Relative to industrialized populations, men from subsistence groups exhibit lower testosterone values and more modest declines with age; paper discusses reasons for these lower values

A Comparison of men’s Life History, Aging, and Testosterone Levels among Datoga Pastoralists, Hadza Foragers, and Qom Transitional Foragers. Louis Calistro Alvarado et al. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, September 12 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-019-00116-1

Abstract
Objectives: Relative to industrialized populations, men from subsistence groups exhibit lower testosterone values and more modest declines with age. Limited energy availability has been hypothesized to suppress testosterone production, particularly during young adulthood when testosterone levels are highest, resulting in a flatter trajectory of age-decline. Energetic constraint, however, is not unique to the evolutionary ecology of humans, and yet significant age-related testosterone decline is observed in numerous species of wild primates. Conversely, human life history is distinguished by extensive bi-parental care and male provisioning. Because fathers show decreased testosterone with parenting effort, we argue that within more naturalistic and evolutionarily relevant ecologies, natural fertility and earlier reproduction suppresses testosterone in emerging adulthood such that a lower relative baseline dictates less age-decline across the remaining lifespan.

Methods: We examine men’s testosterone levels as contrasting functions of energetic status and paternal involvement across three traditional populations with substantial variability in men’s nutritional condition and parental investment. Anthropometric and demographic data along with saliva samples were collected from 70 Datoga, 29 Hadza, and 43 Qom men, ages 20–72 years.

Results: Population variation in salivary testosterone was greatest at younger ages and patterned so paternal involvement associated with lower morning and evening testosterone, along with diminished age-decline in both measures. Men’s energetic status as indicated by body mass index was not associated with testosterone values or age-related decline.

Conclusions: Within socioecological contexts of smaller scale society, these data suggest that blunted age-decline in men’s testosterone levels is primarily due to population variation in parental investment rather than energetic constraint.

Keywords: Men’s life course Aging Testosterone Smaller scale societies

There is evidence that naturally cycling women in their fertile phase, compared to their luteal phase, evaluate specific behavioral cues in men as more attractive for sexual relationships; but this effect is not reproducible

Stern, Julia, Tanja M. Gerlach, and Lars Penke. 2018. “Probing Ovulatory Cycle Shifts in Women’s Preferences for Men’s Behaviors.” PsyArXiv. March 1. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7g3xc

Abstract: The existence of ovulatory cycle shifts in women’s mate preferences has been discussed controversially. There is evidence that naturally cycling women in their fertile phase, compared to their luteal phase, evaluate specific behavioral cues in men as more attractive for sexual relationships. However, recent research has cast doubt on these findings. We addressed this debate in a large, pre-registered within-subject study including salivary hormone measures and luteinizing hormone tests. One-hundred-fifty-seven female participants rated natural videos of 70 men in dyadic intersexual interactions on sexual and long-term attractiveness. Multilevel comparisons across two ovulatory cycles indicated that women’s mate preferences for men’s behaviors did not shift across the cycle, neither for competitive, nor for courtship behavior. Within-women hormone levels and relationship status did not affect these results. Hormonal mechanisms and implications for estrus theories are discussed.

How Virtue Signalling Makes Us Better: Moral Preferences with Respect to Autonomous Vehicle Type Choices

Kopecky, Robin, Michaela Košová, Daniel D. Novotný, Jaroslav Flegr, and David Černý. 2019. “How Virtue Signalling Makes Us Better: Moral Preferences with Respect to Autonomous Vehicle Type Choices.” PsyArXiv. September 11. doi:10.31234/osf.io/36vzk

Abstract
Autonomous vehicles (henceforth AVs) are expected to significantly benefit our transportation systems, their safety, efficiency, and impact on environment. However, many technical, social, legal, and moral questions and challenges concerning AVs and their introduction to the mass market still remain. One of the pressing moral issues has to do with the choice between AV types that differ in their built-in algorithms for dealing with situations of unavoidable lethal collision. In this paper we present the results of our study of moral preferences with respect to three types of AVs: (1) selfish AVs that protect the lives of passenger(s) over any number of bystanders; (2) altruistic AVs that minimize the number of casualties, even if this leads to death of passenger(s); and (3) conservative AVs that abstain from interfering in such situations even if it leads to the death of a higher number of subjects or death of passenger(s). We furthermore differentiate between scenarios in which participants are to make their decisions privately or publicly, and for themselves or for their offspring. We disregard gender, age, health, biological species and other characteristics of (potential) casualties that can affect the preferences and decisions of respondents in our scenarios. Our study is based on a sample of 2769 mostly Czech volunteers (1799 women, 970 men; age IQR: 25-32). The data come from our web-based questionnaire which was accessible from May 2017 to December 2017. We aim to answer the following two research questions: (1) Whether the public visibility of an AV type choice makes this choice more altruistic and (2) which type of situation is more problematic with regard to the altruistic choice: opting for society as a whole, for oneself, or for one’s offspring.
Our results show that respondents exhibit a clear preference for an altruistic utilitarian strategy for AVs. This preference is reinforced if the AV signals its strategy to others. The altruistic preference is strongest when people choose software for everybody else, weaker in personal choice, and weakest when choosing for one’s own child. Based on the results we conclude that, in contrast to a private choice, a public choice is considerably more likely to pressure consumers in their personal choice to accept a non-selfish solution, making it a reasonable and relatively cheap way to shift car owners and users towards higher altruism. Also, a hypothetical voting in Parliament about a single available program is less selfish when the voting does not take place in secret.

Adults with no siblings reported significantly lower levels of conscientiousness & honesty-humility & higher levels of neuroticism and openness than adults with siblings, but mean differences failed to reach the small effect size

Only Children in the 21st Century: Personality Differences between Adults With and Without Siblings are Very, Very Small. Samantha Stronge et al. Journal of Research in Personality, September 10 2019, 103868. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103868

Highlights
•    Tested differences in HEXACO personality for adults with and without siblings.
•    Gender and age interactions were non-significant for all traits.
•    ‘Only children’ reported lower conscientiousness and honesty-humility.
•    ‘Only children’ reported higher neuroticism and openness to experience.
•    However, all mean differences failed to reach the threshold of a small effect size.

Abstract: Negative beliefs about only children suggest that they are spoiled and unlikable, with these early personality differences persisting across the lifespan. Early research found little support for the idea, yet, negative views towards only children remain prevalent. The current research re-visited the issue using a large national panel study of New Zealand adults (N = 20,592) to assess mean differences in personality between those with and without siblings. Adults with no siblings reported significantly lower levels of conscientiousness and honesty-humility and higher levels of neuroticism and openness than adults with siblings; however, mean differences failed to reach the threshold of even a small effect size (|d’s| = .08 - .11). Beliefs about only children appear to contradict actual group differences.

Their orgasms were less pleasurable compared to other experiences, and suggested that their orgasm experiences had negative impacts on their relationships, sexuality, and/or psychological health

When Orgasms Do Not Equal Pleasure: Accounts of “Bad” Orgasm Experiences During Consensual Sexual Encounters. Sara B. Chadwick, Miriam Francisco, Sari M. van Anders. Archives of Sexual Behavior, September 11 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-01527-7

Abstract: Orgasms during consensual sex are often assumed to be wholly positive experiences. This assumption overshadows the possibility that orgasm experiences during consensual sex could be “bad” (i.e., negative and/or non-positive). In the present study, we employed an online survey to explore the possibility that orgasm experiences could be “bad” during consensual sex by asking participants of diverse gender and sexual identities (N = 726, M age = 28.42 years, SD = 7.85) about a subset of potential bad orgasm experiences. Specifically, we asked participants whether they have ever had an orgasm during coerced sex, compliant sex, and/or when they felt pressured to have an orgasm (i.e., orgasm pressure). We also asked participants who had such an experience to describe it, resulting in qualitative descriptions from 289 participants. Using mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found compelling evidence that orgasm experiences can be “bad” during consensual sex. Specifically, many participants described their experiences in negative and/or non-positive ways despite orgasm occurrence, reported that their orgasms were less pleasurable compared to other experiences, and suggested that their orgasm experiences had negative impacts on their relationships, sexuality, and/or psychological health. Participants also suggested that social location shaped their bad orgasm experiences, citing gender and sexual identity, gender identity conflict, race/ethnicity, and religion as important to their perceptions of and responses to their experiences. Results directly challenge the assumption that orgasms during consensual sex are always and/or unilaterally positive experiences.

Keywords: Orgasm Gender Sexual pressure Coercion Compliance Feminist science

Influence of experience on the performance of police criminal risk assessment of juveniles: Significantly higher accuracy of risk assessment, but accuracy did not increase with experience

Influence of experience on the performance of police criminal risk assessment of juvenile offenders. Barbara Bergmann. Forensische Psychiatrie, Psychologie, Kriminologie, Jul 2 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11757-019-00552-5

Abstract: Police officers working in the field of juvenile crime have to assess the criminal risk of young offenders before admitting them into a special police program for chronic offenders. Their performance of this task, which is mostly based on mere experience, has so far been unclear. The following study examined the process of criminal risk assessment in the police context and tested if performance increases with growing experience. The test sample consisted of 85 police officers and 60 undergraduate psychology students as laypersons. The task was to examine fictitious case vignettes of young criminals and rate their risk of further offences. Performance was measured by accuracy of the given rating and the time needed to evaluate each vignette. Results showed a significantly higher accuracy of risk assessment made by police officers when compared to laypersons; however, within the group of police officers the accuracy did not increase with experience. Nevertheless, particularly experienced police officers seemed to use a more efficient strategy as they considered less information for their assessment and thus needed less time to come to a conclusion. These findings indicate an advanced information processing due to experience resulting in a reduction of the cognitive workload and time needed for the assessment.

Keywords: Risk assessment Police Expertise Youth crime Information processing

Twitter: meta-features like the number of followers of the author, the count of tweets produced and the ratio of tweet number and days since account creation affect credibility judgments

The Impact of Twitter Features on Credibility Ratings-An Explorative Examination Combining Psychological Measurements and Feature Based Selection Methods. Judith Meinert, Ahmet Aker, Nicole C. Krämer. Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan 2019. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/59698/0258.pdf

Abstract: In a post-truth age determined by Social Media channels providing large amounts of information of questionable credibility while at the same time people increasingly tend to rely on online information, the ability to detect whether content is believable is developing into an important challenge. Most of the work in that field suggested automated approaches to perform binary classification to determine information veracity. Recipients ́ perspectives and multidimensional psychological credibility measurements have rarely been considered. To fill this gap and gain more insights into the impact of a tweet ́s features on perceived credibility, we conducted a survey asking participants (N=2626) to rate the credibility of crisis-related tweets. The resulting 24.823 ratings were used for an explorative feature selection analysis revealing that mostly meta-related features like the number of followers of the author, the count of tweets produced and the ratio of tweet number and days since account creation affect credibility judgments.

The effect of stress on economic rationality: Rationality is not impaired by the stressor; if anything, participants are more consistent with rationality immediately after the stressor

Cortisol meets GARP: the effect of stress on economic rationality. E. Cettolin et al. Experimental Economics, September 11 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10683-019-09624-z

Abstract: Rationality is a fundamental pillar of Economics. It is however unclear if this assumption holds when decisions are made under stress. To answer this question, we design two laboratory experiments where we exogenously induce physiological stress in participants and test the consistency of their choices with economic rationality. In both experiments we induce stress with the Cold Pressor test and measure economic rationality by the consistency of participants’ choices with the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference (GARP). In the first experiment, participants delay the decision-making task for 20 min until the cortisol level peaks. We find significant differences in cortisol levels between the stressed group and the placebo group which, however, do not affect the consistency of choices with GARP. In a second experiment, we study the immediate effect of the stressor on rationality. Overall, results from the second experiment confirm that rationality is not impaired by the stressor. If anything, we observe that compared to the placebo group, participants are more consistent with rationality immediately after the stressor. Our findings provide strong empirical support for the robustness of the economic rationality assumption under physiological stress.

Keywords: Economic rationality GARP Physiological stress Cortisol

Prisoner’s Dilemma game: Participants were more cooperative when they saw each other compared to when they could not, and when receiving reliable compared to unreliable or no feedback

The Interplay Between Face-to-Face Contact and Feedback on Cooperation During Real-Life Interactions. Friederike Behrens, Mariska E. Kret. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, September 11 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10919-019-00314-1

Abstract: Cooperation forms the basis of our society and becomes increasingly essential during times of globalization. However, despite technological developments people still prefer to meet face-to-face, which has been shown to foster cooperation. However, what is still unclear is how this beneficial effect depends on what people know about their interaction partner. To examine this question, 58 dyads played an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game, sometimes facing each other, sometimes without face contact. Additionally, explicit feedback regarding their decisions was manipulated between dyads. The results revealed that participants were more cooperative when they saw each other compared to when they could not, and when receiving reliable compared to unreliable or no feedback. Contradicting our hypothesis that participants would rely more on nonverbal communication in the absence of explicit information, we observed that the two sources of information operated independently on cooperative behavior. Interestingly, although individuals mostly relied on explicit information if available, participants still cooperated more after their partner defected with face-to-face contact compared to no face-to-face contact. The results of our study have implications for real-life interactions, suggesting that face-to-face contact has beneficial effects on prosocial behavior even if people cannot verify whether their selfless acts are being reciprocated.

Keywords: Cooperation Face-to-face contact Feedback Dyadic interaction Nonverbal communication Social dilemmas

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participants still cooperated more after their partner defected with faceto-face-contact. Hence, people might be more "forgiving" when facing their partner when he/she defects and theefore encourage the defecting partner to return to cooperation by opting for a cooperative decision themselves.

Investigating the Dynamic Relationship of Emotions and Attention Toward Political Information With Mobile Experience

Only One Moment in Time? Investigating the Dynamic Relationship of Emotions and Attention Toward Political Information With Mobile Experience Sampling. Lukas P. Otto et al. Communication Research, September 10, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650219872392

Abstract: This article attempts to (a) investigate the relationship between distinct emotional reactions toward political information and attention toward political news and (b) analyze whether this relationship is dynamic. We use an experience sampling design to assess recipients’ immediate emotional reactions and attention toward news. Participants reported their emotional reactions (anger, fear, happiness, contentment) and attentional focus directly after following a news item for 8 days in a row up to 5 times a day via smartphone. Results indicate that anger is positively and fear negatively correlated with attention toward political news. For positive emotional reactions, happiness is not correlated with attention to news, while contentment is negatively correlated with attention and also shows a negative lagged effect on attention at a later point in time. The study shows promising ways to assess and analyze dynamic processes in everyday media consumption.

Keywords: news consumption, emotion, attention, experience sampling, dynamic

We are all saints and sinners: Some of our actions benefit other people, while other actions harm people. How do people balance moral rights against moral wrongs when evaluating others’ actions?

Johnson, Samuel G. B., and Jaye Ahn. 2019. “Principles of Karmic Accounting: How Our Intuitive Moral Sense Balances Rights and Wrongs.” PsyArXiv. September 10. doi:10.31234/osf.io/xetwg

Abstract: We are all saints and sinners: Some of our actions benefit other people, while other actions harm people. How do people balance moral rights against moral wrongs when evaluating others’ actions? Across 9 studies, we contrast the predictions of three conceptions of intuitive morality—outcome- based (utilitarian), act-based (deontologist), and person-based (virtue ethics) approaches. Although good acts can partly offset bad acts—consistent with utilitarianism—they do so incompletely and in a manner relatively insensitive to magnitude, but sensitive to temporal order and the match between who is helped and harmed. Inferences about personal moral character best predicted blame judgments, explaining variance across items and across participants. However, there was modest evidence for both deontological and utilitarian processes too. These findings contribute to conversations about moral psychology and person perception, and may have policy implications.

See also Beyond "being good frees us to be bad": Moral self-licensing and the fabrication of moral credentials. June 2016, DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781316225608.004 In book: Cheating, Corruption, and Concealment. Daniel Effron, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326058400_Beyond_being_good_frees_us_to_be_bad_Moral_self-licensing_and_the_fabrication_of_moral_credentials

Abstract: Dishonesty is ubiquitous in our world. The news is frequently filled with high-profile cases of corporate fraud, large-scale corruption, lying politicians, and the hypocrisy of public figures. On a smaller scale, ordinary people often cheat, lie, misreport their taxes, and mislead others in their daily life. Despite such prevalence of cheating, corruption, and concealment, people typically consider themselves to be honest, and often believe themselves to be more moral than most others. This book aims to resolve this paradox by addressing the question of why people are dishonest all too often. What motivates dishonesty, and how are people able to perceive themselves as moral despite their dishonest behaviour? What personality and interpersonal factors make dishonesty more likely? And what can be done to recognize and reduce dishonesty? This is a fascinating overview of state-of-the-art research on dishonesty, with prominent scholars offering their views to clarify the roots of dishonesty.

"In this chapter, I demonstrate that people are remarkably adept at convincing themselves that they have a license to give into temptations. After briefly reviewing research showing that doing good deeds can increase people’s willingness to do bad ones, I offer an expanded view of moral self-licensing effects. Specifically, I discuss new work that reveals how people can feel morally licensed without doing good deeds, and I describe how people actively create and distort evidence of their virtue when they anticipate that they will need a moral license."

Under low budget conditions, Eastern & Western participants differed in their mate dollar allocation for almost every trait (culture influences prioritization); but the same priorities were given for traits needed for reproductive success

Mate preference priorities in the East and West: A cross‐cultural test of the mate preference priority model. Andrew G. Thomas et al. Journal of Personality, September 8 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12514

Abstract
Objective: Mate choice involves trading‐off several preferences. Research on this process tends to examine mate preference prioritization in homogenous samples using a small number of traits and thus provide little insight into whether prioritization patterns reflect a universal human nature. This study examined whether prioritization patterns, and their accompanying sex differences, are consistent across Eastern and Western cultures.

Method: In the largest test of the mate preference priority model to date, we asked an international sample of participants (N = 2,477) to design an ideal long‐term partner by allocating mate dollars to eight traits using three budgets. Unlike previous versions of the task, we included traits known to vary in importance by culture (e.g., religiosity and chastity).s

Results: Under low budget conditions, Eastern and Western participants differed in their mate dollar allocation for almost every trait (average d = 0.42), indicating that culture influences prioritization. Despite these differences, traits fundamental for the reproductive success of each sex in the ancestral environment were prioritized by both Eastern and Western participants.

Conclusion: The tendency to prioritize reproductively fundamental traits is present in both Eastern and Western cultures. The psychological mechanisms responsible for this process produce similar prioritization patterns despite cross‐cultural variation.

We compare how much food others are eating as compared to our portions, what types of foods they eat, dimensions related to eating such as body weight & shape & other dimensions like social status

C. Peter Herman, Janet Polivy, Patricia Pliner, Lenny R. Vartanian. Social Influences on Eating pp 147-162, September 6 2019. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-28817-4_9

Abstract: A large literature shows that people compare themselves to others on a wide variety of dimensions; this is called social comparison. Such comparisons to other people can provide useful guides for our behavior, and they may also have emotional consequences, affecting our self-esteem and happiness. We compare ourselves to others with respect to our food consumption as well as other behaviors related to eating. For example, we compare how much food others are eating as compared to our portions, what types of foods others eat, dimensions related to eating such as body weight and shape and even dimensions not directly related to eating such as social status. Such food-related social comparisons can affect not only our eating but our emotions and other behaviors as well. We want to “look good,” act appropriately, and be treated fairly, relative to others, and social comparisons around food and eating are important contributors to this.

Keywords: Social comparison Emotional response Amount of food Food choices Appropriate foods

We are poor at distinguishing knowledge that is in our heads from knowledge that resides in the community (KC); we overestimate how much we know or understand merely by participating in a KC

Individual Representation in a Community of Knowledge. Nathaniel Rabb, Philip M. Fernbach, Steven A. Sloman. Volume 23, Issue 10, October 2019, Pages 891-902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.07.011

Highlights
.  The knowledge that supports many of our beliefs and attitudes resides not in our own heads, but in a community of knowledge constituted by other people, artifacts, and information repositories (e.g., libraries or the Internet).
.  Individuals are poor at distinguishing knowledge that is in their heads from knowledge that resides in the community. This leads them to overestimate how much they know or understand merely by participating in a community of knowledge.
.  This failure of differentiation has implications for public discourse. Extreme views about science and politics have been found to covary with knowledge overestimation.
.  Modeling individual cognition under collective knowledge is an emerging challenge for cognitive science.

Abstract: An individual’s knowledge is collective in at least two senses: it often comes from other people’s testimony, and its deployment in reasoning and action requires accuracy underwritten by other people’s knowledge. What must one know to participate in a collective knowledge system? Here, we marshal evidence that individuals retain detailed causal information for a few domains and coarse causal models embedding markers indicating that these details are available elsewhere (others’ heads or the physical world) for most domains. This framework yields further questions about metacognition, source credibility, and individual computation that are theoretically and practically important. Belief polarization depends on the web of epistemic dependence and is greatest for those who know the least, plausibly due to extreme conflation of others’ knowledge with one’s own.

Keywords: collective cognitionknowledge representation

When outdated norms are used, the Flynn Effect inflates IQs and potentially biases intellectual disability diagnosis; a Flynn Effect was found for IQs ≥ 130, and a negative effect for IQs ≤ 70

The Flynn effect for fluid IQ may not generalize to all ages or ability levels: A population-based study of 10,000 US adolescents. Jonathan M. Platt et al. Intelligence, Volume 77, November–December 2019, 101385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2019.101385

Highlights
•    When outdated norms are used, the Flynn Effect inflates IQs and potentially biases intellectual disability diagnosis
•    In a large US-representative adolescent sample, a Flynn Effect was found for IQs ≥ 130, and a negative effect for IQs ≤ 70
•    IQ changes also differed substantially by age group
•    A negative Flynn Effect for those with low intellectual ability suggests widening disparities in cognitive ability
•    Findings challenge the practice of generalizing IQ trends based on data from non-representative samples

Abstract: Generational changes in IQ (the Flynn Effect) have been extensively researched and debated. Within the US, gains of 3 points per decade have been accepted as consistent across age and ability level, suggesting that tests with outdated norms yield spuriously high IQs. However, findings are generally based on small samples, have not been validated across ability levels, and conflict with reverse effects recently identified in Scandinavia and other countries. Using a well-validated measure of fluid intelligence, we investigated the Flynn Effect by comparing scores normed in 1989 and 2003, among a representative sample of American adolescents ages 13–18 (n = 10,073). Additionally, we examined Flynn Effect variation by age, sex, ability level, parental age, and SES. Adjusted mean IQ differences per decade were calculated using generalized linear models. Overall the Flynn Effect was not significant; however, effects varied substantially by age and ability level. IQs increased 2.3 points at age 13 (95% CI = 2.0, 2.7), but decreased 1.6 points at age 18 (95% CI = −2.1, −1.2). IQs decreased 4.9 points for those with IQ ≤ 70 (95% CI = −4.9, −4.8), but increased 3.5 points among those with IQ ≥ 130 (95% CI = 3.4, 3.6). The Flynn Effect was not meaningfully related to other background variables. Using the largest sample of US adolescent IQs to date, we demonstrate significant heterogeneity in fluid IQ changes over time. Reverse Flynn Effects at age 18 are consistent with previous data, and those with lower ability levels are exhibiting worsening IQ over time. Findings by age and ability level challenge generalizing IQ trends throughout the general population.