Beyond Black and White: Suspension Disparities for Hispanic, Asian, and White Youth. Mark Alden Morgan & John Paul Wright. Criminal Justice Review, https://doi.org/10.1177/0734016817721293
Abstract: Studies have consistently found a significant gap between Black and White students in various forms of school discipline. Few studies, however, have examined disciplinary differences between other racial and ethnic groups. Focusing on out-of-school suspensions, a punishment closely linked to the “school-to-prison pipeline,” we investigate the disparities between Hispanic, Asian, and White youth. Data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class are used to control for contemporary socioeconomic variables, the context of the school environment, and the parent-reported behavior of the student. Through a series of logistic regression models, we found that White students were significantly more likely to be suspended than were Hispanics or Asians. However, while the disparity between Hispanics and Whites was eliminated after controlling for student misbehavior, the gap persisted between Asians and Whites. These results question the contention that systemic racial discrimination is a leading contributor to group differences in school discipline. Moreover, we add to a limited but growing literature showing Asian students are significantly less likely to experience school punishments including suspension.
Thursday, August 24, 2017
In God we trust? Neural measures reveal lower social conformity among non-religious individuals
In God we trust? Neural measures reveal lower social conformity among non-religious individuals. Ravi Thiruchselvam et al. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, June 2016, Pages 956-964, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsx023
Abstract: Even in predominantly religious societies, there are substantial individual differences in religious commitment. Why is this? One possibility is that differences in social conformity (i.e. the tendency to think and behave as others do) underlie inclination towards religiosity. However, the link between religiosity and conformity has not yet been directly examined. In this study, we tested the notion that non-religious individuals show dampened social conformity, using both self-reported and neural (EEG-based ERPs) measures of sensitivity to others’ influence. Non-religious vs religious undergraduate subjects completed an experimental task that assessed levels of conformity in a domain unrelated to religion (i.e. in judgments of facial attractiveness). Findings showed that, although both groups yielded to conformity pressures at the self-report level, non-religious individuals did not yield to such pressures in their neural responses. These findings highlight a novel link between religiosity and social conformity, and hold implications for prominent theories about the psychological functions of religion.
Abstract: Even in predominantly religious societies, there are substantial individual differences in religious commitment. Why is this? One possibility is that differences in social conformity (i.e. the tendency to think and behave as others do) underlie inclination towards religiosity. However, the link between religiosity and conformity has not yet been directly examined. In this study, we tested the notion that non-religious individuals show dampened social conformity, using both self-reported and neural (EEG-based ERPs) measures of sensitivity to others’ influence. Non-religious vs religious undergraduate subjects completed an experimental task that assessed levels of conformity in a domain unrelated to religion (i.e. in judgments of facial attractiveness). Findings showed that, although both groups yielded to conformity pressures at the self-report level, non-religious individuals did not yield to such pressures in their neural responses. These findings highlight a novel link between religiosity and social conformity, and hold implications for prominent theories about the psychological functions of religion.
The prevalence of discrimination across racial groups in contemporary America: Results from a nationally representative sample of adults
The prevalence of discrimination across racial groups in contemporary America: Results from a nationally representative sample of adults. Brian B. Boutwell et al. PLoS One, August 24, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183356
Abstract: A large body of social science research is devoted to understanding the causes and correlates of discrimination. Comparatively less effort has been aimed at providing a general prevalence estimate of discrimination using a nationally representative sample. The current study is intended to offer such an estimate using a large sample of American respondents (N = 14,793) while also exploring perceptions regarding why respondents felt they were discriminated against. The results provide a broad estimate of self-reported discrimination experiences—an event that was only reported by about one-quarter of all sample members—across racial and ethnic categories.
Abstract: A large body of social science research is devoted to understanding the causes and correlates of discrimination. Comparatively less effort has been aimed at providing a general prevalence estimate of discrimination using a nationally representative sample. The current study is intended to offer such an estimate using a large sample of American respondents (N = 14,793) while also exploring perceptions regarding why respondents felt they were discriminated against. The results provide a broad estimate of self-reported discrimination experiences—an event that was only reported by about one-quarter of all sample members—across racial and ethnic categories.
Parents are asking for children who are able to drink socially, for business purposes
in China some parents are asking for children who are able to drink socially, for business purposes, and thus trying to avoid some genes that make it difficult to process alcohol > the report in Nature: China’s embrace of embryo selection raises thorny questions --- Fertility centres are making a massive push to increase preimplantation genetic diagnosis in a bid to eradicate certain diseases.
By David Cyranoski. Aug 16 2017. http://www.nature.com/news/china-s-embrace-of-embryo-selection-raises-thorny-questions-1.22468
By David Cyranoski. Aug 16 2017. http://www.nature.com/news/china-s-embrace-of-embryo-selection-raises-thorny-questions-1.22468
Breaking Magic: Foreign Language Suppresses Superstition
Breaking Magic: Foreign Language Suppresses Superstition. Constantinos Hadjichristidis, Janet Geipel & Luca Surian. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Aug 2017, Pages 1-36, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2017.1371780
Abstract: In three studies we found that reading information in a foreign language can suppress common superstitious beliefs. Participants read scenarios either in their native or a foreign language. In each scenario, participants were asked to imagine performing an action (e.g., submitting a job application) under a superstitious circumstance (e.g., broken mirror; four-leaf clover) and to rate how they would feel. Overall, foreign language prompted less negative feelings towards bad-luck scenarios, less positive feelings towards good-luck scenarios, while it exerted no influence on non-superstitious, control scenarios. We attribute these findings to language-dependent memory. Superstitious beliefs are typically acquired and used in contexts involving the native language. As a result, the native language evokes them more forcefully than a foreign language.
Keywords: superstition, bilingualism, emotions, language, the foreign language effect
Abstract: In three studies we found that reading information in a foreign language can suppress common superstitious beliefs. Participants read scenarios either in their native or a foreign language. In each scenario, participants were asked to imagine performing an action (e.g., submitting a job application) under a superstitious circumstance (e.g., broken mirror; four-leaf clover) and to rate how they would feel. Overall, foreign language prompted less negative feelings towards bad-luck scenarios, less positive feelings towards good-luck scenarios, while it exerted no influence on non-superstitious, control scenarios. We attribute these findings to language-dependent memory. Superstitious beliefs are typically acquired and used in contexts involving the native language. As a result, the native language evokes them more forcefully than a foreign language.
Keywords: superstition, bilingualism, emotions, language, the foreign language effect
The Impact of Abnormally Shaped Vegetables on Consumers’ Risk Perception
The Impact of Abnormally Shaped Vegetables on Consumers’ Risk Perception. Natascha Loebnitz and Klaus G. Grunert. Food Quality and Preference, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2017.08.004
Highlights
• We examine vegetable shape abnormality on consumers’ risk perception.
• Vegetable shape abnormality affect risk perception through food’s perceived naturalness.
• Abnormally shaped vegetables are seen as unnatural which in turn increases risk perception.
• Knowledge types moderate the vegetable shape – risk perception relationship.
Abstract: Genetically-modified (GM) food evokes high levels of fear and negative associations among consumers. This study predicts that people may associate naturally occurring vegetable shape-abnormalities with GM food, which increases their risk perception. With an experimental design in two studies, this research investigates the impact of abnormally-shaped vegetables on participants’ risk perceptions related to vegetable items that vary in their degree of association with GM technology. The results reveal that knowledge can moderate the vegetable shape-abnormality–risk relationship, depending on its objectivity or subjectivity.
Keywords: Abnormally-shaped vegetables; Risk perception; Knowledge types; Perceived naturalness; GM food
My comment: "Consumers perceive abnormally-shaped vegetables as more risky [...] and paradoxically, they associate natural vegetable shape-abnormalities with GM, despite having no other information available" & "increasing consumers' objective knowledge about food production does not prevent risk perceptions."
Highlights
• We examine vegetable shape abnormality on consumers’ risk perception.
• Vegetable shape abnormality affect risk perception through food’s perceived naturalness.
• Abnormally shaped vegetables are seen as unnatural which in turn increases risk perception.
• Knowledge types moderate the vegetable shape – risk perception relationship.
Abstract: Genetically-modified (GM) food evokes high levels of fear and negative associations among consumers. This study predicts that people may associate naturally occurring vegetable shape-abnormalities with GM food, which increases their risk perception. With an experimental design in two studies, this research investigates the impact of abnormally-shaped vegetables on participants’ risk perceptions related to vegetable items that vary in their degree of association with GM technology. The results reveal that knowledge can moderate the vegetable shape-abnormality–risk relationship, depending on its objectivity or subjectivity.
Keywords: Abnormally-shaped vegetables; Risk perception; Knowledge types; Perceived naturalness; GM food
My comment: "Consumers perceive abnormally-shaped vegetables as more risky [...] and paradoxically, they associate natural vegetable shape-abnormalities with GM, despite having no other information available" & "increasing consumers' objective knowledge about food production does not prevent risk perceptions."
Gender equality, value violations, and prejudice toward Muslims
Gender equality, value violations, and prejudice toward Muslims. Aaron Moss et al. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430217716751
Abstract: Why are people prejudiced toward Muslims? In this research, we used a value violation framework to predict that when people believe Muslims value gender equality less than reference groups, it creates a value violation that leads to prejudice. In Study 1, people believed that Muslims value gender equality less than Christians, and the more people believed that Muslims do not value gender equality, the more they reported prejudice toward Muslims. In Study 2, we manipulated perceptions of how much Muslims value gender equality by giving people evidence that Muslims either do or do not support women’s rights. Afterward, we measured people’s prejudice toward Muslims and desire for social distance. Telling people that Muslims value gender equality reduced both prejudice and the desire for social distance. These effects occurred by increasing people’s beliefs that they share values with Muslims, highlighting the importance of values as a source of prejudice.
Abstract: Why are people prejudiced toward Muslims? In this research, we used a value violation framework to predict that when people believe Muslims value gender equality less than reference groups, it creates a value violation that leads to prejudice. In Study 1, people believed that Muslims value gender equality less than Christians, and the more people believed that Muslims do not value gender equality, the more they reported prejudice toward Muslims. In Study 2, we manipulated perceptions of how much Muslims value gender equality by giving people evidence that Muslims either do or do not support women’s rights. Afterward, we measured people’s prejudice toward Muslims and desire for social distance. Telling people that Muslims value gender equality reduced both prejudice and the desire for social distance. These effects occurred by increasing people’s beliefs that they share values with Muslims, highlighting the importance of values as a source of prejudice.
Do post-reproductive aged females promote maternal health? Preliminary evidence from historical populations
Do post-reproductive aged females promote maternal health? Preliminary evidence from historical populations. Alison Gemmill and Ralph Catalano. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, eox012, https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eox012
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Much literature argues that natural selection conserved menopause and longevity in women because those who stopped childbearing helped bolster daughters’ fertility and reduce infant mortality among grandchildren. Whether the presence of grandmothers ever improved fitness sufficiently to affect longevity via natural selection remains controversial and difficult to test. The argument underlying the grandmother and associated alloparenting literature, however, leads us to the novel and testable prediction that the presence of older women in historical societies could have affected population health by reducing lethality associated with childbearing.
Methodology: Using historical life table data from four societies (Denmark, England and Wales, France, and Sweden), we test the hypothesis that death rates among women initiating childbearing declined when the societies in which they were embedded included unexpectedly high frequencies of older women. We use time series analysis to measure the extent to which the observed likelihood of death among women aged 20-24 differs from statistically expected values when the number of older women grows or declines.
Results: In three of the four countries examined, we find an inverse relationship between the frequency of post-reproductive females in the population and odds of mortality among females at the peak of childbearing initiation.
Conclusions and implications: Results suggest that the presence of older women in a population may enhance population health by reducing mortality among women who face high risk of maternal death, although additional research is needed to determine if this relationship is causal.
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Much literature argues that natural selection conserved menopause and longevity in women because those who stopped childbearing helped bolster daughters’ fertility and reduce infant mortality among grandchildren. Whether the presence of grandmothers ever improved fitness sufficiently to affect longevity via natural selection remains controversial and difficult to test. The argument underlying the grandmother and associated alloparenting literature, however, leads us to the novel and testable prediction that the presence of older women in historical societies could have affected population health by reducing lethality associated with childbearing.
Methodology: Using historical life table data from four societies (Denmark, England and Wales, France, and Sweden), we test the hypothesis that death rates among women initiating childbearing declined when the societies in which they were embedded included unexpectedly high frequencies of older women. We use time series analysis to measure the extent to which the observed likelihood of death among women aged 20-24 differs from statistically expected values when the number of older women grows or declines.
Results: In three of the four countries examined, we find an inverse relationship between the frequency of post-reproductive females in the population and odds of mortality among females at the peak of childbearing initiation.
Conclusions and implications: Results suggest that the presence of older women in a population may enhance population health by reducing mortality among women who face high risk of maternal death, although additional research is needed to determine if this relationship is causal.
The Future of Secularism: A Biologically Informed Theory Supplemented with Cross-Cultural Evidence
The Future of Secularism: A Biologically Informed Theory Supplemented with Cross-Cultural Evidence. Lee Ellis et al. Evolutionary Psychological Science, September 2017, Volume 3, Issue 3, pp 224–242, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-017-0090-z
Abstract: For over a century, social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks, a prediction known as the secularization hypothesis. However, skepticism surrounding this hypothesis has been expressed by some researchers in recent decades. After reviewing the pertinent evidence and arguments, we examined some aspects of the secularization hypothesis from what is termed a biologically informed perspective. Based on large samples of college students in Malaysia and the USA, religiosity, religious affiliation, and parental fertility were measured using self-reports. Three religiosity indicators were factor analyzed, resulting in an index for religiosity. Results reveal that average parental fertility varied considerably according to religious groups, with Muslims being the most religious and the most fertile and Jews and Buddhists being the least. Within most religious groupings, religiosity was positively associated with parental fertility. While cross-sectional in nature, ***when our results are combined with evidence that both religiosity and fertility are substantially heritable traits, findings are consistent with view that earlier trends toward secularization (due to science education surrounding advancements in science) are currently being counter-balanced by genetic and reproductive forces. We also propose that the inverse association between intelligence and religiosity, and the inverse correlation between intelligence and fertility lead to predictions of a decline in secularism in the foreseeable future. A contra-secularization hypothesis is proposed and defended in the discussion. It states that secularism is likely to undergo a decline throughout the remainder of the twenty-first century, including Europe and other industrial societies***.
Keywords: Religions, Religiosity, Secularization, Parental fertility, Cross-cultural
My comment: Very interesting article. I believed, from a long time, that the people needs religion. A different thing is what will happen to some strands, like those in Evangelical Christianity that support creationism instead of evolutionism. Maybe these groups will diminish. Or maybe all traditional religions will suffer a decrease in influence, althouth the total sum of religions will increase in the XXI century...
Abstract: For over a century, social scientists have predicted declines in religious beliefs and their replacement with more scientific/naturalistic outlooks, a prediction known as the secularization hypothesis. However, skepticism surrounding this hypothesis has been expressed by some researchers in recent decades. After reviewing the pertinent evidence and arguments, we examined some aspects of the secularization hypothesis from what is termed a biologically informed perspective. Based on large samples of college students in Malaysia and the USA, religiosity, religious affiliation, and parental fertility were measured using self-reports. Three religiosity indicators were factor analyzed, resulting in an index for religiosity. Results reveal that average parental fertility varied considerably according to religious groups, with Muslims being the most religious and the most fertile and Jews and Buddhists being the least. Within most religious groupings, religiosity was positively associated with parental fertility. While cross-sectional in nature, ***when our results are combined with evidence that both religiosity and fertility are substantially heritable traits, findings are consistent with view that earlier trends toward secularization (due to science education surrounding advancements in science) are currently being counter-balanced by genetic and reproductive forces. We also propose that the inverse association between intelligence and religiosity, and the inverse correlation between intelligence and fertility lead to predictions of a decline in secularism in the foreseeable future. A contra-secularization hypothesis is proposed and defended in the discussion. It states that secularism is likely to undergo a decline throughout the remainder of the twenty-first century, including Europe and other industrial societies***.
Keywords: Religions, Religiosity, Secularization, Parental fertility, Cross-cultural
My comment: Very interesting article. I believed, from a long time, that the people needs religion. A different thing is what will happen to some strands, like those in Evangelical Christianity that support creationism instead of evolutionism. Maybe these groups will diminish. Or maybe all traditional religions will suffer a decrease in influence, althouth the total sum of religions will increase in the XXI century...
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
High rates (40%) of smokers enrolled in smoking cessation trials lie about their abstinence
Scheuermann, T. S., Richter, K. P., Rigotti, N. A., Cummins, S. E., Harrington, K. F., Sherman, S. E., Zhu, S.-H., Tindle, H. A., Preacher, K. J., and the Consortium of Hospitals Advancing Research on Tobacco (CHART) (2017) Accuracy of self-reported smoking abstinence in clinical trials of hospital-initiated smoking interventions. Addiction, doi: 10.1111/add.13913
Abstract
Aims: To estimate the prevalence and predictors of failed biochemical verification of self-reported abstinence among participants enrolled in trials of hospital-initiated smoking cessation interventions.
Design: Comparison of characteristics between participants who verified and those who failed to verify self-reported abstinence.
Settings: Multi-site randomized clinical trials conducted between 2010 and 2014 in hospitals throughout the United States.
Participants: Recently hospitalized smokers who reported tobacco abstinence 6 months post-randomization and provided a saliva sample for verification purposes (n = 822).
Measurements: Outcomes were salivary cotinine-verified smoking abstinence at 10 and 15 ng/ml cut-points. Predictors and correlates included participant demographics and tobacco use; hospital diagnoses and treatment; and study characteristics collected via surveys and electronic medical records.
Findings: Usable samples were returned by 69.8% of the 1178 eligible trial participants who reported 7-day point prevalence abstinence. The proportion of participants verified as quit was 57.8% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 54.4, 61.2; 10 ng/ml cut-off] or 60.6% (95% CI = 57.2, 63.9; 15 ng/ml). Factors associated independently with verification at 10 ng/ml were education beyond high school education [odds ratio (OR) = 1.51; 95% CI = 1.07, 2.11], continuous abstinence since hospitalization (OR = 2.82; 95% CI = 2.02, 3.94), mailed versus in-person sample (OR = 3.20; 95% CI = 1.96, 5.21) and race. African American participants were less likely to verify abstinence than white participants (OR = 0.64; 95% CI = 0.44, 0.93). Findings were similar for verification at 15 ng/ml. Verification rates did not differ by treatment group.
Conclusions: In the United States, high rates (40%) of recently hospitalized smokers enrolled in smoking cessation trials fail biochemical verification of their self-reported abstinence.
My comment: As Dr House would say, everybody lies.
Abstract
Aims: To estimate the prevalence and predictors of failed biochemical verification of self-reported abstinence among participants enrolled in trials of hospital-initiated smoking cessation interventions.
Design: Comparison of characteristics between participants who verified and those who failed to verify self-reported abstinence.
Settings: Multi-site randomized clinical trials conducted between 2010 and 2014 in hospitals throughout the United States.
Participants: Recently hospitalized smokers who reported tobacco abstinence 6 months post-randomization and provided a saliva sample for verification purposes (n = 822).
Measurements: Outcomes were salivary cotinine-verified smoking abstinence at 10 and 15 ng/ml cut-points. Predictors and correlates included participant demographics and tobacco use; hospital diagnoses and treatment; and study characteristics collected via surveys and electronic medical records.
Findings: Usable samples were returned by 69.8% of the 1178 eligible trial participants who reported 7-day point prevalence abstinence. The proportion of participants verified as quit was 57.8% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 54.4, 61.2; 10 ng/ml cut-off] or 60.6% (95% CI = 57.2, 63.9; 15 ng/ml). Factors associated independently with verification at 10 ng/ml were education beyond high school education [odds ratio (OR) = 1.51; 95% CI = 1.07, 2.11], continuous abstinence since hospitalization (OR = 2.82; 95% CI = 2.02, 3.94), mailed versus in-person sample (OR = 3.20; 95% CI = 1.96, 5.21) and race. African American participants were less likely to verify abstinence than white participants (OR = 0.64; 95% CI = 0.44, 0.93). Findings were similar for verification at 15 ng/ml. Verification rates did not differ by treatment group.
Conclusions: In the United States, high rates (40%) of recently hospitalized smokers enrolled in smoking cessation trials fail biochemical verification of their self-reported abstinence.
My comment: As Dr House would say, everybody lies.
Being similar while judging right and wrong: The effects of personal and situational similarity on moral judgements
Pascal, E. (2017), Being similar while judging right and wrong: The effects of personal and situational similarity on moral judgements. Int J Psychol. doi:10.1002/ijop.12448
Abstract: This study investigated the effects of similarity with the transgressor and the victim on the perceived immorality of the transgression. Participants read two stories describing a person that cheated on their partner and a police officer that mistreated somebody. In the first story we manipulated participants' personal similarity to the transgressor and in the second their personal similarity to the victim. In each story, participants' past situational similarity to the target character was assessed according to their previous experiences of being in the same position. Results show that ***both personal and past situational similarity to the transgressor determine less severe moral judgements, while personal and past situational similarity with the victim have the opposite effect***. We also tested several potential mediators of these effects, derived from competing theoretical accounts of the influence of similarity on perceived responsibility. Empathy emerged as mediating most of the effects of similarity on moral judgements, except those induced by past situational similarity with the victim. The foreseen probability of being in a similar situation mediated only the effects of similarity to the transgressor, and not those of similarity to the victim. ***Overall, results highlight the complex mechanisms of the influences of similarity on moral judgements***.
Abstract: This study investigated the effects of similarity with the transgressor and the victim on the perceived immorality of the transgression. Participants read two stories describing a person that cheated on their partner and a police officer that mistreated somebody. In the first story we manipulated participants' personal similarity to the transgressor and in the second their personal similarity to the victim. In each story, participants' past situational similarity to the target character was assessed according to their previous experiences of being in the same position. Results show that ***both personal and past situational similarity to the transgressor determine less severe moral judgements, while personal and past situational similarity with the victim have the opposite effect***. We also tested several potential mediators of these effects, derived from competing theoretical accounts of the influence of similarity on perceived responsibility. Empathy emerged as mediating most of the effects of similarity on moral judgements, except those induced by past situational similarity with the victim. The foreseen probability of being in a similar situation mediated only the effects of similarity to the transgressor, and not those of similarity to the victim. ***Overall, results highlight the complex mechanisms of the influences of similarity on moral judgements***.
Freud: The Making of an Illusion, by Frederick Crews
Freud: The Making of an Illusion, by Frederick Crews
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627797173/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
Extracts:
Source: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627797173/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
Extracts:
Source: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Religion, Repulsion, and Reaction Formation: Transforming Repellent Attractions and Repulsions
Religion, Repulsion, and Reaction Formation: Transforming Repellent Attractions and Repulsions. Dov Cohen, Emily Kim and Nathan Hudson. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28604017
Abstract: Protestants were more likely than non-Protestants to demonstrate phenomena consistent with the use of reaction formation. Lab experiments showed that when manipulations were designed to produce taboo attractions (to unconventional sexual practices), Protestants instead showed greater repulsion. When implicitly conditioned to produce taboo repulsions (to African Americans), Protestants instead showed greater attraction. Supportive evidence from other studies came from clinicians’ judgments, defense mechanism inventories, and a survey of respondent attitudes. Other work showed that Protestants who diminished and displaced threatening affect were more likely to sublimate this affect into creative activities; the present work showed that Protestants who do not or cannot diminish or displace such threatening affect instead reverse it. Traditional individual difference variables showed little ability to predict reaction formation, suggesting that the observed processes go beyond what we normally study when we talk about self-control.
Abstract: Protestants were more likely than non-Protestants to demonstrate phenomena consistent with the use of reaction formation. Lab experiments showed that when manipulations were designed to produce taboo attractions (to unconventional sexual practices), Protestants instead showed greater repulsion. When implicitly conditioned to produce taboo repulsions (to African Americans), Protestants instead showed greater attraction. Supportive evidence from other studies came from clinicians’ judgments, defense mechanism inventories, and a survey of respondent attitudes. Other work showed that Protestants who diminished and displaced threatening affect were more likely to sublimate this affect into creative activities; the present work showed that Protestants who do not or cannot diminish or displace such threatening affect instead reverse it. Traditional individual difference variables showed little ability to predict reaction formation, suggesting that the observed processes go beyond what we normally study when we talk about self-control.
Unintended Effects of Providing Risk Information About Drinking and Driving
The Unintended Effects of Providing Risk Information About Drinking and Driving. Mark Johnson and Catalina Kopetz. Health Psychology, Jul 20 2017. doi: 10.1037/hea0000526
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious public health concern despite the fact that drinking and driving risks are widely disseminated and well understood by the public. This research examines the motivational conditions under which providing risk information can exacerbate rather than decrease potential drinking drivers' willingness to drive while impaired.
METHOD: In a hypothetical drinking and driving scenario, 3 studies investigated participants' self-reported likelihood of drinking and driving as a function of (a) accessibility of information regarding risk associated with drinking and driving, (b) motivation to drive, and (c) need for cognitive closure (NFC).
RESULTS: Across the 3 studies, participants self-reported a higher likelihood of driving when exposed to high-risk information (vs. low-risk information) if they were high in NFC. Risk information did decrease self-reported likelihood of driving among low-NFC participants (Studies 1-3). Furthermore, this effect was exacerbated when the relevant motivation (to get home conveniently) was high (Study 3).
CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications for impaired-driving prevention efforts. They suggest that at least under some circumstances, risk information can have unintended negative effects on drinking and driving decisions. The results are consistent with the motivated cognition literature, which suggests that people process and use information in a manner that supports their most accessible and important motivation despite potentially negative consequences.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Alcohol-impaired driving remains a serious public health concern despite the fact that drinking and driving risks are widely disseminated and well understood by the public. This research examines the motivational conditions under which providing risk information can exacerbate rather than decrease potential drinking drivers' willingness to drive while impaired.
METHOD: In a hypothetical drinking and driving scenario, 3 studies investigated participants' self-reported likelihood of drinking and driving as a function of (a) accessibility of information regarding risk associated with drinking and driving, (b) motivation to drive, and (c) need for cognitive closure (NFC).
RESULTS: Across the 3 studies, participants self-reported a higher likelihood of driving when exposed to high-risk information (vs. low-risk information) if they were high in NFC. Risk information did decrease self-reported likelihood of driving among low-NFC participants (Studies 1-3). Furthermore, this effect was exacerbated when the relevant motivation (to get home conveniently) was high (Study 3).
CONCLUSIONS: These findings have important implications for impaired-driving prevention efforts. They suggest that at least under some circumstances, risk information can have unintended negative effects on drinking and driving decisions. The results are consistent with the motivated cognition literature, which suggests that people process and use information in a manner that supports their most accessible and important motivation despite potentially negative consequences.
Understatement of the year: People's ability to judge the veracity of their intuitions may be limited
Can People Judge the Veracity of Their Intuitions? Stefan Leach and Mario Weick. Social Psychological and Personality Science, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617706732
Abstract: People differ in the belief that their intuitions produce good decision outcomes. In the present research, we sought to test the validity of these beliefs by comparing individuals' self-reports with measures of actual intuition performance in a standard implicit learning task, exposing participants to seemingly random letter strings (Studies 1a-b) and social media profile pictures (Study 2) that conformed to an underlying rule or grammar. ***A meta-analysis synthesising the present data (n = 400) and secondary data by Pretz, Totz, and Kaufman (2010) found that people's enduring beliefs in their intuitions were not reflective of actual performance in the implicit learning task. Meanwhile, task-specific confidence in intuition bore no sizable relation with implicit learning performance***, but the observed data favoured neither the Null hypothesis nor the Alternative hypothesis. Together, the present findings suggest that people's ability to judge the veracity of their intuitions may be limited.
Abstract: People differ in the belief that their intuitions produce good decision outcomes. In the present research, we sought to test the validity of these beliefs by comparing individuals' self-reports with measures of actual intuition performance in a standard implicit learning task, exposing participants to seemingly random letter strings (Studies 1a-b) and social media profile pictures (Study 2) that conformed to an underlying rule or grammar. ***A meta-analysis synthesising the present data (n = 400) and secondary data by Pretz, Totz, and Kaufman (2010) found that people's enduring beliefs in their intuitions were not reflective of actual performance in the implicit learning task. Meanwhile, task-specific confidence in intuition bore no sizable relation with implicit learning performance***, but the observed data favoured neither the Null hypothesis nor the Alternative hypothesis. Together, the present findings suggest that people's ability to judge the veracity of their intuitions may be limited.
Dress and sex -- A majority of girls demonstrated appearance rigidity at least once
Dress and sex: a review of empirical research involving human participants and published in refereed journals. Sharron J. Lennon et al. Fashion and Textiles, December 2017, 4:14, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40691-017-0101-5
Abstract: Our research purpose was to assess research addressing relationships between dress and sex. Our review was focused on a 25 years span (i.e., 1990–2015) and on empirical research utilizing human participants published in refereed journals. Three main areas of research emerged: (1) dress used as cue to sexual information, (2) dress and sexual violence, and (3) dress, sex, and objectification. Our analyses revealed parents do invest their young children with sex-typed dress however sometimes children demand to wear such dress. Some women intentionally use dress to communicate sexual information but inferences about women who wear sexy dress can be misinterpreted and are sometimes negative. Observers link wearing sexy dress to violence including sexual coercion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and unwelcome groping, touching, and grabbing. Certain items of sexy dress that reveal the body have been linked to self-objectification. The fit of the items may also contribute to the body revealing nature of clothing styles that elicit self-objectification. The use of sexual images of women and children has increased over time and viewing such images is also linked to self- and other-objectification. Suggestions are provided for future research.
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"Appearance rigidity involves insisting on wearing dress items that are closely tied to one sex or avoiding dress items linked to the opposite sex. Few boys demonstrated appearance rigidity, but a majority of girls demonstrated appearance rigidity at least once. Rigidity was linked to children who indicated it was important to them to be a girl or boy (measured using items adapted from adult identity measures). Repeating the study with 4 year old children from ethnically diverse backgrounds, incidents of appearance rigidity were even higher as over half of both the girls and boys demonstrated it."
Abstract: Our research purpose was to assess research addressing relationships between dress and sex. Our review was focused on a 25 years span (i.e., 1990–2015) and on empirical research utilizing human participants published in refereed journals. Three main areas of research emerged: (1) dress used as cue to sexual information, (2) dress and sexual violence, and (3) dress, sex, and objectification. Our analyses revealed parents do invest their young children with sex-typed dress however sometimes children demand to wear such dress. Some women intentionally use dress to communicate sexual information but inferences about women who wear sexy dress can be misinterpreted and are sometimes negative. Observers link wearing sexy dress to violence including sexual coercion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and unwelcome groping, touching, and grabbing. Certain items of sexy dress that reveal the body have been linked to self-objectification. The fit of the items may also contribute to the body revealing nature of clothing styles that elicit self-objectification. The use of sexual images of women and children has increased over time and viewing such images is also linked to self- and other-objectification. Suggestions are provided for future research.
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"Appearance rigidity involves insisting on wearing dress items that are closely tied to one sex or avoiding dress items linked to the opposite sex. Few boys demonstrated appearance rigidity, but a majority of girls demonstrated appearance rigidity at least once. Rigidity was linked to children who indicated it was important to them to be a girl or boy (measured using items adapted from adult identity measures). Repeating the study with 4 year old children from ethnically diverse backgrounds, incidents of appearance rigidity were even higher as over half of both the girls and boys demonstrated it."
Connecting the Dots: Illusory Pattern Perception Predicts Belief in Conspiracies and the Supernatural
van Prooijen, J.-W., Douglas, K., and De Inocencio, C. (2017) Connecting the Dots: Illusory Pattern Perception Predicts Belief in Conspiracies and the Supernatural. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2331
Abstract: A common assumption is that belief in conspiracy theories and supernatural phenomena are grounded in illusory pattern perception. In the present research we systematically tested this assumption. Study 1 revealed that such irrational beliefs are related to perceiving patterns in randomly generated coin toss outcomes. In Study 2, pattern search instructions exerted an indirect effect on irrational beliefs through pattern perception. Study 3 revealed that perceiving patterns in chaotic but not in structured paintings predicted irrational beliefs. In Study 4, we found that agreement with texts supporting paranormal phenomena or conspiracy theories predicted pattern perception. In Study 5, we manipulated belief in a specific conspiracy theory. This manipulation influenced the extent to which people perceive patterns in world events, which in turn predicted unrelated irrational beliefs. We conclude that illusory pattern perception is a central cognitive mechanism accounting for conspiracy theories and supernatural beliefs.
Abstract: A common assumption is that belief in conspiracy theories and supernatural phenomena are grounded in illusory pattern perception. In the present research we systematically tested this assumption. Study 1 revealed that such irrational beliefs are related to perceiving patterns in randomly generated coin toss outcomes. In Study 2, pattern search instructions exerted an indirect effect on irrational beliefs through pattern perception. Study 3 revealed that perceiving patterns in chaotic but not in structured paintings predicted irrational beliefs. In Study 4, we found that agreement with texts supporting paranormal phenomena or conspiracy theories predicted pattern perception. In Study 5, we manipulated belief in a specific conspiracy theory. This manipulation influenced the extent to which people perceive patterns in world events, which in turn predicted unrelated irrational beliefs. We conclude that illusory pattern perception is a central cognitive mechanism accounting for conspiracy theories and supernatural beliefs.
Children acknowledge more negative self-conceptions when motivated to be truthful
Thomaes, S., Brummelman, E. and Sedikides, C. (2017), Why Most Children Think Well of Themselves. Child Dev. doi:10.1111/cdev.12937
Abstract: This research aimed to examine whether and why children hold favorable self-conceptions (total N = 882 Dutch children, ages 8–12). Surveys (Studies 1–2) showed that children report strongly favorable self-conceptions. For example, when describing themselves on an open-ended measure, children mainly provided positive self-conceptions—about four times more than neutral self-conceptions, and about 11 times more than negative self-conceptions. Experiments (Studies 3–4) demonstrated that children report favorable self-conceptions, in part, to live up to social norms idealizing such self-conceptions, and to avoid seeing or presenting themselves negatively. These findings advance understanding of the developing self-concept and its valence: In middle and late childhood, children's self-conceptions are robustly favorable and influenced by both external (social norms) and internal (self-motives) forces.
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"When encouraged to respond truthfully, children kept their self-protection motive in check, and acknowledged some of their liabilities or uncertainties" & "at least in childhood, such blindness [to their own faults] may be more motivated than real—children acknowledge more negative self-conceptions when motivated to be truthful."
Abstract: This research aimed to examine whether and why children hold favorable self-conceptions (total N = 882 Dutch children, ages 8–12). Surveys (Studies 1–2) showed that children report strongly favorable self-conceptions. For example, when describing themselves on an open-ended measure, children mainly provided positive self-conceptions—about four times more than neutral self-conceptions, and about 11 times more than negative self-conceptions. Experiments (Studies 3–4) demonstrated that children report favorable self-conceptions, in part, to live up to social norms idealizing such self-conceptions, and to avoid seeing or presenting themselves negatively. These findings advance understanding of the developing self-concept and its valence: In middle and late childhood, children's self-conceptions are robustly favorable and influenced by both external (social norms) and internal (self-motives) forces.
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"When encouraged to respond truthfully, children kept their self-protection motive in check, and acknowledged some of their liabilities or uncertainties" & "at least in childhood, such blindness [to their own faults] may be more motivated than real—children acknowledge more negative self-conceptions when motivated to be truthful."
Children Expect More Giving From Resource-Rich Than Resource-Poor Individuals
Ahl, R. E. and Dunham, Y. (2017), “Wealth Makes Many Friends”: Children Expect More Giving From Resource-Rich Than Resource-Poor Individuals. Child Dev. doi:10.1111/cdev.12922
Abstract: Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: ***Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor***. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4–10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor. In Study 3, American children (n = 66) made similar predictions in an incentivized decision-making task. The possibility that children's expectations regarding giving contribute to prowealth preferences is discussed.
Abstract: Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: ***Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor***. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4–10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor. In Study 3, American children (n = 66) made similar predictions in an incentivized decision-making task. The possibility that children's expectations regarding giving contribute to prowealth preferences is discussed.
Monday, August 21, 2017
Is There a Dark Side to Mindfulness? Relation of Mindfulness to Criminogenic Cognitions
Is There a Dark Side to Mindfulness? Relation of Mindfulness to Criminogenic Cognitions. June Tangney et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167217717243
Abstract: In recent years, mindfulness-based interventions have been modified for use with inmate populations, but how this might relate to specific criminogenic cognitions has not been examined empirically. Theoretically, characteristics of mindfulness should be incompatible with distorted patterns of criminal thinking, but is this in fact the case? Among both 259 male jail inmates and 516 undergraduates, mindfulness was inversely related to the Criminogenic Cognitions Scale (CCS) through a latent variable of emotion regulation. However, in the jail sample, this mediational model also showed a direct, positive path from mindfulness to CCS, with an analogous, but nonsignificant trend in the college sample. Post hoc analyses indicate that the Nonjudgment of Self scale derived from the Mindfulness Inventory: Nine Dimensions (MI:ND) largely accounts for this apparently iatrogenic effect in both samples. Some degree of self-judgment is perhaps necessary and useful, especially among individuals involved in the criminal justice system.
Abstract: In recent years, mindfulness-based interventions have been modified for use with inmate populations, but how this might relate to specific criminogenic cognitions has not been examined empirically. Theoretically, characteristics of mindfulness should be incompatible with distorted patterns of criminal thinking, but is this in fact the case? Among both 259 male jail inmates and 516 undergraduates, mindfulness was inversely related to the Criminogenic Cognitions Scale (CCS) through a latent variable of emotion regulation. However, in the jail sample, this mediational model also showed a direct, positive path from mindfulness to CCS, with an analogous, but nonsignificant trend in the college sample. Post hoc analyses indicate that the Nonjudgment of Self scale derived from the Mindfulness Inventory: Nine Dimensions (MI:ND) largely accounts for this apparently iatrogenic effect in both samples. Some degree of self-judgment is perhaps necessary and useful, especially among individuals involved in the criminal justice system.
Examining Regulatory Capture: Evidence from the NHL
Examining Regulatory Capture: Evidence from the NHL. Gregory DeAngelo, Adam Nowak and Imke Reimers. Contemporary Economic Policy, doi:10.1111/coep.12240
Abstract: Regulatory capture has garnered significant attention, but poses a difficult empirical exercise since most relationships between regulators and regulated parties occur behind closed doors. In this research, we overcome this problem by analyzing an environment where the behavior of both the regulator and regulated parties are publicly available. Specifically, we utilize data from the National Hockey League (NHL) to examine the impact of general experience as a referee as well as experience refereeing a particular team on the assignation of penalties. We find that gaining general experience as a referee significantly reduces the number of penalties that a referee assigns. However, as a referee gains experience refereeing a specific team, they significantly reduce the number of penalties assessed to this team relative to teams that they have less experience refereeing, confirming that regulatory capture is observed among referees and teams in the NHL.
Abstract: Regulatory capture has garnered significant attention, but poses a difficult empirical exercise since most relationships between regulators and regulated parties occur behind closed doors. In this research, we overcome this problem by analyzing an environment where the behavior of both the regulator and regulated parties are publicly available. Specifically, we utilize data from the National Hockey League (NHL) to examine the impact of general experience as a referee as well as experience refereeing a particular team on the assignation of penalties. We find that gaining general experience as a referee significantly reduces the number of penalties that a referee assigns. However, as a referee gains experience refereeing a specific team, they significantly reduce the number of penalties assessed to this team relative to teams that they have less experience refereeing, confirming that regulatory capture is observed among referees and teams in the NHL.
Having power increases accuracy in perception of bodily signals
Social Power Increases Interoceptive Accuracy. Mehrad Moeini-Jazani et al. Frontiers in Psychology, August 2017. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01322
Abstract: ***Building on recent psychological research showing that power increases self-focused attention, we propose that having power increases accuracy in perception of bodily signals***, a phenomenon known as interoceptive accuracy. Consistent with our proposition, participants in a high-power experimental condition outperformed those in the control and low-power conditions in the Schandry heartbeat-detection task. We demonstrate that the effect of power on interoceptive accuracy is not explained by participants' physiological arousal, affective state, or general intention for accuracy. Rather, consistent with our reasoning that experiencing power shifts attentional resources inward, we show that the effect of power on interoceptive accuracy is dependent on individuals' chronic tendency to focus on their internal sensations. Moreover, we demonstrate that individuals' chronic sense of power also predicts interoceptive accuracy similar to, and independent of, how their situationally induced feeling of power does. We therefore provide further support on the relation between power and enhanced perception of bodily signals. Our findings offer a novel perspective - a psychophysiological account - on how power might affect judgments and behavior. We highlight and discuss some of these intriguing possibilities for future research.
Abstract: ***Building on recent psychological research showing that power increases self-focused attention, we propose that having power increases accuracy in perception of bodily signals***, a phenomenon known as interoceptive accuracy. Consistent with our proposition, participants in a high-power experimental condition outperformed those in the control and low-power conditions in the Schandry heartbeat-detection task. We demonstrate that the effect of power on interoceptive accuracy is not explained by participants' physiological arousal, affective state, or general intention for accuracy. Rather, consistent with our reasoning that experiencing power shifts attentional resources inward, we show that the effect of power on interoceptive accuracy is dependent on individuals' chronic tendency to focus on their internal sensations. Moreover, we demonstrate that individuals' chronic sense of power also predicts interoceptive accuracy similar to, and independent of, how their situationally induced feeling of power does. We therefore provide further support on the relation between power and enhanced perception of bodily signals. Our findings offer a novel perspective - a psychophysiological account - on how power might affect judgments and behavior. We highlight and discuss some of these intriguing possibilities for future research.
Entwicklung der Punitivität und ausgewählter Einflussfaktoren in der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Jahren 2004 bis 2014
Entwicklung der Punitivität und ausgewählter Einflussfaktoren in der deutschen Bevölkerung in den Jahren 2004 bis 2014 (Development of punitivity and selected influencing factors in the German population in the years 2004 to 2014), von Dirk Baier, Stephanie Fleischer und Michael Hanslmaier. Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform 2017, 1 - 25 (Heft 1)
To date, little is known about –on the one hand– trends in punitivity and other crime related attitudes and –on the other hand– on the explanations of these trends in the German population since the year 2000. Using four representative surveys from 2004, 2006, 2010 and 2014 the study confirms that individual punitive attitudes decrease independent of the indicator that is used. Looking at fear of crime or perceived crime trends the same changes are identified. Explanatory factors of these trends are a rising educational level of the population, a decline in parental violence, a decrease in the number of people who watch television news of private stations and a decrease in the number of people who read tabloid newspapers. However, all the considered influencing factors can not completely explain the trend in punitivity.
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Allerdings können diese vier Faktoren nicht komplett den Entwicklungstrend in der Punitivität erklären. Aus diesem Grund wurden noch weitere Einflussfaktoren betrachtet, zu denen allerdings nur unvollständige Informationen vorliegen. Diese verweisen auf drei weitere Faktoren, die die Entwicklung der Punitivität beeinflusst haben dürften: Erstens handelt es sich um die Internetnutzung. Internetnutzer im Allgemeinen, Nutzer von Internetangeboten deutschlandweiter Tageszeitungen oder öffentlich-rechtlicher Nachrichten im Besonderen weisen eine niedrigere Punitivität auf, zugleich steigen (tendenziell) deren Anteile. Zweitens macht es einen Unterschied, über welche Kanäle man über Verbrechen informiert wird. Erfährt man hauptsächlich über die Medien von Verbrechen, dann erhöht dies die Punitivität; es sind zugleich aber immer weniger Menschen, die sich über die »klassischen« Medien informieren. Das Internet wird in dieser Hinsicht immer wichtiger – was mit Blick auf die Punitivität als unproblematisch einzustufen ist (s.u.). Drittens sinkt der Autoritarismus, der ein wichtiger Einflussfaktor der Punitivität ist.
Die Untersuchung der verschiedenen Einflussfaktoren hat zugleich einige unerwartete Ergebnisse zutage gefördert, die an dieser Stelle erwähnt, aber nicht vertieft diskutiert werden können. So finden sich für alle vier betrachteten Viktimisierungsvariablen (Diebstahl, Körperverletzung, Raub, Wohnungseinbruch) keine Zusammenhänge mit der Punitivität. Es zeigt sich damit zumindest in Bezug auf die bundesdeutsche Bevölkerung, dass Opfer von Straftaten kein Bedürfnis haben, die Täter allgemein härter zu bestrafen. Ein unerwarteter Einfluss ergibt sich für die positiven Erziehungserfahrungen: Befragte, die von einer liebevollen Erziehung berichten, sind punitiver eingestellt (vgl. hierfür auch Baier et al. 2011, 102 f.). Eine solche Erziehung sollte eher davor schützen, härtere Sanktionsformen zu unterstützen. Gleichwohl ist der Effekt letztlich nur in der Befragung 2010 zu beobachten, weshalb er nicht zu hoch gewichtet werden sollte. Ein unerwartetes Ergebnis ergibt sich zudem für die Ost-West-Variable. So erweisen sich Befragte aus Westdeutschland über die Zeit hinweg konstant als weniger punitiv als Befragte aus Ostdeutschland. Dies zeigt sich, wie zusätzliche Auswertungen belegen, bei beiden Punitivitätsindikatoren.
My comment: Because those four factors do not explain the trend in diminishing punitivity, further influencing factors were considered, but only incomplete information is available. These point to three other factors that may have influenced the development of punitivity: First, it is the Internet use. Internet users in general, users of Internet offers in Germany daytime newspapers or public-law news in particular have a lower punitivity. Secondly, it makes a difference about which channels inform about crimes, but fewer and fewer people get information from the "classical" media. The Internet is becoming more and more important in this regard - which can be considered as unproblematic with regard to the punitivity (see above). Thirdly, the authoritarianism, which is an important factor of influence of punitivity.
The investigation of the various influencing factors also revealed some unexpected results, which can be mentioned here but can not be dealt with in depth. For example, there are no correlations with punitivity for all four victimization variables (theft, bodily injury, robbery, burglary). An unexpected influence is found in the positive educational experiences: respondents reporting a loving education are more punitive (see also Baier et al., 2011, 102f.), when the authors expected that such an education should rather protect against harder forms of sanctions. At the same time, the effect is only to be observed in the 2010 survey, which is why it should not be over-weighted. An unexpected result also results for the geographical east-west variable. For example, respondents from West Germany are consistently less punitive than respondents from East Germany. This shows, as additional evaluations prove, with both punitivity indicators.
To date, little is known about –on the one hand– trends in punitivity and other crime related attitudes and –on the other hand– on the explanations of these trends in the German population since the year 2000. Using four representative surveys from 2004, 2006, 2010 and 2014 the study confirms that individual punitive attitudes decrease independent of the indicator that is used. Looking at fear of crime or perceived crime trends the same changes are identified. Explanatory factors of these trends are a rising educational level of the population, a decline in parental violence, a decrease in the number of people who watch television news of private stations and a decrease in the number of people who read tabloid newspapers. However, all the considered influencing factors can not completely explain the trend in punitivity.
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Allerdings können diese vier Faktoren nicht komplett den Entwicklungstrend in der Punitivität erklären. Aus diesem Grund wurden noch weitere Einflussfaktoren betrachtet, zu denen allerdings nur unvollständige Informationen vorliegen. Diese verweisen auf drei weitere Faktoren, die die Entwicklung der Punitivität beeinflusst haben dürften: Erstens handelt es sich um die Internetnutzung. Internetnutzer im Allgemeinen, Nutzer von Internetangeboten deutschlandweiter Tageszeitungen oder öffentlich-rechtlicher Nachrichten im Besonderen weisen eine niedrigere Punitivität auf, zugleich steigen (tendenziell) deren Anteile. Zweitens macht es einen Unterschied, über welche Kanäle man über Verbrechen informiert wird. Erfährt man hauptsächlich über die Medien von Verbrechen, dann erhöht dies die Punitivität; es sind zugleich aber immer weniger Menschen, die sich über die »klassischen« Medien informieren. Das Internet wird in dieser Hinsicht immer wichtiger – was mit Blick auf die Punitivität als unproblematisch einzustufen ist (s.u.). Drittens sinkt der Autoritarismus, der ein wichtiger Einflussfaktor der Punitivität ist.
Die Untersuchung der verschiedenen Einflussfaktoren hat zugleich einige unerwartete Ergebnisse zutage gefördert, die an dieser Stelle erwähnt, aber nicht vertieft diskutiert werden können. So finden sich für alle vier betrachteten Viktimisierungsvariablen (Diebstahl, Körperverletzung, Raub, Wohnungseinbruch) keine Zusammenhänge mit der Punitivität. Es zeigt sich damit zumindest in Bezug auf die bundesdeutsche Bevölkerung, dass Opfer von Straftaten kein Bedürfnis haben, die Täter allgemein härter zu bestrafen. Ein unerwarteter Einfluss ergibt sich für die positiven Erziehungserfahrungen: Befragte, die von einer liebevollen Erziehung berichten, sind punitiver eingestellt (vgl. hierfür auch Baier et al. 2011, 102 f.). Eine solche Erziehung sollte eher davor schützen, härtere Sanktionsformen zu unterstützen. Gleichwohl ist der Effekt letztlich nur in der Befragung 2010 zu beobachten, weshalb er nicht zu hoch gewichtet werden sollte. Ein unerwartetes Ergebnis ergibt sich zudem für die Ost-West-Variable. So erweisen sich Befragte aus Westdeutschland über die Zeit hinweg konstant als weniger punitiv als Befragte aus Ostdeutschland. Dies zeigt sich, wie zusätzliche Auswertungen belegen, bei beiden Punitivitätsindikatoren.
My comment: Because those four factors do not explain the trend in diminishing punitivity, further influencing factors were considered, but only incomplete information is available. These point to three other factors that may have influenced the development of punitivity: First, it is the Internet use. Internet users in general, users of Internet offers in Germany daytime newspapers or public-law news in particular have a lower punitivity. Secondly, it makes a difference about which channels inform about crimes, but fewer and fewer people get information from the "classical" media. The Internet is becoming more and more important in this regard - which can be considered as unproblematic with regard to the punitivity (see above). Thirdly, the authoritarianism, which is an important factor of influence of punitivity.
The investigation of the various influencing factors also revealed some unexpected results, which can be mentioned here but can not be dealt with in depth. For example, there are no correlations with punitivity for all four victimization variables (theft, bodily injury, robbery, burglary). An unexpected influence is found in the positive educational experiences: respondents reporting a loving education are more punitive (see also Baier et al., 2011, 102f.), when the authors expected that such an education should rather protect against harder forms of sanctions. At the same time, the effect is only to be observed in the 2010 survey, which is why it should not be over-weighted. An unexpected result also results for the geographical east-west variable. For example, respondents from West Germany are consistently less punitive than respondents from East Germany. This shows, as additional evaluations prove, with both punitivity indicators.
Behavioral Compensation Before and After Eating at the Minnesota State Fair
Lenne, R. L., Panos, M. E., Auster-Gussman, L., Scherschel, H., Zhou, L., & Mann, T. (2017, August 21). Behavioral Compensation Before and After Eating at the Minnesota State Fair. Appetite, http://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2017.07.025
Abstract: People regulate their eating behavior in many ways. They may respond to overeating by compensating with healthy eating behavior or increased exercise (i.e., a sensible tradeoff), or by continuing to eat poorly (i.e., disinhibition). Conversely, people may respond to a healthy eating event by subsequently eating poorly (i.e., self-licensing) or by continuing to eat healthily (i.e., promotion spillover). We propose that people may also change their behaviors in anticipation of an unhealthy eating event, a phenomenon that we will refer to as pre-compensation. Using a survey of 430 attendees of the Minnesota State Fair over two years, we explored whether, when, and how people compensated before and after this tempting eating event. We found evidence that people use both pre-compensatory and post-compensatory strategies, with a preference for changing their eating (rather than exercise) behavior. There was no evidence that people who pre-compensated were more likely to self-license by indulging in a greater number of foods or calories at the fair than those who did not. Finally, people who pre-compensated were more likely to also post-compensate. These results suggest that changing eating or exercise behavior before exposure to a situation with many tempting foods may be a successful strategy for enjoying oneself without excessively overeating.
My comment: some people atones for eating sins even before actually indulging in food.
Abstract: People regulate their eating behavior in many ways. They may respond to overeating by compensating with healthy eating behavior or increased exercise (i.e., a sensible tradeoff), or by continuing to eat poorly (i.e., disinhibition). Conversely, people may respond to a healthy eating event by subsequently eating poorly (i.e., self-licensing) or by continuing to eat healthily (i.e., promotion spillover). We propose that people may also change their behaviors in anticipation of an unhealthy eating event, a phenomenon that we will refer to as pre-compensation. Using a survey of 430 attendees of the Minnesota State Fair over two years, we explored whether, when, and how people compensated before and after this tempting eating event. We found evidence that people use both pre-compensatory and post-compensatory strategies, with a preference for changing their eating (rather than exercise) behavior. There was no evidence that people who pre-compensated were more likely to self-license by indulging in a greater number of foods or calories at the fair than those who did not. Finally, people who pre-compensated were more likely to also post-compensate. These results suggest that changing eating or exercise behavior before exposure to a situation with many tempting foods may be a successful strategy for enjoying oneself without excessively overeating.
My comment: some people atones for eating sins even before actually indulging in food.
Male Violence and Sexual Intimidation in a Wild Primate Society
Male Violence and Sexual Intimidation in a Wild Primate Society. Baniel, Alice et al. Current Biology , Volume 27 , Issue 14 , 2163 - 2168.e3, Jul 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.013
Highlights
•Male aggression preferentially targets fertile females in chacma baboons
•Male aggression represents a major source of injuries for fertile females
•Male aggressors have higher mating success in the long term, but not immediately
•These results provide evidence for sexual intimidation in a wild non-human primate
Summary: Sexual violence occurring in the context of long-term heterosexual relationships, such as sexual intimidation, is widespread across human populations [ 1–3 ]. However, its evolutionary origins remain speculative because few studies have investigated the existence of comparable forms of sexual coercion in animals [ 4, 5 ], in which repeated male aggression toward a female provides the aggressor with delayed mating benefits [ 6 ]. Here, we test whether male aggression toward females functions as sexual coercion in wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). We found support for all three main predictions of the sexual coercion hypothesis [ 7 ]: male aggression (1) is greatest against cycling females, (2) is costly and represents the main source of injuries for cycling females, and (3) increases male mating success with their victims in the future. Detailed analysis of chronological sequences between aggression and matings ruled out other coercive mechanisms, such as short-term harassment and punishment, by showing that aggression and matings are temporally decoupled. This decoupling may explain why some forms of sexual violence have been largely overlooked in well-studied animal populations despite their likely impact on the fitness of both sexes. Finally, we found no support for alternative hypotheses such as a female preference for aggressive males [ 8, 9 ]. This new, detailed study of the forms and intensity of sexual intimidation in a wild primate suggests that it may be widespread across mammalian societies, with important implications for understanding the evolution of mate choice and sexual conflict in mammals, as well as the origins of human sexual violence.
Keywords: sexual conflict, sexual coercion, intersexual aggression, intimidation, promiscuous mating, injury, mating success, sex roles, primates
My comment: this behavior has been observed in at least two primate species, chimpanzees and now baboons... It could mean that it is a very old behavior in humans, not a recent one or due to socialization (although the environment can ameliorate simptoms or can make them more salient).
Highlights
•Male aggression preferentially targets fertile females in chacma baboons
•Male aggression represents a major source of injuries for fertile females
•Male aggressors have higher mating success in the long term, but not immediately
•These results provide evidence for sexual intimidation in a wild non-human primate
Summary: Sexual violence occurring in the context of long-term heterosexual relationships, such as sexual intimidation, is widespread across human populations [ 1–3 ]. However, its evolutionary origins remain speculative because few studies have investigated the existence of comparable forms of sexual coercion in animals [ 4, 5 ], in which repeated male aggression toward a female provides the aggressor with delayed mating benefits [ 6 ]. Here, we test whether male aggression toward females functions as sexual coercion in wild chacma baboons (Papio ursinus). We found support for all three main predictions of the sexual coercion hypothesis [ 7 ]: male aggression (1) is greatest against cycling females, (2) is costly and represents the main source of injuries for cycling females, and (3) increases male mating success with their victims in the future. Detailed analysis of chronological sequences between aggression and matings ruled out other coercive mechanisms, such as short-term harassment and punishment, by showing that aggression and matings are temporally decoupled. This decoupling may explain why some forms of sexual violence have been largely overlooked in well-studied animal populations despite their likely impact on the fitness of both sexes. Finally, we found no support for alternative hypotheses such as a female preference for aggressive males [ 8, 9 ]. This new, detailed study of the forms and intensity of sexual intimidation in a wild primate suggests that it may be widespread across mammalian societies, with important implications for understanding the evolution of mate choice and sexual conflict in mammals, as well as the origins of human sexual violence.
Keywords: sexual conflict, sexual coercion, intersexual aggression, intimidation, promiscuous mating, injury, mating success, sex roles, primates
My comment: this behavior has been observed in at least two primate species, chimpanzees and now baboons... It could mean that it is a very old behavior in humans, not a recent one or due to socialization (although the environment can ameliorate simptoms or can make them more salient).
Check also: Sexually Coercive Male Chimpanzees Sire More Offspring. Joseph T. Feldblum et al. Current Biology, Volume 24, Issue 23, p2855–2860, 1 December 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.039
Highlights
•Aggression toward sexually receptive females correlated with male mating success
•Aggression toward non-sexually receptive females was associated with paternity
•The effect of aggression on paternity was strongest for high-ranking males
•This represents the first genetic evidence of long-term sexual coercion in mammals
Summary: In sexually reproducing animals, male and female reproductive strategies often conflict [ 1 ]. In some species, males use aggression to overcome female choice [ 2, 3 ], but debate persists over the extent to which this strategy is successful. Previous studies of male aggression toward females among wild chimpanzees have yielded contradictory results about the relationship between aggression and mating behavior [ 4–11 ]. Critically, however, copulation frequency in primates is not always predictive of reproductive success [ 12 ]. We analyzed a 17-year sample of behavioral and genetic data from the Kasekela chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) community in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, to test the hypothesis that male aggression toward females increases male reproductive success. We examined the effect of male aggression toward females during ovarian cycling, including periods when the females were sexually receptive (swollen) and periods when they were not. We found that, after controlling for confounding factors, male aggression during a female’s swollen periods was positively correlated with copulation frequency. However, aggression toward swollen females was not predictive of paternity. Instead, aggression by high-ranking males toward females during their nonswollen periods was positively associated with likelihood of paternity. This indicates that long-term patterns of intimidation allow high-ranking males to increase their reproductive success, supporting the sexual coercion hypothesis. To our knowledge, this is the first study to present genetic evidence of sexual coercion as an adaptive strategy in a social mammal.
Also: Survival of the Fittest and the Sexiest: Evolutionary Origins of Adolescent Bullying. Jun-Bin Koh, and Jennifer S. Wong. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/survival-of-fittest-and-sexiest.html
And also: We, Too, Are Violent Animals. By Jane Goodall, Richard Wrangham, and Dale Peterson. Those who doubt that human aggression is an evolved trait should spend more time with chimpanzees and wolves The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2013, on page C3, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2013/01/we-too-are-violent-animals-by-jane.html
And also: Romanticizing the Hunter-Gatherer. William Buckner. Quillette, December 16, 2017. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/12/romanticizing-hunter-gatherer-despite.html
Sunday, August 20, 2017
An Analysis of the Fake News Audience in the Lead Up to the 2016 Presidential Election
Nelson, Jacob. (2017). Fake News, Fake Problem? An Analysis of the Fake News Audience in the Lead Up to the 2016 Presidential Election. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318470831_Fake_News_Fake_Problem_An_Analysis_of_the_Fake_News_Audience_in_the_Lead_Up_to_the_2016_Presidential_Election
Abstract: In light of the recent U.S. election, many fear that “fake news” has become a powerful and sinister force in the news media environment. These fears stem from the idea that as news consumption increasingly takes place via social media sites, news audiences are more likely to find themselves drawn in by sensational headlines to sources that lack accuracy or legitimacy, with troubling consequences for democracy. However, we know little about the extent to which online audiences are exposed to fake news, and how these outlets factor into the average digital news diet. In this paper, I argue that fears about fake news consumption echo fears about partisan selective exposure, in that both stem from concerns that more media choice leads audiences to consume news that align with their beliefs, and to ignore news that does not. Yet recent studies have concluded that the partisan media audience (1) is small and (2) also consumes news from popular, centrist outlets. I use online news audience data to show a similar phenomenon plays out when it comes to fake news. Findings reveal that social media does indeed play an outsized role in generating traffic to fake news sites; however, the actual fake news audience is small, and a large portion of it also visits more popular, “real” news sites. I conclude by discussing the implications of a news media landscape where the audience is exposed to contradictory sources of public affairs information.
Abstract: In light of the recent U.S. election, many fear that “fake news” has become a powerful and sinister force in the news media environment. These fears stem from the idea that as news consumption increasingly takes place via social media sites, news audiences are more likely to find themselves drawn in by sensational headlines to sources that lack accuracy or legitimacy, with troubling consequences for democracy. However, we know little about the extent to which online audiences are exposed to fake news, and how these outlets factor into the average digital news diet. In this paper, I argue that fears about fake news consumption echo fears about partisan selective exposure, in that both stem from concerns that more media choice leads audiences to consume news that align with their beliefs, and to ignore news that does not. Yet recent studies have concluded that the partisan media audience (1) is small and (2) also consumes news from popular, centrist outlets. I use online news audience data to show a similar phenomenon plays out when it comes to fake news. Findings reveal that social media does indeed play an outsized role in generating traffic to fake news sites; however, the actual fake news audience is small, and a large portion of it also visits more popular, “real” news sites. I conclude by discussing the implications of a news media landscape where the audience is exposed to contradictory sources of public affairs information.
Public Order and Private Payments: Evidence from the Swedish Soccer League
Public Order and Private Payments: Evidence from the Swedish Soccer League. Sten Nyberg and Mikael Priks. Journal of Public Economics, September 2017, Pages 1-8, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.07.005
Highlights
• Private security at public events can be subject to free-riding and externalities.
• Co-payments for police at events can improve incentives for organizers.
• We examine a natural experiment with co-payments in the Swedish soccer league.
• Results show that co-payments increase private security and reduce unruly behavior.
Abstract: Should organizers of events share the associated costs of maintaining public order? We address this question by using unique data from the Swedish soccer league where co-payment for police were introduced for some clubs only. The difference-in-differences analysis shows that co-payments increased private guards by 40 percent and suggests a reduction of unruly behavior by 20 percent. The results are consistent with our model, where co-payments alleviate under-provision in efforts by organizers to combat problems such as hooliganism due to exernalities and free-riding on police services. The model also sheds light on the critique that co-payments could lead financially constrained organizers to provide less security.
Highlights
• Private security at public events can be subject to free-riding and externalities.
• Co-payments for police at events can improve incentives for organizers.
• We examine a natural experiment with co-payments in the Swedish soccer league.
• Results show that co-payments increase private security and reduce unruly behavior.
Abstract: Should organizers of events share the associated costs of maintaining public order? We address this question by using unique data from the Swedish soccer league where co-payment for police were introduced for some clubs only. The difference-in-differences analysis shows that co-payments increased private guards by 40 percent and suggests a reduction of unruly behavior by 20 percent. The results are consistent with our model, where co-payments alleviate under-provision in efforts by organizers to combat problems such as hooliganism due to exernalities and free-riding on police services. The model also sheds light on the critique that co-payments could lead financially constrained organizers to provide less security.
The association between urban tree cover and gun assault: a case-control and casecrossover study
The association between urban tree cover and gun assault: a case-control and casecrossover study. Michelle Kondo et al. American Journal of Epidemiology, 1 August 2017, Pages 289–296.
Abstract: Green space and vegetation may play a protective role against urban violence. We investigated whether being near urban tree cover during outdoor activities was related to being assaulted with a gun. We conducted geographic information systems–assisted interviews with boys and men aged 10–24 years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including 135 patients who had been shot with a firearm and 274 community controls, during 2008–2011. Each subject reported a step-by-step mapped account of where and with whom they traveled over a full day from waking until being assaulted or going to bed. Geocoded path points were overlaid on mapped layers representing tree locations and place-specific characteristics. Conditional logistic regressions were used to compare case subjects versus controls (case-control) and case subjects at the time of injury versus times earlier that day (case-crossover). When comparing cases at the time of assault to controls matched at the same time of day, being under tree cover was inversely associated with gunshot assault (odds ratio (OR) = 0.70, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.55, 0.88), especially in low-income areas (OR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.54, 0.87). Case-crossover models confirmed this inverse association overall (OR = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.34, 0.89) and in low-income areas (OR = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.33, 0.88). Urban greening and tree cover may hold promise as proactive strategies to decrease urban violence.
My comment: Obviously, the shooter finds less interesting someone near an obstacle, to shoot well is already difficult and not to miss a shot when the victim can duck under some object is even more difficult, so you try to get those with no cover, i.e., those in the open.
Abstract: Green space and vegetation may play a protective role against urban violence. We investigated whether being near urban tree cover during outdoor activities was related to being assaulted with a gun. We conducted geographic information systems–assisted interviews with boys and men aged 10–24 years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including 135 patients who had been shot with a firearm and 274 community controls, during 2008–2011. Each subject reported a step-by-step mapped account of where and with whom they traveled over a full day from waking until being assaulted or going to bed. Geocoded path points were overlaid on mapped layers representing tree locations and place-specific characteristics. Conditional logistic regressions were used to compare case subjects versus controls (case-control) and case subjects at the time of injury versus times earlier that day (case-crossover). When comparing cases at the time of assault to controls matched at the same time of day, being under tree cover was inversely associated with gunshot assault (odds ratio (OR) = 0.70, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.55, 0.88), especially in low-income areas (OR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.54, 0.87). Case-crossover models confirmed this inverse association overall (OR = 0.55, 95% CI: 0.34, 0.89) and in low-income areas (OR = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.33, 0.88). Urban greening and tree cover may hold promise as proactive strategies to decrease urban violence.
My comment: Obviously, the shooter finds less interesting someone near an obstacle, to shoot well is already difficult and not to miss a shot when the victim can duck under some object is even more difficult, so you try to get those with no cover, i.e., those in the open.
Using Cognitive Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy
Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: Using Cognitive Dissonance to Explore Attitudinal Hypocrisy. Timothy P. Collins. Chapter 6 of Hypocrisy in American Political Attitudes: A Defense of Attitudinal Incongruence, pp 247-288. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-54012-2_6. ISBN: 978-3-319-54011-5 (Print) 978-3-319-54012-2 (Online)
Abstract: The extent to which a person has attitudes that contradict other attitudes is simply cognitive dissonance by another name. I review cognitive dissonance literature and design a survey experiment in which Midwestern university students’ personal perceptions of and distastes for being accused of being hypocritical are tested in an induced compliance research procedure. The results suggest that, in contrast to previous research and the well-established expectations, the participants were only minimally troubled by the idea that they may be hypocritical. For those who were troubled, political ideology and identity had only marginal predictive effects; instead, the traits of dogmatism and openness to experience appeared to supplant the expected roles of ideological orientations.
Abstract: The extent to which a person has attitudes that contradict other attitudes is simply cognitive dissonance by another name. I review cognitive dissonance literature and design a survey experiment in which Midwestern university students’ personal perceptions of and distastes for being accused of being hypocritical are tested in an induced compliance research procedure. The results suggest that, in contrast to previous research and the well-established expectations, the participants were only minimally troubled by the idea that they may be hypocritical. For those who were troubled, political ideology and identity had only marginal predictive effects; instead, the traits of dogmatism and openness to experience appeared to supplant the expected roles of ideological orientations.
Obviously they [conservatives] are hypocrites in that they want small government but then want to ban gay marriage and increase spending on national defense. You simply can’t have the best of both worlds.—Liberal experimental participant
Liberals are hypocrites because like Obama he wants equality but then he is exempt from Obamacare.—Conservative experimental participant
The perception of emotion in artificial agents
Hortensius, R., Hekele, F., & Cross, E. S. (2017, August 1). The perception of emotion in artificial agents. Retrieved from PsyArXiv osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ufz5w
Abstract: Given recent technological developments in robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, it is perhaps unsurprising that the arrival of emotionally expressive and reactive artificial agents is imminent. However, if such agents are to become integrated into our social milieu, it is imperative to establish an understanding of whether and how humans perceive emotion in artificial agents. In this review, we incorporate recent findings from social robotics, virtual reality, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how people recognize and respond to emotions displayed by artificial agents. First, we review how people perceive emotions expressed by an artificial agent, such as facial and bodily expressions and vocal tone. Second, we evaluate the similarities and differences in the consequences of perceived emotions in artificial compared to human agents. Besides accurately recognizing the emotional state of an artificial agent, it is critical to understand how humans respond to those emotions. Does interacting with an angry robot induce the same responses in people as interacting with an angry person? Similarly, does watching a robot rejoice when it wins a game elicit similar feelings of elation in the human observer? Here we provide an overview of the current state of emotion expression and perception in social robotics, as well as a clear articulation of the challenges to be addressed as we move ever closer to truly emotional artificial agents.
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In the original Milgram study, participants were instructed that they would collaborate with the experimenter to investigate the effects of punishment on learning. To this end, the participant was instructed to administer electric shocks of increasing voltage to a learner – who was actually a confederate – whenever he made a mistake in the learning task. At a certain threshold of 300V, the learner no longer responded to the task and kicked the wall in protest, yet the average maximum shock had a voltage of 312V. Twenty-six out of 40 participants were willing to deliver the maximum intensity of 450V to the learner. This paradigm has subsequently been used to test whether and to what extent people will punish an artificial agent (Fig. 3). One replication of the classic Milgram experiment might provide insight [98]. The experiment featured a physically present robot learner, which led to even more pronounced effects than the original study –the highest electric shock of 450V was administered to the robot, despite its verbal protest and painful facial expression, by all participants.
Another study used a female virtual learner in a similar setup where participants read words to the learner and were able to punish the learner with shocks when she made a mistake [99]. The virtual learner was either visible or partially hidden throughout the experiment, which influenced the amount of shocks administered, with fewer shocks being administered when the virtual learner was fully visible. Overall results were similar to the original Milgram experiment, with 85% of participants delivering the maximum voltage. Even though all participants were aware that the learner was a virtual agent, the visual and verbal expression of pain in response to the shock was sufficient to trigger discomfort and stress in participants.
Abstract: Given recent technological developments in robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, it is perhaps unsurprising that the arrival of emotionally expressive and reactive artificial agents is imminent. However, if such agents are to become integrated into our social milieu, it is imperative to establish an understanding of whether and how humans perceive emotion in artificial agents. In this review, we incorporate recent findings from social robotics, virtual reality, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how people recognize and respond to emotions displayed by artificial agents. First, we review how people perceive emotions expressed by an artificial agent, such as facial and bodily expressions and vocal tone. Second, we evaluate the similarities and differences in the consequences of perceived emotions in artificial compared to human agents. Besides accurately recognizing the emotional state of an artificial agent, it is critical to understand how humans respond to those emotions. Does interacting with an angry robot induce the same responses in people as interacting with an angry person? Similarly, does watching a robot rejoice when it wins a game elicit similar feelings of elation in the human observer? Here we provide an overview of the current state of emotion expression and perception in social robotics, as well as a clear articulation of the challenges to be addressed as we move ever closer to truly emotional artificial agents.
---
In the original Milgram study, participants were instructed that they would collaborate with the experimenter to investigate the effects of punishment on learning. To this end, the participant was instructed to administer electric shocks of increasing voltage to a learner – who was actually a confederate – whenever he made a mistake in the learning task. At a certain threshold of 300V, the learner no longer responded to the task and kicked the wall in protest, yet the average maximum shock had a voltage of 312V. Twenty-six out of 40 participants were willing to deliver the maximum intensity of 450V to the learner. This paradigm has subsequently been used to test whether and to what extent people will punish an artificial agent (Fig. 3). One replication of the classic Milgram experiment might provide insight [98]. The experiment featured a physically present robot learner, which led to even more pronounced effects than the original study –the highest electric shock of 450V was administered to the robot, despite its verbal protest and painful facial expression, by all participants.
Another study used a female virtual learner in a similar setup where participants read words to the learner and were able to punish the learner with shocks when she made a mistake [99]. The virtual learner was either visible or partially hidden throughout the experiment, which influenced the amount of shocks administered, with fewer shocks being administered when the virtual learner was fully visible. Overall results were similar to the original Milgram experiment, with 85% of participants delivering the maximum voltage. Even though all participants were aware that the learner was a virtual agent, the visual and verbal expression of pain in response to the shock was sufficient to trigger discomfort and stress in participants.
Attractiveness of the female body: Preference for average or supernormal?
Slobodan Markovic, Tara Bulut, "Attractiveness of the female body: Preference for average or supernormal?" in: Paolo Bernardis, Carlo Fantoni, Walter Gerbino (eds.) "TSPC2016: Proceedings of the Trieste Symposium on Perception and Cognition, November 4th 2016", Trieste, EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2016, p. 28. http://hdl.handle.net/10077/14979
The main purpose of the present study was to contrast the two hypotheses of female body attractiveness. The first is the “preference-for-average” hypothesis: the most attractive female body is the one that represents the average body proportions for a given population [1]. The second is the “preference-for-supernormal” hypothesis: according to the so-called “peak shift effect”, the most attractive female body is more feminine than the average [2]. We investigated the preference for three female body parts: waist to hip ratio (WHR), buttocks and breasts. There were 456 participants of both genders. Using a program for computer animation (DAZ 3D) three sets of stimuli were generated (WHR, buttocks and breasts). Each set included six stimuli ranked from the lowest to the highest femininity level. Participants were asked to choose the stimulus within each set which they found most attractive (task 1) and average (task 2). One group of participants judged the body parts that were presented in the global condition (whole body), while the other group judged the stimuli in the local condition (isolated body parts only).
[...]
In short, these findings support the preference-for-supernormal hypothesis: the most attractive WHR, buttocks and breasts are more feminine than average ones, for both genders and in both presentation conditions.
The main purpose of the present study was to contrast the two hypotheses of female body attractiveness. The first is the “preference-for-average” hypothesis: the most attractive female body is the one that represents the average body proportions for a given population [1]. The second is the “preference-for-supernormal” hypothesis: according to the so-called “peak shift effect”, the most attractive female body is more feminine than the average [2]. We investigated the preference for three female body parts: waist to hip ratio (WHR), buttocks and breasts. There were 456 participants of both genders. Using a program for computer animation (DAZ 3D) three sets of stimuli were generated (WHR, buttocks and breasts). Each set included six stimuli ranked from the lowest to the highest femininity level. Participants were asked to choose the stimulus within each set which they found most attractive (task 1) and average (task 2). One group of participants judged the body parts that were presented in the global condition (whole body), while the other group judged the stimuli in the local condition (isolated body parts only).
[...]
In short, these findings support the preference-for-supernormal hypothesis: the most attractive WHR, buttocks and breasts are more feminine than average ones, for both genders and in both presentation conditions.
Food addiction among sexual minorities
Food addiction among sexual minorities. Jacob C. Rainey, Celina R. Furman, and Ashley N. Gearhardt. Appetite, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2017.08.019
Abstract: Although sexual minorities represent a small proportion of the general population, this group has been observed to be at an increased risk of developing various pathologies, including substance use and eating disorders. Research suggests that foods high in added fat and refined carbohydrates may trigger an addictive response, especially in at-risk individuals. Consequently, food addiction is associated with elevated risk for obesity, diet-related disease, and psychological distress. However, there is limited research on whether food addiction, like substance use, may be elevated among sexual minorities, and whether self-compassion may be a protective factor. Thus, the current study aims to test whether food addiction is elevated in sexual minorities (relative to heterosexuals) and if discrimination and self-compassion may be related to food addiction among sexual minorities. ***In a community sample of 356 participants (43.3% sexual minority), sexual minorities had almost twice the prevalence of food addiction (16.9%) as heterosexuals (8.9%). Also, sexual minorities on average experienced more food addiction symptoms*** (M = 2.73, SD = 1.76) than heterosexuals (M = 1.95, SD = 1.59). ***For sexual minorities, heterosexist harassment was associated with increased food addiction, while self-compassion appeared to be a protective factor***. Further research needs to examine between-group differences among sexual minorities for better treatment and interventions for food addiction.
Abstract: Although sexual minorities represent a small proportion of the general population, this group has been observed to be at an increased risk of developing various pathologies, including substance use and eating disorders. Research suggests that foods high in added fat and refined carbohydrates may trigger an addictive response, especially in at-risk individuals. Consequently, food addiction is associated with elevated risk for obesity, diet-related disease, and psychological distress. However, there is limited research on whether food addiction, like substance use, may be elevated among sexual minorities, and whether self-compassion may be a protective factor. Thus, the current study aims to test whether food addiction is elevated in sexual minorities (relative to heterosexuals) and if discrimination and self-compassion may be related to food addiction among sexual minorities. ***In a community sample of 356 participants (43.3% sexual minority), sexual minorities had almost twice the prevalence of food addiction (16.9%) as heterosexuals (8.9%). Also, sexual minorities on average experienced more food addiction symptoms*** (M = 2.73, SD = 1.76) than heterosexuals (M = 1.95, SD = 1.59). ***For sexual minorities, heterosexist harassment was associated with increased food addiction, while self-compassion appeared to be a protective factor***. Further research needs to examine between-group differences among sexual minorities for better treatment and interventions for food addiction.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
The influence of reputational concerns on children's prosociality
The influence of reputational concerns on children's prosociality. Jan Engelmann, and Diotima Rapp. Current Opinion in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.024
Highlights
• At around age 5, young children show first signs of concern with reputation.
• At around age 8, young children begin to reason about reputation explicitly and interpret others’ behavior in terms of self-presentational concerns.
• Partner choice by peers and new theory of mind skills likely contribute to the development of reputation management.
Abtract: While it is well known that reputational concerns promote prosociality in adults, their ontogenetic origins remain poorly understood. Here we review evidence suggesting that the first prosocial acts of young children are not aimed at gaining reputational credit. However, at approximately 5 years of age, children come to be concerned about their reputations, and their prosocial behaviors show the signature of self-promotional strategies: increased prosociality in public compared to private settings. In middle childhood, at around 8 years of age, children acquire further abilities to control the image they project and start to reason explicitly about their reputation. We discuss potential social and cognitive factors – Partner Choice and Theory of Mind – that contribute to the developmental emergence of self-presentational behavior.
Highlights
• At around age 5, young children show first signs of concern with reputation.
• At around age 8, young children begin to reason about reputation explicitly and interpret others’ behavior in terms of self-presentational concerns.
• Partner choice by peers and new theory of mind skills likely contribute to the development of reputation management.
Abtract: While it is well known that reputational concerns promote prosociality in adults, their ontogenetic origins remain poorly understood. Here we review evidence suggesting that the first prosocial acts of young children are not aimed at gaining reputational credit. However, at approximately 5 years of age, children come to be concerned about their reputations, and their prosocial behaviors show the signature of self-promotional strategies: increased prosociality in public compared to private settings. In middle childhood, at around 8 years of age, children acquire further abilities to control the image they project and start to reason explicitly about their reputation. We discuss potential social and cognitive factors – Partner Choice and Theory of Mind – that contribute to the developmental emergence of self-presentational behavior.
Friday, August 18, 2017
Women have greater inhibition even with no social component in the experiment
Sex Differences on the Go/No-Go Test of Inhibition. Espen A. Sjoberg and Geoff G. Cole. Archives of Sexual Behavior, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-017-1010-9
Abstract: Parental investment theory suggests that women, due to greater investment in child rearing, can be more choosy than men when considering a potential mate. A corollary to this is that women should possess greater inhibition abilities compared to men in contexts related to sex and reproduction. This notion has found support from the inhibition literature demonstrating that while women do indeed show greater inhibition on tasks that include a social aspect, no such effect is found on cognitive tasks that do not possess a social component. In the present experiment, participants (N = 66) performed a variant of a classic Go/No-Go task consisting of infrequent No-Go trials in which a response needed to be withheld. ***Importantly, the stimuli were geometric shapes possessing no social component. Results showed that women outperformed men on the No-Go trials, indicating greater inhibition***. No significant difference was found in reaction time on Go trials. Thus, the results cannot be explained in terms of a speed/accuracy trade-off. We discuss the findings in the context of the female-evolved inhibition hypothesis.
Abstract: Parental investment theory suggests that women, due to greater investment in child rearing, can be more choosy than men when considering a potential mate. A corollary to this is that women should possess greater inhibition abilities compared to men in contexts related to sex and reproduction. This notion has found support from the inhibition literature demonstrating that while women do indeed show greater inhibition on tasks that include a social aspect, no such effect is found on cognitive tasks that do not possess a social component. In the present experiment, participants (N = 66) performed a variant of a classic Go/No-Go task consisting of infrequent No-Go trials in which a response needed to be withheld. ***Importantly, the stimuli were geometric shapes possessing no social component. Results showed that women outperformed men on the No-Go trials, indicating greater inhibition***. No significant difference was found in reaction time on Go trials. Thus, the results cannot be explained in terms of a speed/accuracy trade-off. We discuss the findings in the context of the female-evolved inhibition hypothesis.
Waiting for the Second Treat: Developing Culture-Specific Modes of Self-Regulation
Lamm, B., Keller, H., Teiser, J., Gudi, H., Yovsi, R. D., Freitag, C., Poloczek, S., Fassbender, I., Suhrke, J., Teubert, M., Vöhringer, I., Knopf, M., Schwarzer, G. and Lohaus, A. (2017), Waiting for the Second Treat: Developing Culture-Specific Modes of Self-Regulation. Child Development, doi:10.1111/cdev.12847
Abstract: The development of self-regulation has been studied primarily in Western middle-class contexts and has, therefore, neglected what is known about culturally varying self-concepts and socialization strategies. The research reported here compared the self-regulatory competencies of German middle-class (N = 125) and rural Cameroonian Nso preschoolers (N = 76) using the Marshmallow test (Mischel, 2014). Study 1 revealed that 4-year-old Nso children showed better delay-of-gratification performance than their German peers. Study 2 revealed that culture-specific maternal socialization goals and interaction behaviors were related to delay-of-gratification performance. Nso mothers’ focus on hierarchical relational socialization goals and responsive control seems to support children's delay-of-gratification performance more than German middle-class mothers’ emphasis on psychological autonomous socialization goals and sensitive, child-centered parenting.
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A higher percentage of Cameroonian Nso children (69.7%) than German middle-class children (28%) succeeded in waiting for the research assistant to return with the second treat. Furthermore, compared to only 28.9% of the Cameroonian Nso children, 49.6% of the German middle-class children ate or at least tasted the sweet before the research assistant returned. Only one Nso child left the room to terminate the delay period ahead of time, but 22.4% of the German middle-class children acted in this way. Finally, although eight Nso children (10.5%) fell asleep during the delay, no German child exhibited this behavior.
[...]
Subsequent univariate analyses revealed that German middle-class children exhibited more time in distraction behaviors in terms of turning away from the sweet and talking or singing. Furthermore, they spend more time in negative emotions than rural Nso children [desperate face, whining, crying, etc.].
[...]
waiting falls neatly into the hierarchically interrelated cultural model of the Nso farmer families, which has adapted to the community’s demands. In this context, the development of self-regulation constitutes an early and unconditional achievement that stems from children’s sense of belongingness and perceived responsibility (Keller, 2015). Accordingly, the children raised in these two cultural models also differed substantially in their delay strategies. Nso children displayed the lack of motion and emotion-neutral attitude expected of them as good behavior (Keller & Otto, 2009). They sat in front of the table with the sweet without engaging in much motor activity, and some downregulated themselves so effectively that they even fell asleep during the delay. Their emotional inexpressiveness is in line with the cultural ideal of an “easy child” who does not jeopardize social functioning with social or emotional demands. [...] German children, on the other hand, acted out their attitudes of self-selected behavioral choices with different kinds of motor strategies, such as moving their bodies, turning around, changing position, walking around in the room, and even leaving the room.
These different delay strategies further suggest that self-regulation is based on different underlying processes based on cultural environment.
Abstract: The development of self-regulation has been studied primarily in Western middle-class contexts and has, therefore, neglected what is known about culturally varying self-concepts and socialization strategies. The research reported here compared the self-regulatory competencies of German middle-class (N = 125) and rural Cameroonian Nso preschoolers (N = 76) using the Marshmallow test (Mischel, 2014). Study 1 revealed that 4-year-old Nso children showed better delay-of-gratification performance than their German peers. Study 2 revealed that culture-specific maternal socialization goals and interaction behaviors were related to delay-of-gratification performance. Nso mothers’ focus on hierarchical relational socialization goals and responsive control seems to support children's delay-of-gratification performance more than German middle-class mothers’ emphasis on psychological autonomous socialization goals and sensitive, child-centered parenting.
---
A higher percentage of Cameroonian Nso children (69.7%) than German middle-class children (28%) succeeded in waiting for the research assistant to return with the second treat. Furthermore, compared to only 28.9% of the Cameroonian Nso children, 49.6% of the German middle-class children ate or at least tasted the sweet before the research assistant returned. Only one Nso child left the room to terminate the delay period ahead of time, but 22.4% of the German middle-class children acted in this way. Finally, although eight Nso children (10.5%) fell asleep during the delay, no German child exhibited this behavior.
[...]
Subsequent univariate analyses revealed that German middle-class children exhibited more time in distraction behaviors in terms of turning away from the sweet and talking or singing. Furthermore, they spend more time in negative emotions than rural Nso children [desperate face, whining, crying, etc.].
[...]
waiting falls neatly into the hierarchically interrelated cultural model of the Nso farmer families, which has adapted to the community’s demands. In this context, the development of self-regulation constitutes an early and unconditional achievement that stems from children’s sense of belongingness and perceived responsibility (Keller, 2015). Accordingly, the children raised in these two cultural models also differed substantially in their delay strategies. Nso children displayed the lack of motion and emotion-neutral attitude expected of them as good behavior (Keller & Otto, 2009). They sat in front of the table with the sweet without engaging in much motor activity, and some downregulated themselves so effectively that they even fell asleep during the delay. Their emotional inexpressiveness is in line with the cultural ideal of an “easy child” who does not jeopardize social functioning with social or emotional demands. [...] German children, on the other hand, acted out their attitudes of self-selected behavioral choices with different kinds of motor strategies, such as moving their bodies, turning around, changing position, walking around in the room, and even leaving the room.
These different delay strategies further suggest that self-regulation is based on different underlying processes based on cultural environment.
An Investigation of Genetic and Environmental Influences Across the Distribution of Self-Control
An Investigation of Genetic and Environmental Influences Across the Distribution of Self-Control. Joseph A. Schwartz et al. Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol 44, Issue 9, 2017, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0093854817709495
Abstract: Previous research illustrating a robust, negative association between self-control and various forms of delinquent and criminal behavior has resulted in a more concentrated focus on the etiological development of self-control. The current study aims to contribute to this literature using a sample of twin and sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine genetic and shared environmental influences across levels of self-control. The results of modified DeFries–Fulker (DF) equations revealed that genetic and shared environmental influences were distributed in a nonlinear pattern across levels of self-control. Subsequent biometric quantile regression models revealed that genetic influences on self-control were maximized in the 50th and 60th percentiles, and minimized in the tails of the distribution. Shared environmental influences were nonsignificant at all examined quantiles of self-control with only one exception. The theoretical importance of utilizing genetically informed modeling strategies is discussed in more detail.
My comment: intermediate levels of self-control are dominated by genetics, and the environment is dominant in those with high (more strict education???) and low (too lenient parents or non-structured families???) self-control.
Abstract: Previous research illustrating a robust, negative association between self-control and various forms of delinquent and criminal behavior has resulted in a more concentrated focus on the etiological development of self-control. The current study aims to contribute to this literature using a sample of twin and sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine genetic and shared environmental influences across levels of self-control. The results of modified DeFries–Fulker (DF) equations revealed that genetic and shared environmental influences were distributed in a nonlinear pattern across levels of self-control. Subsequent biometric quantile regression models revealed that genetic influences on self-control were maximized in the 50th and 60th percentiles, and minimized in the tails of the distribution. Shared environmental influences were nonsignificant at all examined quantiles of self-control with only one exception. The theoretical importance of utilizing genetically informed modeling strategies is discussed in more detail.
My comment: intermediate levels of self-control are dominated by genetics, and the environment is dominant in those with high (more strict education???) and low (too lenient parents or non-structured families???) self-control.
Human Self as Information Agent: Functioning in a Social Environment Based on Shared Meanings
Human Self as Information Agent: Functioning in a Social Environment Based on Shared Meanings. Roy F. Baumeister, Heather M. Maranges, and Kathleen D. Vohs. Review of General Psychology, June 2017. DOI: 10.1037/gpr0000114
Abstract: A neglected aspect of human selfhood is that people are information agents. That is, much human social activity involves communicating and discussing information. This occurs in the context of incompletely shared information—but also a group’s store of collective knowledge and shared understanding. This article elucidates a preliminary theory of self as information agent, proposing that human evolution instilled both abilities and motivations for the various requisite functions. These basic functions include (a) seeking and acquiring information, (b) communicating one’s thoughts to others, (c) circulating information through the group, (d) operating on information to improve it, such as by correcting mistakes, and (e) constructing a shared understanding of reality. Sophisticated information agents exhibit additional features, such as sometimes selectively withholding information or disseminating false information for self-serving reasons, cultivating a reputation as a credible source of information, and cooperating with others to shape the shared worldview in a way that favors one’s subgroup. Meaningful information is thus more than a resource for individual action: It also provides the context, medium, and content within which the individual self interacts with its social environment.
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One fascinating question about official falsehoods is whether the ruling elites who propagate such views believe them or not. We speculate that there are cases of both types. That is, some rulers may knowingly, even cynically, uphold a false worldview because it helps sustain them in power, whereas others sincerely believe their worldview. Probably many cases exist in the large gray area between those two, in which self-deceptive tactics are used to sustain preferred beliefs, and doubts are shrugged off as counterproductive. As an example close to home, psychology today is dominated by a political viewpoint that is progressively liberal, but it seems unlikely that many researchers knowingly assert falsehoods as scientific facts. They do however make publication of some findings much easier than others. The selective critique enables them to believe that the field’s body of knowledge supports their political views more than it does, because contrary facts and findings are suppressed (e.g., Duarte et al., 2015). In general, we suspect that far more elites use biased informational strategies to convince themselves of the truth of their preferred views than cynically assert positions they know to be false—though the latter happens too.
[...] Individuals should therefore first have some motivation to seek and obtain information. They may seek information to fill gaps in the group’s collective knowledge (as opposed to merely satisfying their own curiosity).
The group’s stock of information grows as people contribute different bits of information, but it is only a group resource insofar as the members share it. Hence resolving disputes and inconsistencies is helpful. There is thus some tension between adding diverse input and achieving agreement. A leader can encourage everyone to think the same thing, possibly at the expense of contrary and more accurate views. Leaders can also encourage diverse views and dissent, though that presumably makes it harder for the leader to lead.
Why might evolution have made people willing to sacrifice accuracy in favor of consensus, at least sometimes? Here we speculate that desire for consensus may derive from an innate social motive, whereas accuracy is an epistemic motive that would need to be acquired, and is therefore less deeply rooted and perhaps weaker [it is stronger the need to know what others think is true than to make sure you know the truth???]. Accuracy requires meaningful evaluation, as it is essentially a match between two ideas—and perhaps meaning cannot be transmitted by purely physical processes, such as birth. To put this another way, consensus is about you and me having the same thoughts, and nature can program us to want sameness in general, as is seen in preference for genetic kin. In contrast, accuracy is about abstract relationships between statements and circumstances, and thus it is a meaningful rather than a physical thing. There may not be an innate motive to evaluate the truthvalue of assertions or to appreciate the meaningful difference between truth and falsehood. Hence it may be necessary to learn from experience that accuracy is an informational virtue that confers benefits, whereas consensus may be more closely tied to innate motivations.
Abstract: A neglected aspect of human selfhood is that people are information agents. That is, much human social activity involves communicating and discussing information. This occurs in the context of incompletely shared information—but also a group’s store of collective knowledge and shared understanding. This article elucidates a preliminary theory of self as information agent, proposing that human evolution instilled both abilities and motivations for the various requisite functions. These basic functions include (a) seeking and acquiring information, (b) communicating one’s thoughts to others, (c) circulating information through the group, (d) operating on information to improve it, such as by correcting mistakes, and (e) constructing a shared understanding of reality. Sophisticated information agents exhibit additional features, such as sometimes selectively withholding information or disseminating false information for self-serving reasons, cultivating a reputation as a credible source of information, and cooperating with others to shape the shared worldview in a way that favors one’s subgroup. Meaningful information is thus more than a resource for individual action: It also provides the context, medium, and content within which the individual self interacts with its social environment.
---
One fascinating question about official falsehoods is whether the ruling elites who propagate such views believe them or not. We speculate that there are cases of both types. That is, some rulers may knowingly, even cynically, uphold a false worldview because it helps sustain them in power, whereas others sincerely believe their worldview. Probably many cases exist in the large gray area between those two, in which self-deceptive tactics are used to sustain preferred beliefs, and doubts are shrugged off as counterproductive. As an example close to home, psychology today is dominated by a political viewpoint that is progressively liberal, but it seems unlikely that many researchers knowingly assert falsehoods as scientific facts. They do however make publication of some findings much easier than others. The selective critique enables them to believe that the field’s body of knowledge supports their political views more than it does, because contrary facts and findings are suppressed (e.g., Duarte et al., 2015). In general, we suspect that far more elites use biased informational strategies to convince themselves of the truth of their preferred views than cynically assert positions they know to be false—though the latter happens too.
[...] Individuals should therefore first have some motivation to seek and obtain information. They may seek information to fill gaps in the group’s collective knowledge (as opposed to merely satisfying their own curiosity).
The group’s stock of information grows as people contribute different bits of information, but it is only a group resource insofar as the members share it. Hence resolving disputes and inconsistencies is helpful. There is thus some tension between adding diverse input and achieving agreement. A leader can encourage everyone to think the same thing, possibly at the expense of contrary and more accurate views. Leaders can also encourage diverse views and dissent, though that presumably makes it harder for the leader to lead.
Why might evolution have made people willing to sacrifice accuracy in favor of consensus, at least sometimes? Here we speculate that desire for consensus may derive from an innate social motive, whereas accuracy is an epistemic motive that would need to be acquired, and is therefore less deeply rooted and perhaps weaker [it is stronger the need to know what others think is true than to make sure you know the truth???]. Accuracy requires meaningful evaluation, as it is essentially a match between two ideas—and perhaps meaning cannot be transmitted by purely physical processes, such as birth. To put this another way, consensus is about you and me having the same thoughts, and nature can program us to want sameness in general, as is seen in preference for genetic kin. In contrast, accuracy is about abstract relationships between statements and circumstances, and thus it is a meaningful rather than a physical thing. There may not be an innate motive to evaluate the truthvalue of assertions or to appreciate the meaningful difference between truth and falsehood. Hence it may be necessary to learn from experience that accuracy is an informational virtue that confers benefits, whereas consensus may be more closely tied to innate motivations.
Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding -- individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self
Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. Diana I. Tamir and Jason P. Mitchell. Proc Natl Acad Sci, 109(21): 8038–8043, May 22 2012, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3361411/
Abstract: Humans devote 30–40% of speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences. What drives this propensity for disclosure? Here, we test recent theories that individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and that doing so engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward. Five studies provided support for this hypothesis. Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system, including the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. ***Moreover, individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self***. Two additional studies demonstrated that these effects stemmed from the independent value that individuals placed on self-referential thought and on simply sharing information with others. Together, these findings suggest that the human tendency to convey information about personal experience may arise from the intrinsic value associated with self-disclosure.
Keywords: self-reference, social cognition, reward, functional MRI
Abstract: Humans devote 30–40% of speech output solely to informing others of their own subjective experiences. What drives this propensity for disclosure? Here, we test recent theories that individuals place high subjective value on opportunities to communicate their thoughts and feelings to others and that doing so engages neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with reward. Five studies provided support for this hypothesis. Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system, including the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. ***Moreover, individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self***. Two additional studies demonstrated that these effects stemmed from the independent value that individuals placed on self-referential thought and on simply sharing information with others. Together, these findings suggest that the human tendency to convey information about personal experience may arise from the intrinsic value associated with self-disclosure.
Keywords: self-reference, social cognition, reward, functional MRI
Helping populism win? Social media use, filter bubbles, and support for populist presidential candidates in the 2016 US election campaign
Helping populism win? Social media use, filter bubbles, and support for populist presidential candidates in the 2016 US election campaign. Jacob Groshek and Karolina Koc-Michalska. Information, Communication & Society, Volume 20, 2017 - Issue 9, Pages 1389-1407. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1329334
ABSTRACT: Undoubtedly, populist political candidates from the right and the left, including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, changed the tenor and direction of the 2016 presidential contest in the US. Much like Barack Obama’s electoral successes that were credited at least in part to his savvy social media campaigning in 2008 and 2012, since Trump’s victory, the notion that social media ‘helped him win’ has been revitalized, even by Trump himself [McCormick, R. (2016a). Donald Trump says Facebook and Twitter ‘helped him win’. The Verge. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/13/13619148/trump-facebook-twitter-helped-win]. This study therefore explores citizen support for populist and establishment candidates across the ideological spectrum in the US to specifically examine if using social media was related to an increased likelihood of supporting populist presidential political candidates, including Trump. Differing forms of active, passive, and uncivil social media were taken into account and the findings suggest active social media use for politics was actually related to less support for Republican populists, such as Trump, but that forms of both passive or uncivil social media use were linked to an increase in the likelihood of support to a level roughly equivalent to that of the traditional television viewing. These patterns are almost the inverse of support for Democratic populists, in this case namely Sanders.
KEYWORDS: Populism, social media, elections, president, campaigns, Trump
ABSTRACT: Undoubtedly, populist political candidates from the right and the left, including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, changed the tenor and direction of the 2016 presidential contest in the US. Much like Barack Obama’s electoral successes that were credited at least in part to his savvy social media campaigning in 2008 and 2012, since Trump’s victory, the notion that social media ‘helped him win’ has been revitalized, even by Trump himself [McCormick, R. (2016a). Donald Trump says Facebook and Twitter ‘helped him win’. The Verge. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/13/13619148/trump-facebook-twitter-helped-win]. This study therefore explores citizen support for populist and establishment candidates across the ideological spectrum in the US to specifically examine if using social media was related to an increased likelihood of supporting populist presidential political candidates, including Trump. Differing forms of active, passive, and uncivil social media were taken into account and the findings suggest active social media use for politics was actually related to less support for Republican populists, such as Trump, but that forms of both passive or uncivil social media use were linked to an increase in the likelihood of support to a level roughly equivalent to that of the traditional television viewing. These patterns are almost the inverse of support for Democratic populists, in this case namely Sanders.
KEYWORDS: Populism, social media, elections, president, campaigns, Trump
Concerned that DSM-5 tend to over-pathologize ordinary quirks and eccentricities
Misophonia: A new mental disorder? Steven Taylor. Medical Hypotheses, Volume 103, June 2017, Pages 109-117, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2017.05.003
Abstract: Misophonia, a phenomenon first described in the audiology literature, is characterized by intense emotional reactions (e.g., anger, rage, anxiety, disgust) in response to highly specific sounds, particularly sounds of human origin such as oral or nasal noises made by other people (e.g., chewing, sniffing, slurping, lip smacking). Misophonia is not listed in any of the contemporary psychiatric classification systems. Some investigators have argued that misophonia should be regarded as a new mental disorder, falling within the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive related disorders. Other researchers have disputed this claim. The purpose of this article is to critically examine the proposition that misophonia should be classified as a new mental disorder. The clinical and research literature on misophonia was examined and considered in the context of the broader literature on what constitutes a mental disorder. ***There have been growing concerns that diagnostic systems such as DSM-5 tend to over-pathologize ordinary quirks and eccentricities. Accordingly, solid evidence is required for proposing a new psychiatric disorder.*** The available evidence suggests that (a) misophonia meets many of the general criteria for a mental disorder and has some evidence of clinical utility as a diagnostic construct, but (b) the nature and boundaries of the syndrome are unclear; for example, in some cases misophonia might be simply one feature of a broader pattern of sensory intolerance, and (c) considerably more research is required, particularly work concerning diagnostic validity, before misophonia, defined as either as a disorder or as a key feature of some broader syndrome of sensory intolerance, should be considered as a diagnostic construct in the psychiatric nomenclature. A research roadmap is proposed for the systematic evaluation as to whether misophonia should be considered for future editions of DSM or ICD.
My comment: Hahahahahahahaha. How could they think so... Why the concern? Hahahahahahahaha.
Abstract: Misophonia, a phenomenon first described in the audiology literature, is characterized by intense emotional reactions (e.g., anger, rage, anxiety, disgust) in response to highly specific sounds, particularly sounds of human origin such as oral or nasal noises made by other people (e.g., chewing, sniffing, slurping, lip smacking). Misophonia is not listed in any of the contemporary psychiatric classification systems. Some investigators have argued that misophonia should be regarded as a new mental disorder, falling within the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive related disorders. Other researchers have disputed this claim. The purpose of this article is to critically examine the proposition that misophonia should be classified as a new mental disorder. The clinical and research literature on misophonia was examined and considered in the context of the broader literature on what constitutes a mental disorder. ***There have been growing concerns that diagnostic systems such as DSM-5 tend to over-pathologize ordinary quirks and eccentricities. Accordingly, solid evidence is required for proposing a new psychiatric disorder.*** The available evidence suggests that (a) misophonia meets many of the general criteria for a mental disorder and has some evidence of clinical utility as a diagnostic construct, but (b) the nature and boundaries of the syndrome are unclear; for example, in some cases misophonia might be simply one feature of a broader pattern of sensory intolerance, and (c) considerably more research is required, particularly work concerning diagnostic validity, before misophonia, defined as either as a disorder or as a key feature of some broader syndrome of sensory intolerance, should be considered as a diagnostic construct in the psychiatric nomenclature. A research roadmap is proposed for the systematic evaluation as to whether misophonia should be considered for future editions of DSM or ICD.
My comment: Hahahahahahahaha. How could they think so... Why the concern? Hahahahahahahaha.
They distanced themselves from the negative images of consumption associated with the wealthy... ostentation, materialism, and excess -- all markers of moral unworthiness
Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence. Rachel Sherman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/11096.html
...they described their desires and needs as basic and their spending as disciplined and family-oriented. They asserted that they "could live without" their advantages if they had to, denying that they were dependent on their comfortable lifestyles. They distanced themselves from the negative images of consumption often associated with the wealthy, such as ostentation, materialism, and excess -- all markers of moral unworthiness. These interpretations allowed them to believe that they deserved what they had and at the same time to cast themselves as "normal" people rather than "rich" ones.
See also: This Hamptons trailer park is a billionaire hotspot. By Jennifer Gould Keil. NY Post, Jul 26, 2017. https://nypost.com/2017/07/26/this-hamptons-trailer-park-is-a-billionaire-hotspot/
And: The Perils of Proclaiming an Authentic Organizational Identity. By Balázs Kovács, Glenn Carroll & David Lehman. Sociological Science, January 2017, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/perils-proclaiming-authentic-organizational-identity
And: Why Elites Love Authentic Lowbrow Culture: Overcoming High-Status Denigration with Outsider Art. By Oliver Hahl, Ezra W. Zuckerman, Minjae Kim
American Sociological Review, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417710642
...they described their desires and needs as basic and their spending as disciplined and family-oriented. They asserted that they "could live without" their advantages if they had to, denying that they were dependent on their comfortable lifestyles. They distanced themselves from the negative images of consumption often associated with the wealthy, such as ostentation, materialism, and excess -- all markers of moral unworthiness. These interpretations allowed them to believe that they deserved what they had and at the same time to cast themselves as "normal" people rather than "rich" ones.
See also: This Hamptons trailer park is a billionaire hotspot. By Jennifer Gould Keil. NY Post, Jul 26, 2017. https://nypost.com/2017/07/26/this-hamptons-trailer-park-is-a-billionaire-hotspot/
And: The Perils of Proclaiming an Authentic Organizational Identity. By Balázs Kovács, Glenn Carroll & David Lehman. Sociological Science, January 2017, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/perils-proclaiming-authentic-organizational-identity
And: Why Elites Love Authentic Lowbrow Culture: Overcoming High-Status Denigration with Outsider Art. By Oliver Hahl, Ezra W. Zuckerman, Minjae Kim
American Sociological Review, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0003122417710642
Anomie, Mistrust, and the Impact of Race, SES, and Gender
"It's Hardly Fair to Bring a Child Into the World With the Way Things Look.": Anomie, Mistrust, and the Impact of Race, SES, and Gender. Melvin Thomas. Sociological Inquiry, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soin.12191/abstract
Abstract: This article examines the impact of race, socioeconomic status (SES), and gender on subjective outlook using anomie and general mistrust as indicators. Specifically, this study addresses the following questions: (1) How do African Americans and whites compare with respect to anomie and mistrust? (2) Do racial differences in anomie and mistrust vary by SES? (3) Do African American women have higher levels of anomie and mistrust than whites and African American men? and (4) Are African Americans becoming more or less trusting and anomic over time? Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) (1972-2014), the analysis reveals significant racial differences in social outlook as measured by anomie and mistrust. African Americans indicate higher levels of both anomie and mistrust than whites even after controls for SES and the other variables. The racial gap in anomie and mistrust increases with increases in SES. Being African American and female is associated with higher levels of anomie but not mistrust. African American mistrust decreases relative to whites over time. More affluent African Americans' anomie levels slightly increase relative to similar whites over time. Explanations using the "rage of a privileged class" and "intersectionality" ideas are evaluated.
My comments:
1 the result of this research is unfavourable to the group studied, so the author use a justification in the title. The truth could be this: if one is poor, one is more ethical and respects rules and laws (at least those of your own group, we don't know), and is more trustful of others (we don't know who are the others, see below comment #2 on mistrust). When people in this group increases their socioeconomic status (SES), they find reasons to throw that love of law and ethical behavior overboard (which we assume have a negative impact on community life, cooperation and solidarity), and rationalize it _afterwards_ with how harsh and unjust is the real world. Same with mistrust, which also increases with SES. Of course, other groups with a long history of discrimination, including obstacles to access higher education today, are not in anomie or mistrust levels as we see here. This makes the group studied look bad, and they compensate with a poor-me-how-harsh-is-life title.
There is no mention of other groups: "asia" (Asian, Asiatic), "hispan" (Hispanic, Hispanos, Hispanas), "latin" (Latino, Latina). So, of course, we cannot know if the community is that of your ethnic background, or one including the whites, or only that of whites, or maybe whites + other minorities.
This not knowing which laws/customs/mores do they respect makes useless this half of the study, IMHO.
BTW, the explanation for their abandoning love of law is that the guys increasing their SES are more conscious of the discrimination they suffer. Which, again, other groups do not do to the same extent.Of course, it can be a catch-22 situation... More criminality in this group makes the others fearful of young members of the group and those who are not criminal (the overwhelming majority) get offended for the assessment.
2 about the mistrust part... we do not know what the subjects mean when they answer to "most of the time people" or "most people" questions, and the authors recognize it, although they bury the problem in the text:
They are good scholars because they say this? Are you serious? Right in front of my salad? Wrong. This limitation makes this half of the study useless.
To me it is clear that there is a mix here of effects. Some subjects (most likely men) are talking about whites, and some about whites + hispanics + asiatics + others, but don't know the proportions. But some women probably are complaining about black men (husbands, sex partners). As a consequence of the defects in the questionnaire, we don't know the proportions or men and women who equate "most people" with blacks, or whites, or whites + others.
Abstract: This article examines the impact of race, socioeconomic status (SES), and gender on subjective outlook using anomie and general mistrust as indicators. Specifically, this study addresses the following questions: (1) How do African Americans and whites compare with respect to anomie and mistrust? (2) Do racial differences in anomie and mistrust vary by SES? (3) Do African American women have higher levels of anomie and mistrust than whites and African American men? and (4) Are African Americans becoming more or less trusting and anomic over time? Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) (1972-2014), the analysis reveals significant racial differences in social outlook as measured by anomie and mistrust. African Americans indicate higher levels of both anomie and mistrust than whites even after controls for SES and the other variables. The racial gap in anomie and mistrust increases with increases in SES. Being African American and female is associated with higher levels of anomie but not mistrust. African American mistrust decreases relative to whites over time. More affluent African Americans' anomie levels slightly increase relative to similar whites over time. Explanations using the "rage of a privileged class" and "intersectionality" ideas are evaluated.
My comments:
1 the result of this research is unfavourable to the group studied, so the author use a justification in the title. The truth could be this: if one is poor, one is more ethical and respects rules and laws (at least those of your own group, we don't know), and is more trustful of others (we don't know who are the others, see below comment #2 on mistrust). When people in this group increases their socioeconomic status (SES), they find reasons to throw that love of law and ethical behavior overboard (which we assume have a negative impact on community life, cooperation and solidarity), and rationalize it _afterwards_ with how harsh and unjust is the real world. Same with mistrust, which also increases with SES. Of course, other groups with a long history of discrimination, including obstacles to access higher education today, are not in anomie or mistrust levels as we see here. This makes the group studied look bad, and they compensate with a poor-me-how-harsh-is-life title.
There is no mention of other groups: "asia" (Asian, Asiatic), "hispan" (Hispanic, Hispanos, Hispanas), "latin" (Latino, Latina). So, of course, we cannot know if the community is that of your ethnic background, or one including the whites, or only that of whites, or maybe whites + other minorities.
This not knowing which laws/customs/mores do they respect makes useless this half of the study, IMHO.
BTW, the explanation for their abandoning love of law is that the guys increasing their SES are more conscious of the discrimination they suffer. Which, again, other groups do not do to the same extent.Of course, it can be a catch-22 situation... More criminality in this group makes the others fearful of young members of the group and those who are not criminal (the overwhelming majority) get offended for the assessment.
2 about the mistrust part... we do not know what the subjects mean when they answer to "most of the time people" or "most people" questions, and the authors recognize it, although they bury the problem in the text:
One problem interpreting these findings is that it is hard to know who “most people” are imagined to be in the trust items. [...] Unfortunately, not knowing exactly whom the respondents have in mind is a limitation of this study.
They are good scholars because they say this? Are you serious? Right in front of my salad? Wrong. This limitation makes this half of the study useless.
To me it is clear that there is a mix here of effects. Some subjects (most likely men) are talking about whites, and some about whites + hispanics + asiatics + others, but don't know the proportions. But some women probably are complaining about black men (husbands, sex partners). As a consequence of the defects in the questionnaire, we don't know the proportions or men and women who equate "most people" with blacks, or whites, or whites + others.
The Gun-Slave Hypothesis And The 18th Century British Slave Trade
The Gun-Slave Hypothesis And The 18th Century British Slave Trade. Warren Whatley. Explorations in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2017.07.001
Abstract: The Gun-Slave Hypothesis is the long-standing idea that European gunpowder technology played a key role in growing the transatlantic slave trade. I combine annual data from the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database and the Anglo-African Trade Statistics to estimate a Vector Error Correction Model of the 18th century British slave trade that captures four versions of the Gun-Slave Hypothesis: guns-for-slaves-in-exchange, guns-for-slaves-in-production, slaves-for-guns-derived and the gun-slave cycle. Three econometric results emerge. (1) Gunpowder imports and slave exports were co-integrated in a long-run equilibrium relationship. (2) Positive deviations from equilibrium gunpowder "produced" additional slave exports. This guns-for-slaves-in-production result survives 17 placebo tests that replace gunpowder with non-lethal commodities imports. It is also confirmed by an instrumental variables estimation that uses excess capacity in the British gunpowder industry as an instrument for gunpowder. (3) Additional slave exports attracted additional gunpowder imports for 2-3 more years. Together these dynamics formed a gun-slave cycle. Impulse-response functions generate large increases in slave export in response to increases in gunpowder imports. I use these results to explain the growth of slave exports along the Guinea Coast of Africa in the 18th century.
Abstract: The Gun-Slave Hypothesis is the long-standing idea that European gunpowder technology played a key role in growing the transatlantic slave trade. I combine annual data from the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database and the Anglo-African Trade Statistics to estimate a Vector Error Correction Model of the 18th century British slave trade that captures four versions of the Gun-Slave Hypothesis: guns-for-slaves-in-exchange, guns-for-slaves-in-production, slaves-for-guns-derived and the gun-slave cycle. Three econometric results emerge. (1) Gunpowder imports and slave exports were co-integrated in a long-run equilibrium relationship. (2) Positive deviations from equilibrium gunpowder "produced" additional slave exports. This guns-for-slaves-in-production result survives 17 placebo tests that replace gunpowder with non-lethal commodities imports. It is also confirmed by an instrumental variables estimation that uses excess capacity in the British gunpowder industry as an instrument for gunpowder. (3) Additional slave exports attracted additional gunpowder imports for 2-3 more years. Together these dynamics formed a gun-slave cycle. Impulse-response functions generate large increases in slave export in response to increases in gunpowder imports. I use these results to explain the growth of slave exports along the Guinea Coast of Africa in the 18th century.
Thursday, August 17, 2017
The Nuremberg Code 70 Years Later
JAMA Viewpoint
The Nuremberg Code 70 Years Later. By Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD; Ulf Schmidt, PhD; Steve Joffe, MD, MPH
JAMA. Published online August 17, 2017. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.10265
Seventy years ago, on August 20, 1947, the International Medical Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, delivered its verdict in the trial of 23 doctors and bureaucrats accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in cruel and often lethal concentration camp medical experiments. As part of its judgment, the court articulated a 10-point set of rules for the conduct of human experiments that has come to be known as the Nuremberg Code. Among other requirements, the code called for the “voluntary consent” of the human research subject, an assessment of risks and benefits, and assurances of competent investigators. These concepts have become an important reference point for the ethical conduct of medical research. Yet, there has in the past been considerable debate among scholars about the code’s authorship, scope, and legal standing in both civilian and military science. Nonetheless, the Nuremberg Code has undoubtedly been a milestone in the history of biomedical research ethics.1- 3
Writings on medical ethics, laws, and regulations in a number of jurisdictions and countries, including a detailed and sophisticated set of guidelines from the Reich Ministry of the Interior in 1931, set the stage for the code. The same focus on voluntariness and risk that characterizes the code also suffuses these guidelines. What distinguishes the code is its context. As lead prosecutor Telford Taylor emphasized, although the Doctors’ Trial was at its heart a murder trial, it clearly implicated the ethical practices of medical experimenters and, by extension, the medical profession’s relationship to the state understood as an organized community living under a particular political structure. The embrace of Nazi ideology by German physicians, and the subsequent participation of some of their most distinguished leaders in the camp experiments, demonstrates the importance of professional independence from and resistance to the ideological and geopolitical ambitions of the authoritarian state.
The circumstances in which the code was promulgated thus signified a tension between professional standards and duties to the state. There had long been an intense debate within the medical profession about its ethical obligations in the course of human experiments, dating back to 18th- and 19th-century objections against objectifying human beings for scientific purposes. The increased demands placed on modern states to promote the health and welfare of citizens in the 20th century required state agencies to respond to public pressure to protect participants in clinical trials. These debates were often stimulated by medical ethics transgressions or medical errors that attracted the wider attention of state agencies and the public at large, or by concerned physicians who regarded themselves as reformers and wished to improve their colleagues’ practices. At the center of that debate is the question of how to balance participants’ rights and welfare with the progress of medical science, for example, through professional guidelines and ethics codes or through greater state intervention, laws, and regulations. That the Nazi doctors’ crimes occurred despite the vigorous and sophisticated ethical debates of the time and place should serve as a cautionary tale for physicians today.
Exactly a century ago, for example, Heiman unleashed substantial criticism against what he regarded as his colleagues’ irresponsible experimental practices in his book Etyka Lekarska (“Medical Ethics”).4 He vigorously criticized the reduction of human beings to experimental material, insisted on consent, and warned against taking advantage of desperate patients who may fear their physician will abandon them if they do not cooperate. This tradition in Eastern European medicine, which has persisted over the generations even amid catastrophic wars and massive political turmoil, demonstrates the importance of professional self-governance and advocacy in the face of an undemocratic and in many ways authoritarian state with little respect for individual rights. In 1967, 50 years after the publication of Heiman’s book and 20 years after publication of the code, the Polish Medical Association published strict “Deontological Ethical Rules” (Deontologiczno-Etyczne Zasady) about consent, voluntariness, risks and benefits, publication, and qualified investigators.5 Those rules were expanded 10 years later. Although rules do not necessarily translate into practices, it is notable that even at the height of the Cold War in a socialist government, the association sent a copy of these rules to every physician in Poland. Whether this was effective in protecting patients who participated in research is unknown.
More recent scholarship has found a similar preoccupation with “medical deontology” (medical ethics) in other countries in that region, perhaps partly owing to their proximity to the concentration camps, the collective experiences of the Second World War, and the need to assert professional ethics against a background of authoritarian rule. For example, in East Germany, medical ethicists collaborated with state commissions, such as the Central Expert Committee for Drug Commerce (Zentraler Gutachterausschuss für Arzneimittelverkehr) to monitor the safety and ethical conduct of pharmacological experiments on thousands of patients. Rather than working in an entirely different ethical universe behind the so-called Iron Curtain, these experts, though seemingly removed from the fundamental ethical principles of the code, applied their detailed knowledge of modern research ethics to the practical challenges of experimental medical science in undemocratic societies. The infamous state-sponsored “doping” of world class athletes, in which physicians were involved, was not necessarily typical of medical and ethical practices.
It is essential, however, to distinguish the inherent structural problems of nondemocratic and authoritarian government systems from legitimate government regulation for the protection of patient-participants. The two are not the same. For example, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, critics of the newly founded postwar British National Health Service (NHS), which does support clinical research, alleged that greater government direction of medicine and medical science may inevitably lead to a Nazi or Soviet style of government. Organizations such as the Society for Freedom in Science likewise denounced as totalitarian almost any government program that promoted a greater degree of central or state planning of clinical care and medical research.2 These tensions regarding professional vs governmental control over medical science are pervasive and longstanding.
In a symbolic sense, the Nuremberg Code is part of the infrastructure of the democratic international system that emerged after World War II, with its focus on respect for human rights, individual autonomy, and informed consent. But even that symbolic role is intangible at best. In the field of human research ethics the code was eclipsed by the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki in 1964. While the code may have created greater awareness of the importance of human rights in medical science among wide sections of the medical profession, its specific role in international human rights law is modest compared with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created by the United Nations General Assembly in light of 2 world wars. In 1987, 40 years after the code was written, the US Supreme Court ruled that it did not apply in the case of a retired Army sergeant who claimed to have been injured in an LSD experiment. Likewise, in 2004, an inquest into the death of a British serviceman from a Cold War sarin nerve agent experiment ruled that the code—despite its importance as a reference point in medical ethics—did not apply to UK domestic law. Indeed, the code has not been adopted by any government, with the partial exception of the US Department of Defense in 1953 regarding defensive experiments concerning atomic, biological, and chemical agents.1
The story of the Nuremberg Code is not one of ethical norms taking on the force of law. Rather, its legacy shows the fundamental importance of a robust organized medical profession that protects its independence from political interests and its ability to chart its own moral course, yet is at the same time open to the essential role of nations and government agencies that respect broadly defined and agreed-upon rules to protect the rights and well-being of human research participants. Renewed allegations in 2017 that psychologists working with the Central Intelligence Agency on detainee interrogations engaged in unethical human experimentation demonstrate that these matters are not merely of historical interest.6 It is therefore worth asking, 70 years after the judgment at Nuremberg and in the face of increasing authoritarianism worldwide, whether contemporary physicians can claim membership in a profession that reflects the spirit of the code.
Corresponding Author: Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, 423 Guardian Dr, BH1415, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Drs Schmidt and Moreno report grants from Wellcome Trust during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.
Funding/Support: Drs Schmidt and Moreno acknowledge the support of a Wellcome Trust Seed Award 2016, “Cold War Bioethics: Human Research Ethics in Central Eastern Europe, 1945-present” (WT: 201441/Z/16/Z).
Role of the Funder/Sponsor: Wellcome Trust had no role in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
References
1. Moreno JD. Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans. New York, NY: Routledge; 2001.
2. Schmidt U. Justice at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan; 2004.
3. Schmidt U. Secret Science: a Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments: New Product Edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2015.
4. Heiman T. Etyka lekarska i obowiązki lekarza: (deontologia). Warszawa, Poland: skł. gł. Gebethner i Wolff; 1917.
5. Polish Medical Association. Deontologiczno-etyczne zasady. Służba Zdrowia. 1967;26:3.
6. Dougherty S, Allen SA. Nuremberg Betrayed: Human Experimentation and the CIA Torture Program. June 2017. http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/assets/multimedia/phr_humanexperimentation_report.pdf. Accessed June 22, 2017.
The Nuremberg Code 70 Years Later. By Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD; Ulf Schmidt, PhD; Steve Joffe, MD, MPH
JAMA. Published online August 17, 2017. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.10265
Seventy years ago, on August 20, 1947, the International Medical Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, delivered its verdict in the trial of 23 doctors and bureaucrats accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in cruel and often lethal concentration camp medical experiments. As part of its judgment, the court articulated a 10-point set of rules for the conduct of human experiments that has come to be known as the Nuremberg Code. Among other requirements, the code called for the “voluntary consent” of the human research subject, an assessment of risks and benefits, and assurances of competent investigators. These concepts have become an important reference point for the ethical conduct of medical research. Yet, there has in the past been considerable debate among scholars about the code’s authorship, scope, and legal standing in both civilian and military science. Nonetheless, the Nuremberg Code has undoubtedly been a milestone in the history of biomedical research ethics.1- 3
Writings on medical ethics, laws, and regulations in a number of jurisdictions and countries, including a detailed and sophisticated set of guidelines from the Reich Ministry of the Interior in 1931, set the stage for the code. The same focus on voluntariness and risk that characterizes the code also suffuses these guidelines. What distinguishes the code is its context. As lead prosecutor Telford Taylor emphasized, although the Doctors’ Trial was at its heart a murder trial, it clearly implicated the ethical practices of medical experimenters and, by extension, the medical profession’s relationship to the state understood as an organized community living under a particular political structure. The embrace of Nazi ideology by German physicians, and the subsequent participation of some of their most distinguished leaders in the camp experiments, demonstrates the importance of professional independence from and resistance to the ideological and geopolitical ambitions of the authoritarian state.
The circumstances in which the code was promulgated thus signified a tension between professional standards and duties to the state. There had long been an intense debate within the medical profession about its ethical obligations in the course of human experiments, dating back to 18th- and 19th-century objections against objectifying human beings for scientific purposes. The increased demands placed on modern states to promote the health and welfare of citizens in the 20th century required state agencies to respond to public pressure to protect participants in clinical trials. These debates were often stimulated by medical ethics transgressions or medical errors that attracted the wider attention of state agencies and the public at large, or by concerned physicians who regarded themselves as reformers and wished to improve their colleagues’ practices. At the center of that debate is the question of how to balance participants’ rights and welfare with the progress of medical science, for example, through professional guidelines and ethics codes or through greater state intervention, laws, and regulations. That the Nazi doctors’ crimes occurred despite the vigorous and sophisticated ethical debates of the time and place should serve as a cautionary tale for physicians today.
Exactly a century ago, for example, Heiman unleashed substantial criticism against what he regarded as his colleagues’ irresponsible experimental practices in his book Etyka Lekarska (“Medical Ethics”).4 He vigorously criticized the reduction of human beings to experimental material, insisted on consent, and warned against taking advantage of desperate patients who may fear their physician will abandon them if they do not cooperate. This tradition in Eastern European medicine, which has persisted over the generations even amid catastrophic wars and massive political turmoil, demonstrates the importance of professional self-governance and advocacy in the face of an undemocratic and in many ways authoritarian state with little respect for individual rights. In 1967, 50 years after the publication of Heiman’s book and 20 years after publication of the code, the Polish Medical Association published strict “Deontological Ethical Rules” (Deontologiczno-Etyczne Zasady) about consent, voluntariness, risks and benefits, publication, and qualified investigators.5 Those rules were expanded 10 years later. Although rules do not necessarily translate into practices, it is notable that even at the height of the Cold War in a socialist government, the association sent a copy of these rules to every physician in Poland. Whether this was effective in protecting patients who participated in research is unknown.
More recent scholarship has found a similar preoccupation with “medical deontology” (medical ethics) in other countries in that region, perhaps partly owing to their proximity to the concentration camps, the collective experiences of the Second World War, and the need to assert professional ethics against a background of authoritarian rule. For example, in East Germany, medical ethicists collaborated with state commissions, such as the Central Expert Committee for Drug Commerce (Zentraler Gutachterausschuss für Arzneimittelverkehr) to monitor the safety and ethical conduct of pharmacological experiments on thousands of patients. Rather than working in an entirely different ethical universe behind the so-called Iron Curtain, these experts, though seemingly removed from the fundamental ethical principles of the code, applied their detailed knowledge of modern research ethics to the practical challenges of experimental medical science in undemocratic societies. The infamous state-sponsored “doping” of world class athletes, in which physicians were involved, was not necessarily typical of medical and ethical practices.
It is essential, however, to distinguish the inherent structural problems of nondemocratic and authoritarian government systems from legitimate government regulation for the protection of patient-participants. The two are not the same. For example, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, critics of the newly founded postwar British National Health Service (NHS), which does support clinical research, alleged that greater government direction of medicine and medical science may inevitably lead to a Nazi or Soviet style of government. Organizations such as the Society for Freedom in Science likewise denounced as totalitarian almost any government program that promoted a greater degree of central or state planning of clinical care and medical research.2 These tensions regarding professional vs governmental control over medical science are pervasive and longstanding.
In a symbolic sense, the Nuremberg Code is part of the infrastructure of the democratic international system that emerged after World War II, with its focus on respect for human rights, individual autonomy, and informed consent. But even that symbolic role is intangible at best. In the field of human research ethics the code was eclipsed by the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki in 1964. While the code may have created greater awareness of the importance of human rights in medical science among wide sections of the medical profession, its specific role in international human rights law is modest compared with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created by the United Nations General Assembly in light of 2 world wars. In 1987, 40 years after the code was written, the US Supreme Court ruled that it did not apply in the case of a retired Army sergeant who claimed to have been injured in an LSD experiment. Likewise, in 2004, an inquest into the death of a British serviceman from a Cold War sarin nerve agent experiment ruled that the code—despite its importance as a reference point in medical ethics—did not apply to UK domestic law. Indeed, the code has not been adopted by any government, with the partial exception of the US Department of Defense in 1953 regarding defensive experiments concerning atomic, biological, and chemical agents.1
The story of the Nuremberg Code is not one of ethical norms taking on the force of law. Rather, its legacy shows the fundamental importance of a robust organized medical profession that protects its independence from political interests and its ability to chart its own moral course, yet is at the same time open to the essential role of nations and government agencies that respect broadly defined and agreed-upon rules to protect the rights and well-being of human research participants. Renewed allegations in 2017 that psychologists working with the Central Intelligence Agency on detainee interrogations engaged in unethical human experimentation demonstrate that these matters are not merely of historical interest.6 It is therefore worth asking, 70 years after the judgment at Nuremberg and in the face of increasing authoritarianism worldwide, whether contemporary physicians can claim membership in a profession that reflects the spirit of the code.
Corresponding Author: Jonathan D. Moreno, PhD, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, 423 Guardian Dr, BH1415, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Drs Schmidt and Moreno report grants from Wellcome Trust during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.
Funding/Support: Drs Schmidt and Moreno acknowledge the support of a Wellcome Trust Seed Award 2016, “Cold War Bioethics: Human Research Ethics in Central Eastern Europe, 1945-present” (WT: 201441/Z/16/Z).
Role of the Funder/Sponsor: Wellcome Trust had no role in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
References
1. Moreno JD. Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans. New York, NY: Routledge; 2001.
2. Schmidt U. Justice at Nuremberg: Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan; 2004.
3. Schmidt U. Secret Science: a Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments: New Product Edition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2015.
4. Heiman T. Etyka lekarska i obowiązki lekarza: (deontologia). Warszawa, Poland: skł. gł. Gebethner i Wolff; 1917.
5. Polish Medical Association. Deontologiczno-etyczne zasady. Służba Zdrowia. 1967;26:3.
6. Dougherty S, Allen SA. Nuremberg Betrayed: Human Experimentation and the CIA Torture Program. June 2017. http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/assets/multimedia/phr_humanexperimentation_report.pdf. Accessed June 22, 2017.
The Behavior of Ethicists (ch 15 of A Companion to Experimental Philosophy)
Chapter 15. The Behavior of Ethicists. Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust. In A Companion to Experimental Philosophy, edited by Justin Sytsma and Wesley Buckwalter. DOI: 10.1002/9781118661666.ch15
Summary: We review and present a new meta-analysis of research suggesting that ethicists in the United States appear to behave no morally better overall than do non-ethicist professors. Measures include: returning library books, peer evaluation of overall moral behavior, voting participation, courteous and discourteous behavior at conferences, replying to student emails, paying conference registration fees and disciplinary society dues, staying in touch with one's mother, charitable giving, organ and blood donation, vegetarianism, and honesty in responding to survey questions. One multi-measure study found ethicists tending to embrace more stringent moral views, especially about meat eating and charitable donation. The same multi-measure study found ethicists and other professors to show similarly small-to-medium correlations between their expressed normative attitudes and their self-reported or directly measured behavior.
Keywords: ethics; attitude-behavior correlation; metaphilosophy; experimental philosophy; applied ethics
Summary: We review and present a new meta-analysis of research suggesting that ethicists in the United States appear to behave no morally better overall than do non-ethicist professors. Measures include: returning library books, peer evaluation of overall moral behavior, voting participation, courteous and discourteous behavior at conferences, replying to student emails, paying conference registration fees and disciplinary society dues, staying in touch with one's mother, charitable giving, organ and blood donation, vegetarianism, and honesty in responding to survey questions. One multi-measure study found ethicists tending to embrace more stringent moral views, especially about meat eating and charitable donation. The same multi-measure study found ethicists and other professors to show similarly small-to-medium correlations between their expressed normative attitudes and their self-reported or directly measured behavior.
Keywords: ethics; attitude-behavior correlation; metaphilosophy; experimental philosophy; applied ethics
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