Students tended to think the influence of hate speech on others was greater than on themselves

Third-Person Effect and Hate Speech Censorship on Facebook. Lei Guo, Brett G. Johnson. Social Media + Society, June 18, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120923003

Abstract: By recruiting 368 US university students, this study adopted an online posttest-only between-subjects experiment to analyze the impact of several types of hate speech on their attitudes toward hate speech censorship. Results showed that students tended to think the influence of hate speech on others was greater than on themselves. Their perception of such messages’ effect on themselves was a significant indicator of supportive attitudes toward hate speech censorship and of their willingness to flag hateful messages.

Keywords: third-person effect, paternalism, speech freedom support, hate speech, Facebook, censorship

Discussion

TPE is commonly used in examining people’s supportive attitude of censorship and related behaviors or behavioral intentions (Davison, 1983; Lo et al., 2016). The debates surrounding the censorship of hate speech on Facebook have surfaced more and more in recent years due to the increasing essentiality of social media in political discourse and the concomitant rise of political extremism. The present research extended the TPE research to the context of managing and censoring hate speech on Facebook.

The results produced strong support for the TPE hypothesis. As expected, participants perceived the Facebook racist, sexist, and anti-LGBT hate speech conditions to have a greater influence on others than on themselves. Given people’s intention that protect others from undesirable messages, the results of the study further revealed that participants’ paternalistic attitude was a significant predictor of perceived greater effects of Facebook hate speech on the general public instead of themselves. However, such predictive power of paternalism failed to indicate the perceived effect on self and others in the racist hate speech context. In other words, even participants who reported high levels of paternalism would not perceive any effects of racist hate speech on self and on the general public. It might indicate that participants might not take such hate speech on Facebook as seriously as sexist or anti-LGBT messages. In addition, as racist hate speech is pervasive on Facebook (Siapera et al., 2018), the other potential reason might be because people have become accustomed to such messages and failed to identify such messages as racist hate speech. Future research could thus further explore the mediation effect between paternalism and effects perception or include more potential independent variables in predicting perceived effects on oneself and others, especially under the racist hate speech condition. Surprisingly, support for freedom of speech was not found to be significantly related to the perceived effects of Facebook hate speech on oneself and on the general public. This finding suggests that participants interpreted the effects of exceptional freedom of expression (which includes legal protections for hate speech) was related neither to themselves nor to others.

Another goal of the study was to explore how the perceived effects of Facebook hate speech affected participants’ consequent censorial behavior. The results showed that when females perceived sexist speech on Facebook having more effects on the general public, they would be more willing to support Facebook and government taking actions to moderate and censor sexist hate speech. On the other hand, the perceived effect of such speech on themselves was found to have an effect on female participants’ intention to flag it on Facebook. Gender-based hate speech is prevalent in cyberspace, and women and girls are usually targeted and by such hate speech (Chetty & Alathur, 2018). These features of sexist hate speech validate our finding that US university students, especially female students, are more willing to regulate this type of hate speech on Facebook.

Surprisingly, contrary to our expectation, in racist and anti-LGBT hate speech contexts, the perceived effect on the general public failed to predict participants’ consequent censorial activities. However, the perceived effect on self could lead to support for Facebook’s content moderation of racist hate speech and the government’s regulation of anti-LGBT hate speech, respectively. Informed by previous research, the findings indicate that instead of supporting regulation, people might think that educating others is a more reasonable solution when they perceived racist and anti-LGBT hate speech to have effects on others (Jang & Kim, 2018). In other words, the current study revealed that the perceived effect of Facebook hate speech on oneself was a better predictor of US students’ supportive attitude toward censorial behaviors. This is a theoretically significant finding of this study since it helps advance TPE research by showing that perceived effects on self and others play different roles in triggering censorial behavior. It further confirms that the TPE phenomenon in politically significant cases might be different from it in other contexts (Wei et al., 2019). A possible explanation may be that these types of hate speech are usually highly related to political topics in the United States, making these results consistent with previous research (e.g., Golan & Day, 2008) that has found that the perceived effect of political messages on self prompted people to participate in political action.

However, interestingly, the results also revealed that although Facebook provides users autonomy to express their willingness to censor speech, participants were less likely to flag racist and anti-LGBT hate speech on Facebook even when they reported high level of paternalism, support for freedom of expression, and perceive high impact of such speech on themselves and the public. This pattern of students’ censorial behavior is consistent with previous research which found that US university students’ attitudes toward political activities are largely gripped by apathy and cynicism (Harvard IOP Youth Poll, 2019; Kohnle, 2013). It is also worth noting that except in the racist hate speech context, those with a higher level of supportive attitudes toward free speech were less likely to support content moderating sexist and anti-LGBT hate speech on Facebook. The result could be explained by the root of First Amendment protection or free-speech rights in the US society.

Several limitations of this study should be recognized. First, the imbalance of participants’ demographic profile of the sample may serve as a limitation to the accuracy of the findings. To be specific, of the 368 valid respondents, over 72% were female, while may not represent general Facebook users in the United States. Because based on Facebook statistics, as of February 2020, users are 54% female and 46% male. The respondents were also more prone to be white compared with the entire Facebook users in the United States. Moreover, the latest report of free expression on US college students found that female White students were more likely to agree that hate speech should be protected by the First Amendment. In other words, they are somewhat less likely than other college students to express support for hate speech censorship (Knight Foundation, 2019). Future research could consider using a more representative sample in order to better understand social media users’ censorial attitudes toward online hate speech. Furthermore, we found that most of the TPE variables in this study failed to predict the behavioral component of TPE. In addition to the sampling bias, one plausible explanation of this limitation is that the participants could not distinguish between the comparison groups devised in the current study. According to Lo (2000), demographic characteristics like educational level and age could affect the self-other gap, which in turn could indirectly influence the behavioral outcomes of TPE. Future studies should examine other comparison groups (e.g., other Facebook users) to assess the predictive power of the self-other gap to TPE outcomes. Finally, although we were confident that our stimuli reflected common examples of hate speech found on Facebook, they by no means reflected the most extreme examples of hate speech out there, leading the results of this study to be relatively small. Previous hate speech studies suggested that targeted groups were more likely than the general public to be affected by hate speech. Therefore, instead of asking respondents perceived the effects of hate speech on the general public, the following studies could differentiate between attitudes of respondents toward themselves and the targeted groups. It is also certainly possible that scholars could find more robust results by using more extreme examples of different forms of hate speech as stimuli.

More inclined to share information consistent with our political orientation than information that is not; liberals are most biased with their political opponents, conservatives are most biased with their political allies

Ekstrom, Pierce D., and Calvin K. Lai. 2020. “The Selective Communication of Political Information.” PsyArXiv. June 18. doi:10.31234/osf.io/pnr9u

Abstract: People seek out and interpret political information in self-serving ways. In four experiments, we show that people are similarly self-serving in the political information they share with others. Participants learned about positive and negative effects of increasing the minimum wage (in Studies 1-3) or of banning assault weapons (Study 4). They then indicated how likely they would be to mention each effect to close others. Participants were more inclined to share information that was consistent with their political orientation than information that was not. This effect persisted even when participants believed the information, suggesting that selective communication is not just a reflection of motivated skepticism. We also observed ideological differences. Liberals were most biased with their political opponents, whereas conservatives were most biased with their political allies. This biased information sharing could distort the flow of political information through social networks in ways that exacerbate political polarization.

Infidelity rates, families of British troops, North Africa, 1940s

Infidelity rates, families of British troops, North Africa, 1940s

Source: Tyler Cowen, Jun 18 2020, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/that-was-then-this-is-now-27.html, commenting on Daniel Todman’s Britain’s War 1942-1947.

About 55 percent of British servicemen in World War II were married. Furthermore, by mid-1943, British military units were dealing with almost one hundred cases of "family anxiety" a day, with about two-thirds of those being infidelity issues, summing yearly to about 7.5 percent of the married British servicemen in North Africa and the Middle East at that time.

Political partisans both on the Left and on the Right sincerely adopt inaccurate beliefs that cast their party in a favorable light, rather than merely signalling support

Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading? Erik Peterson  Shanto Iyengar. American Journal of Political Science, June 17 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12535

Abstract: Do partisan disagreements over politically relevant facts, and preferences for the information sources from which to obtain them, represent genuine differences of opinion or insincere cheerleading? The answer to this question is crucial for understanding the scope of partisan polarization. We test between these alternatives with experiments that offer incentives for correct survey responses and allow respondents to search for information before answering each question. We find that partisan cheerleading inflates divides in factual information, but only modestly. Incentives have no impact on partisan divides in information search; these divides are no different from those that occur outside the survey context when we examine web‐browsing data from the same respondents. Overall, our findings support the motivated reasoning interpretation of misinformation; partisans seek out information with congenial slant and sincerely adopt inaccurate beliefs that cast their party in a favorable light.

Religious and Spiritual Factors Help Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer In Their Subjective Outcomes of Anxiety, Depressive Symptoms, Fatigue, and Pain Interference

Association of Religious and Spiritual Factors With Patient-Reported Outcomes of Anxiety, Depressive Symptoms, Fatigue, and Pain Interference Among Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer. Daniel H. Grossoehme et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(6):e206696, Jun 16 2020. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.6696

Key Points
Question  Among adolescents and young adults with cancer, is there an association between spirituality and patient-reported outcomes, and are these outcomes associated with a sense of meaning, peace, and comfort provided by faith?

Findings  In this cross-sectional study of 126 adolescents and young adults with cancer, structural equation modeling revealed that meaning and peace were associated with aspects of spirituality and religiousness as well as anxiety, depressive, and fatigue symptoms.

Meaning  In this study, participants’ sense of meaning and peace was associated with religiousness and with anxiety and depression, possibly representing an underappreciated intervention target.

Abstract
Importance  The associations of spiritual and religious factors with patient-reported outcomes among adolescents with cancer are unknown.

Objective  To model the association of spiritual and religious constructs with patient-reported outcomes of anxiety, depressive symptoms, fatigue, and pain interference.

Design, Setting, and Participants  This cross-sectional study used baseline data, collected from 2016 to 2019, from an ongoing 5-year randomized clinical trial being conducted at 4 tertiary-referral pediatric medical centers in the US. A total of 366 adolescents were eligible for the clinical trial, and 126 were randomized; participants had to be aged 14 to 21 years at enrollment and be diagnosed with any form of cancer. Exclusion criteria included developmental delay, scoring greater than 26 on the Beck Depression Inventory II, non-English speaking, or unaware of cancer diagnosis.

Exposures  Spiritual experiences, values, and beliefs; religious practices; and overall self-ranking of spirituality’s importance.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Variables were taken from the Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality (ie, feeling God’s presence, daily prayer, religious service attendance, being very religious, and being very spiritual) and the spiritual well-being subscales of the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (meaning/peace and faith). Predefined outcome variables were anxiety, depressive symptoms, fatigue, and pain interference from Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System pediatric measures.

Results  A total of 126 individuals participated (72 [57.1%] female participants; 100 [79.4%] white participants; mean [SD] age, 16.9 [1.9] years). Structural equation modeling showed that meaning and peace were inversely associated with anxiety (β = –7.94; 95% CI, –12.88 to –4.12), depressive symptoms (β = –10.49; 95% CI, –15.92 to –6.50), and fatigue (β = –8.90; 95% CI, –15.34 to –3.61). Feeling God’s presence daily was indirectly associated with anxiety (β = –3.37; 95% CI, –6.82 to –0.95), depressive symptoms (β = –4.50; 95% CI, –8.51 to –1.40), and fatigue (β = –3.73; 95% CI, –8.03 to –0.90) through meaning and peace. Considering oneself very religious was indirectly associated with anxiety (β = –2.81; 95% CI, –6.06 to –0.45), depressive symptoms (β = −3.787; 95% CI, –7.68 to –0.61), and fatigue (β = –3.11, 95% CI, –7.31 to –0.40) through meaning and peace. Considering oneself very spiritual was indirectly associated with anxiety (β = 2.11; 95% CI, 0.05 to 4.95) and depression (β = 2.8, 95% CI, 0.07 to 6.29) through meaning and peace. No associations were found between spiritual scales and pain interference.

Conclusions and Relevance  In this study, multiple facets of spirituality and religiousness were associated with anxiety, depression, and fatigue, all of which were indirectly associated with the participant’s sense of meaning and peace, which is a modifiable process. Although these results do not establish a causal direction, they do suggest palliative interventions addressing meaning-making, possibly including a spiritual or religious dimension, as a novel focus for intervention development.

Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first study to document an indirect association of meaning and peace with religiousness and spirituality as well as the likelihood of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and fatigue in AYAs with cancer. Specifically, this study went beyond a bivariate approach, demonstrating that feeling God’s presence and identifying as a very religious person were associated with the extent of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and fatigue. The model proposes an indirect association through a sense of meaning and peace. Although the causal direction of these associations cannot be established from our study, these results suggest that a novel and potentially efficacious intervention target may be a sense of meaning and peace when considering ways to improve anxiety, depression, and fatigue among AYAs with cancer.

Findings from the present study are also consistent with previously published theoretical models and empirical data. Park’s work on meaning, including religious and spiritual meaning,^32,47,48 posits that religious and spiritual beliefs and practices inform constructed meaning, which is related to health outcomes. Meaning-making coping mediates the association of religiosity with psychological adjustment.³³ Religion and spirituality are not important to all AYAs; Salsman and colleagues⁴⁹ recommend identifying subgroups for whom dimensions of religion and spirituality are important to their health-related quality of life and offering them interventions that include religion and/or spirituality.⁴⁹

The meaning of a cancer diagnosis is an important factor for AYAs and the adults living with them.^47,48,50,51 Clinical attention to constructing meaning of the cancer experience is an important element in improving outcomes.⁵² Barakat and colleagues⁵² reported that although distress continued because of having had cancer, finding positive meaning contributed to posttraumatic growth in a sample of 150 AYA cancer survivors and their parents. This is also consistent with findings from a metasynthesis by Kim and colleagues of 51 qualitative studies,⁵³ which revealed that constructed meaning fosters resilience and inner growth and that the benefits persist well into survivorship. They noted the different meanings of an adolescent’s cancer experience from their parents’ and suggested that care be individualized for patients and for patient-parent dyads to maximize outcomes. Rosenberg and colleagues reported^54,55 positive outcomes (ie, resilience, cancer-related quality of life, distress) with skills-based intervention for AYAs with cancer that included meaning as a component. Moskowitz and colleagues⁵⁶ reported improved outcomes in positive affect, antidepressant use, and intrusive or avoidant thoughts using an intervention that included constructed meaning.

The current study’s findings support the inclusion of constructed meaning as part of AYA oncology care.⁵⁵ This approach has also been recognized by the government of the Netherlands, which recently adopted a person-centered definition of health, including attention to meaning and meaninglessness.⁵⁷ Furthermore, that country’s health budget provides for care at home by a recognized spiritual caregiver to address issues of illness-related meaning, focusing on persons older than 50 years and palliative care patients (including children) and their families.⁵⁸ Demonstration of the effects of these outcomes is in progress.

We anticipated finding an association between spiritual constructs and PROs and did not find one. It is possible that no such association exists in this population. It may also be because of the way faith was operationalized. The FACIT faith subscale quantifies the degree of comfort and strength faith provides rather than the magnitude of its importance. Although comfort and strength of faith were not associated with the PROs measured, the actual importance of faith may be motivational, prohealthy behaviors that may relate to PROs. The current study also assessed how pain interferes with life and found no relationship with spiritual or religious variables. Wachholtz and colleagues⁵⁹ reviewed the religious and spiritual literature related to pain, noting that the mixed results between religion, spirituality, and pain may be the result of focusing on a single aspect of the multidimensional experience of pain. Pain interference may not be an aspect of pain associated with the religious and spiritual constructs quantified by the measures used in this study. It is also possible that the model used by Wachholtz and colleagues⁵⁹ is not fully applicable for AYAs.

This study has important clinical implications. All pediatricians and adolescent medicine specialists should practice primary palliative care to minimize AYAs’ suffering in any form. Primary palliative care comprises basic evaluation and management of symptoms and facilitated conversations about goals of care and advance care planning.⁶⁰ Although many pediatric providers may be reluctant to address these issues, AYAs want providers to address their concerns, including spiritual concerns, and their desire for these to be addressed increases with their disease acuity.^61-63 Steinhauser and colleagues have demonstrated the efficacy of a 1-question intervention among adults, asking, “Are you at peace?”⁶⁴ Such simple, nonthreatening interventions may be a feasible way to explore the topic of peace with AYAs. Their sense of peace and their expressed needs for dealing with death and dying may provide opportunities for the broader use of interdisciplinary palliative care teams.

Specialty care addressing meaning and peace to improve outcomes may take several forms. Referrals to psychologists, who routinely deal with issues of spirituality, meaning, and health, may be appropriate.^32,51 Individual and group interventions addressing meaning for people with cancer have shown efficacy for increasing spiritual well-being and for decreasing anxiety, depression, and pain.^65-68 Referrals for specialty spiritual care from clinically trained chaplains may also be beneficial.⁶⁹ Chaplains are trained to work with existential questions of meaning within the framework of the patient’s beliefs.^70,71

Meaningful conclusions can be drawn from this study, moving the state of the science of spirituality forward.⁷² Meaning-making is a complex⁷³ but modifiable process. Clinical application of these findings could facilitate further integration of religious considerations and meaning-making into pediatric palliative care,⁷⁴ as has been demonstrated with adults.⁷⁵

Limitations

This study has several limitations. Cross-sectional data do not permit examination of causality, and longitudinal data were not available. There are no universally accepted definitions of spirituality and religion among researchers.^76,77 Participants self-defined these terms when completing the questionnaires; the results may be confounded through the use of multiple definitions, although there is evidence that AYAs define these terms similarly to some reseachers.^76,78 Several factors limit generalizability. First, it is not possible to generalize beyond the participating population, ie, English-speaking individuals aged 14 to 21 years with cancer in the United States. Second, the sample size dictated a parsimonious model that could not include potential confounders or predicting variables. Finally, the religious and spiritual affiliations of participants did not reflect the US demographic characteristics for this age group. There was a risk of participants providing socially desirable responses by having questions read aloud, although responses were entered by a research assistant who was trained to ask the questions in a way that would minimize bias. If adolescents preferred to enter their own responses, they were permitted; this rarely occurred. Furthermore, this was an analysis of baseline data informing an advance care planning trial. Male patients were more likely to decline participation in the primary study; thus, selection bias may affect the generalizability of these results. Nevertheless, strengths of this study include the application of rigorous scientific methods. First, 39% of those approached agreed to participate. While this is lower than participation rates in psychosocial intervention trials and represents a limitation,⁷⁹ it is better than the 20% or lower participation rates of individuals aged 15 to 19 years in clinical trials, an enrollment problem identified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.^80-82 Second, use of validated and reliable questionnaires increased replicability and transparency. Third, 99.5% of the data were complete. Fourth, the use of structural equation modeling to identify indirect associations between meaning and peace and/or faith on physical and emotional symptoms addresses weaknesses in the rigor of previous research.

Identification of aggressive driving from naturalistic data in car-following situations

Identification of aggressive driving from naturalistic data in car-following situations. Jordanka Kovaceva, Irene Isaksson-Hellman, Nikolce Murgovski. Journal of Safety Research, Volume 73, June 2020, Pages 225-234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2020.03.003

Highlights
• Aggressive driving in car-following situations is identified by jerk metrics.
• We use naturalistic data and self-reported questionnaires.
• Aggressive drivers who are tailgating tend to drive with rapid brake pedal usage.
• Differences in the jerk behavior are observed between countries.

Abstract
Introduction: Aggressive driving has been associated as one of the causes for crashes, sometimes with very serious consequences. The objective of this study is to investigate the possibility of identifying aggressive driving in car-following situations on motorways by simple jerk metrics derived from naturalistic data.
Method: We investigate two jerk metrics, one for large positive jerk and the other for large negative jerk, when drivers are operating the gas and brake pedal, respectively.
Results: The results obtained from naturalistic data from five countries in Europe show that the drivers from different countries have a significantly different number of large positive and large negative jerks. Male drivers operate the vehicle with significantly larger number of negative jerks compared to female drivers. The validation of the jerk metrics in identifying aggressive driving is performed by tailgating (following a leading vehicle in a close proximity) and by a violator/non-violator categorization derived from self-reported questionnaires. Our study shows that the identification of aggressive driving could be reinforced by the number of large negative jerks, given that the drivers are tailgating, or by the number of large positive jerks, given that the drivers are categorized as violators.
Practical applications: The possibility of understanding, classifying, and quantifying aggressive driving behavior and driving styles with higher risk for accidents can be used for the development of driver support and coaching programs that promote driver safety and are enabled by the vast collection of driving data from modern in-vehicle monitoring and smartphone technology.

Keywords: Aggressive drivingJerk metricsNaturalistic drivingCar-followingSelf-reported questionnaires

Consumers Believe That Products Work Better for Others

Polman, Evan, Ignazio Ziano, Kaiyang Wu, and Anneleen Van Kerckhove. 2020. “Consumers Believe That Products Work Better for Others.” PsyArXiv. June 17. doi:10.31234/osf.io/p3jz7

Abstract: Hundreds of studies have shown that consumers tend to see themselves in the best
possible light, yet we present evidence that consumers have a surprisingly glum perspective on receiving a product’s claimed effects. In 10 studies (N = 3,825; including 8 pre-registered), we found that consumers believe that product efficacy is higher for others than it is for themselves. For example, consumers believe that consuming products like an adult coloring book (to inspire creativity), or a granola bar (to satisfy hunger), or moisturizer (to hydrate skin), or an online class (to learn something new) will have a greater effect on others than on themselves. We show that this bias holds across many kinds of products and populations, and inversely correlates with self-selecting product usership. We evidence that this bias stems from the fact that consumers believe they are more unique than others, and less malleable; and we show that this bias in perceived product efficacy alters the choices that consumers make for others. We conclude by discussing implications for research on gift-giving, advice-giving, and for interpersonal social-, health-, and financial-choices.

Nocebo & lessebo effects: Defined as the expectation of harm in the form of adverse events in a placebo arm & the reduction of therapeutic benefit due to the uncertainty of being allocated to placebo

Chapter Six - Nocebo and lessebo effects. Tiago A. Mestre. In Part of volume:
Placebo Effects in Neurologic Disease. Edited by Natalie P. Witek, Christopher G. Goetz, Glenn T. Stebbins. International Review of Neurobiology, Volume 153, 2020, Pages 121-146. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.irn.2020.04.005

Abstract: The power of placebos is commonly associated with the placebo effect. In contrast, detrimental effects related to the use of a placebo are little studied and less well recognized. This chapter covers the nocebo and lessebo effects defined, respectively, as expectation of harm in the form of adverse events in a placebo arm and reduction of therapeutic benefit due to the uncertainty of being allocated to placebo. The lessebo effect is a more recent concept and has been described only in depression, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease. The nocebo response was evaluated in many neurological diseases, including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, restless leg syndrome, among others. Meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials in these conditions reveal a significant variability of the magnitude of the nocebo response and that factors related to study design, study participants or neurological disease can be associated with a nocebo response, although with the opposing findings across conditions. The knowledge about neurobiological mechanisms of the nocebo effect is poor for neurological diseases, and most of the information has been generated in pain. Functional neuroimaging suggests the existence of a distinct network for the anticipation and the experience of a hyperalgesia nocebo response. Different types of neurotransmitters have been involved, including cholecystokinin, dopamine and opioids. Recognizing the potential impact of nocebo and lessebo effects, mitigating strategies are in development with application to clinical research and clinical practice, such as a contextualized informed consent process, alternative study designs and enhancement of patient-physician communication.

Keywords: PlaceboNoceboLesseboExpectationParkinson's diseaseAlzheimer's diseasePainHeadacheEpilepsy

Heterosexual men pornography use (in terms of both overall level of pornography use and use of violent and humiliating pornography) was not predictive of old-fashioned and modern sexism

Pornography use and sexism among heterosexual men. Dan J. Miller, Garry Kidd, Peter T. F. Raggatt, Kerry Anne McBain & Wendy Li. Communication Research Reports , Jun 16 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2020.1777396

ABSTRACT: The idea that pornography promotes sexism is a commonly purported one. This study employed an online sample of heterosexual men (N = 323) to investigate the relationship between pornography use (in terms of both overall level of pornography use and use of violent and/or humiliating pornography) and old-fashioned and modern sexism. The moderating effects of agreeableness and perceived realism of pornography were also assessed. Level of general pornography use and use of violent and/or humiliating pornography was not predictive of either sexism measure. Agreeableness was negatively predictive of both sexism measures, whereas perceived realism was positively predictive of sexism. Agreeableness and perceived realism did not moderate the relationship between level of pornography use and any of the outcome measures.

KEYWORDS: Attitudes, men, pornography, sexism

Do We Know What We Enjoy? Accuracy of Forecasted Eating Happiness

Do We Know What We Enjoy? Accuracy of Forecasted Eating Happiness. Karoline Villinger et al. Front. Psychol., June 17 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01187

Abstract: Forecasting how we will react in the future is important in every area of our lives. However, people often demonstrate an “impact bias” which leads them to inaccurately forecast their affective reactions to distinct and outstanding future events. The present study examined forecasting accuracy for a day-to-day repetitive experience for which people have a wealth of past experiences (eating happiness), along with dispositional expectations toward eating (“foodiness”). Seventy-three participants (67.12% women, M age = 41.85 years) used a smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment to assess their food intake and eating happiness over 14 days. Eating happiness experienced in-the-moment showed considerable inter-and intra-individual variation, ICC = 0.47. Comparing forecasted and in-the-moment eating happiness revealed a significant discrepancy whose magnitude was affected by dispositional expectations and the variability of the experience. The results demonstrate that biased forecasts are a general phenomenon prevalent both in outstanding and well-known experiences, while also emphasizing the importance of inter-individual differences for a detailed understanding of affective forecasting.

Discussion

The present study investigated forecasting accuracy for a familiar day-to-day experience, comparing forecasted eating happiness with eating happiness experienced in-the-moment using an event-based ecological momentary assessment. A significant difference between forecasted and in-the-moment eating happiness was observed. This shows that people’s forecasted emotional reactions for both distinct, outstanding events and familiar day-to-day experiences are inaccurate. Furthermore, the magnitude of the discrepancy was affected by both dispositional expectations (“foodiness”) and the variability of the in-the-moment experience, demonstrating that both stable inter-individual differences and experience-specific aspects influence forecasting accuracy.

Interestingly, while the relative difference score between forecasted and in-the-moment experience did not reveal an impact bias in the present study, the analysis of the absolute difference demonstrated a large effect for the divergence between forecasted and in-the-moment experience across participants (d = 1.81). The tendency to mispredict the intensity and/or duration of an emotional event has usually been described as an overestimation of the emotional impact, such as overestimating the pleasure of a vacation or the disappointment of a romantic breakup (see e.g., Gilbert et al., 1998; Wirtz et al., 2003). However, data from the present study revealed a substantial number of both overestimations and underestimations of in-the-moment eating happiness, explaining why the relative difference score did not reveal an impact bias across participants. One reason for this mixed forecasting pattern in this study might be the nature of the forecasted event. While distinct and outstanding events such as vacations or romantic breakups typically have uniformly positive or negative connotations across individuals, eating happiness is characterized by a greater inter- and intra-individual variance, meaning that eating experiences can vary both in their valence and in their intensity across as well as within individuals. General mechanisms such as focusing on central aspects (Wilson et al., 2000) or underestimating adaption over time (Gilbert et al., 1998) can provide an explanation for the absolute error, but the absolute error can be both to the positive and negative. The present study revealed an effect which is substantially higher than previously reported, for example, by Wirtz et al. (2003) with d > 0.61 from examining students’ real-life vacation experiences. However, the observed effect size is comparable to effect sizes in studies which also analyzed the absolute value of the discrepancy. For example, Hoerger et al. (2012a) found a significant discrepancy with an effect of d = 2.84 when comparing forecasted and in-the-moment experiences related to emotion-evoking pictures. This suggests that, examining an experience with no uniform connotation across individuals, the relative difference might reveal no impact bias across individuals not because people are able to provide accurate forecasts, but due to the prevalence of both overestimations and underestimations in forecasted reactions.

Further, day-to-day experiences are characterized by high familiarity and repetition, both possibly impacting the magnitude of the impact bias. The present data suggest that familiarity of the experience such as having previous experiences of an event or an emotional reaction does not necessarily improve forecasting accuracy. To learn from their emotional experiences, people must actively refer to and integrate relevant previous experiences into the process of forecasting (Wilson et al., 2001, 2003; Kermer et al., 2006; Ayton et al., 2007), which in turn necessitates an accurate recall of past emotional reactions. However, as the emotion itself is not stored in memory in a form that can be directly retrieved later (Robinson and Clore, 2002), past experiences are also subject to biases and people tend to overestimate their past emotional reactions (e.g., Redelmeier and Kahneman, 1996; Fredrickson, 2000). Furthermore, Robinson and Clore (2002) argue that the ability to learn from past experiences is impaired as details of our affective reactions become faded and less accessible over time, which in turn makes people rely more on general knowledge and beliefs when forecasting future affective reactions (see also Schwarz and Xu, 2011; Schwarz, 2012). In addition, the intensity of the impact bias might be so pronounced that it remains even after partial adjustment according to previous experiences, leading to biased forecasts (Wilson et al., 2001). The results of the present study, together with previous research, show that biases in forecasts are a general and robust phenomenon, prevalent for both outstanding and familiar events, with previous experience possibly moderating the magnitude of the bias, but not preventing it.

To further understand the impact bias, we analyzed the variability of the experience both between eating occasions within individuals and in relation to participants’ dispositional expectation toward eating (“foodiness”). One consequence of repeatedly eating throughout the day is a high number of distinct events that can vary both in valence and intensity. Forecasting an experience that involves a high fluctuation may be more difficult than a stable or consistent experience as people need to incorporate the variation of the experience across individual occasions. Focusing on the aspect of repetition within the experience shows that, as hypothesized, a greater variability of in-the-moment eating happiness resulted in lower forecasting accuracy across participants. Besides variations in the experience associated with food intake itself, people may also differ in their experience while eating, with some people enjoying and being happy with almost every food or meal and other people differentiating more between individual eating experiences.

To analyze this difference in experience while eating, we divided the sample into three groups based on the general expectation of eating (“foodiness”). The results showed that variability of in-the-moment eating happiness differed between foodiness groups with people in the low foodiness group displaying the greatest amount of variation between individual eating occasions. Expectations about an experience have been shown to affect the actual in-the-moment experience (Wilson et al., 1989; Klaaren et al., 1994; Totterdell et al., 1997; Wilson and Gilbert, 2003) and might therefore explain the difference in variability between foodiness groups. Specifically, differences in the variability might be explained by the affective expectation model (Wilson et al., 1989), according to which an affective reaction is formed by a comparison between expected and actual experience.

Geers and Lassiter (2002) further demonstrated that mental orientations toward experiences (optimism-pessimism) play an important role in the formation of in-the-moment experiences. People with a generally more positive outlook about their future (optimists) tend to assimilate their in-the-moment experiences toward their expectations, independent of whether their in-the-moment experience stands in line with or in contrast to their expectations. In contrast, people with a generally more negative outlook about their future (pessimists) have been shown to be more sensitive to contradicting information (Spirrison and Gordy, 1993). As a consequence, they only assimilate to their prior expectation when the experience is consistent with their expectation, while their affective reaction diverges from their expectation if they realize inconsistency (Wilson et al., 1989; Geers and Lassiter, 2002). Therefore, people with a low tendency toward foodiness might only have shown assimilation in congruent cases, while people with a high tendency toward foodiness might have assimilated toward their forecasted eating happiness regardless of whether or not their experience in-the-moment was consistent with their forecasts, leading to a more homogenous experience pattern and less variability.

However, even though variability of in-the-moment eating happiness differed between foodiness groups, the impact of variability on forecasting accuracy remained the same. Independent of dispositional expectations, experiencing more variability in-the-moment is more difficult to forecast, resulting in a lower forecasting accuracy. This indicates that forecasting accuracy is influenced by both stable differences between individuals, such as dispositions, but also by experience-specific differences such as the variability/stability of the experience. To summarize, dispositional expectation might influence the displayed variability of the in-the-moment experience, but the impact of the variability on forecasting accuracy is independent of dispositional expectations.

Findings of inter-individual differences also have implications on theories of affective forecasting. Most studies aim at examining and displaying errors at the general level across participants (see Wilson and Gilbert, 2003 for a review), focusing on mechanisms such as attention focus (Wilson et al., 2000) and rationalization processes (Gilbert et al., 1998). However, even though forecasts are prone to general mechanisms creating a systematic bias, a growing body of research provides evidence that people differ in their ability to provide accurate forecasts (Dunn et al., 2007; Wenze et al., 2012; Hoerger et al., 2012b; Christophe and Hansenne, 2016). Hoerger et al. (2016) suggest that dispositional differences such as personality contribute to forecasting accuracy because they affect underlying processes such as the ability to visualize the future, the awareness of the experience, and people’s tendency to forecast and experience more positive or negative emotions.

We add to this stream of research by assessing the impact of dispositional expectations as one facet of people’s personalities. The present results reveal that both in-the-moment experience and the magnitude of the bias are affected by people’s dispositional expectations toward eating (“foodiness”). Even though some people are better at forecasting their future affective responses, the pattern and variability of the actual experience play a crucial role in forecasting accurately. Consequently, summing up the independent effect for group membership and variability explains the greater divergence between forecasted and in-the-moment eating happiness in the low foodiness group. Hence, both dispositional differences and experience-specific aspects must be considered to enable meaningful conclusions for forecasting accuracy to be drawn.

From a broader perspective, it is interesting to relate the present findings to previous research on eating behaviors using ecological momentary assessment. Several studies focused on the relationship between affective reactions and eating behaviors (e.g., Liao et al., 2018; Strahler and Nater, 2018; Jeffers et al., 2019; Schultchen et al., 2019). However, their focus was primarily on the impact of stress and negative affect on food choice rather than the phenomenon of affective forecasting and how forecasted eating happiness relates to in-the-moment experienced happiness. However, integrating these lines of research appears promising and future research may specifically assess the degree to which variability of eating happiness can be attributed to situational context variables such as daily stress or emotional states (see Loewenstein, 1996; Loewenstein and Schkade, 1999; Gilbert et al., 2002; Loewenstein et al., 2003). In a related vein, the present study did not collect data on participant’s familiarity with the consumed foods. It seems possible that a diet composed of a rather limited and stable number of food items is easier to forecast than forecasting experiences with a greater variety and new and unknown foods and cuisines. Thus, future research should consider actual food intake to assess the effects of diet composition on the variability of in-the-moment eating happiness. It needs also to be considered that our results are based on a generally healthy sample that was interested in exploring their eating behavior. Furthermore, even though the sample size is comparable to or even larger than in other EMA studies assessing eating behaviors (Stein and Corte, 2003; Zepeda and Deal, 2008; Schüz et al., 2015a, 2015b), the sample might be considered as rather small in order to detect between-person effects (Gignac and Szodorai, 2016). Thus, the study findings should be replicated using larger and representative samples to acknowledge that eating is a complex behavior that is impacted by various factors and aspects on the personal, situational, and societal level (Renner et al., 2012; Stok et al., 2017). In addition, the finding that forecasted and actual experience often diverges may have potential implications for eating behaviors. For instance, while people adhere to the general belief that unhealthy foods lead to high pleasure (Raghunathan et al., 2006), in-the-moment eating happiness assessments revealed that fruits and vegetables evoked comparable high eating happiness as stereotypical unhealthy foods such as cake or candy (see Wahl et al., 2017a). Thus, one future direction of this line of research could build upon differences between forecasted and in-the-moment experiences to promote healthy eating.

In conclusion, the results of the present study contribute to the generalizability of research on affective forecasting, demonstrating that biased forecasts are a general phenomenon, present not only for outstanding events but also for familiar day-to-day experiences. Furthermore, dispositional differences between people such as dispositional expectations (“foodiness”) and experience-specific aspects such as variability/stability of the in-the-moment experience are both shown to be of great importance, with both impacting forecasting accuracy. Overall, while biased forecasts appear as a stable phenomenon in affective forecasts, inter-individual differences, and experience-specific aspects have a substantial impact in the manifestation and magnitude, and differentiated analyzes are therefore needed in research about affective forecasting.