Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Evolution, Societal Sexism, and Universal Average Sex Differences in Cognition and Behavior: Societies in which out-marriage is normative will exhibit more differences

Evolution, Societal Sexism, and Universal Average Sex Differences in Cognition and Behavior. Lee Ellis. In Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society, edited by Rosemary L. Hopcroft.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190299323.013.30

Abstract: During the past century, social scientists have documented many cross-cultural sex differences in personality and behavior, quite a few of which now appear to be found in all human societies. However, contrary to most scientists’ expectations, these so-called universal sex differences have been shown to be more pronounced in Western industrial societies than in most non-Western developing societies. This chapter briefly reviews the evidence bearing on these findings and offers a biologically based theory that could help shed light on why cross-cultural sex differences exist. The following hypothesis is offered: The expression of many genes influencing sexually dimorphic traits is more likely among descendants of couples who are least closely related to one another. If so, societies in which out-marriage is normative (i.e., Western industrial countries) will exhibit a stronger expression of genes for sexually dimorphic traits compared to societies in which consanguineal marriages are common.

Keywords: social role theory, evolutionary theory, evolutionary neuroandrogenic theory, sex egalitarian societies, sex differences, personality traits

Check also Universal and Specific in the Five Factor Model of Personality. Jüri Allik and Anu Realo. In The Oxford Handbook of the Five Factor Model, edited by Thomas A. Widiger. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/contrary-to-predictions-from.html

And Gender Differences in Personality Traits Across Cultures: Robust and Surprising Findings. Paul T. Costa Jr., Antonio Terracciano, and Robert R. McCrae. Journai of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001, Vol. 81, No. 2,322-331. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.81.2.322


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This chapter focuses on better understanding numerous average sex differences in cognition and behavior. Because the phrase is used frequently, it is henceforth abbreviated with the acronym ASDCBs. This abbreviation refers to any and all average sex differences in how humans think and behave. For ASDCBs that appear to exist in all societies and time frames, the term universal ASDCBs is used.
There are five parts to this chapter. Part 1 documents that numerous universal ASDCBs now appear to exist. Part 2 reviews evidence of how ASDCBs seems to vary in strength over time and across countries. In Part 3, findings from cross-cultural research on the nature of ASDCBs are described. Part 4 describes three theories for explaining ASDCBs, one being strictly environmental and two being of an evolutionary/biological nature. Part 5 explores how well the three theories explain what current evidence suggests about ASDCBs, as revealed in Parts 1–3.
In today’s fast-paced communications world, some readers may simply be interested in this chapter’s bottom line. For them, a brief conclusion section provides an overview of all five parts of the entire chapter.

Part 1: Universal ASDCBs

Social scientists have been searching for possible universal ASDCBs for many years, some with expectations that few, if any, would be found (Kessler & McKenna, 1978; (p. 498) Mead, 1963). Doubts about the existence of universal ASDCBs began to change in the 1970s with the publication of a book by Maccoby and Jacklin (1974). It summarized findings from several thousand studies published up to the early 1970s. Their review led them to identify four ASDCBs that seemed to be present across all cultures: (a) superior verbal ability in females, (b) greater visual–spatial ability in males, (c) better mathematical ability in males, and (d) more physical aggression in males.
Two decades later, a meta-analysis of thousands of additional studies was published by Feingold (1994). It brought him to confirm conclusions reached by Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) and then to add five more universal ASDCBs. Females, he said, were more anxious, friendly/gregarious, trusting of others, and tender-minded, whereas males were more assertive.
A decade and a half after Feingold’s (1994) meta-analysis was published, eight colleagues and I published a book in which findings from more than 18,000 studies pertaining to sex differences were summarized (Ellis et al., 2008). Citations to the studies were organized into hundreds of different tables, each one pertaining to a separate possible ASDCB. Many of the tables had to do with strictly biological traits and included information on nonhumans, neither of which are of concern here. The majority of tables, however, actually pertained to some aspect of human cognition or behavior. From these tables, evidence of 65 universal ASDCBs was obtained. Methodologically, we designated an ASDCB as being apparently universal if (a) at least 10 relevant studies had been conducted and (b) each study without exception reported the same sex difference to exist to a statistically significant degree. For those interested in the details, each ASDCB is described in Ellis (2011a). To save space, here I merely provide a brief sketch of the nature of these 65 ASDCBs under seven subject headings:
  1. 1. Stratification and work: Twelve behavioral traits were identified having to do with social stratification or work. They indicate that males work longer hours outside the home and are more likely to be employed in a variety of “male-typical occupations” such as jobs of a supervisory, scientific, and engineering nature. Females, on the other hand, when employed outside the home, are more likely to work in people-oriented and caregiving occupations.
  2. 2. Drug consuming and illegal behavior: Central to the five traits under this category is that males consume more alcohol and engage in more criminal behavior than do females.
  3. 3. Social and play behavior: The general pattern seen in this category of 12 traits indicates that females are more cooperative and helpful to others throughout life and even in their childhood play activities. Males, on the other hand, tend to be more competitive and more prone to interact with members of the opposite sex in explicitly sexual ways.
  4. 4. Personality and general behavior: Seven personality and general behavior traits were identified. They boiled down to males throughout life being more inclined to explore their environments, to take greater physical risks, and to behave in hostile/aggressive ways toward one another. Females were found to be friendlier. In all the countries sampled, females also expressed greater concern about being overweight.
  5. (p. 499) 5. Attitudes and preferences: Twelve universal sex differences in attitudes and preferences were found. Males express greater interest in physical science and technology, and they want to watch and participate in sports more often than do females. Females have a greater preference for marriage partners who are taller and wealthier than themselves, whereas males want mates who are shorter and younger than themselves. Females have greater interest in school, whereas males have more interest in sex.
  6. 6. Mental health: Twelve universal sex differences involved mental health issues, broadly defined. In this regard, alcoholism, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, psychoticism, and autism are all more common in males. The cognitive/mental health traits that females exhibit more often are anorexia, bulimia, and panic attacks. Females are also more likely than males to blame themselves for any shortcomings, and they ruminate over unpleasant social experiences more.
  7. 7. Emotions and perceptions: The last category of universal sex differences involves females perceiving greater hazards in their environment, reporting greater feelings of stress, and crying more as adults. Males report feeling bored more.
Regarding emotions, readers might suspect that there are other universal tendencies, such as the tendency for women to be more depressed than men. There is in fact considerable evidence supporting this particular conclusion (Hopcroft & Bradley, 2007). However, a few exceptions exist (Ellis et al., 2008, p. 373). To give one of the most recent examples, data obtained from China revealed that equal proportions of men and women self-reported feeling depressed (Hopcroft & McLaughlin, 2012, p. 510).
Overall, it now appears safe to say that many universal ASDCBs exist. If one uses the criteria we set for confident conclusions in this regard, the number stands at 65. But if somewhat more liberal criteria are used, the number could be in the hundreds.
Of course, the search for universal ASDCBs is not over. Findings from hundreds of new studies of sex differences are published every year. No matter what criteria one sets, it is possible that (a) more universal ASDCBs will be located in the future and (b) exceptions to those already identified may be eventually unearthed. With these provisos in mind, some rather surprising evidence pertaining to ASDCBs is briefly described next. This evidence has to do with the types of cultures in which one finds the greatest degree of sex differences in cognition and behavior.

Part 2: ASDCBs Over Time and Across Cultures

Societal efforts have been made in Western cultures to treat the sexes more equitably for well over a century. One of the earliest landmarks in this regard occurred in 1893 when New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the right to vote, (p. 500) a right now afforded to all women living in democratic countries (Ramirez, Soysal, & Shanahan, 1997).
In many Western countries, particularly the United States, laws now guarantee women equal access to higher education (Klein et al., 2014), to sporting activities (Hargreaves, 2002; Milner & Braddock, 2016), and to employment opportunities (Rossilli, 2000). Women’s rights activists continue to work toward even greater equality, but undisputed progress has been made. For example, in Western societies, most adult women are now in the paid labor force, a dramatic increase over the past century (Durand, 2015). Even more dramatic changes have occurred in terms of higher education. At the start of the 20th century, roughly 90% of college graduates in industrialized countries were men; by the early 1990s, well over half of all college degrees were being awarded to women (Averett & Burton, 1996; Buchmann & DiPrete, 2006; Cho, 2007).
Given these trends, it is worthwhile asking if they have been paralleled by any changes in ASDCBs. For example, Have people’s attitudes toward sex equality shifted? Have sex stereotypes changed? Or, have people’s self-perceptions of themselves in masculine/feminine terms diminished? Although much of the relevant data are limited to the United States, the results are quite interesting. The following is a summary:
  • US attitudes regarding sex equality: One study sought to determine if people in the United States are becoming more sympathetic to the idea that men and women should be treated more equally. To address this question, it compared responses to various questions about sex equality that were first administered in the early 1960s and then again in the mid-1990s (Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). Findings indicated that substantial shifts have occurred. In particular, over the three decades involved, greater proportions of people of both sexes believed that men and women should be treated equally in interpersonal relations and in employment opportunities. From this investigation, it appears safe to infer that US attitudes regarding the desirability of treating the sexes equally have become more favorable in recent decades.
  • US sex stereotypes: If attitudes toward treating males and females more equally have become more favorable, one might be led to believe that sex stereotypes have diminished. Sex stereotypes, of course, refer to the extent to which people believe that males and females behave differently regarding a wide range of traits. To address this question, one study compared sex stereotypes expressed by US respondents first in 1974 to similar respondents in 1997 nearly a quarter of a century later (Lueptow, Garovich-Szabo, & Lueptow, 2001). In both cases, respondents were given a list of behavior traits and asked to rate them as being either more typical of males (masculine) or of females (feminine, or not different regarding sex). Overall, this study concluded that nearly all of the stereotypes have remained virtually unchanged. The only exception involved a slight decrease in the extent to which females were stereotyped as exhibiting certain feminine traits, but there were no significant changes in the extent to which males were stereotyped as possessing masculine traits (see also Lueptow, 2005).
  • (p. 501) US masculinity–femininity self-perceptions: Another investigation sought to assess trends in personality sex differences by meta-analyzing findings from studies that had all used a popular measure of masculinity–femininity, known as the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Twenge, 1997). All of the studies included in the meta-analysis were conducted in the United States predominantly among college students from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s. Analyses revealed no significant changes in the degree to which males considered themselves to be masculine or feminine over a wide variety of interests and preferences. Females had not changed their self-ratings in terms of possessing masculine interests and preferences, but women sampled in the 1990s did express somewhat more feminine interests and preferences than did women sampled in the 1970s. Thus, although serious validity issues have been raised regarding the Bem scale (Hoffman & Borders, 2001), Twenge’s meta-analysis suggests that despite all the changes that have occurred both culturally and legislatively in terms of more equal treatment of men and women, the extent to which US college students perceive themselves regarding masculine or feminine traits has changed very little.

Part 3: ASDCBs Across Cultures

E-mail communications and computerized data management have made it possible for researchers throughout the world to conduct large-scale cross-cultural studies. One such study involved assembling responses from prior studies of more than 23,000 respondents residing on four different continents (i.e., Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America). The goal was to search for varied sex differences in personality traits (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001). In particular, the meta-study sought to determine if people living in Western countries (i.e., those in Europe and North America) exhibited stronger or weaker sex differences in personality traits compared to people from predominantly non-Western countries. Results revealed that across all four continents, similar sex differences existed in nearly all of the personality traits measured. However, to the amazement of the researchers, the degree of sex differences in personality traits was more pronounced in the Western countries than in the predominantly non-Western countries (p. 322). Thus, despite all the social and legislative efforts made to promote sex equality in Western countries, sex differences in personality traits were greater in the Western countries than in countries in which few such efforts have yet to be undertaken.
Evolution, Societal Sexism, and Universal Average Sex Differences in Cognition and BehaviorClick to view larger
Figure 23.1 A scatterplot of the relationship between the mean sex differences in overall personality traits reported by Schmitt et al. (2008) and the mean sex differences reported by Costa et al. (2001) for the 25 countries sampled by both research teams. The dotted lines represent 95% confidence around the fitted linear regression line.
Source: Schmitt et al. (2008, p. 176).
Another research team investigated personality traits using measures from the Big Five Personality Inventory from more than 17,000 respondents in 55 countries (Schmitt, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008). The team’s work revealed that countries in which people’s health, lifespan, years of education, and wealth were the highest (i.e., predominantly Western industrial societies) were the countries with the greatest degree of sex differences in personality traits. Figure 23.1 shows how the findings from Schmitt et al.’s (p. 502) study correlate with those from the study by Costa et al. (2001). Note in particular how both studies are in agreement that the greatest sex differences in personality are found predominantly in affluent Western countries, whereas less affluent non-Western countries have the fewest sex differences in personality.
Subsequent work by Schmitt (2015) involved measuring personality traits among respondents drawn from 26 different countries. It further reinforced the conclusion that the most extreme average sex differences were among respondents drawn from the most industrialized and affluent predominantly Western societies. Similar conclusions about affluent Western societies exhibiting the greatest sex differences have been reported not only for personality traits (McCrae & Terracciano, 2005; Schmitt et al., 2016) but also for depression, for which females typically surpass males (Hopcroft & Bradley, 2007; Hopcroft & McLaughlin, 2012).
In the case of academic achievement, most studies have found that females outperform males at least through adolescence (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 278–279). A recent international study of more than 1 million adolescents was undertaken to determine if there were fewer tendencies for females to outperform males in predominantly Western (p. 503) egalitarian countries as opposed to countries in which equality of the sexes is generally discouraged. It found no significant differences in this regard (Stoet & Geary, 2015).
Overall, although Western attitudes toward sex equality have become more prevalent in recent decades, sex stereotypes and sex differences in ASDCBs (e.g., self-concepts and personality) have changed very little. Even more surprising, when Western industrial societies are compared to non-Western developing countries, sex differences in personality traits appear to be more pronounced in the former than in the latter. What in the world is going on? Perhaps theories of ASDCBs can shed light on these rather curious findings.

Part 4: Theories of ASDCBs

Ideas on why males and females seem to think and behave differently have been around for a long time. Proposals began to solidify enough to be identifiable as scientific theories much more recently. Basically, three theories with distinct properties can be identified.

Social Role Theory

The concept of social roles began to be used by social scientists in the 1940s. It refers to how human behavior often seems to be heavily influenced by the training and expectations one receives from others (e.g., parents, teachers, and other influential persons) within a particular culture as though people’s behavior is being scripted by others (Merton, 1968; Parsons, 1942). This perspective began to take the form of a theory of sex differences in behavior in the 1960s (Rosenberg & Sutton-Smith, 1968; Tulkin, Muller, & Conn, 1969).
Social role theory (also sometimes called sex role theory) argues that all sex differences in behavior are learned through the socialization process. Basically, each individual learns what is culturally expected of men and women, and most then gradually conform to those particular norms depending on their own sex (Bussey & Bandura, 1999; Kessler & McKenna, 1978). To illustrate, one of the first things any expectant parent wants to know about his or her baby is whether it is a boy or a girl. As soon as one learns the answer, from birth onward, boys and girls are treated differently on average, and it is this differential treatment as well as a child’s understanding of how he or she is expected to behave that cause average sex differences in behavior to develop throughout life (Eagly, 2013; Eagly & Wood, 1999; Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000; Ridgeway & Correll, 2004).
Currently, among the most prominent proponents of social role theory are Eagly and Wood (1999; see also Eagly, 2013). They assert that were it not for learning and powerful socialization processes, males and females would be all but identical in their behavior. In their words, “extensive socialization is required to orient boys and girls to function differently” (Wood & Eagly, 2002, p. 705). Another proponent summarized social role theory as follows (Rogers, 2005): “Men are expected to be ‘aggressive’ and unemotional, (p. 504) women to be sensitive, intuitive, etc. From a very early age, they learn what is expected of them in terms of ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ personality, and this is heavily reinforced at puberty” (p. 11).
Social role theory reflects what has been termed a “blank slate” perspective because it assumes that males and females would behave the same if it were not for the societies in which they live having different expectations of what is “appropriate” behavior for males and females (Pinker, 2002, pp. 337–371). In other words, social role theorists “expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender egalitarianism” (Schmitt et al., 2016, p. 1). It is worth keeping in mind that two surveys have both indicated that social role theory is by far the most popular theory for explaining sex differences in behavior, at least among sociologists (Horowitz, Yaworsky, & Kickham, 2014; Sanderson & Ellis, 1992).

Evolutionary Theory

Beginning in the 1970s, some social scientists began to move toward studying ASDCBs from an evolutionary perspective (Daly & Wilson, 1978; Simon, 1980). Since then, evolution-based proposals for explaining ASDCBs have expanded a great deal (Buss, 2012; Campbell, 2013; Geary, 2010; Hopcroft, 2016; Lippa, 2010; Mealey, 2000; Schmitt, 2015). Without denying the role of learning or culture, proponents of this perspective emphasize that biological and reproductive factors are even more important.
The main elements in all evolutionary explanations for ASDCBs can be summarized as follows: Biologically, the purpose of life is simply to produce more life, especially life resembling whatever organisms are currently living. In sexually reproducing species, two individuals are required to make new life: one male and one female. For males and females to attract one another, each must exhibit certain traits. In highly evolved species such as humans, the “right” combination of male and female traits for attracting the opposite sex includes behavior as well as physical characteristics.
To provide a simple illustration of the previously discussed line of reasoning, imagine that there are two groups of females in a human population. Group 1 prefers mating with males who control a continual supply of food and other resources and are willing to share them with their mates. Group 2 has no interest in males with resources, preferring instead males who appear to be young and attractive from a health standpoint. Which group of females will pass their genes on at the highest rate? Group 2 would have an advantage in the sense that young and health mates would be more likely to produce healthy offspring. However, Group 1 females would gravitate toward mates with resources to sustain them throughout each pregnancy. Especially given the lengthy gestation periods for each human pregnancy and the dependence that each offspring has on a stable supply of resources, under most circumstances, the females in Group 1 would probably out-reproduce those in Group 2.
Now pose the same question for two groups of males. Again assume that the males in Group 1 prefer females who control and share resources, whereas the males in Group 2 (p. 505) are primarily drawn to females who appear youthful and healthy. Keep in mind that because they do not gestate offspring, males have a much higher reproductive ceiling than do females. So which group of males would most likely have the most surviving offspring? By choosing females who control many resources, the Group 1 males would be drawn to women who are willing to spend considerable time working, which would probably limit the time these women would devote to gestating offspring. On the other hand, the Group 2 males who are most drawn to females who are relatively young and attractive would be able to pass their genes on at considerably higher rates, provided they (the males) are willing to devote time to resource provisioning.
The preceding evolutionary reasoning may seem almost too simple for its implications to be true in reality. However, notice how scenarios match evidence that males emphasize youthfulness and physical attractiveness more than females do when choosing mates, whereas most females are more interested in mating with males with the capacity to make a “decent living” (Conroy-Beam, Buss, Pham, & Shackelford, 2015; Zentner & Mitura, 2012). It is impossible to prove that these sex differences in human mate preferences are evolutionarily based, but the fact that there is virtually no society in which these mating patterns do not exist (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 441–444; Shackelford, Schmitt, & Buss, 2005) is at least consistent with such an explanation.
Also, notice how the evolutionary arguments just presented can be extended to help explain some other well-documented sex differences:
  1. 1. Compared to females, males are more likely to choose jobs based on how much money they can earn (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 462–463).
  2. 2. On average, among full-time workers, males work longer hours (Ellis et al., 2008, p. 782).
  3. 3. In every society ever studied, mothers spend more time caring for their children than do fathers (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 651–652).
  4. 4. Throughout the world, males express stronger desires to have multiple sex partners than is the case for females (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 435–437; Schmitt, 2003).
The overall point being made is that evolutionary reasoning can provide useful conceptual tools for making sense of quite a few apparently universal ASDCBs. Of course, social role theorists might explain these same sex differences by arguing that each one reflects a “cultural script” of what males and females should do. As discussed further in the following section, the main problem with the “cultural script” hypothesis is that it implies that very few, if any, universal ASDCBs should exist.

Evolutionary Neuroandrogenic Theory

It may be possible to strengthen conventional evolutionary theory, at least in terms of explaining ASDCBs, by combining it with evidence of how genes, hormones, and the brains of males and females differ. Biologically, the only things that survive indefinitely (p. 506) after an organism dies are the genes carried by its descendants. Within a given species, these genes come in two forms, one for males and the other for females. By and large, the collection of genes for males and for females are extremely similar. The main exception involves the so-called sex chromosomes, of which females carry two X chromosomes and males have just one X along with one Y chromosome.
In essence, female mammals (including humans) are the default sex, with males being just a variant on the female sex (Dennis, 2004; Woodson & Gorski, 2000). Genes on the Y chromosome serve to effectively switch the would-be female ovaries into becoming testes instead. Testes are special organs for producing a sex hormone known as testosterone along with other so-called male sex hormones, collectively known as androgens.
Hormones are biochemicals that are produced in one part of the body and then transferred to other parts of the body (usually via the blood system) where they have their primary effects. Although testosterone and other androgens are produced mainly in the male testes, small quantities are also produced in the female ovaries and in the adrenal glands of both sexes. Studies have shown that bodily exposure to androgens has many effects, including the promotion of muscle and bone tissue (Leonard et al., 2010), thereby explaining why males on average are stronger and taller than females (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 15 and 30). However, it is the effects of androgens on the brain that are of greatest importance regarding ASDCBs.
Research has shown that androgens alter the brain in many ways, including the size of various parts of the brain, the biochemicals being released, and how the brain actually functions (Baron-Cohen, 2004; Kimura, 1992; McHenry, Carrier, Hull, & Kabbaj, 2014). These androgenic modifications occur both prenatally and postpubertally, with the prenatal effects of androgens being the most profound and irreversible (Auyeung, Lombardo, & Baron-Cohen, 2013; Baron-Cohen, 2004). As one would expect, many parts of male and female brains have been shown to differ on average, both structurally (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 54–78) and functionally (Ellis et al., 2008, pp. 79–87).
To help explain universal ASDCBs, I have proposed a theory that can also be considered merely an extension of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Thus, it is called evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory (Ellis, 2011a, 2011b). The theory stipulates that androgens have evolved as the main biochemicals responsible for masculinizing/defeminizing the brain of an otherwise female mammal. In other words, ENA theory asserts that androgens not only masculinized/defeminized the body as a whole (e.g., increased muscularity) but also masculinize/defeminize the brain specifically. Because the brain is the direct controller of both thought and behavior, ENA theory offers the following explanation for universal ASDCBs: By androgenizing the brain, natural selection has tailored male brains to exhibit thoughts and behavior that promote a male reproductive strategy and female brains to exhibit thoughts and behavior conducive to a female reproductive strategy. The nature of both strategies is the types of thinking and behavior that helps each sex pass on genes to future generations.
In more detailed terms, ENA theory asserts that androgens have evolved the ability to not only masculinize/defeminize the body as a whole (e.g., increased muscularity and bone density) but also masculinize/defeminize the brain, thereby impacting thought (p. 507) and behavior. The resulting sex differences in thought and behavior must serve both sexes’ overall reproductive interests. More precisely, as a result of male brains being more heavily androgenized, they mainly produce masculine thoughts and behavior, most of which are part of an overall male reproductive strategy. Female brains, on the other hand, have evolved tendencies to retain feminine thoughts and behavior, which are part of a predominantly female reproductive strategy.
If the above reasoning is correct, one can make the following deductions: Most universal ASDCBs have evolved by natural selection and have been promoted by exposing the brains of males to high (male-typical) levels of androgens. This means that androgens are biochemicals naturally selected for modifying the “normal” female brain into a male brain.
It is worth adding that the nature of the evolved sex differences may not always be immediately apparent. For example, nearly all studies have found males on average to be more accurate than females when throwing objects such as balls or darts at targets (Ellis et al., 2008, p. 240). This ability may contribute little or nothing to male reproductive success in today’s industrial societies. However, in the past, it is likely to have enhanced male hunting ability, which in turn allowed males to provide resources to mates who were gestating and breast-feeding their offspring. Of course, the average number of offspring they successfully rear would be the “reproductive payoff” for the better hunting ability of these males (and for the females who chose these males as mating partners).
ENA theory goes beyond conventional (Darwinian) evolutionary theory in the sense that it specifies how neurohormonal factors has been naturally selected so as to produce ASDCBs. This extra element in turn allows numerous testable hypotheses to be derived from ENA theory about ASDCBs that conventional evolutionary theory does not allow one to deduce.
To illustrate, consider the field of criminology. Many proposals have been made in recent years that evolutionary theory may help explain why males are more criminal than females, especially regarding serious property and violent offenses (Buss, 2012; Daly & Wilson, 1990; Duntley & Shackelford, 2008; Ellis, 2005; Roach & Pease, 2013). Most of these proposals hinge on the fact that males have a much higher reproductive ceiling than do females (i.e., a male can have many more offspring in a lifetime than can a female). Of course, for males to capitalize on their higher reproductive ceiling, they need to have numerous sex partners. But, as already noted, females generally prefer males with resource-procuring abilities. To meet expectations in this regard, males must usually compete with other males. Among the fastest ways to obtain resources and thereby to attract potential mates is for males to engage in thefts, burglaries, robberies, and embezzlements.
Additional criminal methods males can employ to acquire mating opportunities involves the use of physical force against prospective mates—that is, by committing rape or sexual assault (Ellis, 2005). Males can also effectively compete with rival males for resources and mating opportunities by assaulting or even murdering these rivals (Buss, 2012, Daly & Wilson, 1990).
The bottom line is that because males can reproduce much more prolifically than females, many males appear to have evolved several “dirty tricks” (that nearly (p. 508) all governments seek to suppress with the criminal justice system) to help pass their genes on to future generations. Of course, these evolutionary arguments are difficult to directly test. However, because ENA theory links its evolutionary arguments directly with arguments about the effects of androgens on the brain, it provides additional testable hypotheses about sex differences in offending. For example, if ENA theory is true, criminals should have brains that are more highly androgenized. In other words, although almost all males should have higher androgen levels than females, criminal males should have even higher androgen levels than males in general.
Recently, a colleague and I tested this line of reasoning using two separate samples, one from the United States (Hoskin & Ellis, 2015) and the other from both the United States and Malaysia (Ellis & Hoskin, 2015). In both studies, we provided respondents with a checklist of delinquent and criminal acts for them to self-report. To measure brain exposure to prenatal androgens, we used a measure known as the 2D:4D ratio. This measure simply involves the relative length of the second and fourth digits (usually on the right hand). Basically, the longer the fourth digit (ring finger) is compared to the second digit (pointing finger), the greater the exposure to prenatal testosterone and possibly other androgens (Manning, 2009).
Our findings were consistent with what ENA theory predicts: Respondents with the lowest 2D:4D ratios reported greater involvement in delinquency and crime than respondents with the highest ratios. We even tested the hypothesis separately by sex and found the same basic pattern: Both males and females with the lowest 2D:4D ratios self-reported more crime compared to their counterparts with relatively high 2D:4D ratios. This evidence, of course, does not by itself prove ENA theory because the theory basically makes the same predictions for all evolved traits that exhibit average differences between males and females (Ellis, 2011a, 2011b). Therefore, ENA theory provides a conceptual platform for theorizing about all manner of ASDCBs with more ways of being disproven than is true for conventional evolutionary theory.

Part 5: Theoretically Explaining Societal and Temporal Variations in ASDCBs

The last issue to be covered in this chapter involves assessing each of the three theories just identified—social role theory, conventional evolutionary theory, and ENA theory—regarding their abilities to explain findings reviewed in Parts 1–3. In other words, which of these three theories can account for findings about the apparently universal ASDCBs documented so far?
Regarding Part 1, both of the evolutionary theories have an advantage over the social role theory. This is because social role theory assumes that cultural learning is largely responsible for ASDCBs. If this were true, one would not expect to find very many, if (p. 509) any, universal ASDCBs. To give just a few examples, why would alcoholism and interests in engineering be more common in men in all known societies if these sex differences are the result of culturally based learning? Similarly, one should be able to find societies in which boys express greater liking of school and seek to be more cooperative with others compared to females, but as of yet, such sex differences have failed to materialize in any empirical study (Ellis, 2011a).
In the case of the two evolutionary theories, both can explain the findings reviewed in Part 1 by simply noting that evolutionary forces have operated on human populations in essentially the same way for thousands of years. Therefore, if most ASDCBs are either directly or indirectly the result of natural selection, one would expect to find many universal ASDCBs. It is worth mentioning that ENA theory goes on to predict that the vast majority of universal ASDCBs will be associated with differential brain exposure to androgens, an implication that largely remains untested.
In the case of the findings reported in Part 2, the picture is more mixed in terms of judging the merits of the three theories. Recall that the main conclusions drawn from the studies reviewed in Part 2 pertained to trends in the United States. These trends were as follows:
  1. 1. Attitudes have become more accepting of equality between the sexes in recent decades.
  2. 2. Sex stereotypes have remained more or less stable during the past few decades.
  3. 3. Self-perceptions by men and women in terms of their being masculine, feminine, or somewhere in between have changed very little in recent decades.
Because social role theory considers culturally based learning to be responsible for all ASDCBs, it would probably explain attitudes toward sex equality also in terms of cultural learning. Thus, as anti-discrimination laws began to be passes in the United States especially in the 1960s, social role theorists would expect public opinion to shift away from sex discrimination, which it certainly has. Both of the evolutionary theories, however, are essentially silent to the possibility of attitudinal changes regarding sex equality, so they are weaker than social role theory in this regard.
Regarding the apparent stability of sex stereotypes and self-perceptions concerning people’s feelings of masculinity/femininity, both evolutionary theories would probably have an edge over social role theory. This is because they envision most ASDCBs as having evolved over thousands of years, making them unlikely to change significantly over one or two generations.
Part 3 indicated that sex differences in personality traits were more pronounced in most Western industrial societies than in most non-Western developing countries. This poses a serious challenge to all three theories of ASDCBs. Social role theorists would be hard-pressed to explain why societies in which the greatest efforts have been made toward sex equality would end up exhibiting the most sex inequality, at least regarding personality. In the case of the two evolutionary theories, they are largely silent regarding any cross-country comparisons of sex differences in personality.
(p. 510) Because ENA theory has elements beyond what is found in conventional evolutionary theory, it might be possible for researchers to compare citizens from Western and non-Western societies in terms of average androgen levels. If sex differences in androgen levels are higher in countries with the greatest sex differences in personality, it could begin to provide a theoretical basis for explaining Western/non-Western patterns in this regard. Along these lines, a study by Manning, Fink, and Trivers (2014) compared countries in terms of their citizens’ average prenatal androgen exposure and the percentage of elected officials who were females and the percentage of the paid workforce who were females. The study concluded that countries in which female exposure to prenatal testosterone (as indicated by 2D:4D ratios) was high and in which male exposure was low had the highest proportions of females in elective offices and in the labor force. This study seems relevant to ASDCB determination. However, notice that it implies that citizens of Western societies have fewer average sex differences in exposure to androgens than do citizens of non-Western societies. The studies summarized in Part 3 by Costa et al. (2001) and Schmitt et al. (2008), on the other hand, lead one to conclude that Western societies have greater average sex differences in personality than do non-Western societies. These seeming inconsistencies call for more empirical scrutiny.

Conclusion

This chapter was divided into five parts. Part 1 documented growing evidence of numerous universal ASDCBs (average sex differences in cognition and behavior). In particular, work by colleagues and myself led us to tentatively identify 65 such traits (Ellis, 2011a, 2011b; Ellis et al., 2008).
In Part 2, studies pertaining to three questions about ASDCBs were explored. First, have people’s attitudes toward sex equality changed, and if so, in what direction? The answer is that these attitudes have changed. At least in the United States, acceptance of women being educated and allowed to work in jobs alongside men has grown considerably since the 1970s (Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001).
Second, have sex stereotypes changed, and if so, how? The answer appears to be that sex stereotypes have changed very little during the past few decades at least in the United States. Specifically, people’s beliefs about how males and females differ in terms of basic interests, personality, and behaviors appear to have remained virtually the same in the 1990s as they were in the 1970s (Lueptow, 2005; Lueptow et al., 2001).
Third, have there been changes in men’s and women’s self-perceptions regarding their masculinity/femininity? In other words, do the sexes today think of themselves as just masculine, feminine, or somewhere in between, as was true in their parent’s generation? The evidence suggests that the answer is that little has changed, with the possible exception of contemporary women having somewhat more feminine interests than those sampled in the 1970s (Twenge, 1997).
(p. 511) The issue addressed in Part 3 had to do with making cross-cultural comparisons regarding sex differences in personality. Surprisingly, the evidence suggests that greater sex differences exist in most Western industrialized societies than in most non-Western developing societies (Costa et al., 2001; Hopcroft & Bradley, 2007; Hopcroft & McLaughlin 2012; Schmitt et al., 2016). This finding seems counterintuitive because considerably more effort has been made in most Western societies to encourage sex equality than has been made in most non-Western societies.
Part 4 described the three theories that have been proposed for explaining ASDCBs. The oldest one to be proposed is social role theory (Eagly & Wood, 1999). This theory asserts that males and females would be virtually identical in how they think and behave if it were not for sex differences in sociocultural training and expectations (Eagly et al., 2000). Surveys among sociologists indicate that it remains the most popular theory among social scientists (Horowitz et al., 2014; Sanderson & Ellis, 1992).
Beginning in approximately the 1970s, Darwin’s theory of evolution began to be specifically applied to the study of human ASDCBs (Hrdy, 1981; Wilson & Daly, 1978). Since then, numerous others have advocated an evolutionary approach to the study of ASDCBs (Archer, 1996; Geary, 2010; Hopcroft, 2016; Mealey, 2000). An evolutionary perspective explains why males and females think and behave differently based on how the sexes differ in their contributions to the reproductive process. In other words, the rate at which humans leave descendants (and therefore their genes) in future generations depends heavily on males and females thinking and behaving differently. Thus, whether operating through differential learning or some biological process, the most reproductively successful males will exhibit thought and behavior patterns than on average differ from those of the most reproductively successful females.
I have proposed a version of evolutionary theory that specifically incorporates brain and hormonal concepts (Ellis, 2006, 2011a, 2011b). This theory, called evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory, is specifically designed to explain average sex differences in cognition and behavior. According to this theory, all mammals (including humans) are essentially females. However, a special chromosome has evolved that carries genes for making roughly half of these would-be females into males instead. In essence, these genes operate by causing the would-be female ovaries to develop into testes, special organs for producing large quantities of a masculinizing hormone called testosterone (along with other male hormones, called androgens). Androgens affect thought and behavior by infiltrating the brain both prenatally and following puberty. As a result of greater androgen exposure, males on average end up thinking and behaving in ways that serve their reproductive interests, whereas low androgen exposure in females causes them to think and behave in ways that generally contribute to their reproductive interests.
Finally, Part 5 addresses the question of how well the three theories described in Part 4 can shed light on the evidence summarized in Parts 1–3. Social role theory has difficulty explaining why there are numerous universal ASDCBs as discussed in Part 1. It also predicts that ASDCBs would weaken as societies become more sex egalitarian, which Parts 2 and 3 indicate have not happened.
(p. 512) Because evolutionary theory assumes that most ASDCBs have been naturally (or sexually) selected, it is able to account for why large numbers of ASDCBs exist, as indicated in Part 1. Furthermore, the evidence cited in Part 2 that people’s stereotypes about sex differences and their self-concepts in terms of masculinity/femininity have changed very little in recent decades is also understandable in an evolutionary context. ENA theory, as an extended version of evolutionary theory, goes on to hypothesize that androgenic effects on the brain explain how ASDCBs have evolved. It remains to be seen if most ASDCBs are the result of neuroandrogenic factors, but at least one recent test of this hypothesis regarding sex differences in mate preferences provided moderate support (Ellis & Ratnasingam, 2015).
The evidence that sex differences in personality traits appear to be more pronounced in Western industrial societies than in most non-Western developing societies (Part 4) presents a conundrum for all three theories of ASDCBs. It is especially devastating to social role theory, which is based on the assumption that gender differences would be least prevalent in cultures that foster the greatest degree of “gender equality” (Schmitt et al., 2016). The fact that most sociologists subscribe to this theory more than any other (Horowitz et al., 2014; Sanderson & Ellis, 1992) suggests that a sea change is in the offering for how social scientists think about cognitive and behavioral sex differences.
There seems to be only a few ways to explain why the most sex egalitarian societies have the greatest degree of sex differences in terms of personality traits. One possibility is that more of the genes responsible for sex differences in cognitive and behavioral traits have accumulated in Western populations than in non-Western populations. If so, one would be likely to find that sex differences in physical traits would also be more prevalent in Western populations, a possibility for which I could find no evidence.
Another possibility is that by being more lenient in allowing its citizens to express themselves in sex-related terms, males in Western cultures may end up thinking and behaving in more male-typical ways, and females in more female-typical ways, than is typical of non-Western cultures. If this second line of reasoning is true, it would turn traditional sex-role theorizing on its head. In other words, social scientists who argue that one should not stereotype or try to influence people’s behavior according to “conventional sex roles” because it contributes to sex inequality are mistaken. To the contrary, the effects of culturally prescribed sex roles would actually be inhibiting the expression of sex differences in thought and behavior. Thus, the more equitably males and females are treated by their sociocultural surroundings, the more different men and women will become.
In closing, I offer a proposal for social scientists to consider and test during the ensuing years. It is partly based on evidence that arranged marriages, particularly among close relatives (usually first cousins), are widespread both historically and even today in most developing countries (Desai & Andrist, 2010; Jurdi & Saxena, 2003). Contemporary developed countries appear to be among the only cultures in which arranged consanguineal marriages are rare (Hatfield, Rapson, & Martel, 2007).
I propose that one of the effects of freely marrying individuals from large pools of nonrelatives is that this cultural practice allows the expression of genes for traits to be (p. 513) maximized. This includes genes responsible for sexually dimorphic cognitive and behavioral traits. If so, it is in societies in which out-marrying is most common—that is, primarily Western industrial countries—that one will find the expression of genes for masculine traits in males and feminine traits in females to be the greatest.
Overall, it is clear that research is still needed to identify ASDCBs and to understand the factors responsible for them and for why they appear to be more pronounced in some cultures than in others. Nevertheless, the accumulation of ASDCB research so far is yielding tantalizing surprises that could fundamentally challenge some of sociology’s more cherished assumptions.

Acknowledgments

The comments provided by Rosemary L. Hopcroft, Anthony Hoskin, Malini Ratnasingam, and David P. Schmitt on drafts of this manuscript are greatly appreciated.

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Monday, March 12, 2018

Religious people are less accepting of unethical behavior and report more volunteering, but are no more trustworthy in a trust game with an unknown person

Religion, moral attitudes and economic behavior. Isadora Kirchmaier, Jens Prüfer, Stefan T. Trautmann. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 148, April 2018, Pages 282–300, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.02.022

Highlights
•    Religious people are less accepting of unethical behavior and report more volunteering.
•    Religious people are no more trustworthy in a trust game with an unknown person.
•    Religious people have lower preference for redistribution.
•    Parental religion correlates with their children's moral attitudes.

Abstract: Using data for a representative sample of the Dutch population with information about participants’ religious background, we study the association between religion and moral behavior and attitudes. We find that religious people are less accepting of unethical economic behavior (e.g., tax evasion, bribery) and report more volunteering. They are equally likely as non-religious people to betray trust in an experimental game, where social behavior is unobservable and not directed to a self-selected group of recipients. Religious people also report lower preference for redistribution. Considering differences between denominations, Catholics betray less than non-religious people, while Protestants betray more than Catholics and are indistinguishable from the non-religious. We also explore the intergenerational transmission and the potential causality of these associations.

Keywords: Religion; Ethics; Redistribution; Trust game

Reluctance to Benefit from Others’ Misfortune: Feeling that benefitting from it increases the likelihood that such harm will actually occur

Lelieveld, Gert-Jan, Yoel Inbar, and Erik van Dijk 2018. “Explaining Reluctance to Benefit from Others’ Misfortune”. PsyArXiv. March 12. psyarxiv.com/twmnp

Abstract: The current article investigates decisions where people are not causing harm to others, but only benefit from the harm. Specifically, we assessed people's willingness to benefit from other's chance-caused misfortunes. In five studies, examining real behavior of individuals in a television game show (Study 1) and using experimental betting tasks (Studies 2-5), we show that people are reluctant to benefit from the misfortunes of others. While in all studies participants' decisions were objectively unrelated to the likelihood of misfortune befalling others, subsequent analyses indicate that people erroneously feel that benefitting from others' misfortune increases the likelihood that such harm will actually occur. The results are discussed in relation to the literature on moral decision making and magical thinking.

Facial displays are not fixed, semantic read-outs of internal states such as emotions or intentions, but flexible tools for social influence. Facial displays are not about us, but about changing the behavior of those around us

Facial Displays Are Tools for Social Influence. Carlos Crivelli, Alan J. Fridlund. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.02.006

Highlights

.  Like non-human animal signals, human facial displays are an important way that we regulate our social interactions, whether they are in public or in private, and whether our ‘interactants’ are real or fantasied people, non-human animals, virtual agents, or even inanimate objects toward which we attribute agency.

.  Facial displays are not fixed, semantic read-outs of internal states such as emotions or intentions, but flexible tools for social influence. Facial displays are not about us, but about changing the behavior of those around us.

.  The behavioral ecology view of facial displays (BECV) is an externalist and functionalist approach to facial behavior that reconceives it as signaling contingent social action.

Abstract: Based on modern theories of signal evolution and animal communication, the behavioral ecology view of facial displays (BECV) reconceives our ‘facial expressions of emotion’ as social tools that serve as lead signs to contingent action in social negotiation. BECV offers an externalist, functionalist view of facial displays that is not bound to Western conceptions about either expressions or emotions. It easily accommodates recent findings of diversity in facial displays, their public context-dependency, and the curious but common occurrence of solitary facial behavior. Finally, BECV restores continuity of human facial behavior research with modern functional accounts of non-human communication, and provides a non-mentalistic account of facial displays well-suited to new developments in artificial intelligence and social robotics.

Keywords: behavioral ecology; facial displays; social influence; diversity; emotion; evolution

No Evidence for Desensitization in Empathy for Pain after a Violent Video Game Intervention in a Longitudinal fMRI Study on Non-Gamers

The Myth of Blunted Gamers: No Evidence for Desensitization in Empathy for Pain after a Violent Video Game Intervention in a Longitudinal fMRI Study on Non-Gamers. S Kuhn et al. Neurosignals 2018;26:22–30, https://doi.org/10.1159/000487217

Abstract

Background/Aims: It is a common concern in the research field and the community that habitual violent video gaming reduces empathy for pain in its players. However, previous fMRI studies have only compared habitual game players against control participants cross-sectionally. However the observed pattern of results may be due to a priori differences in people who become gamers and who not. In order to derive the causal conclusion that violent video game play causes desensitisation, longitudinal studies are needed.

Methods: Therefore we conducted a longitudinal fMRI intervention study over 16 weeks. Participants were randomly assigned to 1) play a violent video game (Grand Theft Auto 5), 2) perform a social life simulation game (The Sims 3) 30 min/day for 8 weeks, 3) serve as passive control. To assess empathy processing, participants were exposed to painful and non-painful stimuli (e.g. someone cutting a cucumber with or without hurting herself) either as real photographs or video-game like depictions in a 3T MRI scanner before and after the training intervention as well as two months after training.

Results: We did not find any evidence for desensitization in the empathy network for pain in the violent video game group at any time point.

Conclusions: The present results provide strong evidence against the frequently proclaimed negative effects of playing violent video games and will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the effects of violent video gaming in real life.

Keywords: Violent video games; Aggression; Empathy; fMRI; Training study.

Cosa Nostra and the Camorra: Assessment of personality, alexithymic traits, and attachment styles

Cosa Nostra and the Camorra: Assessment of personality, alexithymic traits, and attachment styles. Giuseppe Craparo et al. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Volume 58, May–June 2018, Pages 17–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2018.02.010

Abstract: The Mafia (Cosa Nostra) and the Camorra are criminal organizations deeply rooted in an immoral familyism in which group interests are protected to the detriment of the individual. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of personality disorders, alexithymic traits and specific attachment styles in a sample of members belonging to these two different organized crime groups. We carried out two studies adopting two different perspectives. In the first study, we recruited 20 participants (10 members of Cosa Nostra and 10 members of the Camorra) who were serving time in the Augusta (Sicily) prison for crimes they had committed as members of the two Mafia-type organizations. The age of the Cosa Nostra members ranged from 28 to 62 years (M = 47.40, SD = 10.25); the age of the Camorra members ranged from 45 to 68 (M = 55.30, SD = 7.06). We tested personality profiles, attachment styles, alexithymia, and psychopathy and compared the results between the two groups. In this study while we did not find significant differences between the two groups, we were able to identify some discrepancies in a few of the variables analysed. In the second study, we used the Structured Interview of Personality Organization (STIPO) to analyse the personality organization of 10 of 20 participants (5 members of Cosa Nostra and 5 members of Camorra). Analysing the results at the STIPO we found a significant presence of borderline personality organization in both groups. As regards attachment style, we found that Camorra-members' scores high (75°) on the Discomfort with Closeness (related to Avoidant Attachment Style) and Relationship as Secondary factors of the Attachment Style Questionnaire. The Data collected in our study were not sufficient to identify a specific personality disorder or a specific serious psychological condition in the two groups of participants. Nonetheless, thanks to use of the STIPO we were able to determine that in the sample analysed there was not one subject with a psychotic personality organization; we did however find the presence of borderline personality organization and neurotic personality organization in some of the subjects.

Have wars and violence declined? It seems not.

Have wars and violence declined? Michael Mann. Theory and Society, February 2018, Volume 47, Issue 1, pp 37–60. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-018-9305-y

Abstract: For over 150 years liberal optimism has dominated theories of war and violence. It has been repeatedly argued that war and violence either are declining or will shortly decline. There have been exceptions, especially in Germany and more generally in the first half of the twentieth century, but there has been a recent revival of such optimism, especially in the work of Azar Gat, John Mueller, Joshua Goldstein, and Steven Pinker who all perceive a long-term decline in war and violence through history, speeding up in the post-1945 period. Critiquing Pinker’s statistics on war fatalities, I show that the overall pattern is not a decline in war, but substantial variation between periods and places. War has not declined and current trends are slightly in the opposite direction. The conventional view is that civil wars in the global South have largely replaced inter-state wars in the North, but this is misleading since there is major involvement in most civil wars by outside powers, including those of the North. There is more support for their view that homicide has declined in the long-term, at least in the North of the world (with the United States lagging somewhat). This is reinforced by technological improvements in long-distance weaponry and the two transformations have shifted war, especially in the North, from being “ferocious” to “callous” in character. This renders war less visible and less central to Northern culture, which has the deceptive appearance of being rather pacific. Viewed from the South the view has been bleaker both in the colonial period and today. Globally war and violence are not declining, but they are being transformed.

Sunday, March 11, 2018

How you behave in school predicts life success above and beyond family background, broad traits, and cognitive ability

How you behave in school predicts life success above and beyond family background, broad traits, and cognitive ability. Spengler, Marion,Damian, Rodica Ioana,Roberts, Brent W. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Mar 05 , 2018, http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspp0000185

In this study, we investigated the role of student characteristics and behaviors in a longitudinal study over a 50-year timespan (using a large U.S. representative sample of high school students). We addressed the question of whether behaviors in school have any long-lasting effects for one‘s later life. Specifically, we investigated the role of being a responsible student, interest in school, writing skills, and reading skills in predicting educational attainment, occupational prestige, and income 11 years (N = 81,912) and 50 years (N = 1,952) after high school. We controlled for parental socioeconomic status, IQ, and broad personality traits in all analyses. We found that student characteristics and behaviors in adolescence predicted later educational and occupational success above and beyond parental socioeconomic status, IQ, and broad personality traits. Having higher interest in school was related to higher educational attainment at years 11 and 50, higher occupational prestige at year 11, and higher income at year 50. Higher levels of being a responsible student were related to higher educational attainment and higher occupational prestige at years 11 and 50. This was the first longitudinal study to test the role of student characteristics and behaviors over and above broad personality traits. It highlights the potential importance of what students do in school and how they react to their experiences during that time. It also highlights the possibility that things that happen in specific periods of one’s life may play out in ways far more significant than we expect.


Some people hear what they see: car indicator lights, flashing neon shop signs, and people’s movements as they walk may all trigger an auditory sensation; it is more frequent than previously thought

Sounds from seeing silent motion: Who hears them, and what looks loudest? Christopher J. Fassnidge, Elliot D. Freeman. Cortex, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.02.019

Abstract

Some people hear what they see: car indicator lights, flashing neon shop signs, and people’s movements as they walk may all trigger an auditory sensation, which we call the visual-evoked auditory response (vEAR or ‘visual ear’). We have conducted the first large-scale online survey (N>4000) of this little-known phenomenon. We analysed the prevalence of vEAR, what induces it, and what other traits are associated with it.

We asked respondents if they had previously experienced vEAR. Participants then rated silent videos for vividness of evoked auditory sensations, and answered additional questions.

Prevalence appeared higher relative to other typical synaesthesias. Prior awareness and video ratings were associated with greater frequency of other synaesthesias, including flashes evoked by sounds, and musical imagery. Higher-rated videos often depicted meaningful events that predicted sounds (e.g. collisions). However, ratings were also driven by the low-level ‘motion energy’ of non-predictive flashing or moving patterns, specifically in respondents who had previous awareness of vEAR.

Our motion energy analysis suggests that signals from visual motion processing may affect audition relatively directly, without requiring higher-level interpretative processes. While some popular explanations of synaesthesia assume rare and specific patterns of brain hyper-connectivity, the apparently high prevalence of vEAR, and its broad association with other synaesthesias and traits, are consistent with a common dependence on normal variations in physiological mechanisms of disinhibition or excitability of sensory brain areas and their functional connectivity, rather than just on specific patterns of hyper-connectivity. The prevalence of vEAR makes it easier to test such hypotheses further, and makes the results more relevant to understanding not only synaesthetic anomalies but also normal perception.

Keywords: Synaesthesia; individual differences; Audiovisual perception; Synaesthesia

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Saturday, March 10, 2018

Clothes are what most visibly set humans apart from all other species. In fact no other technology plays such an intimate part in the everyday lives of modern humans.

Clothing. Ian Gilligan. In T.K. Shackelford, V.A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3009-1

Clothes are what most visibly set humans apart from all other species. In fact no other technology plays such an intimate part in the everyday lives of modern humans. Yet of all our major inventions, the least is known about the origin of clothes. One reason is that clothes do not survive for long in the archaeological record. Another factor contributingto an academic neglect is a gender bias: Clothes are generally considered more a feminine concern.

Clothing originated as an adaptive behavioral response to biological nakedness which became a thermal liability during the Pleistocene ice ages. Findings from climatology and thermal physiologycan reveal the prehistoric need for clothes as insulation from cold. While no garments have survived, archaeology yields evidence for clothing-related technologies in the paleolithic era (especially tailored clothes). The invention and improvement of clothes as protection from worsening weather conditions led to major technological innovations – toolkits with stone scrapers, blades, and bone needles. These technologies allowed hominins to conquer most of the world’s environments and to finally enter the Americas from Siberia. Clothing was the most advanced technology developed by hominins in prehistory – and it is the only paleolithic invention that people still carry with them in the contemporary world.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Testosterone and Hedge Funds: Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? They don't.

Lu, Yan and Teo, Melvyn, Do Alpha Males Deliver Alpha? Testosterone and Hedge Funds (January 12, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3100645

Abstract: Using facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a proxy for testosterone, we show that high-testosterone hedge fund managers significantly underperform low-testosterone hedge fund managers after adjusting for risk. Moreover, high-testosterone managers are more likely to terminate their funds, disclose violations on their Form ADVs, and display greater operational risk. We trace the underperformance to high-testosterone managers' greater preference for lottery-like stocks and reluctance to sell loser stocks. Our results are robust to adjustments for sample selection, marital status, sensation seeking, and manager age, and suggest that investors should eschew masculine hedge fund managers.

Keywords: hedge funds, alpha, testosterone, facial width-to-height, masculine, disposition effect, operational risk

JEL Classification: G02, G23

Men perceived a more attractive female profile picture as less trustworthy, while women found a male with a more attractive profile picture to be more trustworthy

Too hot to trust: Examining the relationship between attractiveness, trustworthiness, and desire to date in online dating. Rory McGloin, Amanda Denes. New Media & Society, Volume: 20 issue: 3, page(s): 919-936. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816675440

Abstract: This study expands upon previous research by examining how the enhancement of a dating profile picture might influence perceptions of interpersonal trustworthiness and how this relationship might further influence the perceived attractiveness and desire to date the respective individual. Participants were exposed to one of four online dating profile conditions and were then asked to rate the attractiveness of the person in the profile, as well as their perceived trustworthiness. The results revealed that men in this study perceived a more attractive female profile picture as less trustworthy, while women found a male with a more attractive profile picture to be more trustworthy. An indirect effects model also revealed that perceived trustworthiness mediates the relationship between similarity and attractiveness, though these effects were not moderated by the picture manipulation itself. Finally, this study found that individuals have greater intentions to date individuals whose profile pictures are perceived as more attractive.

Keywords: Attractiveness, evolutionary theory, online dating, profile pictures, similarity, trustworthiness


Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized

Universal and Specific in the Five Factor Model of Personality. Jüri Allik and Anu Realo. In The Oxford Handbook of the Five Factor Model, edited by Thomas A. Widiger. 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199352487.013.23

Abstract: Personality psychologists—perhaps even more than in some other disciplines—are deeply interested in what is common to personality descriptions in all cultures and societies. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the potential universality of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of general personality structure. The chapter begins with a discussion of what is meant, or should be meant, by a universal. Discussed then is the empirical support, as well as the conceptual and empirical difficulty, in establishing universality in personality structure, for the FFM as well as other dimensional models. The chapter then considers different levels of analysis (including cultural and intraindividual analyses), higher-order invariants (including sex differences, age differences, and differences in perspective), and whether mean levels are universal. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the basis for personality universals, as well as addressing the common challenges to universality.

Keywords: Five-Factor Model, universal, culture, personality structure, differences in perspective


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It seems this is well established:

Gender Differences in Personality Traits Across Cultures: Robust and Surprising Findings. Paul T. Costa Jr., Antonio Terracciano, and Robert R. McCrae. Journai of Personality and Social Psychology, 2001, Vol. 81, No. 2,322-331. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.81.2.322

Abstract: Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures.

Words related to resistance to change, but not perceived threat, were related to political ideology such that conservatives were more likely to include resistance-to-change-related words in their responses compared with liberals

Brief Textual Indicators of Political Orientation. Bradley M. Okdie, Daniel M. Rempala. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X18762973

Abstract: Language reflects one’s thoughts, feelings, and worldview. Technology has led to a proliferation of brief communications. Is this brief text meaningful? We examine whether text from brief political and nonpolitical communications reflect political ideology. Student responses to their ideological foundations (Study 1), brief snippets of unanimous Supreme Court verdicts (Study 2), and celebrity tweets (Study 3) were textually analyzed to examine whether they contained perceived threat and resistance to change content and whether this predicted the authors’ political affiliation. Across three studies, words related to resistance to change, but not perceived threat, were related to political ideology such that conservatives were more likely to include resistance-to-change-related words in their responses compared with liberals. These results suggest that brief text, even when not overtly political, reflects one’s political ideology. The increase in brief text production via new technology and its ability to predict political ideology make these findings particularly meaningful.

Keywords: political orientation, computer-mediated communication, affiliation, Twitter, brief text communication

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The Influence of Physical Attractiveness on Belief in a Just World: Physical attractiveness powerfully affects our subjective experience as a human and that just-world beliefs are driven, at least in part, by personal experience with inequality

The Influence of Physical Attractiveness on Belief in a Just World. R. Shane Westfall, Murray G. Millar, Aileen Lovitt. Psychological Reports, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0033294118763172

Abstract: Previous work has consistently found that belief in a just world is strongly correlated with societal privilege. In the present study, we examined the influence of physical attractiveness on belief in a just world. We hypothesized that physically attractive individuals would be stronger endorsers of belief in a just world, whereas less attractive individuals would be less likely to endorse belief in a just world. Both self-rated attractiveness (experiment one) and attractiveness rated by other persons (experiment two) were found to predict endorsement of belief in a just world. Additionally, both attractiveness measures were found to have a relationship with participant’s level of life satisfaction. These findings suggest that physical attractiveness powerfully affects our subjective experience as a human and that just-world beliefs are driven, at least in part, by personal experience with inequality.

Keywords: Just-world beliefs, attractiveness, halo effect, individual differences

Is Envy Harmful to a Society’s Psychological Health and Wellbeing? A Longitudinal Study of 18,000 Adults

Is Envy Harmful to a Society’s Psychological Health and Wellbeing? A Longitudinal Study of 18,000 Adults. Redzo Mujcic and Andrew J. Oswald. Social Science and Medicine, forthcoming. http://andrewoswald.com/

Abstract: Nearly 100 years ago, the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell warned of the social dangers of widespread envy. One view of modern society is that it is systematically developing a set of institutions -- such as social media and new forms of advertising -- that make people feel inadequate and envious of others. If so, how might that be influencing the psychological health of our citizens? This paper reports the first large-scale longitudinal research into envy and its possible repercussions. The paper studies 18,000 randomly selected individuals over the years 2005, 2009, and 2013. Using measures of SF-36 mental health and psychological well-being, four main conclusions emerge. First, the young are especially susceptible. Levels of envy fall as people grow older. This longitudinal finding is consistent with a cross-sectional pattern noted recently by Nicole E. Henniger and Christine R. Harris, and with the theory of socioemotional regulation suggested by scholars such as Laura L. Carstensen. Second, using fixed-effects equations and prospective analysis, the analysis reveals that envy today is a powerful predictor of worse SF-36 mental health and well-being in the future. A change from the lowest to the highest level of envy, for example, is associated with a worsening of SF-36 mental health by approximately half a standard deviation (p < 0.001). Third, no evidence is found for the idea that envy acts as a useful motivator. Greater envy is associated with slower -- not higher -- growth of psychological well-being in the future. Nor is envy a predictor of later economic success. Fourth, the longitudinal decline of envy leaves unaltered a U-shaped age pattern of well-being from age 20 to age 70. These results are consistent with the idea that society should be concerned about institutions that stimulate large-scale envy.

Keywords: Envy, age, SF-36, mental health, well-being, longitudinal data


Does learning that homosexuality is innate (or not) increase support for gay rights? Doesn't, new information is filtered by previous ideology

Science, Sexuality, and Civil Rights: Does Information on the Causes of Sexual Orientation Change Attitudes? Elizabeth Suhay, Jeremiah Garretson. The Journal of Politics, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/694896

Abstract: Does learning that homosexuality is innate increase support for gay rights? Because there is a strong correlation between the belief that people are “born gay” and support for gay rights, many assume the former causes the latter. However, correlation does not equal causation. Drawing on data from a US-representative experiment, we examine whether exposure to scientific information on the origins of sexual orientation influences attitudes toward gay people and support for gay rights. The information influenced participants’ beliefs about the causes of homosexuality but had no impact on their attitudes. Further, belief change was contingent on ideology—liberals were more persuaded by information that people are born gay, and conservatives by information that people are not born gay. In the contemporary context, shifting causal attributions may not lead to attitude updating; rather, broad political values may act as a cognitive filter, biasing the uptake of new information about sexual orientation.

Keywords: causal attributions, gay rights, political attitudes, motivated reasoning, science communication.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

I find a worldwide optimism about the future; in spite of repeated evidence to the contrary, people consistently but irrationally predict they will be better off five years from now. The gap between future & current wellbeing diminishes with age, & in rich countries, is negative among the elderly

What do Self-Reports of Wellbeing Say about Life-Cycle Theory and Policy? Angus Deaton. NBER Working Paper No. 24369. http://www.nber.org/papers/w24369

Abstract: I respond to Atkinson's plea to revive welfare economics, and to considering alternative ethical frameworks when making policy recommendations. I examine a measure of self-reported evaluative wellbeing, the Cantril Ladder, and use data from Gallup to examine wellbeing over the life-cycle. I assess the validity of the measure, and show that it is hard to reconcile with familiar theories of intertemporal choice. I find a worldwide optimism about the future; in spite of repeated evidence to the contrary, people consistently but irrationally predict they will be better off five years from now. The gap between future and current wellbeing diminishes with age, and in rich countries, is negative among the elderly. I also use the measure to think about income transfers by age and sex. Policies that give priority those with low incomes favor the young and the old, while utilitarian policies favor the middle aged, and men over women.

Taboo words to describe proper names does not cause a significant effect; however, we found that participants rated certain categories of taboo words as more offensive than other categorie

Duncan, Jennifer, Erin M Buchanan, Caleb Z Marshall, and Katerina Oberdieck 2018. “But Words Will Never Hurt Me”. Open Science Framework. February 2. osf.io/b2nxg

Abstract: It is no secret that people often use taboo words when speaking about persons and objects in their environment. Taboo words are charged with emotion and have observable impact on the listener as well as the speaker. The purpose of this study was to determine whether taboo words were quantitatively more offensive when used in combination with a proper name versus being used with a non-human object. We found that using taboo words to describe proper names does not cause a significant effect; however, we found that participants rated certain categories of taboo words as more offensive than other categories. In a second experiment, taboo words did affect ratings and memory for proper names and non-human objects.

No evidence to support an association between emotion recognition deficits and previous exposure to adversity, either in terms of total lifetime exposure, timing, duration, or recency, or when stratifying by sex

Dunn, E. C., Crawford, K. M., Soare, T. W., Button, K. S., Raffeld, M. R., Smith, A. D.A.C., Penton-Voak, I. S. and Munafò, M. R. (2018), Exposure to childhood adversity and deficits in emotion recognition: results from a large, population-based sample. J Child Psychol Psychiatr. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12881

Abstract

Background: Emotion recognition skills are essential for social communication. Deficits in these skills have been implicated in mental disorders. Prior studies of clinical and high-risk samples have consistently shown that children exposed to adversity are more likely than their unexposed peers to have emotion recognition skills deficits. However, only one population-based study has examined this association.

Methods: We analyzed data from children participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective birth cohort (n = 6,506). We examined the association between eight adversities, assessed repeatedly from birth to age 8 (caregiver physical or emotional abuse; sexual or physical abuse; maternal psychopathology; one adult in the household; family instability; financial stress; parent legal problems; neighborhood disadvantage) and the ability to recognize facial displays of emotion measured using the faces subtest of the Diagnostic Assessment of Non-Verbal Accuracy (DANVA) at age 8.5 years. In addition to examining the role of exposure (vs. nonexposure) to each type of adversity, we also evaluated the role of the timing, duration, and recency of each adversity using a Least Angle Regression variable selection procedure.

Results: Over three-quarters of the sample experienced at least one adversity. We found no evidence to support an association between emotion recognition deficits and previous exposure to adversity, either in terms of total lifetime exposure, timing, duration, or recency, or when stratifying by sex.

Conclusions: Results from the largest population-based sample suggest that even extreme forms of adversity are unrelated to emotion recognition deficits as measured by the DANVA, suggesting the possible immutability of emotion recognition in the general population. These findings emphasize the importance of population-based studies to generate generalizable results.

Married...with children: The science of well-being in marriage and family life

Nelson-Coffey, S. K. (2018). Married...with children: The science of well-being in marriage and family life.  In E. Diener, S. Oishi, & L. Tay (Eds.),  Handbook of well-being. Salt Lake City, UT: DEF Publishers. DOI:nobascholar.com.

Abstract: As  some  of  the  most  important  relationships  in  people’s  lives,  marriage  and  parenthood  offer  many opportunities  for  people  to  experience  great  joy  or  to suffer  incredible  disappointment.  In  the  current chapter, I review current understanding of whether, how, and why marriage and parenthood are associated with well-being, drawing on evidence from cross-sectional, longitudinal, and daily experience studies. I also consider the implications of family structure for the associations between marriage and well-being, and parenthood  and  well-being,  respectively.  Current evidence  provides  relatively  robust  support  for  the association between marriage and well-being; however, the association between parenthood is much more complex. I conclude with a number of suggestions for future research.

Keywords: Family, Marriage, Parenthood, Well-Being, Happiness

Significant variation in suicide frequency concerning day of the week with a peak on Mondays and Tuesdays and seasonality with increased numbers in spring and summer months

Time-related aspects of suicides – suicide frequency related to birthday, major holidays, day of the week, season, month of birth and zodiac signs. Eberhard A. Deisenhammer, Christoph Stiglbauer, Georg Kemmler. Neuropsychiatrie, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40211-018-0260-7

Summary

Background: Suicides are generally the consequence of overchallenged coping strategies of individual for psychological, social or internal and external biological strain factors. Timing of the suicide, too, may be influenced by external factors. Studies so far have yielded in part inconsistent results concerning the association of suicides with particular days or periods of the year. Even less is known regarding a potential effect of the time of birth on suicide risk.

Methods: The Tyrol Suicide Register (TSR) provides data on suicides occurring in the Austrian State of Tyrol including birthday of the suicide victim and day of the suicide. In the present study the frequency of suicides was analyzed with regard to birthday, day of the week, major holidays and season over a period of 17 years. Further, a potential association with month of birth and zodiac signs was studied.

Results: We found a significant variation in suicide frequency concerning day of the week with a peak on Mondays and Tuesdays and seasonality with increased numbers in spring and summer months.

Conclusions: The increase of suicide numbers at the beginning of the week may be explained by the “broken-promise effect” which has been described as the consequence of frustrated expectations concerning the weekend. Possible explanations for the suicide peaks in spring and summer may be biological, specifically serotonergic alterations as well as the experience of depressed patients perceiving the social and emotional contrast to people who are able to enjoy these periods of pleasure and outdoor activities.

Keywords: Suicide risk Birth Seasonality Holidays Weekday Zodiac

Relatedness decreases and reciprocity increases cooperation in Norway rats

Relatedness decreases and reciprocity increases cooperation in Norway rats. Manon K. Schweinfurth, Michael Taborsky. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, March 07 2018.DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0035

Abstract: Kin selection and reciprocity are two mechanisms underlying the evolution of cooperation, but the relative importance of kinship and reciprocity for decisions to cooperate are yet unclear for most cases of cooperation. Here, we experimentally tested the relative importance of relatedness and received cooperation for decisions to help a conspecific in wild-type Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus). Test rats provided more food to non-kin than to siblings, and they generally donated more food to previously helpful social partners than to those that had refused help. The rats thus applied reciprocal cooperation rules irrespective of relatedness, highlighting the importance of reciprocal help for cooperative interactions among both related and unrelated conspecifics.


Check also Reciprocal Trading of Different Commodities in Norway Rats. Manon K. Schweinfurth, Michael Taborsky. Current Biology, www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/02/reciprocal-altruism-among-non-human.html

Decision-makers are resilient in the face of social exclusion

Juanchich, M., Walasek, L. and Sirota, M. (2018), Decision-makers are resilient in the face of social exclusion. Br J Psychol. doi:10.1111/bjop.12294

Abstract: A growing body of evidence suggests that social exclusion impairs people's capacity for active deliberation and logical reasoning. Building on this finding and on the postulate from the dual-process theory that analytical thinking is essential in order to make good judgements and decisions, we hypothesized that social exclusion will alter judgement and choice behaviour. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments in which social exclusion was manipulated using the Cyberball paradigm, an online ball-tossing game in which participants either received the ball a fair number of times or were excluded by the other two players. We focused on a range of tasks designed to be sensitive to participants’ ability to engage in analytical thinking and careful deliberation, including the cognitive reflection test (Experiment 1) and a set of anchoring, intertemporal preference, disjunction, and confidence tasks (experiments 2 and 3). Our results unanimously failed to support the hypothesis that social exclusion influences people's judgements and decision-making. We discuss the implications of our findings for social exclusion theory.

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to a modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave

Facebook news and (de)polarization: reinforcing spirals in the 2016 US election. Michael A. Beam, Myiah J. Hutchens & Jay D. Hmielowski. Information, Communication & Society,  https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1444783

ABSTRACT: The rise of social media, and specifically Facebook, as a dominant force in the flow of news in the United States has led to concern that people incur greater isolation from diverse perspectives through filter bubbles (from algorithmic filtering) and echo chambers (from an information environment populated by social recommendations coming from overwhelmingly like-minded others). This evolution in news diffusion comes at a time when Americans report increased affective partisan polarization. In particular, evidence shows increasingly negative attitudes about out-party members. Based on selective exposure and reinforcing spirals model perspectives, we examined the reciprocal relationship between Facebook news use and polarization using national 3-wave panel data collected during the 2016 US Presidential Election. Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to a modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal news exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization. We found no evidence of a parallel model, where pro-attitudinal exposure stemming from Facebook news use resulted in greater affective polarization.

KEYWORDS: Selective exposure, reinforcing spirals, political polarization, Facebook, filter bubbles, echo chambers

‘Nest tying’ by wild chimpanzees at Bulindi—a variant of a universal great ape behavior?

Tie one on: ‘nest tying’ by wild chimpanzees at Bulindi—a variant of a universal great ape behavior? Matthew R. McLennan. Primates, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-018-0658-7

Abstract: With data accumulating from a growing pool of chimpanzee field studies, new behaviors as well as novel variants on common behaviors continue to be described. Nest construction is a universal behavior in wild great apes. Among chimpanzee populations, reported variation in nest building behavior mostly reflects environmental constraints. Despite the ubiquity of nest making by chimpanzees, only ground nesting has been recognized as a behavioral variant, potentially determined by both environmental and social factors. In a study of nests made by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Bulindi, Uganda, I identified a hitherto undescribed nest construction technique, termed ‘nest tying’. Five observed nests lacked strong weight-bearing structures beneath them, such as large branches or a supporting trunk. Instead, the nests appeared ‘tied’ (or ‘tethered’) to an adjacent trunk by looping leafy stems or palm fronds around it and interweaving these into the nest mattress, securing the nest against the trunk; thus, nest tying presumably functions to provide added stability and support. This preliminary report presents a description of the observed nests. Irrespective of whether nest tying constitutes true knot making—commonly considered absent in wild great apes—this nest construction technique would seem to require advanced dexterity and a sophisticated understanding of the mechanical properties of the plants used. Forest fragments in Bulindi are highly degraded. Thus, nest tying—and construction of integrated nests (i.e., utilizing multiple plants, often small trees and shrubs) generally—may be promoted by a relative paucity of suitable nesting trees at this site. Still, insofar as nest building is learned in chimpanzees, different construction techniques including nest tying are potentially acquired through social learning. Further investigation is required to ascertain the prevalence and acquisition of this nest construction technique at Bulindi, and to verify its presence or absence in other habitats.

In women, the biological pre-disposition to sexual problems seems to remain relatively stable over time, that is, environment has no influence

Burri A, Ogata S. Stability of Genetic and Environmental Influences on Female Sexual Functioning. The Journal of Sexual Medicine March 06 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.01.020

Abstract

Background: Genetic factors have been implicated in the etiology of female sexual dysfunction. Yet, how much the dynamic nature of sexual functioning is influenced by changes in genetic and/or environmental factors remains unknown.

Aim: To explore temporal stability of genetic and environmental influences on female sexual functioning over a 4-year period.

Methods: Data on desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain were collected in 2009 and 2013 using the Female Sexual Function Index and were available for 1,209 British twin women.
Outcomes: To track the stability of genetic influences the Female Sexual Function Index sub-domain and total scores were subject to multivariate twin analyses for repeated measures.

Results: Desire showed a lower heritability at follow-up (37% vs 14%) whereas for arousal and sexual pain the heritability at follow-up was higher compared to baseline (28% vs 34% and 30% vs 45%, respectively). The heritability of lubrication remained stable at 27%. According to the best-fitting additive environmental (AE) Cholesky model for all domains except for sexual pain there were no new genetic factors expressing themselves over the 4-year period, but an addition of new, unique environmental determinants could be observed. For sexual pain an additional genetic factor could be observed at follow-up, explaining 39% of the phenotypic variance.

Clinical Translation: The biological pre-disposition to sexual problems seems to remain relatively stable over time.

Conclusions: This is the first study to investigate the genetic stability of female sexual functioning in a large population sample of women. White ethnicity and the relatively high mean age of women asks for caution in extrapolating the findings to other ethnic and age groups. The findings highlight the value of more in-depth exploration of the non-shared environmental influences that could provide clues to the mechanisms behind remittance and/or persistence of sexual problems. Integration of these findings may provide a useful conceptual framework for the treatment and prevention of certain types of sexual problems.

Key Words: Female Sexual Functioning; Female Sexual Dysfunction; Genetics; Twins; Longitudinal


Zero-sum beliefs are pervasive. These beliefs seem to arise in part due to intuitive mercantilist beliefs that money has value over- and-above what it can purchase, since buyers are seen as less likely to benefit than sellers

Johnson, Samuel and Zhang, Jiewen and Keil, Frank, Psychological Underpinnings of Zero-Sum Thinking (January 28, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3117627 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3117627

Abstract: A core proposition in economics is that voluntary exchanges benefit both parties. We show that people often deny the mutually beneficial nature of exchange, instead using zero-sum thinking. Participants read about simple exchanges of goods and services, judging whether each party to the transaction was better off or worse off afterwards. These studies revealed that zero-sum beliefs are pervasive. These beliefs seem to arise in part due to intuitive mercantilist beliefs that money has value over- and-above what it can purchase, since buyers are seen as less likely to benefit than sellers, and barters are often seen as failing to benefit either party (Experiment 1). Zero-sum beliefs are greatly reduced by giving reasons for the exchange (Experiment 2), suggesting that a second mechanism underlying zero-sum thinking is a failure to spontaneously take the perspective of the buyer. Implications for politics and business are discussed.

Keywords: Intuitive theories, Folk psychology, Judgment & decision-making, Behavioral economics

Ten Things Career Changers Need on Their Resume

Ten Things Career Changers Need on Their Resume. By Alina Dizik. FINS, Sep 26 2011
http://europe-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SBB0001424053111904332804576540560574814434/Ten-Things-Career-Changers-Need-on-Their-Resume

In the last few years, executive resume writer Mary Elizabeth Bradford has noticed more of her clients seeking a career switch, even after having built successful careers in another field.

Nowadays, mid-level career changers -- such as software developers who now work in finance or entrepreneurs who come back into corporate life -- make up more than 45% of her practice. Many struggle to create an attention-grabbing resume, she says.

"The ability to objectively match up relevant skills to the position of choice is invaluable," Bradford says.

Eager to switch careers? Here are 10 ways to improve your resume:


Do a Comprehensive Rewrite

Most job candidates make a few quick changes to their resume before submitting it for a new role. If you are switching careers, re-analyze your skills during the editing process and include every area of the business that you've been able to impact, says Jill Smart, chief human resources officer at Accenture, a management consulting and technology firm with employees in 120 countries.

"People changing careers need to make sure their resume shows the full breadth of their skills -- operations, leadership, management, communication," explains Smart.

For example, Accenture hires former doctors to work in their health and public service practice. Their resumes need to demonstrate not only their relationship-building skills but also how they'll fit into the new business setting.


Use the New Job Description to Write a Summary Paragraph

Experts' opinions are mixed on the need for a resume summary or objective for those looking to stay in their field, but it's an important feature for a career changer, says Bonnie Marcus, a New York-based business coach and founder of Women's Success Coaching, a career coaching firm targeting women.

Include a summary paragraph at the top of your resume and tie "everything in the job description with everything you've accomplished in the past," she says.

For example, if the new position calls for online marketing expertise, make sure any marketing or Web experience is mentioned in this opening paragraph. Since most managers spend less than a minute scanning your resume, make sure the first thing they read ties directly to the job description.


Know What to Exclude

While conveying your skills is important, your resume shouldn't be a dumping ground for every minor accomplishment in your career, says resume expert Alesia Benedict, president of GetInterviews.com.

"Don't list tasks that are not relevant to the new career or you will simply reinforce that you should only be considered for your current type of position," Benedict says.

For example, an accountant shouldn't list certain routine bookkeeping duties if they are eager to leave accounting. Also avoid using specific company or industry terms or acronyms that are only known to those in your field.


Demonstrate Accomplishments With Numbers

Include bullet points that show how you've contributed to the bottom line. Numbers, especially those given in dollars, can quickly give hiring managers an idea of your contributions -- even in an unrelated field, says recruiter Craig Libis, founder of Executive Recruiting Consultants based in Dell Rapids, S.D.

While important on all resumes, for a career changer, numbers can be a simple way for hiring managers to relate to an unfamiliar work history. "Specific numbers [allow] the hiring company the ability to apply what the applicant can do for their company in the future," Libis says.


Add Relatable Job Title Descriptions

Adding a short descriptor after the official job title can help hiring managers easily identify your transferable skills.

"For example, if your job title was 'software engineer,' but you want to transition to project management, consider demonstrating the job title as 'Software Engineer (with a heavy emphasis on Project Management)'," Feldberg explains. But be careful not to exaggerate the truth. "You only want to use this approach if you can do it honestly," she adds.


Match up Keywords

When it comes to resume writing, keywords help you move past the electronic filters. For a career changer, that's the first potential barrier in stepping into a new role; a resume full of accounting keywords, for instance, will have a hard time getting past filters for a job in marketing.

Bradford recommends using job aggregator sites like Indeed.com to identify applicable keywords. Find several job postings for your ideal job, paste the job descriptions into a document and find keywords by highlighting any terms that are job descriptors or mention specific needed skills. Then pick out those keywords that match up with your previous experience and include them throughout the first page of your resume, says Bradford.

"Most job seekers are surprised how many matching and relevant skills they find in these job descriptions," she says.


Use a Mixed Format

When working with career switchers, resume writer Robyn Feldberg creates a functional-style resume on the first page and includes the traditional chronological format on the second page. "In other words, the first page looks like a glorified profile," says Dallas-based Feldberg who runs Abundant Success Coach, a career coaching and resume writing service.

Since the functional format focuses more on skills, you can use it to draw the hiring manager in with relevant experience without worrying about the chronology. Combining both resume formats helps to highlight the various transferable skills while still providing a look at the job history, she adds.



Drop Names to Show Previous Success

Showing that you've been able to succeed and work with established industry leaders in your previous career shouldn't be saved for the interview; instead, weave it into your resume to get a hiring manager's attention, says Theresa Szczurek, chief executive Radish Systems, a Boulder-based software firm. A bullet point may read: "Closed $2 million in new sales in 12 months with industry leaders XYZ," she explains.

Especially when applying for a position where you don't have prior experience, it's important to show that you've have the support of top industry leaders and were able to make a difference in your previous role.


Highlight Non-Work Related Experience

As a career changer, the extracurricular activities on your resume will carry more weight, say experts. Be sure to include activities that relate to your desired role like professional association memberships, volunteering, internships or part-time consulting.

For example, "if you're looking to move into Web or database development, volunteer [your] time ... creating a website or database for schools, churches, non-profits," and then highlight your role on your resume, suggests Mike McBrierty, chief operating officer of the technology staffing division of Eliassen Group, an IT recruiting firm based in Wakefield, Mass.


Find Natural Alignments

From a human resources perspective, there are certain accomplishments that are similar across different management structures and firms.

"Look for things about your current position that would have meaning to the person considering you for the new position," says Luke Tanen who left the music industry to work as the director of the Chicago Innovation Awards. For example, Tanen's mention of closing sponsorship deals was similarly impressive in both fields. "In seeing that the Chicago Innovation Awards were [free] in the job posting, I was quite certain that sponsors play a big role in this program. So I made a point to highlight it as my top bullet point from my past experience securing music sponsorships."

The Prevalence of Sexual Abuse in Institutions in Germany: Overall, 3.1% of adult respondents (women: 4.8%, men: 0.8%) reported abuse

The Prevalence of Sexual Abuse in Institutions: Results From a Representative Population-Based Sample in Germany. Andreas Witt et al. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1079063218759323

Abstract: The lifetime prevalence of sexual abuse in institutional settings in Germany was examined in a sample representative of the general adult population (N = 2,437). Participants completed a survey on whether they had ever experienced such abuse, its nature (contact, noncontact, forced sexual, intercourse), the type of institution (e.g. school, club), and the relationship of perpetrator to victim (peer, caregiver, staff member). Overall, 3.1% of adult respondents (women: 4.8%, men: 0.8%) reported having experienced some type of sexual abuse in institutions. Adult women reported higher rates of all types than did men, with rates of 3.9% versus 0.8% for contact sexual abuse, 1.2% versus 0.3% for noncontact sexual abuse, and 1.7% versus 0.2% for forced sexual intercourse. We conclude that a remarkable proportion of the general population experiences sexual abuse in institutions, underscoring the need for development of protective strategies. Especially, schools seem to represent good starting points for primary prevention strategies.

Keywords: abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual abuse, sexual offender, victim

How Counterfeits Infect Genuine Products: The Role of Moral Disgust

Amar, M., Ariely, D., Carmon, Z. and Yang, H. (2018), How Counterfeits Infect Genuine Products: The Role of Moral Disgust. J Consum Psychol. doi:10.1002/jcpy.1036

Abstract: We argue that moral disgust toward counterfeiting can degrade both the efficacy of products perceived to be counterfeits and that of genuine products resembling them. Five studies support our propositions and highlight the infectious nature of counterfeiting: Perceiving a product as a counterfeit made disgust more mentally accessible, and led participants to disinfect the item more and reduce how long they remained in physical contact with it (Study 1). Participants who perceived a mouse as a counterfeit, performed less well in a computer game using the mouse and expressed greater moral disgust, which mediated lowered performance (Study 2). Exposure to a supposedly counterfeit fountain pen in an unrelated prior task infected participants’ performance using a genuine ballpoint pen resembling the “counterfeit;” individual differences in moral attitudes moderated the effect (Study 3). Exposure to a supposedly counterfeit mouse infected performance with a genuine mouse of the same brand; moral disgust mediated this effect (Study 4). Finally, moral disgust mediated lowered efficacy of a supposed counterfeit and that of a genuine item resembling the “counterfeit” (Study 5).

Chimpanzees but not orangutans display aversive reactions toward their partner receiving a superior reward

Chimpanzees but not orangutans display aversive reactions toward their partner receiving a superior reward. Yena Kim et al. bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/274803

Abstract: Fairness judgment is a fundamental aspect of human cooperation. By carefully balancing the payoffs and efforts with cooperating partner (s) we could either avoid or punish cheaters and stably maintain cooperation. Recent studies investigating the origin of this fairness sentiment have demonstrated that this psychological trait is not unique to humans, but also can be observed in other group-living primates, such as chimpanzees and capuchins, suggesting a convergent evolution of a sense of fairness, with cooperative social life being the selective pressure for it. The current study was designed to test this hypothesis by directly comparing the response to the outcome inequity in two of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, having different social systems, i.e. solitary and patrilocal multi-male multi-female groups. Unlike other inequity experiments, we used a prosocial choice apparatus with different reward distributions (advantageous / disadvantageous) to give subjects an active role of not-sharing foods if they considered it unfair. In addition to the choice, we also recorded the behavioral responses of the apes to the inequity. Throughout the experiments aversive emotional responses toward the disadvantageous inequity were only found in chimpanzees, but not in orangutans, supporting the convergent (or domain-specific) evolution of a sense of fairness. However, this aversion to the inequity did not lead the chimpanzees to actually make selfish choices, indirectly supporting the previous findings that chimpanzees employ a partner choice strategy rather than a punishment for fair cooperation. We also found that hierarchy seems to play an important role in the expression of aversion to inequity and prosocial tendency in chimpanzees.

Monday, March 5, 2018

How Well Do Economists Forecast Recessions? As we already knew, badly.

How Well Do Economists Forecast Recessions? Zidong An ; João Tovar Jalles ; Prakash Loungani. IMF Working Paper No. 18/39. March 5, 2018. http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/03/05/How-Well-Do-Economists-Forecast-Recessions-45672?cid=em-COM-123-36702

Summary: We describe the evolution of forecasts in the run-up to recessions. The GDP forecasts cover 63 countries for the years 1992 to 2014. The main finding is that, while forecasters are generally aware that recession years will be different from other years, they miss the magnitude of the recession by a wide margin until the year is almost over. Forecasts during non-recession years are revised slowly; in recession years, the pace of revision picks up but not sufficiently to avoid large forecast errors. Our second finding is that forecasts of the private sector and the official sector are virtually identical; thus, both are equally good at missing recessions. Strong booms are also missed, providing suggestive evidence for Nordhaus’ (1987) view that behavioral factors—the reluctance to absorb either good or bad news—play a role in the evolution of forecasts.

Does Students’ Grit Predict Their School Achievement Above and Beyond Their Personality, Motivation, and Engagement? It seems to have little explanatory power.

Does Students’ Grit Predict Their School Achievement Above and Beyond Their Personality, Motivation, and Engagement? Ricarda Steinmayr, Anne F. Weidinger, Allan Wigfield. Contemporary Educational Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2018.02.004

Highlights
•    In 2 independent samples, we investigated grit’s relation to school achievement.
•    Established conceptually and empirically related constructs were also considered.
•    Only Grit – perseverance of effort predicted GPA when including the other constructs.
•    Perseverance of effort did not predict GPA when controlling for previous achievement.

    Results question grit’s relevance for school achievement, at least in the short term.

Abstract: Grit—individuals’ perseverance of effort and consistency of interests—was introduced in 2007 as new construct that predicts different achievement outcomes. To date, most studies examining grit’s prediction of achievement have not included other predictors in their analyses. Therefore, we assessed grit’s incremental validity for school achievement above theoretically and empirically related predictors, in two adolescent student samples from Germany. Study 1 (N = 227) examined grit’s relative importance for students’ school grades (GPA, math, German) when controlling for prior school grades, the Big Five personality traits, school engagement, values, expectancies for success, and self-efficacy. In Study 2 (N = 586), intelligence, conscientiousness, and established constructs from motivation and engagement literatures were controlled to investigate grit’s relative importance for GPA, math grades and test performance in math. In both studies, relative weight analyses revealed that the grit subscales added little explanatory power. Results question grit’s unique prediction of scholastic success.

Keywords: grit; personality; motivation; school engagement; school performance; intelligence; relative weight analysis


Men’s attractiveness actually decreased if he was presented as the partner of an unattractive woman

Mate Copying and the Effects of Sexual History on Romantic Desirability. Ryan Corley Anderson. Evolutionary Psychological Science, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40806-018-0143-y

Abstract: Mate copying typically refers to the idea that the likelihood of an individual being chosen as a romantic partner varies as a function of how they are assessed by (generally opposite sex) others. The phenomenon has been well documented among nonhumans, but mate copying among humans has only really begun to receive attention from an academic audience in the last decade. Although our understanding of mate copying can be broadly encapsulated by the statement “sexual experience is desirable,” the long-standing and deeply ingrained social prescriptions against promiscuity present a challenge to this dictum. This paper attempts to address this inconsistency by reviewing literature supportive of and inconsistent with the above statement. It is concluded that the two ideas, although seemingly opposing, are not mutually exclusive.

The documented potential of humor for the maintenance of well-being is impressive, thereby rendering exaggerations and insufficiently substantiated claims of additional effects unnecessary

Humor and well-being: A little less is quite enough. Ilona Papousek. International Journal of Humor Research, https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humr.ahead-of-print/humor-2016-0114/humor-2016-0114.xml

Abstract: Paul McGhee, one of the most influential pioneers in the field of humor research has been engaged for decades in exploring how humor can be used for the maintenance or improvement of well-being in the face of adversity. The present paper reviews recent empirical research corroborating several of his propositions. Undeniably, the benefits of humor can be much greater when one generates his or her own humor compared to just passively consuming humor. The active use of humor can be a potent tool to successfully cope with and appropriately recover from stressful situations, especially if it becomes a habitual response to adverse circumstances. While the ice is thin with regard to any beneficial effects of humor on physical health, it certainly may enhance the quality of life of patients. The paper concludes with the general evaluation that the documented potential of humor for the maintenance of well-being is impressive, thereby rendering exaggerations and insufficiently substantiated claims of additional effects unnecessary.

Keywords: Humor production; humor appreciation; humor training; laughter; coping; health

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Face identification is more accurate when people collaborate in social dyads than when they work alone; accuracy peaks at near perfection with eight participants

Jeckeln, G., Hahn, C. A., Noyes, E., Cavazos, J. G. and O'Toole, A. J. (2018), Wisdom of the social versus non-social crowd in face identification. Br J Psychol. doi:10.1111/bjop.12291

Abstract: Face identification is more accurate when people collaborate in social dyads than when they work alone (Dowsett & Burton, 2015, Br. J. Psychol., 106, 433). Identification accuracy is also increased when the responses of two people are averaged for each item to create a ‘non-social’ dyad (White, Burton, Kemp, & Jenkins, 2013, Appl. Cogn. Psychol., 27, 769; White et al., 2015, Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci., 282, 20151292). Does social collaboration add to the benefits of response averaging for face identification? We compared individuals, social dyads, and non-social dyads on an unfamiliar face identity-matching test. We also simulated non-social collaborations for larger groups of people. Individuals and social dyads judged whether face image pairs depicted the same- or different identities, responding on a 5-point certainty scale. Non-social dyads were constructed by averaging the responses of paired individuals. Both social and non-social dyads were more accurate than individuals. There was no advantage for social over non-social dyads. For larger non-social groups, performance peaked at near perfection with a crowd size of eight participants. We tested three computational models of social collaboration and found that social dyad performance was predicted by the decision of the more accurate partner. We conclude that social interaction does not bolster accuracy for unfamiliar face identity matching in dyads beyond what can be achieved by averaging judgements.


Saturday, March 3, 2018

Are personality traits a good predictors of the type of watched pornography? Analysis of the relationship between personality traits and the preference of a chosen pornographic categories

Are personality traits a good predictors of the type of watched pornography? Analysis of the relationship between personality traits and the preference of a chosen pornographic categories. Rafał Gerymski, Institute of Psychology, Opole University.  https://depot.ceon.pl/handle/123456789/14659

Abstract: The aim of this work was the further exploration of the relationship between selected personality factors and the preference of a given type of pornography. Data from 136 respondents aged between 19 and 56 years was used for the analysis. Selected personality traits were examined using the TIPI-PL questionnaire. Subjects were presented with 25 categories of pornographic films and were asked to select the keywords they use to search for pornography on the Internet. Data exploration has shown that the viewers of pornographic films are characterized by a significantly higher level of extraversion and emotional stability in relation to people who do not use pornography. In addition, it was shown that openness to experience turned out to be a significant predictor of the preferences of pornographic categories such as „BDSM”, „group sex” or „big penis”. Further research should take into account other features of the human psyche that may be related to pornographic preferences and examine the attractiveness of a given type of pornography.

Myths and Misconceptions in Developmental and Neuro-Psychology

Myths and Misconceptions in Developmental and Neuro-Psychology. Adrian Furnham. Psychology, Vol.9 No.2, February 2018. DOI 10.4236/psych.2018.92016

ABSTRACT: The current study examined the prevalence of psychological myths and misconceptions in two areas of psychology: Developmental and Neuro-Psychology. In all 220 participants completed two questionnaires both derived from two recently published books, in which they rated to what extent, they thought various statements/facts about the brain and about child development were True or False. A large number of these myths were rated as True (Definitely or Partly) indicating the extent to which people had misconceptions about this area of psychology. There were few significant demographic correlates of the total correct score (determined by rating the myth as False) indicating no clear pattern in what sort of person has these misconceptions. Implications and limitations are discussed.

KEYWORDS: Psychology, Education, Myths, Misconceptions, Psychological Knowledge, Misrepresentations

Check also Seven myths of memory. Nicola S. Clayton, , Clive Wilkins. Behavioural Processes, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/12/seven-myths-of-memory.html

And Class Dis-Mythed: Exploring the Prevalence and Perseverance of Myths in Upper-Level Psychology Courses. Michael Root and Caroline Stanley.
http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/10/typical-courses-and-critical-thinking.html

And Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths. Kelly Macdonald et al. Frontiers in Psychology, Aug 10 2017. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/training-in-education-or-neuroscience.html

People tend to rate low their ability to tell lies convincingly and at the same time believe that they are better lie detectors than the average person. Study of personality, demographic and psychophysiological correlates

Chapter 15 – Personality, Demographic, and Psychophysiological Correlates of People's Self-Assessed Lying Abilities. Eitan Elaad. In Detecting Concealed Information and Deception, 2018, Pages 353–376, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-812729-2.00015-X

Abstract: Previous research indicated that people tend to rate low their ability to tell lies convincingly and at the same time believe that they are better lie detectors than the average person. The present chapter highlights correlations of the low self-assessed lie-telling ability and of the relatively high self-assessed lie-detection ability. A mini metaanalysis was performed on observations gathered from 16 experimental groups. The analysis shows demographic differences in these assessments. It was observed that religiosity, gender, age, and on-the-job lie-related experience, are moderators of the lie-telling and lie-detection ability assessments. Personality dimensions such as the Big Five attributes are also associated with people's lie-related ability assessments. It was further observed that high lie-telling ability raters preferred plausible deception over implausible truth. Finally, larger physiological responses to critical items in the Concealed Information Test were found among high lie-telling ability raters. Suggestions for future research are provided.

Keywords: Age; Big five; Concealed information test; Lie-detection ability; Lie-telling ability; Lying preference; Mini metaanalysis; Religiosity; Self-assessments

A Case of Pathological Collecting Behavior

Pathological collecting behavior. Michitaka Funayama et al. Cortex, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.02.014

Here we describe the development of pathological collecting behavior, which was observed in a patient with right orbitofrontal damage after subarachnoid hemorrhage [...]. His pathological collection behavior was first noticed 11 years post-onset (at age 59) when he began searching out detergents, newspapers, bottles of milk and beer, and hangers every day, mainly from garbage dumps [...]. At age 66, he began washing window screens and his car and cleaning his bathroom several times per day.

At age 76, during his stereotypical automobile washing, he removed the license plate to thouroughly wash underneath it; while doing so, he dropped a screw for the fight side of his car's license plate into the sewer. He was unable to retrieve the screw, and henceforth he began stealing screws from only the right side of license plates of other people's cars. His wife warned him not to collect them, and he always told her that he would never do it again; moreover, he surely knew that stealing was not permitted under any circumstances. However, he collected more than 50 screws over the following 2 months, but eventually he was arrested and again hospitalized in our psychiatry ward. Notably, even after his discharge from our ward, he could still work as a salesclerk at his liquor store.

From Swiping to Casual Sex and/or Committed Relationships: Exploring the Experiences of Tinder Users

From Swiping to Casual Sex and/or Committed Relationships: Exploring the Experiences of Tinder Users. Elisabeth Timmermans, Cédric Courtois. The Information Society 34(2), March 2018, DOI 10.1080/01972243.2017.1414093

Abstract: To better understand if and how the mechanics of the process Tinder imposes on its users (i.e., swiping, matching, and starting conversations) influences the resulting sexual or romantic interactions, we collected data from 1038 Belgian Tinder users. Our findings show that a user’s swiping quantity does not guarantee a higher number of Tinder matches, women have generally more matches than men and men usually have to start a conversation on Tinder. Moreover, while having conversations was positively associated with reporting having had offline Tinder encounters, less than half of our sample reported having had an offline meeting with another Tinder user. Whereas more than one third of those offline encounters lead to casual sex, more than a quarter of those offline encounters result in the formation of a committed relationship. Such findings indicate that Tinder is not “just a hookup app”, as often assumed in public discourse. We argue it is plausible that sexual encounters will eventually lead to committed relationships in a society where initiation of relationship formation with dating has been replaced by hooking up.

Comments to "If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic “causes” of these “conditions”?"

A person wrote in Facebook's Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology group:  "Psychiatrists look for twisted molecules and defective genes as the causes of schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is the name of a disease. If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic “causes” of these “conditions”?
     Thomas Szasz, Hungarian psychiatrist

It seems that there are several contributions of biological nature to our social behavior.

1  Regarding Communism:

1.1  "We document a statistically significant and robust positive relation between risk aversion and the demand for redistribution that is also economically important. We show that previously used proxies for risk aversion (such as being an entrepreneur or having a history of unemployment) do not capture the effect of our measure of risk aversion but have distinctly different effects on the demand for redistribution." From Individual risk preferences and the demand for redistribution. Manja Gärtner, Johanna Mollerstrom and David Seim. Journal of Public Economics, v 153, September 2017, Pages 49-55. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/individual-risk-preferences-and-demand.html


1.2  There are several species in which inequity aversion has been measured, like common marmosets. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/02/inequity-aversion-is-observed-in-common.html

Or check this: Social inequality aversion in mice: Analysis with stress-induced hyperthermia and behavioral preference. Shigeru Watanabe. Learning and Motivation, Volume 59, August 2017, Pages 38-46, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/09/social-inequality-aversion-in-mice.html

Which is why some suspect that there is an "Evolutionary Origin of Empathy and Inequality Aversion" http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/09/evolutionary-origin-of-empathy-and.html


1.3  Even in dictator's games, we try to avoid the taking version, and prefer the giving version: "Over 85% of the dictators in our experiment choose to play a giving game over a taking game when the payoff possibilities are identical and, on average, dictators are willing to sacrifice over 31% of their endowment to avoid taking." http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/02/dictator-game-aversion-to-taking-is.html



2  Regarding religiosity:

2.1  there are good reasons to believe that religiosity is a substantially heritable trait. Good summary here: "The Future of Secularism: A Biologically Informed Theory Supplemented with Cross-Cultural Evidence" http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/the-future-of-secularism-biologically.html


2.2  "In spite of increased secularization in American culture and a growing distrust of organized religion, religious involvement, personal religiosity, and spirituality are still viewed as highly desirable characteristics." Examining Social Desirability in Measures of Religion and Spirituality Using the Bogus Pipeline. Ann E. Jones and Marta Elliott. Review of Religious Research. March 2017, Volume 59, Issue 1, pp 47–64. http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/examining-social-desirability-in.html

2.3  Being Atheist is linked to genes, which is a way to say than being religious is linked to the other genes. See The Mutant Says in His Heart, “There Is No God”: the Rejection of Collective Religiosity Centred Around the Worship of Moral Gods Is Associated with High Mutational Load. Edward Dutton, Guy Madison, Curtis Dunkel. Evolutionary Psychological Science, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/12/the-rejection-of-collective-religiosity.html



These authors are not saying that genetics make us more religious than not, or more redistributive than not, as an originally predetermined outcome... What they say is that being redistributive and religious was favored by the ancestors, and those with such behaviours reproduced better (more than the others), and are now dominant behaviors.

Of course, we don't know if that is a good idea or not, but we can discuss such theories, since they help explain observed behaviors.

Disclaimer: I am an Atheist (although I am not mad at religous people, I respect them).