Jordan, M. R., Gebert, T., & Looser, C. E. (2019). Perspective taking failures in the valuation of mind and body. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(3), 407-420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000571
Abstract: Accurately inferring the values and preferences of others is crucial for successful social interactions. Nevertheless, without direct access to others’ minds, perspective taking errors are common. Across 5 studies, we demonstrate a systematic perspective taking failure: People believe they value their minds more than others do and often believe they value their bodies less than others do. The bias manifests across a variety of domains and measures, from judgments about the severity of injuries to preferences for new abilities to assessments of how much one is defined by their mind and body. This perspective taking failure was diminished—but still present—when participants thought of a close other. Finally, we assess and find evidence for the notion that this perspective taking failure is a function of the fact that others’ minds are less salient than others’ bodies. It appears to be the case that people believe the most salient cue from a target is also the best indicator of their values and preferences. This bias has implications for the ways in which we create social policy, judge others’ actions, make choices on behalf of others, and allocate resources to the physically and mentally ill.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Asymmetry in individuals’ willingness to venture into cross-cutting spaces, with conservatives more likely to follow media and political accounts classified as left-leaning than the reverse
How Many People Live in Political Bubbles on Social Media? Evidence From Linked Survey and Twitter Data. Gregory Eady et al. SAGE Open, February 28, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019832705
Abstract: A major point of debate in the study of the Internet and politics is the extent to which social media platforms encourage citizens to inhabit online “bubbles” or “echo chambers,” exposed primarily to ideologically congenial political information. To investigate this question, we link a representative survey of Americans with data from respondents’ public Twitter accounts (N = 1,496). We then quantify the ideological distributions of users’ online political and media environments by merging validated estimates of user ideology with the full set of accounts followed by our survey respondents (N = 642,345) and the available tweets posted by those accounts (N ~ 1.2 billion). We study the extent to which liberals and conservatives encounter counter-attitudinal messages in two distinct ways: (a) by the accounts they follow and (b) by the tweets they receive from those accounts, either directly or indirectly (via retweets). More than a third of respondents do not follow any media sources, but among those who do, we find a substantial amount of overlap (51%) in the ideological distributions of accounts followed by users on opposite ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, however, we find asymmetries in individuals’ willingness to venture into cross-cutting spaces, with conservatives more likely to follow media and political accounts classified as left-leaning than the reverse. Finally, we argue that such choices are likely tempered by online news watching behavior.
Keywords: media consumption, media & society, mass communication, communication, social sciences, political communication, new media, communication technologies, political behavior, political science
Abstract: A major point of debate in the study of the Internet and politics is the extent to which social media platforms encourage citizens to inhabit online “bubbles” or “echo chambers,” exposed primarily to ideologically congenial political information. To investigate this question, we link a representative survey of Americans with data from respondents’ public Twitter accounts (N = 1,496). We then quantify the ideological distributions of users’ online political and media environments by merging validated estimates of user ideology with the full set of accounts followed by our survey respondents (N = 642,345) and the available tweets posted by those accounts (N ~ 1.2 billion). We study the extent to which liberals and conservatives encounter counter-attitudinal messages in two distinct ways: (a) by the accounts they follow and (b) by the tweets they receive from those accounts, either directly or indirectly (via retweets). More than a third of respondents do not follow any media sources, but among those who do, we find a substantial amount of overlap (51%) in the ideological distributions of accounts followed by users on opposite ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, however, we find asymmetries in individuals’ willingness to venture into cross-cutting spaces, with conservatives more likely to follow media and political accounts classified as left-leaning than the reverse. Finally, we argue that such choices are likely tempered by online news watching behavior.
Keywords: media consumption, media & society, mass communication, communication, social sciences, political communication, new media, communication technologies, political behavior, political science
Friday, March 1, 2019
Partisans overestimate the negative affect that results from exposure to opposing views; the affective forecasting error derives from underestimation of agreement
Selective exposure partly relies on faulty affective forecasts. Charles A. Dorison, Julia A. Minson, Todd Rogers. Cognition, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.02.010
Highlights
• Partisans overestimate the negative affect that results from exposure to opposing views.
• The affective forecasting error derives from underestimation of agreement.
• Faulty affective forecasts partially underpin selective exposure.
Abstract: People preferentially consume information that aligns with their prior beliefs, contributing to polarization and undermining democracy. Five studies (collective N = 2455) demonstrate that such “selective exposure” partly stems from faulty affective forecasts. Specifically, political partisans systematically overestimate the strength of negative affect that results from exposure to opposing views. In turn, these incorrect forecasts drive information consumption choices. Clinton voters overestimated the negative affect they would experience from watching President Trump’s Inaugural Address (Study 1) and from reading statements written by Trump voters (Study 2). Democrats and Republicans overestimated the negative affect they would experience from listening to speeches by opposing-party senators (Study 3). People’s tendency to underestimate the extent to which they agree with opponents’ views drove the affective forecasting error. Finally, correcting biased affective forecasts reduced selective exposure by 24–34% (Studies 4 and 5).
Keywords: Selective exposureAffective forecastingFalse polarizationEmotion
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However, despite the benefits of holding accurate beliefs, the phenomenon of selective exposure to agreeing information has been well documented in social psychology (Frey, 1986), political science (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Sears & Freedman, 1967), and communications (Stroud, 2008). For example, one of the earliest studies on selective exposure demonstrated that mothers were more likely to listen to arguments that supported their beliefs regarding hereditary and environmental factors in childrearing than arguments that contradicted their beliefs (Adams, 1961). More recently, in the domain of political communication, conservatives in an experiment preferred to read articles from the conservative site Fox News, whereas liberals preferred to read articles from more liberal sources such as CNN and NPR (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). These effects persist even with financial incentives on the line (Frimer, Skitka, & Motyl, 2017). Recent research has also examined how presentation order and structure moderate this phenomenon (Fischer et al., 2011; Jonas, Schulz-Hardt, Frey, & Thelen, 2001).
Highlights
• Partisans overestimate the negative affect that results from exposure to opposing views.
• The affective forecasting error derives from underestimation of agreement.
• Faulty affective forecasts partially underpin selective exposure.
Abstract: People preferentially consume information that aligns with their prior beliefs, contributing to polarization and undermining democracy. Five studies (collective N = 2455) demonstrate that such “selective exposure” partly stems from faulty affective forecasts. Specifically, political partisans systematically overestimate the strength of negative affect that results from exposure to opposing views. In turn, these incorrect forecasts drive information consumption choices. Clinton voters overestimated the negative affect they would experience from watching President Trump’s Inaugural Address (Study 1) and from reading statements written by Trump voters (Study 2). Democrats and Republicans overestimated the negative affect they would experience from listening to speeches by opposing-party senators (Study 3). People’s tendency to underestimate the extent to which they agree with opponents’ views drove the affective forecasting error. Finally, correcting biased affective forecasts reduced selective exposure by 24–34% (Studies 4 and 5).
Keywords: Selective exposureAffective forecastingFalse polarizationEmotion
---
However, despite the benefits of holding accurate beliefs, the phenomenon of selective exposure to agreeing information has been well documented in social psychology (Frey, 1986), political science (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Sears & Freedman, 1967), and communications (Stroud, 2008). For example, one of the earliest studies on selective exposure demonstrated that mothers were more likely to listen to arguments that supported their beliefs regarding hereditary and environmental factors in childrearing than arguments that contradicted their beliefs (Adams, 1961). More recently, in the domain of political communication, conservatives in an experiment preferred to read articles from the conservative site Fox News, whereas liberals preferred to read articles from more liberal sources such as CNN and NPR (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009). These effects persist even with financial incentives on the line (Frimer, Skitka, & Motyl, 2017). Recent research has also examined how presentation order and structure moderate this phenomenon (Fischer et al., 2011; Jonas, Schulz-Hardt, Frey, & Thelen, 2001).
Implicit Association Test showed a self-other asymmetry, that people perceived a desirable IAT result to be more valid when it applied to themselves than to others, & the opposite held for undesirable IAT results
Mendonça, C., Mata, A., & Vohs, K. D. (2019). Self-other asymmetries in the perceived validity of the implicit association test. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xap0000214
Abstract: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular instrument in implicit social cognition, with some scholars and practitioners calling for its use in applied settings. Yet, little is known about how people perceive the test’s validity as a measure of their true attitudes toward members of other groups. Four experiments manipulated the desirability of the IAT’s result and whether that result referred to one’s own attitudes or other people’s. Results showed a self-other asymmetry, such that people perceived a desirable IAT result to be more valid when it applied to themselves than to others, whereas the opposite held for undesirable IAT results. A fifth experiment demonstrated that these self-other differences influence how people react to the idea of using the IAT as a personnel selection tool. Experiment 6 tested whether the self-other effect was driven by motivation or expectations, finding evidence for motivated reasoning. All told, the current findings suggest potential barriers to implementing the IAT in applied settings.
Abstract: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular instrument in implicit social cognition, with some scholars and practitioners calling for its use in applied settings. Yet, little is known about how people perceive the test’s validity as a measure of their true attitudes toward members of other groups. Four experiments manipulated the desirability of the IAT’s result and whether that result referred to one’s own attitudes or other people’s. Results showed a self-other asymmetry, such that people perceived a desirable IAT result to be more valid when it applied to themselves than to others, whereas the opposite held for undesirable IAT results. A fifth experiment demonstrated that these self-other differences influence how people react to the idea of using the IAT as a personnel selection tool. Experiment 6 tested whether the self-other effect was driven by motivation or expectations, finding evidence for motivated reasoning. All told, the current findings suggest potential barriers to implementing the IAT in applied settings.
Since most drivers believe they are better than average drivers, the benchmark of achieving automation that is safer than an average human driver is not acceptably safe performance for most
Safer than the average human driver (who is less safe than me)? Examining a popular safety benchmark for self-driving cars. Michael A. Nees. Journal of Safety Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2019.02.002
Highlights
• The criterion of being safer than a human driver has become pervasive in the discourse on vehicle automation.
• Most drivers perceive themselves to be safer than the average driver (the better-than-average effect).
• This study replicated the better than average effect and showed that most drivers stated a desire for self-driving cars that are safer than their own perceived ability to drive safely.
• Since most drivers believe they are better than average drivers, the benchmark of achieving automation that is safer than a human driver (on average) may not represent acceptably safe performance of self-driving cars for most drivers.
Abstract: Although the level of safety required before drivers will accept self-driving cars is not clear, the criterion of being safer than a human driver has become pervasive in the discourse on vehicle automation. This criterion actually means “safer than the average human driver,” because it is necessarily defined with respect to population-level data. At the level of individual risk assessment, a body of research has shown that most drivers perceive themselves to be safer than the average driver (the better-than-average effect). Using an online sample of U.S. drivers, this study replicated the better than average effect and showed that most drivers stated a desire for self-driving cars that are safer than their own perceived ability to drive safely before they would: (1) feel reasonably safe riding in a self-driving vehicle; (2) buy a self-driving vehicle, all other things (cost, etc.) being equal; and (3) allow self-driving vehicles on public roads. Since most drivers believe they are better than average drivers, the benchmark of achieving automation that is safer than a human driver (on average) may not represent acceptably safe performance of selfdriving cars for most drivers.
Highlights
• The criterion of being safer than a human driver has become pervasive in the discourse on vehicle automation.
• Most drivers perceive themselves to be safer than the average driver (the better-than-average effect).
• This study replicated the better than average effect and showed that most drivers stated a desire for self-driving cars that are safer than their own perceived ability to drive safely.
• Since most drivers believe they are better than average drivers, the benchmark of achieving automation that is safer than a human driver (on average) may not represent acceptably safe performance of self-driving cars for most drivers.
Abstract: Although the level of safety required before drivers will accept self-driving cars is not clear, the criterion of being safer than a human driver has become pervasive in the discourse on vehicle automation. This criterion actually means “safer than the average human driver,” because it is necessarily defined with respect to population-level data. At the level of individual risk assessment, a body of research has shown that most drivers perceive themselves to be safer than the average driver (the better-than-average effect). Using an online sample of U.S. drivers, this study replicated the better than average effect and showed that most drivers stated a desire for self-driving cars that are safer than their own perceived ability to drive safely before they would: (1) feel reasonably safe riding in a self-driving vehicle; (2) buy a self-driving vehicle, all other things (cost, etc.) being equal; and (3) allow self-driving vehicles on public roads. Since most drivers believe they are better than average drivers, the benchmark of achieving automation that is safer than a human driver (on average) may not represent acceptably safe performance of selfdriving cars for most drivers.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Effect of olfactory disgust: Disgust might hamper behavioral actions motivated by sexual arousal (e.g., poor judgment, coercive sexual behavior)
The influence of olfactory disgust on (Genital) sexual arousal in men. Charmaine Borg, Tamara A. Oosterwijk, Dominika Lisy, Sanne Boesveldt, Peter J. de Jong. PLOS, February 28, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213059
Abstract
Background: The generation or persistence of sexual arousal may be compromised when inhibitory processes such as negative emotions, outweigh sexual excitation. Disgust particularly, has been proposed as one of the emotions that may counteract sexual arousal. In support of this view, previous research has shown that disgust priming can reduce subsequent sexual arousal. As a crucial next step, this experimental study tested whether disgust (by means of odor) can also diminish sexual arousal in individuals who are already in a state of heightened sexual excitation.
Methodology: In this study, participants were all men (N = 78). To elicit sexual arousal, participants watched a pornographic video. Following 4.30 minutes from the start of the video clip, they were exposed to either a highly aversive/disgusting odor (n = 42), or an odorless diluent/solvent (n = 36), that was delivered via an olfactometer, while the pornographic video continued. In both conditions the presentation of the odor lasted 1 second and was repeated 11 times with intervals of 26 seconds. Sexual arousal was indexed by both self-reports and penile circumference.
Principal findings: The disgusting odor (released when the participants were already sexually aroused) resulted in a significant decrease of both subjective and genital sexual arousal compared to the control (odorless) condition.
Significance: The finding that the inhibitory effect of disgust was not only expressed in self-report but also expressed on the penile response further strengthens the idea that disgust might hamper behavioral actions motivated by sexual arousal (e.g., poor judgment, coercive sexual behavior). Thus, the current findings indicate that exposure to an aversive odor is sufficiently potent to reduce already present (subjective and) genital sexual arousal. This finding may also have practical relevance for disgust to be used as a tool for self-defence (e.g., Invi Bracelet).
Abstract
Background: The generation or persistence of sexual arousal may be compromised when inhibitory processes such as negative emotions, outweigh sexual excitation. Disgust particularly, has been proposed as one of the emotions that may counteract sexual arousal. In support of this view, previous research has shown that disgust priming can reduce subsequent sexual arousal. As a crucial next step, this experimental study tested whether disgust (by means of odor) can also diminish sexual arousal in individuals who are already in a state of heightened sexual excitation.
Methodology: In this study, participants were all men (N = 78). To elicit sexual arousal, participants watched a pornographic video. Following 4.30 minutes from the start of the video clip, they were exposed to either a highly aversive/disgusting odor (n = 42), or an odorless diluent/solvent (n = 36), that was delivered via an olfactometer, while the pornographic video continued. In both conditions the presentation of the odor lasted 1 second and was repeated 11 times with intervals of 26 seconds. Sexual arousal was indexed by both self-reports and penile circumference.
Principal findings: The disgusting odor (released when the participants were already sexually aroused) resulted in a significant decrease of both subjective and genital sexual arousal compared to the control (odorless) condition.
Significance: The finding that the inhibitory effect of disgust was not only expressed in self-report but also expressed on the penile response further strengthens the idea that disgust might hamper behavioral actions motivated by sexual arousal (e.g., poor judgment, coercive sexual behavior). Thus, the current findings indicate that exposure to an aversive odor is sufficiently potent to reduce already present (subjective and) genital sexual arousal. This finding may also have practical relevance for disgust to be used as a tool for self-defence (e.g., Invi Bracelet).
Nations that scored higher on democracy indices, especially emerging ones, experienced increased mortality due to violence; women possessed higher rates of homicide & suicide in democracies
Government political structure and gender differences in violent death: A longitudinal analysis of forty-three countries, 1960–2008. Morkeh Blay-Tofey et al. Aggression and Violent Behavior, Feb 28 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2019.02.011
Highlights
• The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of democracy on violent death rates (homicide, suicide, and combined) by gender (men and women).
• Multi-level regression analyses examined associations between regime-type characteristics and logged rates of violent deaths using homicide and suicide. Models were adjusted for unemployment and economic inequality
• Violent deaths appear to be more prevalent even in stable democracies, and women are more affected than men.
• Although the analysis provided depicts a strong picture anchored in regime type changes and violent death rates, violence is inherently complex and more research is needed to determine what aspects within democracies may lead to increased violent death rates.
Abstract
Objectives: Little global and longitudinal scholarship exists on the relationship between regime type and mortality on a global level. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of democracy on violent death rates (homicide, suicide, and combined) by gender (men and women).
Methods: Three measures of democracy were used to quantify regime type. Homicide and suicide rates were obtained from the World Health Organization. Multi-level regression analyses examined associations between regime characteristics and logged rates of homicide, suicide, and violent deaths. Models were adjusted for unemployment and economic inequality.
Results: Nations that scored higher on democracy indices, especially emerging democracies, experienced increased mortality due to violence. Women possessed higher rates of homicide and suicide in democracies compared to men.
Conclusions: Violent deaths appear to be more prevalent even in stable democracies, and women are more affected than men. This overturns the common assumption that democracies bring greater equality, and therefore lower death rates over long-term. Future analyses might examine the aspects of democracies that lead to higher rates of violent death so as to help mitigate them.
Keywords: Homicide suicide violence democracy autocracy regime gender
Highlights
• The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of democracy on violent death rates (homicide, suicide, and combined) by gender (men and women).
• Multi-level regression analyses examined associations between regime-type characteristics and logged rates of violent deaths using homicide and suicide. Models were adjusted for unemployment and economic inequality
• Violent deaths appear to be more prevalent even in stable democracies, and women are more affected than men.
• Although the analysis provided depicts a strong picture anchored in regime type changes and violent death rates, violence is inherently complex and more research is needed to determine what aspects within democracies may lead to increased violent death rates.
Abstract
Objectives: Little global and longitudinal scholarship exists on the relationship between regime type and mortality on a global level. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of democracy on violent death rates (homicide, suicide, and combined) by gender (men and women).
Methods: Three measures of democracy were used to quantify regime type. Homicide and suicide rates were obtained from the World Health Organization. Multi-level regression analyses examined associations between regime characteristics and logged rates of homicide, suicide, and violent deaths. Models were adjusted for unemployment and economic inequality.
Results: Nations that scored higher on democracy indices, especially emerging democracies, experienced increased mortality due to violence. Women possessed higher rates of homicide and suicide in democracies compared to men.
Conclusions: Violent deaths appear to be more prevalent even in stable democracies, and women are more affected than men. This overturns the common assumption that democracies bring greater equality, and therefore lower death rates over long-term. Future analyses might examine the aspects of democracies that lead to higher rates of violent death so as to help mitigate them.
Keywords: Homicide suicide violence democracy autocracy regime gender
Males from Drosophila m. populations with higher competitive mating success produce sons with lower fitness; male investment in enhanced mating success comes at the cost of reduced offspring quality
Males from populations with higher competitive mating success produce sons with lower fitness. Trinh T. X. Nguyen Amanda J. Moehring. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Feb 27 2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13433
Abstract: Female mate choice can result in direct benefits to the female or indirect benefits through her offspring. Females can increase their fitness by mating with males whose genes encode increased survivorship and reproductive output. Alternatively, male investment in enhanced mating success may come at the cost of reduced investment in offspring fitness. Here, we measure male mating success in a mating arena that allows for male‐male, male‐female, and female‐female interactions in Drosophila melanogaster. We then use isofemale line population measurements to correlate male mating success with sperm competitive ability, the number of offspring produced, and the indirect benefits of the number of offspring produced by daughters and sons. We find that males from populations that gain more copulations do not increase female fitness through increased offspring production, nor do these males fare better in sperm competition. Instead, we find that these populations have a reduced reproductive output of sons, indicating a potential reproductive trade‐off between male mating success and offspring quality.
Abstract: Female mate choice can result in direct benefits to the female or indirect benefits through her offspring. Females can increase their fitness by mating with males whose genes encode increased survivorship and reproductive output. Alternatively, male investment in enhanced mating success may come at the cost of reduced investment in offspring fitness. Here, we measure male mating success in a mating arena that allows for male‐male, male‐female, and female‐female interactions in Drosophila melanogaster. We then use isofemale line population measurements to correlate male mating success with sperm competitive ability, the number of offspring produced, and the indirect benefits of the number of offspring produced by daughters and sons. We find that males from populations that gain more copulations do not increase female fitness through increased offspring production, nor do these males fare better in sperm competition. Instead, we find that these populations have a reduced reproductive output of sons, indicating a potential reproductive trade‐off between male mating success and offspring quality.
The wrong belief in the exceptionalism of human cortex has caused to prematurely assign functions distributed widely in the brain to the cortex, & to fail to explore subcortical sources of brain evolution, inter alia
Human exceptionalism, our ordinary cortex and our research futures. Barbara L. Finlay. Developmental Psychobiology, February 27 2019, https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21838
Abstract: The widely held belief that the human cortex is exceptionally large for our brain size is wrong, resulting from basic errors in how best to compare evolving brains. This misapprehension arises from the comparison of only a few laboratory species, failure to appreciate differences in brain scaling in rodents versus primates, but most important, the false assumption that linear extrapolation can be used to predict changes from small to large brains. Belief in the exceptionalism of human cortex has propagated itself into genomic analysis of the cortex, where cortex has been studied as if it were an example of innovation rather than predictable scaling. Further, this belief has caused both neuroscientists and psychologists to prematurely assign functions distributed widely in the brain to the cortex, to fail to explore subcortical sources of brain evolution, and to neglect genuinely novel features of human infancy and childhood.
Abstract: The widely held belief that the human cortex is exceptionally large for our brain size is wrong, resulting from basic errors in how best to compare evolving brains. This misapprehension arises from the comparison of only a few laboratory species, failure to appreciate differences in brain scaling in rodents versus primates, but most important, the false assumption that linear extrapolation can be used to predict changes from small to large brains. Belief in the exceptionalism of human cortex has propagated itself into genomic analysis of the cortex, where cortex has been studied as if it were an example of innovation rather than predictable scaling. Further, this belief has caused both neuroscientists and psychologists to prematurely assign functions distributed widely in the brain to the cortex, to fail to explore subcortical sources of brain evolution, and to neglect genuinely novel features of human infancy and childhood.
“Dysrationalia” Among University Students: Intelligence & rational thinking, although related, represent two fundamentally different constructs; the intelligent have the same inability to think rationally
“Dysrationalia” Among University Students: The Role of Cognitive Abilities, Different Aspects of Rational Thought and Self-Control in Explaining Epistemically Suspect Beliefs
Nikola Erceg, Zvonimir Galić, Andreja Bubić. Europe's Journal of Psychology, Vol 15, No 1 (2019), https://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/1696
Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate the role that cognitive abilities, rational thinking abilities, cognitive styles and self-control play in explaining the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs among university students. A total of 159 students participated in the study. We found that different aspects of rational thought (i.e. rational thinking abilities and cognitive styles) and self-control, but not intelligence, significantly predicted the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. Based on these findings, it may be suggested that intelligence and rational thinking, although related, represent two fundamentally different constructs. Thus, deviations from rational thinking could be well described by the term “dysrationalia”, meaning the inability to think rationally despite having adequate intelligence. We discuss the implications of the results, as well as some drawbacks of the study.
Keywords: dysrationalia; epistemically suspect beliefs; cognitive abilities; rational thinking; self-control
Nikola Erceg, Zvonimir Galić, Andreja Bubić. Europe's Journal of Psychology, Vol 15, No 1 (2019), https://ejop.psychopen.eu/article/view/1696
Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate the role that cognitive abilities, rational thinking abilities, cognitive styles and self-control play in explaining the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs among university students. A total of 159 students participated in the study. We found that different aspects of rational thought (i.e. rational thinking abilities and cognitive styles) and self-control, but not intelligence, significantly predicted the endorsement of epistemically suspect beliefs. Based on these findings, it may be suggested that intelligence and rational thinking, although related, represent two fundamentally different constructs. Thus, deviations from rational thinking could be well described by the term “dysrationalia”, meaning the inability to think rationally despite having adequate intelligence. We discuss the implications of the results, as well as some drawbacks of the study.
Keywords: dysrationalia; epistemically suspect beliefs; cognitive abilities; rational thinking; self-control
Low replicability damages public trust in psychology; neither information about increased transparency nor explanations for low replicability, nor recovered replicability repaired public trust
Wingen, Tobias, Jana Berkessel, and Birte Englich. 2019. “No Replication, No Trust? How Low Replicability Influences Trust in Psychology.” OSF Preprints. February 22. doi:10.31219/osf.io/4ukq5
Abstract: In the current psychological debate, low replicability of psychological findings is the central topic. While this discussion about the replication crisis has a huge impact on psychological research, we know less about how it impacts lay people’s trust in psychology. In the current paper, we examine whether low replicability damages public trust in psychology and whether this damaged trust can be repaired. Study 1 and 2 provide correlational and experimental evidence that low replicability reduces public trust in psychological science. Additionally, Studies 3, 4, and 5 evaluate whether and how damaged trust in psychological science could be repaired. Critically, neither information about increased transparency (Study 3), nor explanations for low replicability (either QRPs or hidden moderators; Study 4), nor recovered replicability (Study 5) repaired public trust. Overall, our studies highlight the crucial importance of replicability for public trust, as well as the importance of balanced communication of low replicability.
Abstract: In the current psychological debate, low replicability of psychological findings is the central topic. While this discussion about the replication crisis has a huge impact on psychological research, we know less about how it impacts lay people’s trust in psychology. In the current paper, we examine whether low replicability damages public trust in psychology and whether this damaged trust can be repaired. Study 1 and 2 provide correlational and experimental evidence that low replicability reduces public trust in psychological science. Additionally, Studies 3, 4, and 5 evaluate whether and how damaged trust in psychological science could be repaired. Critically, neither information about increased transparency (Study 3), nor explanations for low replicability (either QRPs or hidden moderators; Study 4), nor recovered replicability (Study 5) repaired public trust. Overall, our studies highlight the crucial importance of replicability for public trust, as well as the importance of balanced communication of low replicability.
It is unlikely that we will find strong relationships between what individuals are reporting about themselves and how they objectively behave
The Challenges and Opportunities of Small EffectsThe New Normal in Academic Psychiatry. Martin P. Paulus, Wesley K. Thompson. JAMA Psychiatry. February 27, 2019. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.4540
Full text in the link above.
Explanations and accurate predictions are the fundamental deliverables for a mechanistic or pragmatic approach that academic psychiatric research can provide to stakeholders. Starting with this issue, we are publishing a series of Viewpoints describing the research boundaries and challenges to progress in our field. In this issue, Simon1 raises the need for better explanatory model using data from electronic health records. This Viewpoint acknowledges an important issue: variables or constructs that are used to help explain the current state of individuals or to generate predictions need to account for a substantial proportion of the variance of the dependent variable or outcome measure to be clinically useful. However, similar to findings from genetics literature, systems neuroscience approaches using brain imaging are beginning to show that variability in structural and functional brain imaging only accounts for a small percentage of the explained variance when considering a variety of clinical phenotypes, especially in large population-representative samples.2 For example, in a 2016 analysis of UK Biobank data,3 the functional activation related to a face processing task, which activated the fusiform gyrus and amygdala, accounted for a maximum of 1.8% of the variance of 1100 nonimaging variables. These findings are in line with emerging results from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study4 focused on the association between screen media behavior and structural MRI characteristics. Importantly, these large-scale studies have used robust and reliable estimators to reduce false-positive discoveries. Thus, similar to genetics literature, it appears that individual processing differences as measured by neuroimaging account for little symptomatic or behavioral variance.
There is evidence that the association between individual variation on self-assessed symptoms and behavioral performance on neurocognitive tasks is weak.5,6 Moreover, many behavioral tasks show limited test-retest reliability and little agreement between task conceptualization and actual agreement with emerging latent variables of these tasks. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will find strong relationships between what individuals are reporting about themselves and how they objectively behave. It seems that the individual experience of a person with a mental health condition, which has been proposed to be an important end point for explanatory approaches,7 is not well approximated by the behavioral probes that are currently available.
These and other findings have profound implications for our theoretical understanding of psychiatric diseases. Specifically, small effect sizes make it unlikely that psychiatric disorders can be explained by unicausal or oligocausal theories. In other words, there is not going to be a unifying glutamatergic or inflammatory disease model of mood disorders. What’s more, even if there is a relationship between markers for these disease processes and the state of a psychiatric disorder, as currently conceived, it may not be sufficiently strong to be used by itself to make useful person-level predictions. This is not to say that these processes are not contributing to the etiology or pathophysiology of the disorder but rather that their impact is likely to be small so as to not be individually useful in helping patients and other stakeholders explain their current disease state. As a consequence, there is a low probability of a generic disease process for a group of psychiatric disorders or a final common pathway for a disease.
One possible reason for the lack of a strong relationship between units of analyses, ie, between brain circuits and behavior or behavior and symptoms, is many-to-one and one-to-many mapping. In other words, the brain has many ways of producing the same symptoms, and very similar brain dysfunctions can produce a number of different clinical symptoms. An example of one-to-many mapping is the phenotypic heterogeneity of Huntington disease, which, as an autosomal dominant disorder, has a simple genetic basis but enormous clinical variability via the modulation of multiple biochemical pathways.8 In comparison, the clinical homogeneity of motor neuron disease is betrayed by a significant genetic variability, leading to similar symptoms.9 Therefore, it is quite possible that phenotypically similar groups result from different processes and phenotypically heterogeneous individuals actually share broadly similar underlying pathophysiology.
These many-to-one and one-to-many mappings put a profound strain on case-control studies, ie, comparing individuals diagnosed with a particular psychiatric disease with controls that are matched on a limited number of variables. Case-control designs have very limited explanatory depth and are fundamentally uninformative of the disease process because they are correlational, provide little specificity and questionable sensitivity, and have questionable generalizability to populations.10 Single-case designs together with hierarchical inferential procedures might provide a reasonable alternative.11 Single-case designs use individuals as their own control, can use controlled interventions to examine causality, and are well suited to uncover individual differences across phenotypically similar participants. However, care must be taken not to subdivide studies so finely that defects of small sample sizes, including elevated rates of type I and II errors, become problematic even for large epidemiologically informed samples.
Latent variable approaches, such as principal components or factor analyses, can be useful unsupervised statistical methods to uncover relationships between variables within and across units of analyses. However, the underlying assumption is that these latent variables reflect common relationships among all individuals. Instead, it is more likely that relationships differ across individuals and may even differ across states within an individual. Recent approaches to this problem use both latent variable and mixture approaches to differentiate different subgroups of individuals with depression.12 Others have used deviation from normative regression models to identify heterogeneity in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.13 Both sets of approaches support the hypothesis that there are no generic depressive, bipolar, or schizophrenia diseases. At the other extreme, considering that psychiatric diseases emerge from causal factors that vary across units of analyses ranging from molecular to social,7 one might hypothesize that each individual patient with a mental health condition is an exemplar of a rare disease model. In this case, no generalizable model might be possible, and useful individual-level predictions would be elusive.
Thus, we are facing the classical problem of variance-bias trade-off,14 which has been examined in great detail in the statistical literature. Specifically, how do we arbitrate between generating a few generic models with useful explanatory or predictive values vs multiple models that may tend to overexplain and overfit individual patient’s disease etiology, pathophysiology, and clinical course? This decision cannot be arbitrated solely on statistical grounds but will need to judiciously incorporate expert knowledge about the disease and candidate processes on different units of analyses because the permutational complexity of the variables to be considered is so large that even data sets with thousands of individuals may not provide a sufficient sample size to approach this using exploratory techniques resistant to overfitting.
At this time, we are standing at a precipice: our explanatory disease models are woefully insufficient, and our predictive approaches have not yielded robust individual-level predictions that can be used by clinicians. Yet there is room for hope. Larger data sets will be widely available, multilevel data sets that span assessments from genes to social factors are being released, new statistical tools are being developed, within-subject statistical designs are being rediscovered, and attempts to include expert knowledge into latent variable approaches might help arbitrating the variance-bias trade-off. Fundamentally, academic psychiatry cannot continue to move forward with small n case-control studies to provide tangible results to stakeholders.
References
1.
Simon GE. Big data from health records in mental health care: hardly clairvoyant but already useful [published online February 27, 2019]. JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.4510ArticleGoogle Scholar
2.
Boyle EA, Li YI, Pritchard JK. An expanded view of complex traits: from polygenic to omnigenic. Cell. 2017;169(7):1177-1186. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.038PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
3.
Miller KL, Alfaro-Almagro F, Bangerter NK, et al. Multimodal population brain imaging in the UK Biobank prospective epidemiological study. Nat Neurosci. 2016;19(11):1523-1536. doi:10.1038/nn.4393PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
4.
Paulus MP, Squeglia LM, Bagot K, et al. Screen media activity and brain structure in youth: evidence for diverse structural correlation networks from the ABCD study. Neuroimage. 2019;185:140-153. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.040PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
5.
Eisenberg IW, Bissett PG, Enkavi AZ, et al. Uncovering mental structure through data-driven ontology discovery [published online December 12, 2018]. PsyArXiv. doi:10.31234/osf.io/fvqejGoogle Scholar
6.
Thompson WK, Barch DM, Bjork JM, et al. The structure of cognition in 9 and 10 year-old children and associations with problem behaviors: findings from the ABCD study’s baseline neurocognitive battery [published online December 13, 2018]. Dev Cogn Neurosci. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2018.12.004PubMedGoogle Scholar
7.
Kendler KS. Levels of explanation in psychiatric and substance use disorders: implications for the development of an etiologically based nosology. Mol Psychiatry. 2012;17(1):11-21. doi:10.1038/mp.2011.70PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
8.
Ross CA, Aylward EH, Wild EJ, et al. Huntington disease: natural history, biomarkers and prospects for therapeutics. Nat Rev Neurol. 2014;10(4):204-216. doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2014.24PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
9.
Dion PA, Daoud H, Rouleau GA. Genetics of motor neuron disorders: new insights into pathogenic mechanisms. Nat Rev Genet. 2009;10(11):769-782. doi:10.1038/nrg2680PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
10.
Sedgwick P. Case-control studies: advantages and disadvantages. BMJ. 2014;348:f7707. doi:10.1136/bmj.f7707Google ScholarCrossref
11.
Smith JD. Single-case experimental designs: a systematic review of published research and current standards. Psychol Methods. 2012;17(4):510-550. doi:10.1037/a0029312PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
12.
Drysdale AT, Grosenick L, Downar J, et al. Resting-state connectivity biomarkers define neurophysiological subtypes of depression. Nat Med. 2017;23(1):28-38. doi:10.1038/nm.4246PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
13.
Wolfers T, Doan NT, Kaufmann T, et al. Mapping the heterogeneous phenotype of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder using normative models. JAMA Psychiatry. 2018;75(11):1146-1155. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.2467ArticlePubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
14.
James G, Witten D, Hastie T, Tibshirani R. An Introduction to Statistical Learning With Applications in R. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag New York; 2013.
Full text in the link above.
Explanations and accurate predictions are the fundamental deliverables for a mechanistic or pragmatic approach that academic psychiatric research can provide to stakeholders. Starting with this issue, we are publishing a series of Viewpoints describing the research boundaries and challenges to progress in our field. In this issue, Simon1 raises the need for better explanatory model using data from electronic health records. This Viewpoint acknowledges an important issue: variables or constructs that are used to help explain the current state of individuals or to generate predictions need to account for a substantial proportion of the variance of the dependent variable or outcome measure to be clinically useful. However, similar to findings from genetics literature, systems neuroscience approaches using brain imaging are beginning to show that variability in structural and functional brain imaging only accounts for a small percentage of the explained variance when considering a variety of clinical phenotypes, especially in large population-representative samples.2 For example, in a 2016 analysis of UK Biobank data,3 the functional activation related to a face processing task, which activated the fusiform gyrus and amygdala, accounted for a maximum of 1.8% of the variance of 1100 nonimaging variables. These findings are in line with emerging results from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study4 focused on the association between screen media behavior and structural MRI characteristics. Importantly, these large-scale studies have used robust and reliable estimators to reduce false-positive discoveries. Thus, similar to genetics literature, it appears that individual processing differences as measured by neuroimaging account for little symptomatic or behavioral variance.
There is evidence that the association between individual variation on self-assessed symptoms and behavioral performance on neurocognitive tasks is weak.5,6 Moreover, many behavioral tasks show limited test-retest reliability and little agreement between task conceptualization and actual agreement with emerging latent variables of these tasks. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will find strong relationships between what individuals are reporting about themselves and how they objectively behave. It seems that the individual experience of a person with a mental health condition, which has been proposed to be an important end point for explanatory approaches,7 is not well approximated by the behavioral probes that are currently available.
These and other findings have profound implications for our theoretical understanding of psychiatric diseases. Specifically, small effect sizes make it unlikely that psychiatric disorders can be explained by unicausal or oligocausal theories. In other words, there is not going to be a unifying glutamatergic or inflammatory disease model of mood disorders. What’s more, even if there is a relationship between markers for these disease processes and the state of a psychiatric disorder, as currently conceived, it may not be sufficiently strong to be used by itself to make useful person-level predictions. This is not to say that these processes are not contributing to the etiology or pathophysiology of the disorder but rather that their impact is likely to be small so as to not be individually useful in helping patients and other stakeholders explain their current disease state. As a consequence, there is a low probability of a generic disease process for a group of psychiatric disorders or a final common pathway for a disease.
One possible reason for the lack of a strong relationship between units of analyses, ie, between brain circuits and behavior or behavior and symptoms, is many-to-one and one-to-many mapping. In other words, the brain has many ways of producing the same symptoms, and very similar brain dysfunctions can produce a number of different clinical symptoms. An example of one-to-many mapping is the phenotypic heterogeneity of Huntington disease, which, as an autosomal dominant disorder, has a simple genetic basis but enormous clinical variability via the modulation of multiple biochemical pathways.8 In comparison, the clinical homogeneity of motor neuron disease is betrayed by a significant genetic variability, leading to similar symptoms.9 Therefore, it is quite possible that phenotypically similar groups result from different processes and phenotypically heterogeneous individuals actually share broadly similar underlying pathophysiology.
These many-to-one and one-to-many mappings put a profound strain on case-control studies, ie, comparing individuals diagnosed with a particular psychiatric disease with controls that are matched on a limited number of variables. Case-control designs have very limited explanatory depth and are fundamentally uninformative of the disease process because they are correlational, provide little specificity and questionable sensitivity, and have questionable generalizability to populations.10 Single-case designs together with hierarchical inferential procedures might provide a reasonable alternative.11 Single-case designs use individuals as their own control, can use controlled interventions to examine causality, and are well suited to uncover individual differences across phenotypically similar participants. However, care must be taken not to subdivide studies so finely that defects of small sample sizes, including elevated rates of type I and II errors, become problematic even for large epidemiologically informed samples.
Latent variable approaches, such as principal components or factor analyses, can be useful unsupervised statistical methods to uncover relationships between variables within and across units of analyses. However, the underlying assumption is that these latent variables reflect common relationships among all individuals. Instead, it is more likely that relationships differ across individuals and may even differ across states within an individual. Recent approaches to this problem use both latent variable and mixture approaches to differentiate different subgroups of individuals with depression.12 Others have used deviation from normative regression models to identify heterogeneity in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.13 Both sets of approaches support the hypothesis that there are no generic depressive, bipolar, or schizophrenia diseases. At the other extreme, considering that psychiatric diseases emerge from causal factors that vary across units of analyses ranging from molecular to social,7 one might hypothesize that each individual patient with a mental health condition is an exemplar of a rare disease model. In this case, no generalizable model might be possible, and useful individual-level predictions would be elusive.
Thus, we are facing the classical problem of variance-bias trade-off,14 which has been examined in great detail in the statistical literature. Specifically, how do we arbitrate between generating a few generic models with useful explanatory or predictive values vs multiple models that may tend to overexplain and overfit individual patient’s disease etiology, pathophysiology, and clinical course? This decision cannot be arbitrated solely on statistical grounds but will need to judiciously incorporate expert knowledge about the disease and candidate processes on different units of analyses because the permutational complexity of the variables to be considered is so large that even data sets with thousands of individuals may not provide a sufficient sample size to approach this using exploratory techniques resistant to overfitting.
At this time, we are standing at a precipice: our explanatory disease models are woefully insufficient, and our predictive approaches have not yielded robust individual-level predictions that can be used by clinicians. Yet there is room for hope. Larger data sets will be widely available, multilevel data sets that span assessments from genes to social factors are being released, new statistical tools are being developed, within-subject statistical designs are being rediscovered, and attempts to include expert knowledge into latent variable approaches might help arbitrating the variance-bias trade-off. Fundamentally, academic psychiatry cannot continue to move forward with small n case-control studies to provide tangible results to stakeholders.
References
1.
Simon GE. Big data from health records in mental health care: hardly clairvoyant but already useful [published online February 27, 2019]. JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.4510ArticleGoogle Scholar
2.
Boyle EA, Li YI, Pritchard JK. An expanded view of complex traits: from polygenic to omnigenic. Cell. 2017;169(7):1177-1186. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.038PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
3.
Miller KL, Alfaro-Almagro F, Bangerter NK, et al. Multimodal population brain imaging in the UK Biobank prospective epidemiological study. Nat Neurosci. 2016;19(11):1523-1536. doi:10.1038/nn.4393PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
4.
Paulus MP, Squeglia LM, Bagot K, et al. Screen media activity and brain structure in youth: evidence for diverse structural correlation networks from the ABCD study. Neuroimage. 2019;185:140-153. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.040PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
5.
Eisenberg IW, Bissett PG, Enkavi AZ, et al. Uncovering mental structure through data-driven ontology discovery [published online December 12, 2018]. PsyArXiv. doi:10.31234/osf.io/fvqejGoogle Scholar
6.
Thompson WK, Barch DM, Bjork JM, et al. The structure of cognition in 9 and 10 year-old children and associations with problem behaviors: findings from the ABCD study’s baseline neurocognitive battery [published online December 13, 2018]. Dev Cogn Neurosci. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2018.12.004PubMedGoogle Scholar
7.
Kendler KS. Levels of explanation in psychiatric and substance use disorders: implications for the development of an etiologically based nosology. Mol Psychiatry. 2012;17(1):11-21. doi:10.1038/mp.2011.70PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
8.
Ross CA, Aylward EH, Wild EJ, et al. Huntington disease: natural history, biomarkers and prospects for therapeutics. Nat Rev Neurol. 2014;10(4):204-216. doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2014.24PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
9.
Dion PA, Daoud H, Rouleau GA. Genetics of motor neuron disorders: new insights into pathogenic mechanisms. Nat Rev Genet. 2009;10(11):769-782. doi:10.1038/nrg2680PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
10.
Sedgwick P. Case-control studies: advantages and disadvantages. BMJ. 2014;348:f7707. doi:10.1136/bmj.f7707Google ScholarCrossref
11.
Smith JD. Single-case experimental designs: a systematic review of published research and current standards. Psychol Methods. 2012;17(4):510-550. doi:10.1037/a0029312PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
12.
Drysdale AT, Grosenick L, Downar J, et al. Resting-state connectivity biomarkers define neurophysiological subtypes of depression. Nat Med. 2017;23(1):28-38. doi:10.1038/nm.4246PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
13.
Wolfers T, Doan NT, Kaufmann T, et al. Mapping the heterogeneous phenotype of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder using normative models. JAMA Psychiatry. 2018;75(11):1146-1155. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.2467ArticlePubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref
14.
James G, Witten D, Hastie T, Tibshirani R. An Introduction to Statistical Learning With Applications in R. New York, NY: Springer-Verlag New York; 2013.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
When an NHL team has an opportunity to win a playoff series, there appears to be an advantage for visiting teams—not home teams—in winning an overtime game
A home advantage? Examining 100 years of team success in National Hockey League playoff overtime games. Desmond McEwan. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2019.02.010
Highlights
• Examination of team success in professional hockey (NHL) playoff overtime games.
• There was an away team advantage when they had a chance to win a playoff series.
• No home team advantage was found when they had a chance to win a series.
• Home and away teams were equally likely to win final games that went to overtime.
Abstract
Objectives: To examine a potential home (dis)advantage in various types of playoff overtime games in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Design: Archival.
Method: Success rates for home and away teams in win-imminent overtime games (i.e., wherein a team has an opportunity to win the playoff series) were compared to their respective success in non-imminent overtime games (i.e., the outcome of the game does not determine the outcome of the series).
Results: When away teams had an opportunity to win a series, they were significantly more likely to win an overtime game compared to home teams. No such advantage was evident for home teams when they had an opportunity to win a series.
Conclusions: When an NHL team has an opportunity to win a playoff series, there appears to be an advantage for visiting teams—not home teams—in winning an overtime game.
Keywords: ChampionshipChokeClutchHome advantagePressureSelf-attention
Highlights
• Examination of team success in professional hockey (NHL) playoff overtime games.
• There was an away team advantage when they had a chance to win a playoff series.
• No home team advantage was found when they had a chance to win a series.
• Home and away teams were equally likely to win final games that went to overtime.
Abstract
Objectives: To examine a potential home (dis)advantage in various types of playoff overtime games in the National Hockey League (NHL).
Design: Archival.
Method: Success rates for home and away teams in win-imminent overtime games (i.e., wherein a team has an opportunity to win the playoff series) were compared to their respective success in non-imminent overtime games (i.e., the outcome of the game does not determine the outcome of the series).
Results: When away teams had an opportunity to win a series, they were significantly more likely to win an overtime game compared to home teams. No such advantage was evident for home teams when they had an opportunity to win a series.
Conclusions: When an NHL team has an opportunity to win a playoff series, there appears to be an advantage for visiting teams—not home teams—in winning an overtime game.
Keywords: ChampionshipChokeClutchHome advantagePressureSelf-attention
Do Equal Employment Opportunity Statements Backfire?: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment on Job-Entry Decisions
Do Equal Employment Opportunity Statements Backfire?: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment on Job-Entry Decisions. Andreas Leibbrandt and John A. List. Cato Institute, February 27, 2019. https://www.cato.org/publications/research-briefs-economic-policy/do-equal-employment-opportunity-statements-backfire
Sweeping changes in the 1960s potentially altered employment and lifetime opportunities in the United States in ways that were unprecedented and that transformed every aspect of the employer-employee relationship. In the past half century, for example, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statements were added as a requirement in the Code of Federal Regulations, and nearly every U.S. employer has grappled with how to provide equal opportunities. Even with such policies and affirmative action programs in place, racial inequalities remain ubiquitous in labor markets. Relative to whites, blacks in the United States are twice as likely to be unemployed and earn 20 percent less or lower. A critic of EEO regulations might interpret such data patterns as stark evidence of a policy gone awry, whereas a supporter of EEO regulations might view such data under an optimistic lens, noting that such comparisons would be even more highly skewed absent the sweeping EEO policies enacted in the 20th century.
Rather than turning back the clock and examining how EEO regulations in totality have influenced labor-market patterns over the past several decades, we present initial insights into how an important element of EEO regulations affects labor markets today. In this sense, we aim to provide initial empirical evidence on how EEO statements currently affect racial minorities and their labor-market choices. Such an exercise is important for several reasons. First, several states and the U.S. federal government require EEO statements in job advertisements. Second, aside from these cases, employers have to decide whether they want to include an EEO statement in their job advertisement. Third, many public and private employers in the United States and elsewhere still use EEO statements in job advertisements. Fourth, there are broad recommendations and regulations surrounding their inclusion. Finally, because racial minorities remain disadvantaged in many labor markets, it is of utmost importance to evaluate common practices and policies that aim to reduce labor-market inequalities. To our best knowledge, causal estimates of actual EEO statements do not exist despite their pervasiveness and arguments that they could discourage minorities.
We use a large-scale natural field experiment aimed at exploring the causal impact of EEO statements in job advertisements to provide a first step into understanding the effects of EEO policy. To investigate how EEO statements affect the job-applicant pool, we advertise real jobs and investigate more than 2,300 job-entry decisions across various labor-market settings. Our working hypothesis is that EEO statements encourage minorities to apply for a job. Our experiment renders it possible to investigate interesting heterogeneities because we post the job advertisements in 10 large U.S. cities with substantially different racial compositions.
We find that EEO statements do affect job-entry decisions. However, the statement that all job applicants receive equal consideration irrespective of race leads to unexpected outcomes. In particular, we find that EEO statements discourage racial minorities from applying for jobs in important ways. Educated nonwhites are less likely to apply if the job description includes an EEO statement, and the discouragement effect is particularly pronounced in cities with white-majority populations. The impact of EEO statements on job applications from minorities is economically significant because their application likelihood drops by up to 30 percent.
To explore the underlying mechanism at work, we conduct complementary surveys with job seekers drawn from the same subject pool. We find that the inclusion of EEO statements significantly affects anticipated discrimination, stereotype threat, and tokenism. That is, we observe that the inclusion of the EEO statement in the studied job advertisements decreases the likelihood with which job seekers anticipate discrimination during hiring and career advancement and that it lowers stereotype threat. At the same time, however, we observe that the inclusion of the EEO statement significantly increases the perception of tokenism. This effect is particularly pronounced in cities with white-majority populations, where more than two thirds of job seekers believe that the inclusion of the EEO statement signals that there will be token hires.
Our survey findings augment the field experimental results and provide insights into the mechanism underlying the observed discouragement effect of EEO statements. They suggest that racial minorities prefer not to apply for jobs where there is a high likelihood that they are token hires. These tokenism concerns are so strong that they outweigh other desirable effects of EEO statements, such as lower anticipated discrimination and stereotype threat.
Combined with the insights from Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan and from Sonia Kang, Katherine DeCelles, András Tilcsik, and Sora Jun, who report that employers who use EEO statements are not less likely to discriminate against racial minorities, our findings paint a rather bleak picture of current EEO policies aimed to have a positive impact on minority labor-market representation. This does not imply that EEO statements have never had their intended effects, that EEO policies requiring the mandatory inclusion of EEO statements across the board cannot have their intended effects, or that differently formulated statements cannot have their intended effects. Rather, the results suggest that there is little support for the inclusion of standard EEO statements in job ads in today’s labor market and even evidence that important deleterious effects arise from such statements.
NOTE: This research brief is based on Andreas Leibbrandt and John A.List, “Do Equal Employment Opportunity Statements Backfire?Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment on Job-Entry Decisions,”NBER Working Paper No. 25035, September 2018, http://www.nber.org/papers/w25035
Sweeping changes in the 1960s potentially altered employment and lifetime opportunities in the United States in ways that were unprecedented and that transformed every aspect of the employer-employee relationship. In the past half century, for example, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statements were added as a requirement in the Code of Federal Regulations, and nearly every U.S. employer has grappled with how to provide equal opportunities. Even with such policies and affirmative action programs in place, racial inequalities remain ubiquitous in labor markets. Relative to whites, blacks in the United States are twice as likely to be unemployed and earn 20 percent less or lower. A critic of EEO regulations might interpret such data patterns as stark evidence of a policy gone awry, whereas a supporter of EEO regulations might view such data under an optimistic lens, noting that such comparisons would be even more highly skewed absent the sweeping EEO policies enacted in the 20th century.
Rather than turning back the clock and examining how EEO regulations in totality have influenced labor-market patterns over the past several decades, we present initial insights into how an important element of EEO regulations affects labor markets today. In this sense, we aim to provide initial empirical evidence on how EEO statements currently affect racial minorities and their labor-market choices. Such an exercise is important for several reasons. First, several states and the U.S. federal government require EEO statements in job advertisements. Second, aside from these cases, employers have to decide whether they want to include an EEO statement in their job advertisement. Third, many public and private employers in the United States and elsewhere still use EEO statements in job advertisements. Fourth, there are broad recommendations and regulations surrounding their inclusion. Finally, because racial minorities remain disadvantaged in many labor markets, it is of utmost importance to evaluate common practices and policies that aim to reduce labor-market inequalities. To our best knowledge, causal estimates of actual EEO statements do not exist despite their pervasiveness and arguments that they could discourage minorities.
We use a large-scale natural field experiment aimed at exploring the causal impact of EEO statements in job advertisements to provide a first step into understanding the effects of EEO policy. To investigate how EEO statements affect the job-applicant pool, we advertise real jobs and investigate more than 2,300 job-entry decisions across various labor-market settings. Our working hypothesis is that EEO statements encourage minorities to apply for a job. Our experiment renders it possible to investigate interesting heterogeneities because we post the job advertisements in 10 large U.S. cities with substantially different racial compositions.
We find that EEO statements do affect job-entry decisions. However, the statement that all job applicants receive equal consideration irrespective of race leads to unexpected outcomes. In particular, we find that EEO statements discourage racial minorities from applying for jobs in important ways. Educated nonwhites are less likely to apply if the job description includes an EEO statement, and the discouragement effect is particularly pronounced in cities with white-majority populations. The impact of EEO statements on job applications from minorities is economically significant because their application likelihood drops by up to 30 percent.
To explore the underlying mechanism at work, we conduct complementary surveys with job seekers drawn from the same subject pool. We find that the inclusion of EEO statements significantly affects anticipated discrimination, stereotype threat, and tokenism. That is, we observe that the inclusion of the EEO statement in the studied job advertisements decreases the likelihood with which job seekers anticipate discrimination during hiring and career advancement and that it lowers stereotype threat. At the same time, however, we observe that the inclusion of the EEO statement significantly increases the perception of tokenism. This effect is particularly pronounced in cities with white-majority populations, where more than two thirds of job seekers believe that the inclusion of the EEO statement signals that there will be token hires.
Our survey findings augment the field experimental results and provide insights into the mechanism underlying the observed discouragement effect of EEO statements. They suggest that racial minorities prefer not to apply for jobs where there is a high likelihood that they are token hires. These tokenism concerns are so strong that they outweigh other desirable effects of EEO statements, such as lower anticipated discrimination and stereotype threat.
Combined with the insights from Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan and from Sonia Kang, Katherine DeCelles, András Tilcsik, and Sora Jun, who report that employers who use EEO statements are not less likely to discriminate against racial minorities, our findings paint a rather bleak picture of current EEO policies aimed to have a positive impact on minority labor-market representation. This does not imply that EEO statements have never had their intended effects, that EEO policies requiring the mandatory inclusion of EEO statements across the board cannot have their intended effects, or that differently formulated statements cannot have their intended effects. Rather, the results suggest that there is little support for the inclusion of standard EEO statements in job ads in today’s labor market and even evidence that important deleterious effects arise from such statements.
NOTE: This research brief is based on Andreas Leibbrandt and John A.List, “Do Equal Employment Opportunity Statements Backfire?Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment on Job-Entry Decisions,”NBER Working Paper No. 25035, September 2018, http://www.nber.org/papers/w25035
Valuing Facebook: 'Superendowment effect' may be signalling that social media are Wasting Time Goods – goods on which people spend time, but for which they are not willing to pay much (if anything)
Valuing Facebook. Cass R Sunstein. Behavioural Public Policy, Feb 27 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2018.34
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a great deal of discussion of the welfare effects of digital goods, including social media. A national survey, designed to monetize the benefits of a variety of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram), found a massive disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA). The sheer magnitude of this disparity reflects a ‘superendowment effect’. Social media may be Wasting Time Goods – goods on which people spend time, but for which they are not, on reflection, willing to pay much (if anything). It is also possible that in the context of the WTP question, people are giving protest answers, signaling their intense opposition to being asked to pay for something that they had formerly enjoyed for free. Their answers may be expressive, rather than reflective of actual welfare effects. At the same time, the WTA measure may also be expressive, a different form of protest, telling us little about the actual effects of social media on people's lives and experiences. It may greatly overstate those effects. In this context, there may well be a sharp disparity between conventional economic measures and actual effects on experienced well-being.
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a great deal of discussion of the welfare effects of digital goods, including social media. A national survey, designed to monetize the benefits of a variety of social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram), found a massive disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA). The sheer magnitude of this disparity reflects a ‘superendowment effect’. Social media may be Wasting Time Goods – goods on which people spend time, but for which they are not, on reflection, willing to pay much (if anything). It is also possible that in the context of the WTP question, people are giving protest answers, signaling their intense opposition to being asked to pay for something that they had formerly enjoyed for free. Their answers may be expressive, rather than reflective of actual welfare effects. At the same time, the WTA measure may also be expressive, a different form of protest, telling us little about the actual effects of social media on people's lives and experiences. It may greatly overstate those effects. In this context, there may well be a sharp disparity between conventional economic measures and actual effects on experienced well-being.
Olfaction During Pregnancy and Postpartum Period: Did not differ compared to controls, although identified some odors less well than did the controls
Olfaction During Pregnancy and Postpartum Period. Marco Aurelio Fornazieri et al. Chemosensory Perception, Feb 27 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12078-019-09259-7
Abstract
Introduction: Studies of the effect of pregnancy on olfactory function are contradictory—some report reduced function, others hypersensitivity, and still others no change at all. Our objectives were to quantify olfactory function in women during gestational and puerperal periods, to compare the olfactory test scores to those of non-pregnant women, and to explore the potential influence of rhinitis on olfactory function during these periods.
Methods: We evaluated olfactory function in 206 women with and without rhinitis—47 in the first trimester of pregnancy, 33 in the second, 44 in the third, 32 in the postpartum period, and 50 who were non-pregnant. Olfactory assessment was performed using the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) and ratings of the pleasantness and intensity of four common odors.
Results: Although total UPSIT scores did not differ among the study groups, pregnant and postpartum women identified some odors less well than did the controls. Pregnant women, especially in the first trimester, tended to consider some smells less pleasant. Rhinitis was adversely associated with the olfactory test scores of the pregnant and postpartum women.
Conclusions: The overall olfactory function of postpartum and pregnant women did not differ compared to controls; however, detection of some individual UPSIT items was adversely impacted (e.g., menthol, gingerbread, gasoline). Rhinitis was associated with reduced olfaction during pregnancy and puerperium.
Implications: These findings support the view that pregnancy-related alterations in smell are idiosyncratic, present only for some odorants, and may be impacted by the presence of rhinitis that commonly occurs during pregnancy.
Keywords: Olfaction disorders Smell Pregnancy Postpartum period Olfactory perception Rhinitis
Abstract
Introduction: Studies of the effect of pregnancy on olfactory function are contradictory—some report reduced function, others hypersensitivity, and still others no change at all. Our objectives were to quantify olfactory function in women during gestational and puerperal periods, to compare the olfactory test scores to those of non-pregnant women, and to explore the potential influence of rhinitis on olfactory function during these periods.
Methods: We evaluated olfactory function in 206 women with and without rhinitis—47 in the first trimester of pregnancy, 33 in the second, 44 in the third, 32 in the postpartum period, and 50 who were non-pregnant. Olfactory assessment was performed using the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) and ratings of the pleasantness and intensity of four common odors.
Results: Although total UPSIT scores did not differ among the study groups, pregnant and postpartum women identified some odors less well than did the controls. Pregnant women, especially in the first trimester, tended to consider some smells less pleasant. Rhinitis was adversely associated with the olfactory test scores of the pregnant and postpartum women.
Conclusions: The overall olfactory function of postpartum and pregnant women did not differ compared to controls; however, detection of some individual UPSIT items was adversely impacted (e.g., menthol, gingerbread, gasoline). Rhinitis was associated with reduced olfaction during pregnancy and puerperium.
Implications: These findings support the view that pregnancy-related alterations in smell are idiosyncratic, present only for some odorants, and may be impacted by the presence of rhinitis that commonly occurs during pregnancy.
Keywords: Olfaction disorders Smell Pregnancy Postpartum period Olfactory perception Rhinitis
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
When acting through autonomous machines, the way people solve social dilemmas changes: participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves
Human Cooperation When Acting Through Autonomous Machines. Celso M. de Melo, Stacy Marsella, and Jonathan Gratch. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 26, 2019 116 (9) 3482-3487. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817656116
Significance: Autonomous machines that act on our behalf—such as robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles—are quickly becoming a reality. These machines will face situations where individual interest conflicts with collective interest, and it is critical we understand if people will cooperate when acting through them. Here we show, in the increasingly popular domain of autonomous vehicles, that people program their vehicles to be more cooperative than they would if driving themselves. This happens because programming machines causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, and that encourages cooperation. Our results further indicate that personal experience influences how machines are programmed. Finally, we show that this effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles and we discuss theoretical and practical implications.
Abstract: Recent times have seen an emergence of intelligent machines that act autonomously on our behalf, such as autonomous vehicles. Despite promises of increased efficiency, it is not clear whether this paradigm shift will change how we decide when our self-interest (e.g., comfort) is pitted against the collective interest (e.g., environment). Here we show that acting through machines changes the way people solve these social dilemmas and we present experimental evidence showing that participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves. We show that this happens because programming causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, leading to considerations of broader societal goals. We also show that the programmed behavior is influenced by past experience. Finally, we report evidence that the effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles. We discuss implications for designing autonomous machines that contribute to a more cooperative society.
Keywords: autonomous vehiclescooperationsocial dilemmas
Significance: Autonomous machines that act on our behalf—such as robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles—are quickly becoming a reality. These machines will face situations where individual interest conflicts with collective interest, and it is critical we understand if people will cooperate when acting through them. Here we show, in the increasingly popular domain of autonomous vehicles, that people program their vehicles to be more cooperative than they would if driving themselves. This happens because programming machines causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, and that encourages cooperation. Our results further indicate that personal experience influences how machines are programmed. Finally, we show that this effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles and we discuss theoretical and practical implications.
Abstract: Recent times have seen an emergence of intelligent machines that act autonomously on our behalf, such as autonomous vehicles. Despite promises of increased efficiency, it is not clear whether this paradigm shift will change how we decide when our self-interest (e.g., comfort) is pitted against the collective interest (e.g., environment). Here we show that acting through machines changes the way people solve these social dilemmas and we present experimental evidence showing that participants program their autonomous vehicles to act more cooperatively than if they were driving themselves. We show that this happens because programming causes selfish short-term rewards to become less salient, leading to considerations of broader societal goals. We also show that the programmed behavior is influenced by past experience. Finally, we report evidence that the effect generalizes beyond the domain of autonomous vehicles. We discuss implications for designing autonomous machines that contribute to a more cooperative society.
Keywords: autonomous vehiclescooperationsocial dilemmas
Reconstructing meaning: Fragmented information is combined into a complete semantic representation of an object and to identify brain regions associated with object meaning
Reconstructing meaning from bits of information. Sasa L. Kivisaari, Marijn van Vliet, Annika Hultén, Tiina Lindh-Knuutila, Ali Faisal & Riitta Salmelin. Nature Communications, volume 10, Article number: 927 (2019). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08848-0
Abstract: Modern theories of semantics posit that the meaning of words can be decomposed into a unique combination of semantic features (e.g., “dog” would include “barks”). Here, we demonstrate using functional MRI (fMRI) that the brain combines bits of information into meaningful object representations. Participants receive clues of individual objects in form of three isolated semantic features, given as verbal descriptions. We use machine-learning-based neural decoding to learn a mapping between individual semantic features and BOLD activation patterns. The recorded brain patterns are best decoded using a combination of not only the three semantic features that were in fact presented as clues, but a far richer set of semantic features typically linked to the target object. We conclude that our experimental protocol allowed us to demonstrate that fragmented information is combined into a complete semantic representation of an object and to identify brain regions associated with object meaning.
Abstract: Modern theories of semantics posit that the meaning of words can be decomposed into a unique combination of semantic features (e.g., “dog” would include “barks”). Here, we demonstrate using functional MRI (fMRI) that the brain combines bits of information into meaningful object representations. Participants receive clues of individual objects in form of three isolated semantic features, given as verbal descriptions. We use machine-learning-based neural decoding to learn a mapping between individual semantic features and BOLD activation patterns. The recorded brain patterns are best decoded using a combination of not only the three semantic features that were in fact presented as clues, but a far richer set of semantic features typically linked to the target object. We conclude that our experimental protocol allowed us to demonstrate that fragmented information is combined into a complete semantic representation of an object and to identify brain regions associated with object meaning.
The “Furry” Phenomenon: Characterizing Sexual Orientation, Sexual Motivation, and Erotic Target Identity Inversions in Male Furries
The “Furry” Phenomenon: Characterizing Sexual Orientation, Sexual Motivation, and Erotic Target Identity Inversions in Male Furries. Kevin J. Hsu, J. Michael Bailey. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Feb 26 2019, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1303-7
Abstract: Furries are individuals who are especially interested in anthropomorphic or cartoon animals (e.g., Bugs Bunny). They often strongly identify with anthropomorphic animals and create fursonas, identities of themselves as those anthropomorphic animals. Some practice fursuiting, or wearing costumes that resemble anthropomorphic animals. Furries have been portrayed as sexually motivated in the media and popular culture, although little empirical research has addressed this issue. If some furries are sexually motivated, they may be motivated by an erotic target identity inversion (ETII): sexual arousal by the fantasy of being the same kinds of individuals to whom they are sexually attracted. Furries with ETIIs would experience both sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals and sexual arousal by fantasizing about being anthropomorphic animals, because they often change their appearance and behavior to become more like anthropomorphic animals. We surveyed 334 male furries recruited from the Internet about their sexual orientation, sexual motivation, and sexual interests. A large majority of our sample reported non-heterosexual identities (84%) and some degree of sexual motivation for being furries (99%). Male furries also tended to report a pattern of sexual interests consistent with an ETII involving anthropomorphic animals. Both sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals and sexual arousal by fantasizing about being anthropomorphic animals were nearly universal. Furthermore, male furries tended to be sexually aroused by fantasizing about being the same kinds of anthropomorphic animals to whom they were sexually attracted, with respect to gender and species. This sexual motivation and these unusual sexual interests do not justify discrimination or stigmatization.
Keywords: Furries Sexual orientation Sexual motivation Erotic target identity inversions Autogynephilia Paraphilias
Abstract: Furries are individuals who are especially interested in anthropomorphic or cartoon animals (e.g., Bugs Bunny). They often strongly identify with anthropomorphic animals and create fursonas, identities of themselves as those anthropomorphic animals. Some practice fursuiting, or wearing costumes that resemble anthropomorphic animals. Furries have been portrayed as sexually motivated in the media and popular culture, although little empirical research has addressed this issue. If some furries are sexually motivated, they may be motivated by an erotic target identity inversion (ETII): sexual arousal by the fantasy of being the same kinds of individuals to whom they are sexually attracted. Furries with ETIIs would experience both sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals and sexual arousal by fantasizing about being anthropomorphic animals, because they often change their appearance and behavior to become more like anthropomorphic animals. We surveyed 334 male furries recruited from the Internet about their sexual orientation, sexual motivation, and sexual interests. A large majority of our sample reported non-heterosexual identities (84%) and some degree of sexual motivation for being furries (99%). Male furries also tended to report a pattern of sexual interests consistent with an ETII involving anthropomorphic animals. Both sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals and sexual arousal by fantasizing about being anthropomorphic animals were nearly universal. Furthermore, male furries tended to be sexually aroused by fantasizing about being the same kinds of anthropomorphic animals to whom they were sexually attracted, with respect to gender and species. This sexual motivation and these unusual sexual interests do not justify discrimination or stigmatization.
Keywords: Furries Sexual orientation Sexual motivation Erotic target identity inversions Autogynephilia Paraphilias
Acute stress: Considering one’s belief in God or science did not mitigate stress responses; under acutely stressful circumstances, reflecting on one’s beliefs may not confer immediate benefits
Farias, M., & Newheiser, A.-K. (2019). The effects of belief in God and science on acute stress. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cns0000185
Abstract: It is widely assumed that belief in God allows people to better cope with life’s stresses. This stress-buffering effect is not limited to religion; when faced with stress, nonreligious people cling on to other belief systems, notably belief in science. We report an experimental test of whether people are able to down-regulate an acute stress experience by reflecting on their beliefs. We used the Trier Social Stress Test to induce stress in religious and scientist participants from the United Kingdom by having them discuss arguments for and against the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (“Brexit”). Prior to stress induction, participants were or were not reminded of their belief in God or science. We included subjective, cardiovascular, and cortisol stress measures at multiple time points. At both subjective and cardiovascular levels, participants reliably experienced stress. However, considering one’s belief in God or science did not mitigate stress responses. Religious participants were somewhat less reactive to stress induction than scientists. Despite the large correlational literature on the stress-buffering effects of faith, under acutely stressful circumstances, reflecting on one’s beliefs may not confer immediate benefits.
Abstract: It is widely assumed that belief in God allows people to better cope with life’s stresses. This stress-buffering effect is not limited to religion; when faced with stress, nonreligious people cling on to other belief systems, notably belief in science. We report an experimental test of whether people are able to down-regulate an acute stress experience by reflecting on their beliefs. We used the Trier Social Stress Test to induce stress in religious and scientist participants from the United Kingdom by having them discuss arguments for and against the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (“Brexit”). Prior to stress induction, participants were or were not reminded of their belief in God or science. We included subjective, cardiovascular, and cortisol stress measures at multiple time points. At both subjective and cardiovascular levels, participants reliably experienced stress. However, considering one’s belief in God or science did not mitigate stress responses. Religious participants were somewhat less reactive to stress induction than scientists. Despite the large correlational literature on the stress-buffering effects of faith, under acutely stressful circumstances, reflecting on one’s beliefs may not confer immediate benefits.
Bad Science May Banish Paper Receipts: California lawmakers seek a ban, based on a scare over BPA that was debunked two decades ago
Bad Science May Banish Paper Receipts. Steve Milloy. The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2019. https://www.wsj.com/articles/bad-science-may-banish-paper-receipts-11551137837
California lawmakers seek a ban, based on a scare over BPA that was debunked two decades ago
Having vanquished plastic straws, the California Legislature is now considering a bill to ban paper cash-register receipts. One reason offered for the ban is to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The other is to reduce public exposure to bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical used to coat receipts.
Whatever one’s opinion about climate science, it’s clear that eliminating the carbon footprint of California’s paper receipts won’t affect the global climate. Some 1,200 new coal plants are being planned or built around the world, and oil and gas production and use are rising through the roof. Even a global ban on paper would have no significant impact on atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels.
The more interesting reason for the ban is the BPA argument, which is part of a broader trend of misuse of science in public policy. The alarm behind the California bill arises from the notion that BPA is an “endocrine disrupter”: a chemical that, even at low doses, can disrupt human hormonal systems. Such disruptions theoretically could cause a variety of ailments, from cancer to reproductive problems to attention-deficit disorder.
Like the panic over DDT that followed the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the endocrine-disrupter scare made its public debut with a book, “Our Stolen Future” (1996). Written by three activist authors and including a foreword by Al Gore, the book lays out a case for regulating various pollutants.
“Our Stolen Future” was followed the same year by a highly publicized Tulane University study that reported certain combinations of pesticides and other chemicals in the environment were much more potent endocrine disrupters than the individual chemicals themselves. Within weeks, this study prompted Congress to pass a bill directing the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a program to test chemicals for their potential harm to hormonal systems.
In the months that followed, the Tulane study began to fall apart. Independent laboratories around the world reported that they could not replicate its results. By July 1997, the original study was retracted. Federal investigators concluded in 2001 that the Tulane researchers had committed scientific misconduct by falsifying their results.
Yet the law and regulatory programs spawned by the false study remained in place. The endocrine-disrupter scare gained steam through the 2000s, and BPA became its biggest villain. Generous federal funding led to the publication of hundreds of BPA studies. A movement to ban BPA was joined by several cities, states such as California, and foreign nations including Canada, resulting in the elimination of the substance from plastic bottles in those regions. Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority pushed back against the scare, to little avail.
Finally in 2012, the FDA decided to launch Clarity, a large $8 million study of BPA to be conducted according to regulatory guidelines known as the Good Laboratory Practices standard. Researchers, including those who had published studies claiming that low-dose exposures to BPA posed health risks, were provided with coded, pre-dosed animals to avoid bias and cheating. Researchers were required to upload their raw data to a government database before the identity of each dose group was disclosed to them.
The results of Clarity were published in 2018. The FDA concluded that the study failed to demonstrate adverse health effects from exposure to BPA in low doses—like the amount one might be exposed to by handling a paper receipt.
Yet despite its birth in scientific misconduct, its dismissals along the way by international regulators and science and public-health groups like the National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization, and finally its debunking by the FDA’s Clarity study, the BPA scare survives. Thanks to Congress, it lives on at the EPA, where a 22-year-old endocrine-disrupter screening program peddles merrily along despite producing no results of interest.
It is a sad state of affairs when actual science cannot vanquish adjudicated science fraud in public policy.
Mr. Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, served on the Trump EPA transition team, and is author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”
California lawmakers seek a ban, based on a scare over BPA that was debunked two decades ago
Having vanquished plastic straws, the California Legislature is now considering a bill to ban paper cash-register receipts. One reason offered for the ban is to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The other is to reduce public exposure to bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical used to coat receipts.
Whatever one’s opinion about climate science, it’s clear that eliminating the carbon footprint of California’s paper receipts won’t affect the global climate. Some 1,200 new coal plants are being planned or built around the world, and oil and gas production and use are rising through the roof. Even a global ban on paper would have no significant impact on atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels.
The more interesting reason for the ban is the BPA argument, which is part of a broader trend of misuse of science in public policy. The alarm behind the California bill arises from the notion that BPA is an “endocrine disrupter”: a chemical that, even at low doses, can disrupt human hormonal systems. Such disruptions theoretically could cause a variety of ailments, from cancer to reproductive problems to attention-deficit disorder.
Like the panic over DDT that followed the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the endocrine-disrupter scare made its public debut with a book, “Our Stolen Future” (1996). Written by three activist authors and including a foreword by Al Gore, the book lays out a case for regulating various pollutants.
“Our Stolen Future” was followed the same year by a highly publicized Tulane University study that reported certain combinations of pesticides and other chemicals in the environment were much more potent endocrine disrupters than the individual chemicals themselves. Within weeks, this study prompted Congress to pass a bill directing the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a program to test chemicals for their potential harm to hormonal systems.
In the months that followed, the Tulane study began to fall apart. Independent laboratories around the world reported that they could not replicate its results. By July 1997, the original study was retracted. Federal investigators concluded in 2001 that the Tulane researchers had committed scientific misconduct by falsifying their results.
Yet the law and regulatory programs spawned by the false study remained in place. The endocrine-disrupter scare gained steam through the 2000s, and BPA became its biggest villain. Generous federal funding led to the publication of hundreds of BPA studies. A movement to ban BPA was joined by several cities, states such as California, and foreign nations including Canada, resulting in the elimination of the substance from plastic bottles in those regions. Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority pushed back against the scare, to little avail.
Finally in 2012, the FDA decided to launch Clarity, a large $8 million study of BPA to be conducted according to regulatory guidelines known as the Good Laboratory Practices standard. Researchers, including those who had published studies claiming that low-dose exposures to BPA posed health risks, were provided with coded, pre-dosed animals to avoid bias and cheating. Researchers were required to upload their raw data to a government database before the identity of each dose group was disclosed to them.
The results of Clarity were published in 2018. The FDA concluded that the study failed to demonstrate adverse health effects from exposure to BPA in low doses—like the amount one might be exposed to by handling a paper receipt.
Yet despite its birth in scientific misconduct, its dismissals along the way by international regulators and science and public-health groups like the National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization, and finally its debunking by the FDA’s Clarity study, the BPA scare survives. Thanks to Congress, it lives on at the EPA, where a 22-year-old endocrine-disrupter screening program peddles merrily along despite producing no results of interest.
It is a sad state of affairs when actual science cannot vanquish adjudicated science fraud in public policy.
Mr. Milloy publishes JunkScience.com, served on the Trump EPA transition team, and is author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.”
People believe that they are above average but also hold themselves to standards of comparison that are well above average due to the increased mental availability of such high-performing standards of comparison
Davidai, S., & Deri, S. (2019). The second pugilist’s plight: Why people believe they are above average but are not especially happy about it. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(3), 570-587. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000580
Abstract: People’s tendency to rate themselves as above average is often taken as evidence of undue self-regard. Yet, everyday experience is occasioned with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. How can these 2 experiences be reconciled? Across 12 studies (N = 2,474; including 4 preregistered studies) we argue that although people do indeed believe that they are above average they also hold themselves to standards of comparison that are well above average. Across a host of domains, we find that people’s typical standards of comparison are significantly above the level of the “average” person (Studies 1A, 1B, 2A, and 3). We further show that people’s tendency to measure themselves against above-average others is due to the increased mental availability of such high-performing standards of comparison (Studies 4A and 4B). Finally, we present evidence that this is not simply the result of self-enhancement by showing that people measure themselves against above-average others even when they feel subjectively inadequate (Study 5A), receive objective information about their poor performance (Study 5B), or evaluate themselves on domains in which they chronically underperform (Study 5C). Even in domains where being above average is undesirable (e.g., rudeness), people bring to mind and compare themselves with above average targets (Studies 2B and 2C). We discuss the implications for self-enhancement research and the importance of examining who people compare themselves to in addition to how people believe they compare with others.
Abstract: People’s tendency to rate themselves as above average is often taken as evidence of undue self-regard. Yet, everyday experience is occasioned with feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. How can these 2 experiences be reconciled? Across 12 studies (N = 2,474; including 4 preregistered studies) we argue that although people do indeed believe that they are above average they also hold themselves to standards of comparison that are well above average. Across a host of domains, we find that people’s typical standards of comparison are significantly above the level of the “average” person (Studies 1A, 1B, 2A, and 3). We further show that people’s tendency to measure themselves against above-average others is due to the increased mental availability of such high-performing standards of comparison (Studies 4A and 4B). Finally, we present evidence that this is not simply the result of self-enhancement by showing that people measure themselves against above-average others even when they feel subjectively inadequate (Study 5A), receive objective information about their poor performance (Study 5B), or evaluate themselves on domains in which they chronically underperform (Study 5C). Even in domains where being above average is undesirable (e.g., rudeness), people bring to mind and compare themselves with above average targets (Studies 2B and 2C). We discuss the implications for self-enhancement research and the importance of examining who people compare themselves to in addition to how people believe they compare with others.
Who watches an ISIS beheading—and why
Redmond, S., Jones, N. M., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2019). Who watches an ISIS beheading—and why. American Psychologist, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000438
Abstract: In the wake of collective traumas and acts of terrorism, media bring real graphic images and videos to TV, computer, and smartphone screens. Many people consume this coverage, but who they are and why they do so is poorly understood. Using a mixed-methods design, we examined predictors of and motivations for viewing graphic media among individuals who watched a beheading video created by the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). A representative national sample of U.S. residents (N = 3,294) reported whether they viewed a video and why (or why not) via an anonymous survey administered during a 3-year longitudinal study. Accounting for population weights, about 20% of the sample reported watching at least part of a beheading video, and about 5% reported watching an entire video. Increased likelihood of watching a video was associated with demographics (male, unemployed, and Christian), frequency of typical TV watching, and both prior lifetime exposure to violence and fear of future terrorism. Watching at least part of a beheading video was prospectively associated with fear of future negative events and global distress approximately 2 years after the beheading videos went viral. The most common reasons respondents reported for watching a beheading video were information seeking and curiosity. Results suggest attentional vigilance: Preexisting fear and history of violent victimization appear to draw individuals to graphic coverage of violence. However, viewing this coverage may contribute to subsequent fear and distress over time, likely assisting terrorists in achieving their goals.
Abstract: In the wake of collective traumas and acts of terrorism, media bring real graphic images and videos to TV, computer, and smartphone screens. Many people consume this coverage, but who they are and why they do so is poorly understood. Using a mixed-methods design, we examined predictors of and motivations for viewing graphic media among individuals who watched a beheading video created by the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). A representative national sample of U.S. residents (N = 3,294) reported whether they viewed a video and why (or why not) via an anonymous survey administered during a 3-year longitudinal study. Accounting for population weights, about 20% of the sample reported watching at least part of a beheading video, and about 5% reported watching an entire video. Increased likelihood of watching a video was associated with demographics (male, unemployed, and Christian), frequency of typical TV watching, and both prior lifetime exposure to violence and fear of future terrorism. Watching at least part of a beheading video was prospectively associated with fear of future negative events and global distress approximately 2 years after the beheading videos went viral. The most common reasons respondents reported for watching a beheading video were information seeking and curiosity. Results suggest attentional vigilance: Preexisting fear and history of violent victimization appear to draw individuals to graphic coverage of violence. However, viewing this coverage may contribute to subsequent fear and distress over time, likely assisting terrorists in achieving their goals.
Are People Trained in Economics “Different”? In certain situations, there appear differences between the behavior of people trained in economics & other groups, but as the existing evidence is mostly ambiguous
Are People Trained in Economics “Different,” and if so, Why? A Literature Review. Simon Niklas Hellmich. The American Economist, Feb 22, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0569434519829433
Abstract: Some argue that frequent confrontation with the homo economicus actor-concept motivates economists to adjust their behavior to that paradigm. Another thesis is that economists are different because the discipline attracts individuals with preferences that differ from those of noneconomists. This article discusses survey, experimental, and field evidence collected during this debate. In certain situations, there appear differences between the behavior of people trained in economics and other groups, but as the existing evidence is mostly ambiguous, a comprehensive picture of the nature and sources of these differences has not yet emerged. The article concludes that economics teachers and researchers should pay more attention to the influence the normative statements inherent in basic neoclassical economics can have on cognitive frames and interindividual processes in moral decision making.
Keywords: education, economic man, preferences, self-interest
Abstract: Some argue that frequent confrontation with the homo economicus actor-concept motivates economists to adjust their behavior to that paradigm. Another thesis is that economists are different because the discipline attracts individuals with preferences that differ from those of noneconomists. This article discusses survey, experimental, and field evidence collected during this debate. In certain situations, there appear differences between the behavior of people trained in economics and other groups, but as the existing evidence is mostly ambiguous, a comprehensive picture of the nature and sources of these differences has not yet emerged. The article concludes that economics teachers and researchers should pay more attention to the influence the normative statements inherent in basic neoclassical economics can have on cognitive frames and interindividual processes in moral decision making.
Keywords: education, economic man, preferences, self-interest
That addictions are rooted in brain dysfunction is essentially unfalsifiable and devoid of scientific content; there is overwhelming scientific evidence that other key presuppositions of the brain disease model are false
Is addiction a brain disease? Scott O. Lilienfeld, Sally Satel. Chapter 2 in Casting Light on the Dark Side of Brain Imaging, 2019, Pages 13-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816179-1.00014-1
Abstract: Over the past two decades the brain disease model has become the prevailing scientific narrative for explaining substance addictions. This model, buoyed by brain imaging data, posits that addictions are rooted in brain dysfunctions, and are chronic, relapsing conditions that largely eradicate individuals’ capacity to control substance use. We argue that the assertion that addictions are rooted in brain dysfunction is essentially unfalsifiable and devoid of scientific content. Further, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that other key presuppositions of the brain disease model are false. Finally, this model has been of questionable utility; there is minimal evidence that it leads to effective intervention, reduces stigma, or accounts for recent large-scale societal changes in the prevalence of addictions. It is high time to abandon this model and to adopt a pluralistic approach to addiction that acknowledges the value of neuroimaging evidence in conjunction with other lenses of analysis.
Abstract: Over the past two decades the brain disease model has become the prevailing scientific narrative for explaining substance addictions. This model, buoyed by brain imaging data, posits that addictions are rooted in brain dysfunctions, and are chronic, relapsing conditions that largely eradicate individuals’ capacity to control substance use. We argue that the assertion that addictions are rooted in brain dysfunction is essentially unfalsifiable and devoid of scientific content. Further, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that other key presuppositions of the brain disease model are false. Finally, this model has been of questionable utility; there is minimal evidence that it leads to effective intervention, reduces stigma, or accounts for recent large-scale societal changes in the prevalence of addictions. It is high time to abandon this model and to adopt a pluralistic approach to addiction that acknowledges the value of neuroimaging evidence in conjunction with other lenses of analysis.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Behavioral differences between CEOs and others: The most striking results are that CEOs do not best respond to beliefs; they cooperate more, play less hawkish & thereby earn much more than the control group
Strategic decisions: behavioral differences between CEOs and others. Håkan J. Holm, Victor Nee, Sonja Opper. Experimental Economics, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10683-019-09604-3
Abstract: We study whether CEOs of private firms differ from other people with regard to their strategic decisions and beliefs about others’ strategy choices. Such differences are interesting since CEOs make decisions that are economically more relevant, because they affect not only their own utility or the well-being of household members, but the utility of many stakeholders inside and outside of the organization. They also play a central role in shaping values and norms in society. We expect differences between both groups, because CEOs are more experienced with strategic decision making than comparable people in other professional roles. Yet, due to the difficulties in recruiting this high-profile group for academic research, few studies have explored how CEOs make incentivized decisions in strategic games under strict controls and how their choices in such games differ from those made by others. Our study combines a stratified random sample of 200 CEOs of medium-sized firms with a carefully selected control group of 200 comparable people. All subjects participated in three incentivized games—Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, Battle-of-the-Sexes. Beliefs were elicited for each game. We report substantial and robust differences in both behavior and beliefs between the CEOs and the control group. The most striking results are that CEOs do not best respond to beliefs; they cooperate more, play less hawkish and thereby earn much more than the control group.
Abstract: We study whether CEOs of private firms differ from other people with regard to their strategic decisions and beliefs about others’ strategy choices. Such differences are interesting since CEOs make decisions that are economically more relevant, because they affect not only their own utility or the well-being of household members, but the utility of many stakeholders inside and outside of the organization. They also play a central role in shaping values and norms in society. We expect differences between both groups, because CEOs are more experienced with strategic decision making than comparable people in other professional roles. Yet, due to the difficulties in recruiting this high-profile group for academic research, few studies have explored how CEOs make incentivized decisions in strategic games under strict controls and how their choices in such games differ from those made by others. Our study combines a stratified random sample of 200 CEOs of medium-sized firms with a carefully selected control group of 200 comparable people. All subjects participated in three incentivized games—Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, Battle-of-the-Sexes. Beliefs were elicited for each game. We report substantial and robust differences in both behavior and beliefs between the CEOs and the control group. The most striking results are that CEOs do not best respond to beliefs; they cooperate more, play less hawkish and thereby earn much more than the control group.
Children Do Not Raise Happiness In Europe: Evidence from One Million Persons
Children, Unhappiness and Family Finances: Evidence from One Million Europeans. David G. Blanchflower, Andrew E. Clark. NBER Working Paper No. 25597, February 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25597
Abstract; The common finding of a zero or negative correlation between the presence of children and parental well-being continues to generate research interest. We here consider over one million observations on Europeans from ten years of Eurobarometer surveys, and in the first instance replicate this negative finding, both in the overall data and then for most different marital statuses. Children are expensive, and controlling for financial difficulties turns almost all of our estimated child coefficients positive. We argue that financial difficulties explain the pattern of existing results by parental education and income, and country income and social support. Marital status matters. Kids do not raise happiness for singles, the divorced, separated or widowed. Last, we underline that all children are not the same, with step-children commonly having a more negative correlation than children from the current relationship.
Abstract; The common finding of a zero or negative correlation between the presence of children and parental well-being continues to generate research interest. We here consider over one million observations on Europeans from ten years of Eurobarometer surveys, and in the first instance replicate this negative finding, both in the overall data and then for most different marital statuses. Children are expensive, and controlling for financial difficulties turns almost all of our estimated child coefficients positive. We argue that financial difficulties explain the pattern of existing results by parental education and income, and country income and social support. Marital status matters. Kids do not raise happiness for singles, the divorced, separated or widowed. Last, we underline that all children are not the same, with step-children commonly having a more negative correlation than children from the current relationship.
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