Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Three categories of monogamy maintenance strategies to avoid relationship threats are commonly used: Proactive Avoidance (of attractive alternatives), Relationship Enhancement, and Low Self‐Monitoring and Derogation (in the face of extradyadic attraction). Not very successfully...

Ain’t misbehavin? Monogamy maintenance strategies in heterosexual romantic relationships. Brenda H. Lee, Lucia F. O'Sullivan. Personal Relationships, https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12235

Abstract: Monogamy is a near universal expectation in intimate relationships in Western societies and is typically defined as sexual and romantic exclusivity to one partner. This research informs the paradox between monogamy intentions and high rates of infidelity. Monogamy maintenance (MM) strategies used in response to relationship threats posed by attraction to extradyadic others were identified and characterized. Across three samples, 741 U.S. adults in intimate relationships completed surveys addressing MM. Twenty‐four strategies emerged in three factors—Proactive Avoidance (of attractive alternatives), Relationship Enhancement, and Low Self‐Monitoring and Derogation (in the face of extradyadic attraction). All MM factors were commonly endorsed, yet were largely unsuccessful at forestalling infidelity.


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The derogation of attractive alternatives was included in the preliminary MMI [MM inventory] both in the form of outward behaviors that may be perceived as rude or socially disengaging (e.g., “Intentionally ignored the looks from this other person when they were looking at me”; “Treated this other person rudely”), and in the form of self-directed talk (e.g., “Told myself that this other person was bad for me”; “Looked for unflattering things in this other person”). These strategies were intentional extensions of previously identified automatic responses to attractive others in experimental contexts—namely, inattention and hostility (Maner et al., 2009; Plant et al., 2010). The outward strategies directed toward the attractive other were infrequently endorsed, indicating that although individuals may engage in stronger forms of derogation with fleeting relationship threats, they typically derogate attractive others in the form of selfdirected talk within the social contexts of their lives.

Check also Attentional and evaluative biases help people maintain relationships by avoiding infidelity. McNulty, James K., Meltzer, Andrea L., Makhanova, Anastasia, Maner, Jon K. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Feb 12 , 2018, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/02/attentional-and-evaluative-biases-help.html  





Some Unwanted Events and Side Effects in Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Negative wellbeing/distress (27% of patients), worsening of symptoms (9%), strains in family relations (6%)

Unwanted Events and Side Effects in Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Marie-Luise Schermuly-Haupt, Michael Linden, A. John Rush. Cognitive Therapy and Research, June 2018, Volume 42, Issue 3, pp 219–229. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10608-018-9904-y

Abstract: Side effects (SEs) are negative reactions to an appropriately delivered treatment, which must be discriminated from unwanted events (UEs) or consequences of inadequate treatment. One hundred CBT therapists were interviewed for UEs and SEs in one of their current outpatients. Therapists reported 372 UEs in 98 patients and SEs in 43 patients. Most frequent were "negative wellbeing/distress" (27% of patients), "worsening of symptoms" (9%), "strains in family relations" (6%); 21% of patients suffered from severe or very severe and 5% from persistent SEs. SEs are unavoidable and frequent also in well-delivered CBT. They include both symptoms and the impairment of social life. Knowledge about the side effect profile can improve early recognition of SEs, safeguard patients, and enhance therapy outcome.

Sexual activity and desire decreased in men, especially in the young and middle-age groups; a contribution is the decrease of men living with a partner

Beutel ME, Burghardt J, Tibubos AN, et al. Declining Sexual Activity and Desire in Men—Findings From Representative German Surveys, 2005 and 2016. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Volume 15, Issue 5, May 2018, Pages 750–756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.03.010

Abstract

Background: Surveys have indicated an increase of sexual activity in aging men; recently, however, a decrease of sexual activity has been reported in young men.

Aim: To assess (i) sexual activity and desire and their determinants across the age range in a population-based male sample and (ii) their changes over 11 years.

Methods: A representative survey of men (N = 1,095) 18 to 93 years old from 2016 was compared with a survey from 2005 (N = 1,106 men) with the same age range. Samples were drawn from the German population at random using standardized sampling procedures. Questions were filled out by participants in the presence of a trained interviewer. Sexual activity was compared using logistic regression with the factors survey (2005 vs 2016), living with a partner (yes vs no), and age. Frequency of sexual desire was compared using analysis of covariance with the factors survey (2005 vs 2016), living with a partner (yes vs no), and the covariate age.

Outcomes: Sexual activity was assessed as having been intimate with someone in the past year; frequency of sexual desire was evaluated within the past 4 weeks.

Results: The great majority of men cohabiting with a partner in 2016 was sexually active and indicated sexual desire until 70 years of age; half did so at an older age. Across the age range, men living without a partner reported considerably less sexual activity and desire. Compared with 2005, fewer men reported living with a partner. The overall proportion of men reporting sexual activity deceased from 81% to 73% in 2016 and absent sexual desire increased from 8% to 13%.

Clinical Translation: The findings highlight the relevance of living with a partner for sexual activity and desire. We advocate using a measure of sexual activity that encompasses many variants of intimate behavior.

Strengths and Limitations: Large and methodologically comparable population-based samples were compared. However, interpretations are limited by the absence of longitudinal data. We did not assess the effect of having a partner living elsewhere.

Conclusion: Sexual activity and desire decreased, especially in the young and middle-age groups. The decrease of men living with a partner contributed to this decreased sexual activity and desire. There was a generation effect, with younger and middle-age men living without a partner becoming less sexually active and experiencing less desire compared with the previous survey. The findings unveil changes in sexual activity and desire in a short time span.

Key Words: Sexual Desire; Sexual Activity; Partnership; Representative Sample

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is not only necessary but also sufficient for pain-related negative emotion; it preferentially encodes the emotional-affective component of pain rather than sensory-discriminative component

A new perspective on the anterior cingulate cortex and affective pain. Xiao Xiao, Yu-Qiu Zhang. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.03.022

Highlights
•    The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is not only necessary but also sufficient for pain-related negative emotion.
•    The ACC preferentially encodes the emotional-affective component of pain rather than sensory-discriminative component.
•    The neural network of the ACC with amygdala, BNST, PFC, IC, VLO, and some other limbic structures contributes to the negative emotion of pain.

Abstract: Pain is a complex experience including sensory-discriminative and emotional-affective components. Base on the intensity and chronification of pain, pain is divided into physiological and pathological pain. Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is activated by noxious and contextual stimuli, is involved in pain processing, especially affective pain, the neural mechanisms of the ACC involvement in affective pain have yet to be elaborated. This review summarizes the main progresses and recent findings from our and other laboratories regarding the ACC and affective pain. Most evidence provided new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying affective pain. Excitation of ACC pyramidal neurons is necessary and sufficient for the pain-related negative emotion. We also sketched other brain regions associated with the ACC and discussed the role of these brain regions in affective pain. Actually, it is likely that the neural network between these brain regions is critical for the negative affect of pain. In particular, the important advances within the optogenetic filed provide new opportunities to deepen and expand our understanding of the affective pain.

When both the original study and its failed replication are correct

Noah, T., Schul, Y., & Mayo, R. (2018). When both the original study and its failed replication are correct: Feeling observed eliminates the facial-feedback effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(5), 657-664. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000121

Abstract: This article suggests a theoretically driven explanation for a replication failure of one of the basic findings in psychology: the facial-feedback effect. According to the facial-feedback hypothesis, the facial activity associated with particular emotional expressions can influence people’s affective experiences. Recently, a replication attempt of this effect in 17 laboratories around the world failed to find any support for the effect. We hypothesize that the reason for the failure of replication is that the replication protocol deviated from that of the original experiment in a critical factor. In all of the replication studies, participants were alerted that they would be monitored by a video camera, whereas the participants in the original study were not monitored, observed, or recorded. Previous findings indicate that feeling monitored or observed reduces reliance on internal cues in making judgments. Therefore, we hypothesize that recording the participants in the replication experiments reduced their reliance on the facial-feedback. To test the hypothesis, we replicated the facial-feedback experiment in 2 conditions: one with a video-camera and one without it. The results revealed a significant facial-feedback effect in the absence of a camera, which was eliminated in the camera’s presence. These findings suggest that minute differences in the experimental protocol might lead to theoretically meaningful changes in the outcomes. In our view, the theoretical and methodological approach advocated by our study changes failed replications from being the “end of the road” regarding entire fields of study into a new road for growth regarding our understanding of human nature.

An ambient coffee-like scent improved performance on an analytical reasoning task because it created higher performance expectations. Kind of placebo effect.

The impact of coffee-like scent on expectations and performance. Adriana Madzharo, Ning Ye, Maureen Morrin, Lauren Block. Journal of Environmental Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2018.04.001

Highlights
•    An ambient coffee-like scent improved performance on an analytical reasoning task.
•    The scent created higher performance expectations.
•    Expectations about alertness are also associated with the scent.
•    An ambient coffee-like scent had a placebo effect on behavior.

ABSTRACT: The present research explores the effect of an ambient coffee-like scent (versus no scent) on expectations regarding performance on an analytical reasoning task as well as on actual performance. We show that people in a coffee-scented (versus unscented) environment perform better on an analytical reasoning task due to heightened performance expectations (Study 1). We further show that people expect that being in a coffee-scented environment will increase their performance because they expect it will increase their physiological arousal level (Study 2). Our results thus demonstrate that a coffee-like scent (which actually contains no caffeine) can elicit a placebo effect.

Keywords: olfaction; performance; coffee-like scent; placebo effects

India's liberalization cannot be explained with wealth-maximization alone; the prevalent ideology in India changed dramatically before the liberalization; commerce was looked upon as anti-social, now it is celebrated

The role of ideological change in India's economic liberalization. Nimish Adhia. The Journal of Socio-Economics, Volume 44, June 2013, Pages 103-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2013.02.015

Abstract: The paper describes the role of ideological change in India's economic liberalization and provides evidence for it. Since the 1980s the most prevalent ideology has changed from condemning commerce and profit as anti-social, to tolerating—even applauding—commercial success. The paper reports on a content analysis of the most popular Hindi film each year since 1955, and finds that characters of rich merchants have changed from being portrayed as villains to being portrayed as heroes.

Highlights
► I argue that India's liberalization cannot be explained with wealth-maximization alone. ► The prevalent ideology in India changed dramatically before the liberalization. ► Commerce was looked upon as anti-social, now it is celebrated. ► Content and narrative analysis of Indian films reveals the change in ideology.

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The injunction of performing one’s duty without regard to outcomes has been the basis of much of the Indian philosophical and religious discourse.

The dilemma is recurrent in Indian films.... From the 1950s to the 1980s, the dilemmas invariably resolve in favor of duty. The mother in Mother India (1956) shoots and kills her wayward son as he attempts to kidnap a woman—an action that would have been shameful for the village. “I am the mother of the entire village,” she says as she picks up the gun. As the son collapses to the ground, she wails and rushes to his side, and is shown to lament his death for the rest of her life, but the film valorizes her as “Mother India.”

But then starting with Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1986) there is a spate of films that celebrate the assertion of one’s desire. The assertion commonly takes the form of falling in love—an audacious act in a society where the sexual mores are conservative and a majority of marriages are arranged on basis of familial and community criteria. The young lovers in the big hit Qayamat se Qayamat tak (Doomsday to Doomsday, 1988) elope and endure enormous hardships on account of their families’ opposition. The families had a falling out in the past when they were neighboring landlords in the country. The demands of familial loyalty, shown to arise in this way from a feudal setup and concluding in the death of the young lovers, are condemned by the film as savage and outdated. “We are not the property of our parents,” the young man once counsels his beloved. “We need not be carriers of their legacy of hate.”

Perceived mental health from men’s facial appearance reflected actual mental health; results held for subclinical autistic quotient, depressive symptoms, and schizotypy; and accuracy was not explained by attractiveness or other appearance variables

Cues to mental health from men’s facial appearance. Robert Ward, , Naomi Jane Scott. Journal of Research in Personality, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2018.04.007

Highlights
•    Perceived mental health from men’s facial appearance reflected actual mental health.
•    Results held for subclinical autistic quotient, depressive symptoms, and schizotypy.
•    Accuracy was not explained by attractiveness or other appearance variables.
•    Mental health vulnerability could lead to negative social evaluation.

Abstract: Previous work shows that mental health can be evident from neutral facial appearance. We assessed the accuracy of mental health perceptions from facial appearance, and how perceived mental health related to other appearance cues, specifically attractiveness, perceived physical health, and masculinity. We constructed composite images from men scoring high and low on autistic quotient, depressive symptoms, and schizotypy inventories, and asked observers to rate these images for mental health. We found perceived mental health reflected actual mental health in all cases. Furthermore, the accuracy of mental health inference was not fully explained by other appearance cues. We consider implications of accurate mental health detection from appearance, and the possibility that appearance could be a risk factor for mental health issues.

Keywords: facial appearance; mental health; attractiveness; masculinity

China’s Mistress-Dispellers

China’s Mistress-Dispellers. By Jiayang Fan. The New Yorker, June 26, 2017 Issue
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/chinas-mistress-dispellers
How the economic boom and deep gender inequality have created a new industry.
[image]

Yu Ruojian was pleased to learn that his target ran a sex shop. Someone who worked in retail would be used to talking to strangers, and it would be easy, posing as a customer in such an intimate store, to bring the conversation around to personal matters. In March last year, he visited the store, in Wuxi, a city about seventy miles from Shanghai, where he lives. He told the proprietor, a gregarious woman in her forties whom I’ll call Wang, that he was looking for herbal remedies to help a friend whose marital relations were hampered by shyness. They chatted for half an hour before exchanging contact details. “I’ll be back to pester you soon enough,” Yu said as he left. “You’d better!” Wang responded, unaware that she’d walked into the first in a series of carefully laid traps.

A month earlier, Yu had heard from a woman in her fifties, the wife of a factory manager in Wuxi, who explained that her husband was having an affair with Wang. She had tolerated it for years, but now she’d found that he had spent more than two hundred thousand yuan—thirty thousand dollars—on her, savings that should have been going toward their old age and a house for their son.

Yu, a gentle-looking man in his early forties, with the placid demeanor of a yoga instructor, works as a mistress dispeller, a job that barely existed a decade ago but is becoming common in major Chinese cities. His clients are women who hope to preserve their marriages by fending off what is known in Chinese as a xiao san, or “Little Third”—a term that encompasses everything from a partner in a casual affair to a long-term “kept woman.” Mistress dispellers use a variety of methods. Some Little Thirds can be paid off or discouraged by hearing unwelcome details of their lovers’ lives—debts, say, or responsibility for an elderly parent—or shamed with notes sent to friends and family. If the dispeller or the client is well connected, a Little Third may suddenly find that her job requires her to move to another city. A female dispeller sometimes seeks to become a confidante, in order to advise the targeted woman that the liaison will inevitably crumble. In certain cases, a male mistress dispeller may even seduce the woman. Like all the mistress dispellers I spoke to, Yu said that he never resorts to this tactic, but he acknowledged that there are those who do.

A week after his first visit, Yu went back to the store. He had heard that Wang had recently purchased property nearby, and he let drop that he was looking to buy an apartment in the neighborhood. She offered to take him on a tour and introduce him to agents with properties to sell. In the course of several weeks, Yu and Wang started getting meals together, and eventually Yu invited her to Shanghai for a weekend sightseeing trip. She demurred at first but later accepted, on the condition that she could bring a girlfriend along.

Using his client’s money, Yu put the pair up at a hotel, showed them the city, and took them to sample its culinary specialties. On Shanghai’s famous river promenade, Yu took pictures of the two women and then got the friend to take several of him and Wang with their arms around each other. Once the weekend was over, these pictures found their way to Wang’s boyfriend. “A picture speaks louder than a thousand words, and, in a jealous man’s imagination, it can speak ten thousand,” Yu told me. The man ended the relationship, and returned to his wife, appreciative, if nothing else, of her loyalty. The mission had taken around four months in all.

As Yu spoke, it was hard to gauge his attitude to what he or anyone else had done. He seemed neither proud nor defensive, and offered no judgments on the behavior of those he encountered. He’d had all kinds of jobs, he told me, working in computer sales, right out of college, and then learning about psychology, Buddhism, and traditional Chinese arts. The emotional turmoil he’d caused seemed remote to him, as if his studies had enabled him to regard it with Zen composure. Things had been messy and painful before his involvement, and though the treatment he administered was painful, too, he’d been able to bring about a situation that was, on the whole, better.

Yu told me that he was on his second marriage and had one daughter from each. When I asked why his Wuxi client hadn’t considered divorce, he was incredulous. For a woman, divorce was rarely a sensible choice. “In today’s world, a secondhand woman is like a secondhand car,” he said. “Once it’s been driven, it’s not worth a fraction of its original selling price.” A secondhand man, on the other hand, Yu explained, is like renovated property in China’s real-estate market: “The value only appreciates.”

A volatile mixture of rapid social change, legal reforms, and traditional attitudes has created something approaching a crisis in Chinese marriage. In the past decade, the divorce rate has doubled. Adultery is the most prevalent cause, accounting for about a third of the cases, and men are more than thirteen times as likely to stray as women are. These trends are seen as troubling in a country that places a high social value on matrimony. Media outlets with close ties to the state frequently run stories with titles like “The Five-Year Itch” and “DNA Testing in China: Eroding Wedlock?” The government has signalled that it takes public morality seriously, in part by exposing the sexual misdeeds of high officials who fall afoul of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption crusade. According to Xinhua, the state news agency, Zhou Yongkang, a former security chief who was arrested and expelled from the Communist Party in 2014, “committed adultery with a number of women in power-for-sex and money-for-sex trades.” Wild rumors spread on Chinese media that he had had more than four hundred lovers.

In divorces, women suffer disproportionately. Yu’s view of a woman’s poor chance at remarriage is widely shared, but there are more concrete issues, arising from economic disparity within marriages. Mistress dispellers are only one part of a broader industry that has sprung up to help wives rescue their unions, but their work has aroused particular fascination, as has the figure of the mistress herself, often portrayed in films and TV dramas as a predatory but irresistible homewrecker. While I was in a taxi in Shanghai, a song came on the radio that the driver mentioned was a favorite of his. Titled “Little Third,” it was the breakout single by a Henanese singer called Leng Mo, who sings to a woman about his bitter realization that he could never make her happy, given that “finally you have become someone else’s Little Third.” In another hit—“Di San Zhe” (“Third Party”), by the Malaysian-born superstar Fish Leong—a woman is magnanimous toward her rival, taking responsibility for the loss of her man and insisting that the third party shouldn’t be blamed: “Although your choice has destroyed me, I will take it positively.” It is an attitude that few wives in China can afford to share.

Yu is one of about three hundred employees of Weiqing Group, which bills itself as China’s “first professional transnational love hospital.” Weiqing—the name translates as “preserve feeling”—was founded sixteen years ago and provides an array of services, designed to save a marriage at all costs [...]

This article appears in the print edition of the June 26, 2017, issue, with the headline “The Third Person.”

    Jiayang Fan became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 2016.

Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry: People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than you’d expect

Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry. By Elif Batuman. The New Yorker, April 30, 2018 Issue
People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than you’d expect.https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry

image: The head of one rental-relative company described the service as “human affection expressed through the form of the family.”

Two years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo salaryman in his sixties, started renting a part-time wife and daughter. His real wife had recently died. Six months before that, their daughter, who was twenty-two, had left home after an argument and never returned.

“I thought I was a strong person,” Nishida told me, when we met one night in February, at a restaurant near a train station in the suburbs. “But when you end up alone you feel very lonely.” Tall and slightly stooped, Nishida was wearing a suit and a gray tie. He had a deep voice and a gentle, self-deprecating demeanor.

Of course, he said, he still went to work every day, in the sales division of a manufacturing company, and he had friends with whom he could go out for drinks or play golf. But at night he was completely alone. He thought he would feel better over time. Instead, he felt worse. He tried going to hostess clubs. Talking to the ladies was fun, but at the end of the night you were alone again, feeling stupid for having spent so much money.

Then he remembered a television program he had seen, about a company called Family Romance, one of a number of agencies in Japan that rent out replacement relatives. One client, an elderly woman, had spoken enthusiastically about going shopping with her rental grandchild. “The grandchild was just a rental, but the woman was still really happy,” Nishida recalled.

Nishida contacted Family Romance and placed an order for a wife and a daughter to join him for dinner. On the order form, he noted his daughter’s age, and his wife’s physique: five feet tall and a little plump. The cost was forty thousand yen, about three hundred and seventy dollars. The first meeting took place at a café. The rental daughter was more fashionable than Nishida’s real daughter—he used the English word “sharp”—but the wife immediately impressed him as “an ordinary, generic middle-aged woman.” He added, “Unlike, for example, Ms. Matsumoto”—he nodded toward my interpreter, Chie Matsumoto—“who might look like a career woman.” Chie, a journalist, teacher, and activist, who has spiky salt-and-pepper hair and wears plastic-framed glasses, laughed as she translated this qualification.

The wife asked Nishida for details about how she and the daughter should act. Nishida demonstrated the characteristic toss of the head with which his late wife had rearranged her hair, and his daughter’s playful way of poking him in the ribs. Then the women started acting. The rental wife called him Kazu, just as his real wife had, and tossed her head to shake back her hair. The rental daughter playfully poked him in the ribs. An observer would have taken them for a real family.

Nishida booked a second meeting. This time, the wife and daughter came to his house. The wife cooked okonomiyaki, a kind of pancake that Nishida’s late wife had made, while Nishida chatted with the daughter. Then they ate dinner together and watched television.

More family dinners followed, usually at Nishida’s house, though one time they went out for monjayaki, another variety of pancake beloved by the late Mrs. Nishida. It hadn’t been a fancy meal, and Nishida wondered whether he should have taken the women, who were, after all, his guests, to a nicer place. Then again, in real life, the Nishidas hadn’t gone to any of those nicer places.

Before another meeting, it occurred to Nishida to send Family Romance a copy of his house key. When he came home from work that night, the lights were on, the house was warm, and a wife and daughter were there to say, “Welcome home.”

“That was very nice,” Nishida recalled, smiling slightly. He said he didn’t miss the women when they left—not with any sense of urgency or longing. But he did think, “It would be nice to spend some time like that with them again.”

Nishida said that, although he still calls them by the names of his wife and daughter, and the meetings still take the form of family dinners, the women have, to some extent, stopped acting and “turned into their own selves.” The rental wife sometimes “breaks out of the shell of the rental family” enough to complain about her real husband, and Nishida gives her advice. With this loosening of the roles, he realized that he, too, had been acting, playing the part of “a good husband and father,” trying not to seem too miserable, telling his daughter how to hold her rice bowl. Now he felt lighter, able for the first time to talk about his real daughter, about how shocked he had been when she announced her decision to move in with a boyfriend he had never met, and how they had argued and broken off contact.

On the subject of the real daughter, the rental daughter had a lot to say: as someone in her early twenties, she could tell that Nishida hadn’t spoken correctly, or expressed himself in the right way. He’d made it hard for his daughter to apologize and it was up to him to create an opening. “Your daughter is waiting for you to call her,” she told him. To me, this sentence had the eerie ring of something uttered at a séance. Nishida himself seemed uncertain about how and for whom the rental daughter had spoken. “She was acting as a rental daughter, but at the same time she was telling me how she felt as a real daughter,” he said. “And yet, if it was a real father-daughter relationship, maybe she wouldn’t have spoken this honestly.”

[...]

Hypersexuality, Gender, and Sexual Orientation: LGTBQ males had the highest scores of hypersexuality indicators

Hypersexuality, Gender, and Sexual Orientation: A Large-scale Psychometric Survey Study. Beata Bothe et al. Archives of Sexual Behavior, March 2018, DOI 10.1007/s10508-018-1201-z

Abstract: Criteria for hypersexual disorder (HD) were proposed for consideration in the DSM-5 but ultimately excluded for a variety of reasons. Regardless, research continues to investigate hypersexual behavior (HB). The Hypersexual Behavior Inventory (HBI) is one of the most robust scales assessing HB, but further examination is needed to explore its psychometric properties among different groups. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the generalizability of the HBI in a large, diverse, non-clinical sample (N = 18,034 participants; females = 6132; 34.0%; Mage = 33.6 years, SDage = 11.1) across both gender and sexual orientation. Measurement invariance testing was carried out to ensure gender- and sexual orientation-based comparisons were meaningful. Results demonstrated when both gender and sexual orientation were considered (i.e., heterosexual males vs. LGBTQ males vs. heterosexual females vs. LGBTQ females), LGBTQ males had significantly higher latent means on the HBI factors. Results also demonstrated LGBTQ males had the highest scores on other possible indicators of hypersexuality (e.g., frequency of masturbation, number of sexual partners, or frequency of pornography viewing). These indings suggest LGBTQ males may be a group most at risk of engaging in hypersexual behavior, and LGBTQ females are at a higher risk of engaging in hypersexual activities due to coping problems. Given the large-scale nature of the study, the indings signiicantly contribute to the currently growing body of the literature on hypersexuality.

Monday, April 23, 2018

Online trolling is motivated (at least in part) by sadistic tendencies, minimizing perpetrator culpability in judgments of harmful behavior

Internet Trolling and Everyday Sadism: Parallel Effects on Pain Perception and Moral Judgment. Erin E. Buckels, Paul D. Trapnell, Tamara Andjelovic, Delroy L. Paulhus. Journal of Personality, https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12393

Abstract

Objective: To clarify the association between online trolling and sadistic personality; and provide evidence that the reward and rationalization processes at work in sadism are likewise manifest in online trolling.

Method: Online respondents (total N = 1,715) completed self‐report measures of personality and trolling behavior. They subsequently engaged in one of two judgment tasks. In Study 1, respondents viewed stimuli depicting scenes of emotional/physical suffering, and provided ratings of (a) perceived pain intensity and (b) pleasure experienced while viewing the photos. In Study 2, the iTroll questionnaire was developed and validated. It was then administered alongside a moral judgment task.

Results: Across both studies, online trolling was strongly associated with a sadistic personality profile. Moreover, sadism and trolling predicted identical patterns of pleasure and harm minimization. The incremental contribution of sadism was sustained even when controlling for broader antisocial tendencies (i.e., the Dark Triad, callous‐emotionality, and trait aggression).

Conclusion: Results confirm that online trolling is motivated (at least in part) by sadistic tendencies. Coupled with effective rationalization mechanisms, sadistic pleasure can be consummated in such everyday behaviors as online trolling.

h/t:https://twitter.com/DegenRolf

Regional differences in intelligence are positively associated with many economic, social and demographic phenomena, like income, health, educational and occupational achievement, and negatively associated with poverty, fertility and crime

Regional differences in intelligence in 22 countries and their economic, social and demographic correlates: A review. Richard Lynna, John Fuerst, Emil O.W. Kirkegaard. Intelligence, Volume 69, July–August 2018, Pages 24–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2018.04.004

Highlights
•    Regional differences in intelligence are reported for fifteen countries.
•    These are positively associated with many economic, social and demographic phenomena.
•    These include income, health, educational and occupational achievement.
•    These are negatively associated with poverty, fertility and crime.

Abstract: Differences in intelligence have previously been found to be related to a wide range of inter-individual and international social outcomes. There is evidence indicating that intelligence differences are also related to different regional outcomes within nations. A quantitative and narrative review is provided for twenty-two countries (number of regions in parentheses): Argentina (24 to 437), Brazil (27 to 31), British Isles (12 to 392), Chile (15), China (31), Colombia (33), Denmark (7), Finland (4), France (90), Germany (16), India (33), Italy (12 to 19), Japan (47), Mexico (31 to 32), Peru (1468), Portugal (5), Russia (29 to 79), Spain (15 to 48), Switzerland (47), Turkey (12), the USA (30 to 3100), and Vietnam (61). Between regions, intelligence is significantly associated with a wide range of economic, social, and demographic phenomena, including income (r_unweighted =  .56), educational attainment (r_unweighted =  .59), health (r_unweighted =  .49), general socioeconomic status (r_unweighted =  .55), and negatively with fertility (r_unweighted = −.51) and crime (r_unweighted = −.20). Proposed causal models for these differences are noted. It is concluded that regional differences in intelligence within nations warrant further focus; methodological concerns that need to be addressed in future research are detailed.

Keywords: Intelligence; Cognitive ability; Income; Health; Achievement; Fertility; Crime; SES; General socioeconomic factor; Inequality

Infants’ prosocial behavior is governed by cost-benefit analyses

Infants’ prosocial behavior is governed by cost-benefit analyses. Jessica A.Sommerville et al. Cognition, Volume 177, August 2018, Pages 12-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.021

Abstract: Cost-benefit analyses are central to mature decision-making and behavior across a range of contexts. Given debates regarding the nature of infants’ prosociality, we investigated whether 18-month-old infants’ (N = 160) prosocial behavior is impacted by anticipated costs and benefits. Infants participated in a helping task in which they could carry either a heavy or light block across a room to help an experimenter. Infants’ helping behavior was attenuated when the anticipated physical costs were high versus low (Experiment 1), and high-cost helping was enhanced under conditions of increased intrinsic motivational benefits (Experiments 2 and 3). High-cost helping was further predicted by infants’ months of walking experience, presumably because carrying a heavy block across a room is more effortful for less experienced walkers than for more experienced walkers demonstrating that infants subjectively calibrate costs. Thus, infants’ prosocial responding may be guided by a rational decision-making process that weighs and integrates costs and benefits.

Keywords: Prosocial behavior, Infancy, Cost-benefit analyses, Shared preferences

h/t https://twitter.com/DegenRolf

How does social and sexual information processing map onto cortical circuits?

Socio-sexual processing in cortical circuits. Michael Brecht, Constanze Lenschow, Rajnish P Rao. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Volume 52, October 2018, Pages 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2018.04.003

Abstract: How does social and sexual information processing map onto cortical circuits? Addressing this question has been difficult, because of a lack of circuit-oriented social neuroscience and an absence of measurements from interacting brains. Recent work showed social information is already differentially processed in the primary sensory cortices. Converging evidence suggests that prefrontal areas contribute to social interaction processing and determining social hierarchies. In social interactions, we identify gender in split seconds, but after centuries of anatomy we are still unable to distinguish male and female cortices. Novel data reinforce the idea of a bisexual layout of cortical anatomy. Physiological analysis, however, provided evidence for sex differences in cortical processing. Unlike other cortical circuits, sexual processing circuits undergo major rewiring and expansion during puberty and show lasting damage from childhood abuse.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Negative experiences may increase meaning in life; comprehension, a pillar of meaning in life, may be incited by negative experiences

It's Not Going to Be That Fun: Negative Experiences Can Add Meaning to Life. Kathleen D. Vohs, Jennifer L. Aaker, Rhia Catapano. Current Opinion in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.04.014

Highlights
•    Negative experiences may increase meaning in life
•    Comprehension, a pillar of meaning in life, may be incited by negative experiences
•    Comprehension converts disparate pieces into coherent, self-relevant wholes
•    That meaning in life differs from feeling good can offer rich theoretical insights

Abstract: People seek to spend time in positive experiences, enjoying and savoring. Yet there is no escaping negative experiences, from the mundane (e.g., arguing) to the massive (e.g., death of a child). Might negative experiences confer a hidden benefit to well-being? We propose that they do, in the form of enhanced meaning in life. Research suggests that negative experiences can serve to boost meaning because they stimulate comprehension (understanding how the event fits into a broader narrative of the self, relationships, and the world), a known pillar of meaning in life. Findings on counterfactual thinking, reflecting on events’ implications, and encompassing experiences into broad-based accounts of one's identity support the role of comprehension in contributing to life's meaning from unwanted, unwelcome experiences.

h/t https://twitter.com/DegenRolf

Three-year-olds know about land property and develop inferences of ownership

The development of territory-based inferences of ownership. Brandon W. Goulding, Ori Friedman. Cognition, Volume 177, August 2018, Pages 142–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.04.013

Abstract: Legal systems often rule that people own objects in their territory. We propose that an early-developing ability to make territory-based inferences of ownership helps children address informational demands presented by ownership. Across 6 experiments (N = 504), we show that these inferences develop between ages 3 and 5 and stem from two aspects of the psychology of ownership. First, we find that a basic ability to infer that people own objects in their territory is already present at age 3 (Experiment 1). Children even make these inferences when the territory owner unintentionally acquired the objects and was unaware of them (Experiments 2 and 3). Second, we find that between ages 3 and 5, children come to consider past events in these judgments. They move from solely considering the current location of an object in territory-based inferences, to also considering and possibly inferring where it originated (Experiments 4 to 6). Together, these findings suggest that territory-based inferences of ownership are unlikely to be constructions of the law. Instead, they may reflect basic intuitions about ownership that operate from early in development.

Keywords: Ownership; Territory; Cognitive development; Historical inference; Law and psychology; Cognitive offloading

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21% of the pedestrians in an urban setting in Belgium violate traffic lights: Push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations

Non-compliance with pedestrian traffic lights in Belgian cities. Kevin Diependaele. Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2016.11.017

Highlights
•    21% of the pedestrians in an urban setting in Belgium violate traffic lights.
•    There is large variability; percentages below 15% and above 30% are no exceptions.
•    Higher traffic volume and complexity reduce the frequency of red-light running.
•    Gap acceptance theory can account for the effect of traffic volume and complexity.
•    Push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations.
•    Auxiliary signals, either visual or auditory, have a lowering effect on violations.

Abstract: The frequency of red light running was investigated across the nine most populated cities in Belgium. The results show that approximately 21% of the pedestrians violate the lights. There is, however, large variability in the frequency of violations depending on the specific context. Traffic volumes, motorized as well as pedestrian volumes, and situational characteristics that are generally associated with higher traffic complexity (rush hours, number of driving directions, number of lanes per driving direction and the presence of a tram or bus lane) have a lowering effect. A number of technical characteristics of the pedestrian crossing were also found to exert a significant influence: push buttons and worn off zebra markings increase the frequency of violations. On the other hand, auxiliary signals, either visual or auditory, have a positive effect.

Keywords: Pedestrians; Red light running; Belgium