract: Uncompetitive contests for grades, promotions, and job assignments, which feature lax standards or consider only limited talent pools, are often criticized for being unmeritocratic. We show that, when contestants are strategic, lax standards and exclusivity can make selection more meritocratic. Strategic contestants take more risks in more competitive contests. Risk taking reduces the correlation between selection and ability. By reducing the noise engendered by strategic risk taking, dialing down competition can produce outcomes that better conform with the meritocratic ideal of selecting the best and only the best.

Keywords: selection contests, meritocracy, risk taking
JEL Classification: C72, D82, J01

Federal Presidents Attacking The Press Thru Illegal Moves or Even Promoting & Using Unconstitutional Laws

7 Presidents Who Were Tougher Than Trump on the Media. Fred Lucas. The Daily Signal, Dec 27 2018. https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/12/27/7-presidents-who-were-tougher-than-trump-on-the-media


[President Lyndon B. Johnson speaks during a press conference. Johnson and political allies tried to blunt media criticism. (Photo: Everett Collection/Newscom)]

The president was frustrated with the media coverage of him and his policies, swearing that 85 percent of all newspapers were against him.

“Our newspapers cannot be edited in the interests of the general public,” the president griped. Then, almost derisively, he said: “Freedom of the press. How many bogies are conjured up by invoking that greatly overworked phrase?”

So, he opted to bypass the traditional media he was convinced was unfair and speak directly to America.

And President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats on the radio, beginning in 1933, proved to be a successful political move.

The verdict is still out on President Donald Trump’s tweets, though.

Trump regularly tweets about “fake news.” He has doubled down on the view that overly critical news outlets are the “enemy of the American people.”

He talked about more stringent libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations, threatened the broadcast license of certain networks, and the Trump White House pulled the press pass for CNN personality Jim Acosta after a confrontation at a press conference.

But so far he hasn’t taken government action, as Roosevelt and other past presidents have.

A Trump-appointed federal judge sided with CNN on the Acosta press pass. Congress is unlikely to enact new libel laws, as Supreme Court precedent sets a high standard for a public figure to sue a news outlet.

The Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to pull a license of a network (which aren’t licensed), having purview only over individual stations that operate on the public airwaves (which are licensed). Cable news outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel also are not licensed and not subject to FCC regulation.

Past presidents have taken tangible actions to undermine a free press. Trump has so far taken only a more negative rhetorical tone toward the press, said David Beito, a history professor at the University of Alabama.

“Would he like to do something? He probably would, but a change of tone has been the biggest difference,” Beito told The Daily Signal, characterizing Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the press as more aggressive than most of his predecessors.

Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were among the biggest presidential offenders during the 20th century, he added.

“Wilson was extremely hostile to any sort of criticism, but it was couched in terms of wartime and the red scare,” Beito said. “Everyone knew Wilson was doing this. FDR was very subtle. Roosevelt was effective working through third parties. It was hard tying him to anything.”

Here are seven examples of presidential administrations that went well beyond rhetoric in going after the press.


1. ‘Thank’ Obama

The Obama administration’s Justice Department launched more leak investigations under the World War I-era Espionage Act than any other administration in history, according to then-New York Times reporter James Risen, writing in a December 2016 op-ed.

The Obama administration targeted Risen with a subpoena to force him to reveal his sources.

In a separate case, the Obama Justice Department named then-Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen as an unindicted co-conspirator. The Justice Department also seized the phone records of Rosen’s parents.

The Obama administration also seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, seizing records for 20 separate phone lines, including cellular and home lines.

Risen, now with The Intercept, wrote in his op-ed in The New York Times:

    If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the FBI to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama. …

    Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the FBI have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

“With Obama, the press often gave him cover,” Beito told The Daily Signal. “Obama often did do things against reporters that were concerning.”

If the Trump administration imposes regulations on social media and internet giants, he added, it could set a precedent for future Democratic presidents who want to regulate more sectors.

A 2013 report from the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists compared Obama to former President Richard Nixon for his aggressive probes of leaks to reporters.


2. LBJ on ‘Challenge and Harass’

Talk radio was not a conservative phenomenon in the 1960s, as it became in the 1990s. But President Lyndon B. Johnson—and the Democratic National Committee—took action to suppress the format during his 1964 presidential race.

The Fairness Doctrine, an FCC rule, required broadcasters to air both sides of a controversial issue.

A former CBS News president, Fred Friendly, broke the story in his 1977 book, “The Good Guys, the Bad Guys and the First Amendment,” of how the Democratic National Committee used the rule to target unfriendly broadcasts.

Friendly wrote that “there is little doubt that this contrived scheme had White House approval.”

The DNC delivered a kit to activists explaining “how to demand time under the Fairness Doctrine.” It also mailed out thousands of copies of an article against conservative talk radio published in The Nation, a liberal magazine.

The Democrats also sent thousands of radio stations a letter from DNC counsel Dan Brightman warning that if Democrats are attacked on their programs, they would demand equal time.

Democrat operative Wayne Phillips was quoted in the Friendly book as saying, “the effectiveness of this operation was in inhibiting the political activity of these right-wing broadcasts.”

Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of the Commerce Department in the Johnson administration, recalled: “Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenge would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.”


3. Nixon and the Fairness Doctrine

Johnson’s successor as president, Richard Nixon, would use similar tactics, particularly in the heat of the Watergate investigation.

The Nixon administration’s FCC threatened the licenses of TV stations owned by The Washington Post Co. and CBS Inc. over aggressive coverage of the Watergate scandal that eventually led Nixon to resign.

Nixon’s White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, targeted individual stations with Fairness Doctrine complaints, according to the Poynter Institute, a journalism research group.

Nixon also kept an “enemies list” that largely included journalists.

The Reagan administration’s FCC did away with the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and Reagan vetoed subsequent legislation to put the policy in law. This led to the flourishing of conservative talk radio.


4. FDR and ‘Overworked Phrase’

The Roosevelt administration frequently targeted major newspapers, publishers, and journalists for tax audits. The common factor was that these publications or individuals opposed FDR’s New Deal programs, Beito said.

The chief targets included Col. Robert McCormick, owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, and press barons Frank Gannett and William Randolph Hearst.

Beito wrote about Roosevelt’s tactics in a piece for Reason, a libertarian magazine.

Roosevelt, during his re-election campaign in 1936, complained that 85 percent of newspapers were against him and the New Deal. In 1938, the president vented:

    Our newspapers cannot be edited in the interests of the general public, from the counting room. And I wish we could have a national symposium on that question, particularly in relation to the freedom of the press. How many bogies are conjured up by invoking that greatly overworked phrase?

Sen. Hugo Black, D-Ala., a staunch FDR ally whom the president later would name to the Supreme Court, was chairman of the Special Senate Committee on Lobbying.

The lobbying committee began investigating utility companies, banks, and businesses that opposed the New Deal. Its work eventually turned into a fishing expedition, issuing subpoenas to critics such as Hearst and unfriendly media outlets, Beito wrote in the Reason article.

A court decision in Hearst’s favor short-circuited the Black committee’s investigation into the telegrams of major businesses that opposed the New Deal, he wrote.


5. Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information

Not long after the country entered World War I, Wilson wrote the Democratic-controlled House, asking for “authority to exercise censorship over the press to the extent that that censorship is embodied in the recent action of the House of Representatives is absolutely necessary to the public safety.”

Congress turned down Wilson, so the president issued an executive order creating a Committee on Public Information.

The agency employed 75,000 in its speaking division alone, and had separate divisions overseeing foreign language newspapers and films, according to Smithsonian magazine.

This was part of Wilson’s larger effort to control news coverage, Christopher B. Daly wrote last year in the Smithsonian magazine article:

    In its crusade to ‘make the world safe for democracy,’ the Wilson administration took immediate steps at home to curtail one of the pillars of democracy—press freedom—by implementing a plan to control, manipulate and censor all news coverage, on a scale never seen in U.S. history. … He waged a campaign of intimidation and outright suppression against those ethnic and socialist papers that continued to oppose the war. Taken together, these wartime measures added up to an unprecedented assault on press freedom.

The federal propaganda agency also established a government-run national newspaper called the Official Bulletin, Daly wrote: “In some respects, it is the closest the United States has come to a paper like the Soviet Union’s Pravda or China’s People’s Daily.”


6. Lincoln and the Civil War

The Civil War was an unparalleled test of the nation and civil liberties. Press freedom not surprisingly took a hit.

President Abraham Lincoln didn’t order the military to shut down pro-Confederate and anti-war newspapers, but turned a blind eye when the Union army did so, according to the magazine Civil War Times.

In the midst of war, pro-Union newspaper publishers generally didn’t speak up for their fellow newspapermen, who were sometimes jailed.

Chiefly, the Union army targeted newspapers in Kentucky, a border state with split loyalties; Virginia, a Confederate state; and Maryland and Missouri, both Union states.

According to the article in the Civil War Times:

    At their most unobjectionable level, the safeguards were initially meant to keep secret military information off the telegraph wires and out of the press. But in other early cases censors also prevented the publication of pro-secession sentiments that might encourage border states out of the Union. …

    Eventually the military and the government began punishing editorial opposition to the war itself. Authorities banned pro-peace newspapers from the U.S. mails, shut down newspaper offices and confiscated printing materials. They intimidated, and sometimes imprisoned, reporters, editors and publishers who sympathized with the South or objected to an armed struggle to restore the Union.

    For the first year of the war, Lincoln left no trail of documents attesting to any personal conviction that dissenting newspapers ought to be muzzled. But neither did he say anything to control or contradict such efforts when they were undertaken, however haphazardly, by his Cabinet officers or military commanders.


7. Adams and the Sedition Act

President John Adams signed the Sedition Act of 1798 to ban “false, scandalous and malicious writing” against Congress or the president and to make it illegal to conspire “to oppose any measure or measures of the government.”

This could be the oldest, most well-known clash between a president and the press.

Adams and the Federalist Congress were not tyrants, but rather passed the series of four laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts out of fear of a pending war with France that never occurred.

Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont, who wrote letters to Democratic-Republican newspapers, was the first person tried under the law.

Acting as his own lawyer, Lyon argued that the law wasn’t constitutional. He was convicted nonetheless, and sentenced to four months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

One publisher of a Democratic-Republican newspaper, James Callender, was convicted and jailed for nine months for “false, scandalous, and malicious writing, against the said President of the United States.”

The law expired in early 1801. President Thomas Jefferson, leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, pardoned everyone convicted under the law.


Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of "The Right Side of History" podcast. Send an email to Fred.

Who Built Maslow’s Pyramid? A History of the Creation of Management Studies’ Most Famous Symbol

Who Built Maslow’s Pyramid? A History of the Creation of Management Studies’ Most Famous Symbol and Its Implications for Management Education. Todd Bridgman, Stephen Cummings and John A Ballard. Academy of Management Learning & Education, Apr 13 2018. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2017.0351

Abstract: Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation, the idea that human needs exist in a hierarchy that people strive progressively to satisfy, is regarded as a fundamental approach to understanding and motivating people at work. It is one of the first and most remembered models encountered by students of management. Despite gaining little support in empirical studies and being criticized for promoting an elitist, individualistic view of management, Maslow’s theory remains popular, its popularity underpinned by its widely-recognized pyramid form. However, Maslow never created a pyramid to represent the hierarchy of needs. We investigated how it came to be and draw on this analysis to call for a rethink of how Maslow is represented in management studies. We also challenge management educators to reflect critically on what are taken to be the historical foundations of management studies and the forms in which those foundations are taught to students.

If it is easy to remember, then it is not secure: Metacognitive beliefs affect password selection

If it is easy to remember, then it is not secure: Metacognitive beliefs affect password selection. Karlos Luna. Applied Cognitive Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3516

Summary: In this research we applied current theories of metacognition to study computer security and tested the idea that users’ password selection is affected by the metacognitive belief that if a password is memorable, then it is not secure. In two experiments, different types of eight‐character passwords and longer, more secure sentences were presented. Participants rated perceived memorability and perceived security of the passwords and indicated whether they would use them in a critical and in a non‐critical service. The results confirmed the belief. Sentences that are in fact highly secure and perceived as highly memorable were also perceived as weak passwords. The belief strongly affected password selection for critical services, but it had no effect on non‐critical services. In sum, long sentences are a particularly interesting type of password because they meet both security and memorability criteria, but their use is limited by a false belief.

We observe a natural memory decay pattern where beliefs become less accurate & confidence is reduced as well; & on average, subjects overpay for bets on propositions that they believe in, but underpay for the opposite bets

Subjective beliefs and confidence when facts are forgotten. Igor Kopylov, Joshua Miller. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11166-018-9295-1

Abstract: Forgetting can be a salient source of uncertainty for subjective beliefs, confidence, and ambiguity attitudes. To investigate this, we run several experiments where people bet on propositions (facts) that they cannot recall with certainty. We use betting preferences to infer subjects’ revealed beliefs and their revealed confidence in these beliefs. Forgetting is induced via interference tasks and time delays (up to one year). We observe a natural memory decay pattern where beliefs become less accurate and confidence is reduced as well. Moreover, we find a form of comparative ignorance where subjects are more ambiguity averse when they cannot recall the truth rather than never having learnt it. In a different vein, we identify an overconfidence pattern: on average, subjects overpay for bets on propositions that they believe in, but underpay for the opposite bets. We formulate a two-signal behavioral model of forgetting that generates all of these patterns. It suggests new testable hypotheses that are confirmed by our data.

The vaunted gatekeeper role of the creative industries is largely mythical; high costs of production have stifled creativity in industries that require ever-bigger blockbusters to cover the losses of expensive failure

Digital Renaissance: What Data and Economics Tell Us about the Future of Popular Culture. Joel Waldfogel. Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 2018. https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Renaissance-Economics-Popular-Culture/dp/0691162824/

The digital revolution poses a mortal threat to the major creative industries—music, publishing, television, and the movies. The ease with which digital files can be copied and distributed has unleashed a wave of piracy with disastrous effects on revenue. Cheap, easy self-publishing is eroding the position of these gatekeepers and guardians of culture. Does this revolution herald the collapse of culture, as some commentators claim? Far from it. In Digital Renaissance, Joel Waldfogel argues that digital technology is enabling a new golden age of popular culture, a veritable digital renaissance.

By reducing the costs of production, distribution, and promotion, digital technology is democratizing access to the cultural marketplace. More books, songs, television shows, and movies are being produced than ever before. Nor does this mean a tidal wave of derivative, poorly produced kitsch; analyzing decades of production and sales data, as well as bestseller and best-of lists, Waldfogel finds that the new digital model is just as successful at producing high-quality, successful work as the old industry model, and in many cases more so. The vaunted gatekeeper role of the creative industries proves to have been largely mythical. The high costs of production have stifled creativity in industries that require ever-bigger blockbusters to cover the losses on ever-more-expensive failures.

Are we drowning in a tide of cultural silt, or living in a golden age for culture? The answers in Digital Renaissance may surprise you.

Individuals who are in a romantic relationship, have ever had sexual intercourse & oral sex, & who have more frequent & variable sex have more positive body attitudes

A review of research linking body image and sexual well-being. Meghan M. Gillen, Charlotte H.Markey. Body Image, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2018.12.004

Highlights
•    We reviewed research on body image and sexual well-being.
•    The review focused on Dr. Thomas Cash’s contributions to this area.
•    Most research suggests a positive link between body image and sexual well-being.
•    We suggest research on new populations using new methods and on positive body image.

Abstract: The link between body image and sexual well-being is intuitive and increasingly supported by psychological research: individuals, particularly women, with greater body satisfaction and body appreciation tend to report more positive sexual experiences. Although both perceptions of one’s body and one’s sexual life are central to most adults’ experiences, this area of research has remained somewhat understudied. In this review, we discuss the findings that are available and suggest directions for future research and applied implications of this work. We highlight Thomas Cash’s contributions to this area of study, given his significant contributions to moving our understanding of body image and sexual well-being forward.

A decrease in population growth lowers firm entry rates; aging firms fully explains the concentration of employment in large firms, & trends in average firm size & exit rates, & the decline in labor’s share of GDP

From Population Growth to Firm Demographics: Implications for Concentration, Entrepreneurship and the Labor Share. Hugo Hopenhayn, Julian Neira, Rish Singhania. NBER Working Paper No. 25382, Dec 2018. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25382

Abstract: The US economy has undergone a number of puzzling changes in recent decades. Large firms now account for a greater share of economic activity, new firms are being created at a slower rate, and workers are getting paid a smaller share of GDP. This paper shows that changes in population growth provide a unified quantitative explanation for these long-term changes. The mechanism goes through firm entry rates. A decrease in population growth lowers firm entry rates, shifting the firm-age distribution towards older firms. Heterogeneity across firm age groups combined with an aging firm distribution replicates the observed trends. Micro data show that an aging firm distribution fully explains i) the concentration of employment in large firms, ii) and trends in average firm size and exit rates, key determinants of the firm entry rate. An aging firm distribution also explains the decline in labor’s share of GDP. In our model, older firms have lower labor shares because of lower overhead labor to employment ratios. Consistent with our mechanism, we find that the ratio of nonproduction workers to total employment has declined in the US.

Is the Link between Pornography Use and Relational Happiness Really More about Masturbation? Results from Two National Surveys

Is the Link between Pornography Use and Relational Happiness Really More about Masturbation? Results from Two National Surveys. Samuel Perry, The Journal of Sex Research, Dec 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329403709

Abstract: Numerous studies have observed a persistent, and most often negative, association between pornography use and romantic relationship quality. While various theories have been suggested to explain this association, studies have yet to empirically examine whether the observed link between pornography consumption and relationship outcomes has more to do with solo-masturbation than actually watching pornography. The current study draws on two nationally-representative data sets with nearly identical measures to test whether taking masturbation practice into account reduces or nullifies the association between pornography use and relational happiness. Controls are included for sex frequency and satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and other relevant correlates. Results from both the 2012 New Family Structures Study (N=1,977) and 2014 Relationships in America survey (N=10,106) show that masturbation is negatively associated with relational happiness for men and women, while pornography use is either unassociated or becomes unassociated with relational happiness once masturbation is included. Indeed, evidence points to a slight positive association between pornography use and relational happiness once masturbation and gender differences are accounted for. Findings suggest that future studies on this topic should include measures of masturbation practice along with pornography use and that modifications to theories connecting pornography use to relationship outcomes should be considered.

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association Between Disgust and Prejudice Toward Gay Men (but not gay women)

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association Between Disgust and Prejudice Toward Gay Men. Mark J. Kiss, Melanie A. Morrison , & Todd G. Morrison. Journal of Homosexuality, https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1553349

ABSTRACT: A sizeable number of studies have documented a relationship between heterosexual persons’ experience of disgust (measured as an individual difference variable or induced experimentally) and prejudice toward gay men (i.e., homonegativity). Yet, to date, no one has attempted to meta-analytically review this corpus of research. We address this gap by conducting a meta-analysis of published and unpublished work examining heterosexual men and women’s disgust and their homonegativity toward gay men. Fourteen articles (12 published, two unpublished) containing 17 studies were analyzed (N = 7,322). The average effect size for disgust sensitivity studies was moderate to large (d = 0.64), whereas for disgust induction studies, the effect was large (d = 0.77). No evidence of effect size heterogeneity emerged. Future directions and recommendations for methodological improvements are outlined.

KEYWORDS: Gay men, disgust, prejudice, homonegativity, emotions, meta-analysis

---
The current meta-analysis reveals that disgust is associated with negative attitudes toward gay men. While a number of possible explanations for this association were elucidated, the question remains: Why do heterosexuals who experience or are sensitive to disgust evidence greater prejudice toward gay men but not lesbian women or other minoritized social groups? What is it about gay men—as a social category—that links them to the affective state of disgust? Relatedly, although disgust can be evoked using disparate methods, is there a specific type of disgust induction that is most salient vis-à-vis homonegative attitudes toward gay men? Morrison, Kiss, et al. (in press) noted:

Gay men may be regarded as disgusting because anal intercourse is widely (mis) perceived as a common practice among members of this social category. This behaviour, especially when engaged in receptively, constitutes a nexus of taboos: violation of hegemonic standards of masculinity; a disconcerting proximity to faeces and attendant concerns about germs/disease; and, given its nonprocreative and “base” nature, the capacity to erode the distinction between humans and animals and, hence, undermine our faith in speciesism.

In monkeys & apes the maximax heuristic (risk is ignored for potential gains, however low they may be) is observed while playing lotteries, as can happen in human managerial & financial decision-making

Broihanne, M.-H., Romain, A., Call, J., Thierry, B., Wascher, C. A. F., De Marco, A., . . . Dufour, V. (2018). Monkeys (Sapajus apella and Macaca tonkeana) and great apes (Gorilla gorilla, Pongo abelii, Pan paniscus, and Pan troglodytes) play for the highest bid. Journal of Comparative Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/com0000153

Abstract: Many studies investigate the decisions made by animals by focusing on their attitudes toward risk, that is, risk-seeking, risk neutrality, or risk aversion. However, little attention has been paid to the extent to which individuals understand the different odds of outcomes. In a previous gambling task involving 18 different lotteries (Pelé, Broihanne, Thierry, Call, & Dufour, 2014), nonhuman primates used probabilities of gains and losses to make their decision. Although the use of complex mathematical calculation for decision-making seemed unlikely, we applied a gradual decrease in the chances to win throughout the experiment. This probably facilitated the extraction of information about odds. Here, we investigated whether individuals would still make efficient decisions if this facilitating factor was removed. To do so, we randomized the order of presentation of the 18 lotteries. Individuals from 4 ape and 2 monkey species were tested. Only capuchin monkeys differed from others, gambling even when there was nothing to win. Randomizing the lottery presentation order leads all species to predominantly use a maximax heuristic. Individuals gamble as soon as there is at least one chance to win more than they already possess, whatever the risk. Most species also gambled more as the frequency of larger rewards increased. These results suggest optimistic behavior. The maximax heuristic is sometimes observed in human managerial and financial decision-making, where risk is ignored for potential gains, however low they may be. This suggests a shared and strong propensity in primates to rely on heuristics whenever complexity in evaluation of outcome odds arises.

New Studies Show Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics, far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, was small, amateurish, & mostly unrelated to the 2016 election

New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics. Aaron Maté. The Nation, Dec 28 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-elections-interference/

Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.

Excerpts with no links:

The release of two Senate-commissioned reports has sparked a new round of panic about Russia manipulating a vulnerable American public on social media. Headlines warn that Russian trolls have tried to suppress the African-American vote, promote Green Party candidate Jill Stein, recruit “assets,” and “sow discord” or “hack the 2016 election” via sex-toy ads and Pokémon Go. “The studies,” writes David Ignatius of The Washington Post, “describe a sophisticated, multilevel Russian effort to use every available tool of our open society to create resentment, mistrust and social disorder,” demonstrating that the Russians, “thanks to the Internet…seem to be perfecting these dark arts.” According to Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times, “it looks increasingly as though” Russian disinformation “changed the direction of American history” in the narrowly decided 2016 election, when “Russian trolling easily could have made the difference.”

The reports, from the University of Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Research Project and the firm New Knowledge, do provide the most thorough look at Russian social-media activity to date. With an abundance of data, charts, graphs, and tables, coupled with extensive qualitative analysis, the authors scrutinize the output of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) the Russian clickbait firm indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February 2018. On every significant metric, it is difficult to square the data with the dramatic conclusions that have been drawn.

• 2016 Election Content: The most glaring data point is how minimally Russian social-media activity pertained to the 2016 campaign. The New Knowledge report acknowledges that evaluating IRA content “purely based on whether it definitively swung the election is too narrow a focus,” as the “explicitly political content was a small percentage.” To be exact, just “11% of the total content” attributed to the IRA and 33 percent of user engagement with it “was related to the election.” The IRA’s posts “were minimally about the candidates,” with “roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts” having “mentioned Trump or Clinton by name.”

• Scale: The researchers claim that “the scale of [the Russian] operation was unprecedented,” but they base that conclusion on dubious figures. They repeat the widespread claim that Russian posts “reached 126 million people on Facebook,” which is in fact a spin on Facebook’s own guess. “Our best estimate,” Facebook’s Colin Stretch testified to Congress in October 2017, “is that approximately 126 million people may have been served one of these [IRA] stories at some time during the two year period” between 2015 and 2017. According to Stretch, posts generated by suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s News Feed amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.”

• Spending: Also hurting the case that the Russians reached a large number of Americans is that they spent such a microscopic amount of money to do it. Oxford puts the IRA’s Facebook spending between 2015 and 2017 at just $73,711. As was previously known, about $46,000 was spent on Russian-linked Facebook ads before the 2016 election. That amounts to about 0.05 percent of the $81 million spent on Facebook ads by the Clinton and Trump campaigns combined. A recent disclosure by Google that Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on platforms in 2016 only underscores how miniscule that spending was. The researchers also claim that the IRA’s “manipulation of American political discourse had a budget that exceeded $25 million USD.” But that number is based on a widely repeated error that mistakes the IRA’s spending on US-related activities for its parent project’s overall global budget, including domestic social-media activity in Russia.

• Sophistication: Another reason to question the operation’s sophistication can be found by simply looking at its offerings. The IRA’s most shared pre-election Facebook post was a cartoon of a gun-wielding Yosemite Sam. Over on Instagram, the best-received image urged users to give it a “Like” if they believe in Jesus. The top IRA post on Facebook before the election to mention Hillary Clinton was a conspiratorial screed about voter fraud. It’s telling that those who are so certain Russian social-media posts affected the 2016 election never cite the posts that they think actually helped achieve that end. The actual content of those posts might explain why.

• Covert or Clickbait Operation? Far from exposing a sophisticated propaganda campaign, the reports provide more evidence that the Russians were actually engaging in clickbait capitalism: targeting unique demographics like African Americans or evangelicals in a bid to attract large audiences for commercial purposes. Reporters who have profiled the IRA have commonly described it as “a social media marketing campaign.” Mueller’s indictment of the IRA disclosed that it sold “promotions and advertisements” on its pages that generally sold in the $25-$50 range. “This strategy,” Oxford observes, “is not an invention for politics and foreign intrigue, it is consistent with techniques used in digital marketing.” New Knowledge notes that the IRA even sold merchandise that “perhaps provided the IRA with a source of revenue,” hawking goods such as T-shirts, “LGBT-positive sex toys and many variants of triptych and 5-panel artwork featuring traditionally conservative, patriotic themes.”

• “Asset Development”: Lest one wonder how promoting sex toys might factor into a sophisticated influence campaign, the New Knowledge report claims that exploiting “sexual behavior” was a key component of the IRA’s “expansive” “human asset recruitment strategy” in the United States. “Recruiting an asset by exploiting a personal vulnerability,” the report explains, “is a timeless espionage practice.” The first example of this timeless espionage practice is of an ad featuring Jesus consoling a dejected young man by telling him: “Struggling with the addiction to masturbation? Reach out to me and we will beat it together.” It is unknown if this particular tactic brought any assets into the fold. But New Knowledge reports that there was “some success with several of these human-activation attempts.” That is correct: The IRA’s online trolls apparently succeeded in sparking protests in 2016, like several in Florida where “it’s unclear if anyone attended”; “no people showed up to at least one,” and “ragtag groups” showed up at others, including one where video footage captured a crowd of eight people. The most successful effort appears to have been in Houston, where Russian trolls allegedly organized dueling rallies pitting a dozen white supremacists against several dozen counter-protesters outside an Islamic center.   

Based on all of this data, we can draw this picture of Russian social-media activity: It was mostly unrelated to the 2016 election; microscopic in reach, engagement, and spending; and juvenile or absurd in its content. This leads to the inescapable conclusion, as the New Knowledge study acknowledges, that “the operation’s focus on elections was merely a small subset” of its activity. They qualify that “accurate” narrative by saying it “misses nuance and deserves more contextualization.” Alternatively, perhaps it deserves some minimal reflection that a juvenile social-media operation with such a small focus on elections is being widely portrayed as a seismic threat that may well have decided the 2016 contest.

Doing so leads us to conclusions that have nothing to do with Russian social-media activity, nor with the voters supposedly influenced by it. Take the widespread speculation that Russian social-media posts may have suppressed the black vote. That a Russian troll farm sought to deceive black audiences and other targeted demographics on social media is certainly contemptible. But in criticizing that effort there’s no reason to assume it was successful—and yet that’s exactly what the pundits did. “When you consider the narrow margins by which [Donald Trump] won [Michigan and Wisconsin], and poor minority turnout there, these Russian voter suppression efforts may have been decisive,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod commented. “Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election,” The New York Times conspicuously notes, “but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.”

That it is even considered possible that the Russian campaign impacted the black vote displays a rather stunning paternalism and condescension. Would Axelrod, Times reporters, or any of the others floating a similar scenario accept a suggestion that their own votes might be susceptible to silly social-media posts mostly unrelated to the election? If not, what does that tell us about their attitudes toward the people that they presume could be so vulnerable?

Entertaining the possibility that Russian social-media posts impacted the election outcome requires more than just a contemptuous view of average voters. It also requires the abandonment of elementary standards of logic, probability, and arithmetic. We now have corroboration of this judgment from an unlikely source. Just days after the New Knowledge report was released, The New York Times reported that the company had carried out “a secret experiment” in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. According to an internal document, New Knowledge used “many of the [Russian] tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections,” going so far as to stage an “elaborate ‘false flag’ operation” that promoted the idea that the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, was backed by Russian bots. The fallout from the operation has led Facebook to suspend the accounts of five people, including New Knowledge CEO Jonathon Morgan.

The Times discloses that the project had a budget of $100,000, but adds that it “was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race.” A Democratic operative concurs, telling the Times that “it was impossible that a $100,000 operation had an impact.”

The Alabama Senate race cost $51 million. If it was impossible for a $100,000 New Knowledge operation to affect a 2017 state election, then how could a comparable—perhaps even less expensive—Russian operation possibly impact a $2.4 billion US presidential election in 2016?

On top of straining credulity, fixating on barely detectable and trivial social-media content also downplays myriad serious issues. As the journalist Ari Berman has tirelessly pointed out, the 2016 election was “the first presidential contest in 50 years without the full protections of the [Voting Rights Act],” one that was conducted amid “the greatest rollback of voting rights since the act was passed” in 1965. Rather than ruminating over whether they were duped by Russian clickbait, reporters who have actually spoken to black Midwest voters have found that political disillusionment amid stagnant wages, high inequality, and pervasive police brutality led many to stay home.

And that leads us to perhaps a key reason why elites in particular are so fixated on the purported threat of Russian meddling: It deflects attention from their own failures, and the failings of the system that grants them status as elites. During the campaign, corporate media outlets handed Donald Trump billions of dollars worth of air time because, in the words of the now ousted CBS exec Les Moonves: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS…. The money’s rolling in and this is fun.” Not wanting to interrupt the fun, these outlets have every incentive to breathlessly cover Russiagate and amplify comparisons of stolen Democratic Party e-mails and Russian social-media posts to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Kristallnacht, and “cruise missiles.”

Having lost the presidential election to a reality TV host, the Democratic Party leadership is arguably the most incentivized to capitalize on the Russia panic. They continue to oblige. Like clockwork, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook seized on the new Senate studies to warn that “Russian operatives will try to divide Democrats again in the 2020 primary, making activists unwitting accomplices.” By “unwitting accomplices,” Mook is presumably referring to the progressive Democrats who have protested the DNC leadership’s collusion with the Clinton campaign and bias against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. Mook is following a now familiar Democratic playbook: blaming Russia for the consequences of the party elite’s own actions. When an uproar arose over Trump campaign data firm Cambridge Analytica in early 2018, Hillary Clinton was quoted posing what she dubbed the “real question”: “How did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin, or Michigan, or Pennsylvania?”

In fact, the Russians spent a grand total of $3,102 in these three states, with the majority of that paltry sum not even during the general election but during the primaries, and the majority of the ads were not even about candidates but about social issues. The total number of times ads were targeted at Wisconsin (54), Michigan (36), Pennsylvania (25) combined is less than the 152 times that ads were targeted at the blue state of New York. Wisconsin and Michigan also happen to be two states that Clinton infamously, and perilously, avoided visiting in the campaign’s final months.

The utility of Russia-baiting goes far beyond absolving elites of responsibility for their own failures. Hacked documents have recently revealed that a UK-government charity has waged a global propaganda operation in the name of “countering Russian disinformation.” The project, known as the Integrity Initiative, is run by military intelligence officials with funding from the British Foreign Office and other government sources, including the US State Department and NATO. It works closely with “clusters” of sympathetic journalists and academics across the West, and has already been outed for waging a social-media campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The group’s Twitter account promoted articles that painted Corbyn as a “useful idiot” in support of “the Kremlin cause”; criticized his communications director, Seumas Milne, for his alleged “work with the Kremlin agenda”; and said, “It’s time for the Corbyn left to confront its Putin problem.”

The Corbyn camp is far from the only progressive force to be targeted with this smear tactic. That it is revealed to be part of a Western government–backed operation is yet another reason to consider the fixation with Russian social-media activity in a new light. There is no indication that the disinformation spread by employees of a St. Petersburg troll farm has had a discernible impact on the US electorate. The barrage of claims to the contrary is but one element of an infinitely larger chorus from failed political elites, sketchy private firms, shadowy intelligence officials, and credulous media outlets that inculcates the Western public with fears of a Kremlin “sowing discord.” Given how divorced the prevailing alarm is from the actual facts—and the influence of those fueling it—we might ask ourselves whose disinformation is most worthy of concern.

Aaron Maté is a host/producer for The Real News.