Rapid Anxiety Reduction (RAR): A unified theory of humor. Adam Safron. arXiv, Nov 8 2019. https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.02364
Abstract: Here I propose a novel theory in which humor is the feeling of Rapid Anxiety Reduction (RAR). According to RAR, humor can be expressed in a simple formula: -d(A)/dt. RAR has strong correspondences with False Alarm Theory, Benign Violation Theory, and Cognitive Debugging Theory, all of which represent either special cases or partial descriptions at alternative levels of analysis. Some evidence for RAR includes physiological similarities between hyperventilation and laughter and the fact that smiles often indicate negative affect in non-human primates (e.g. fear grimaces where teeth are exposed as a kind of inhibited threat display). In accordance with Benign Violation Theory, if humor reliably indicates both a) anxiety induction, b) anxiety reduction, and c) the time-course over which anxiety is reduced, then the intersection of these conditions productively constrains inference spaces over latent mental states with respect to the values and capacities of the persons experiencing humor. In this way, humor is a powerful cypher for understanding persons in both individual and social contexts, with far-reaching implications. Finally, if humor can be expressed in such a simple formula with clear ties to phenomenology, and yet this discovery regarding such an essential part of the human experience has remained undiscovered for this long, then this is an extremely surprising state of affairs worthy of further investigation. Towards this end, I propose an analogy can be found with consciousness studies, where in addition to the "Hard problem" of trying to explain humor, we would do well to consider a "Meta-Problem" of why humor seems so difficult to explain, and why relatively simple explanations may have eluded us for this long. (Please note: RAR was conceived in 2008, and last majorly updated in 2012.)
Saturday, November 16, 2019
There seems to be an optimal level of humility, such that those participants who somewhat underestimated their morality with respect to their peers were liked and respected the most
Shared Reality or Shared Illusions? Evaluating Moral Impressions. Maxwell Barranti. PhD Thesis, Psychology Dept, Toronto U, 2019. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/97321/3/Barranti_Maxwell_201911_PhD_thesis.pdf
Abstract: Moral impressions are some of the most consequential opinions people have about themselves and others. Morality is at the core of identity (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014), and drives many interpersonal interactions such as cooperation (Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005) and affiliation (Bukowski & Sippola, 1998). Yet, little is known about the extent to which these moral impressions are grounded in reality or if they are only held as idiosyncratic impressions. The current investigation evaluated how people see their own and other’s moral character, if these moral impressions are shared, and if a shared understanding of moral character is adaptive. First, I developed and tested a measurement model for assessing self- and other-impressions of morality which removes a global evaluative bias from moral impressions (Studies 1 and 2). Second, I evaluated if self- and other-impressions are grounded in a shared social reality (i.e. self-other agreement and inter-judge consensus) and/or grounded in observable behavior (Study 3). Third, I evaluated if sharing a social reality for moral impressions has interpersonal consequences for the self (Study 4). This work sheds light on the extent to which morality is in the eye of the beholder and the adaptiveness of holding shared moral impressions. Additionally, this work has implications for the assessment of moral character and the adaptiveness of self-knowledge.
1 Importance of moral impressions
1.1 Self-impressions
The beliefs we hold about our own moral character – moral self-impressions – are among the most important beliefs we hold about ourselves (Wojciszke, 2005). Indeed, people’s beliefs about their own morality lie at the heart of their identity (Heiphetz, Strohminger, & Young, 2017). For example, changing aspects of our moral selves is viewed as fundamentally changing a person, more so than non-moral aspects (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014). When people are asked about what traits comprise the ideal person, moral traits are the defining features of an ideal person (Cottrell, Neuberg, & Li, 2007). Even after death, loved ones emphasize the morality of the recently deceased (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014). People value a moral self-image (Jordan & Mullen, 2011; Monin & Jordan, 2009) and have a strong desire to see themselves as moral (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008). Given how much people care about their own morality it stands to reason that holding moral self-perceptions may be a fundamental psychological need (Prentice, Jayawickreme, Hawkins, Hartley, Furr, & Fleeson, 2018). Taken together, this suggests that moral self-perceptions are an important part of people’s lives.
1.2 Other-impressions
It isn’t just our own morality that people care deeply about. People also care deeply about the morality of others (Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2012). This is evidenced by the amount of time and effort people put into seeking and sharing information about the moral character of others. People preferentially seek out morally relevant information more so than non-moral information when forming an impression of others (Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, 2011; Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998). Further, and they regularly share information about the moral character of people they know. For example, people regularly gossip about morality (Feinberg, Willer, Stellar, & Keltner, 2012; Peters & Kashima 2015). A conservative estimate is that on any given day there is about a 15% chance to learn about moral acts of others (Hofmann, Wisneski, Brandt, & Skitka, 2014). In essence, people exert effort into learning the morality of others.
Part of why people try to understand the other’s morality is because they believe it is useful information for guiding important interpersonal decisions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people use their impressions about other’s moral character to inform a wide variety of decisions. As such, moral impressions carry consequence. Moral character impressions affect who people like and trust (Goodwin et al., 2014). Friendships and relationships are sought and ended based on moral judgments (Van’t Wout & Sanfey, 2008). Decisions about whom to trust with valuable resources (e.g. money) are informed by moral character judgments (e.g. money; De Bruin & Van Lange, 1999; Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005). People avoid working with people who are uncooperative. For example, people prefer to work with other’s when they have seen them make large contributions to a public good (Rockenbach & Milinski, 2011). Leaders are elected based on constituent impressions of their morality. For example, voters prefer candidates that appear trustworthy (Chen, Jing, & Lee, 2014). All of this evidence suggests that being seen as a moral person has positive interpersonal consequences.
In essence, people care deeply about their own morality and exert lots of effort to understand the moral character of others. The well documented dominance of moral impressions in our social lives has driven scholars to regard morality as a fundamental dimension of person perception (Brambilla & Leach, 2014, Goodwin et al., 2014; Wojciszke, 2005). And yet, despite the importance of moral impressions in our lives and its fundamental role in person perception, current work has not adequately addressed several fundamental questions about moral character impressions. Are our moral impressions grounded in reality? Is holding realistic moral impressions adaptive? To address these fundamental questions, it is important to understand the process by which accurate moral impressions form and the challenges that stand in the way of forming accurate moral impressions.
4 In lab and daily behaviors
Despite evidence of convergence between self- and other-impressions of morality, there was little evidence that self-impressions were related to moral behaviors. Self-impressions were not associated with in-lab cooperation behavior nor with daily reports from participants about their own behavior. There was some evidence that other-impressions are related to moral behavior. Specifically, other-impressions were related to in-lab cooperation behaviors in the public goods game. However, there was no relationship between other-impressions and daily reports of moral behavior.
If my measures of behaviors are taken as a valid criterion of accuracy, then these results suggest that people are somewhat accurate about the morality of others. But that people are inaccurate about their own morality. This is mostly in line with SOKA model predictions that the evaluative nature of a moral impression prevents selves from holding accurate impressions and the somewhat internal nature of morality makes it difficult for other’s to form an accurate moral impression. And in general these results are in line with some recent work that suggest that impressions are not tethered to acoustical recordings of behaviors for either agreeableness (Beer & Vazire, 2017) or moral impressions (Bollich, 2016).
5 Is sharing reality adaptive?
Using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, I found that those participants that share a social reality did not experience the most social value. Instead, there was an optimal level of humility, such that those participants who somewhat underestimated their morality with respect to their peers were liked and respected the most. There seems to be a balancing act between the benefits of sharing a social reality and being somewhat humble with respect to peers. The result of this balance is that some, but not too much humility was associated with highest levels of social value.
Although the general pattern for moral impression suggested the optimal approach for participants was to be humble with respect to their peers, this was not the case for the domain of fairness. Instead, peer’s impression of fairness was positively related to social value, regardless of how people saw themselves. This suggests that there are no benefits of humility, nor costs to enhancement in the domain of fairness. Though some caution should be used when interpreting domain specific effects, as little systematic domain variance was detected in studies 1 & 2.
Abstract: Moral impressions are some of the most consequential opinions people have about themselves and others. Morality is at the core of identity (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014), and drives many interpersonal interactions such as cooperation (Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005) and affiliation (Bukowski & Sippola, 1998). Yet, little is known about the extent to which these moral impressions are grounded in reality or if they are only held as idiosyncratic impressions. The current investigation evaluated how people see their own and other’s moral character, if these moral impressions are shared, and if a shared understanding of moral character is adaptive. First, I developed and tested a measurement model for assessing self- and other-impressions of morality which removes a global evaluative bias from moral impressions (Studies 1 and 2). Second, I evaluated if self- and other-impressions are grounded in a shared social reality (i.e. self-other agreement and inter-judge consensus) and/or grounded in observable behavior (Study 3). Third, I evaluated if sharing a social reality for moral impressions has interpersonal consequences for the self (Study 4). This work sheds light on the extent to which morality is in the eye of the beholder and the adaptiveness of holding shared moral impressions. Additionally, this work has implications for the assessment of moral character and the adaptiveness of self-knowledge.
1 Importance of moral impressions
1.1 Self-impressions
The beliefs we hold about our own moral character – moral self-impressions – are among the most important beliefs we hold about ourselves (Wojciszke, 2005). Indeed, people’s beliefs about their own morality lie at the heart of their identity (Heiphetz, Strohminger, & Young, 2017). For example, changing aspects of our moral selves is viewed as fundamentally changing a person, more so than non-moral aspects (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014). When people are asked about what traits comprise the ideal person, moral traits are the defining features of an ideal person (Cottrell, Neuberg, & Li, 2007). Even after death, loved ones emphasize the morality of the recently deceased (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014). People value a moral self-image (Jordan & Mullen, 2011; Monin & Jordan, 2009) and have a strong desire to see themselves as moral (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008). Given how much people care about their own morality it stands to reason that holding moral self-perceptions may be a fundamental psychological need (Prentice, Jayawickreme, Hawkins, Hartley, Furr, & Fleeson, 2018). Taken together, this suggests that moral self-perceptions are an important part of people’s lives.
1.2 Other-impressions
It isn’t just our own morality that people care deeply about. People also care deeply about the morality of others (Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2012). This is evidenced by the amount of time and effort people put into seeking and sharing information about the moral character of others. People preferentially seek out morally relevant information more so than non-moral information when forming an impression of others (Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, 2011; Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998). Further, and they regularly share information about the moral character of people they know. For example, people regularly gossip about morality (Feinberg, Willer, Stellar, & Keltner, 2012; Peters & Kashima 2015). A conservative estimate is that on any given day there is about a 15% chance to learn about moral acts of others (Hofmann, Wisneski, Brandt, & Skitka, 2014). In essence, people exert effort into learning the morality of others.
Part of why people try to understand the other’s morality is because they believe it is useful information for guiding important interpersonal decisions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people use their impressions about other’s moral character to inform a wide variety of decisions. As such, moral impressions carry consequence. Moral character impressions affect who people like and trust (Goodwin et al., 2014). Friendships and relationships are sought and ended based on moral judgments (Van’t Wout & Sanfey, 2008). Decisions about whom to trust with valuable resources (e.g. money) are informed by moral character judgments (e.g. money; De Bruin & Van Lange, 1999; Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005). People avoid working with people who are uncooperative. For example, people prefer to work with other’s when they have seen them make large contributions to a public good (Rockenbach & Milinski, 2011). Leaders are elected based on constituent impressions of their morality. For example, voters prefer candidates that appear trustworthy (Chen, Jing, & Lee, 2014). All of this evidence suggests that being seen as a moral person has positive interpersonal consequences.
In essence, people care deeply about their own morality and exert lots of effort to understand the moral character of others. The well documented dominance of moral impressions in our social lives has driven scholars to regard morality as a fundamental dimension of person perception (Brambilla & Leach, 2014, Goodwin et al., 2014; Wojciszke, 2005). And yet, despite the importance of moral impressions in our lives and its fundamental role in person perception, current work has not adequately addressed several fundamental questions about moral character impressions. Are our moral impressions grounded in reality? Is holding realistic moral impressions adaptive? To address these fundamental questions, it is important to understand the process by which accurate moral impressions form and the challenges that stand in the way of forming accurate moral impressions.
4 In lab and daily behaviors
Despite evidence of convergence between self- and other-impressions of morality, there was little evidence that self-impressions were related to moral behaviors. Self-impressions were not associated with in-lab cooperation behavior nor with daily reports from participants about their own behavior. There was some evidence that other-impressions are related to moral behavior. Specifically, other-impressions were related to in-lab cooperation behaviors in the public goods game. However, there was no relationship between other-impressions and daily reports of moral behavior.
If my measures of behaviors are taken as a valid criterion of accuracy, then these results suggest that people are somewhat accurate about the morality of others. But that people are inaccurate about their own morality. This is mostly in line with SOKA model predictions that the evaluative nature of a moral impression prevents selves from holding accurate impressions and the somewhat internal nature of morality makes it difficult for other’s to form an accurate moral impression. And in general these results are in line with some recent work that suggest that impressions are not tethered to acoustical recordings of behaviors for either agreeableness (Beer & Vazire, 2017) or moral impressions (Bollich, 2016).
5 Is sharing reality adaptive?
Using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, I found that those participants that share a social reality did not experience the most social value. Instead, there was an optimal level of humility, such that those participants who somewhat underestimated their morality with respect to their peers were liked and respected the most. There seems to be a balancing act between the benefits of sharing a social reality and being somewhat humble with respect to peers. The result of this balance is that some, but not too much humility was associated with highest levels of social value.
Although the general pattern for moral impression suggested the optimal approach for participants was to be humble with respect to their peers, this was not the case for the domain of fairness. Instead, peer’s impression of fairness was positively related to social value, regardless of how people saw themselves. This suggests that there are no benefits of humility, nor costs to enhancement in the domain of fairness. Though some caution should be used when interpreting domain specific effects, as little systematic domain variance was detected in studies 1 & 2.
Nonconsensual somnophilia: Seems driven by an underlying interest in “passivity, power, and the elimination, in degrees, of the possibility of rejection,” not an overt interest in sexual aggression
Somnophilia: Examining Its Various Forms and Associated Constructs. Elizabeth T. Deehan, Ross M. Bartels. Sexual Abuse, November 15, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063219889060
Abstract: Somnophilia refers to the interest in having sex with a sleeping person. Using an online sample of 437 participants, the present study provides the first empirical examination of somnophilia, its various forms, and theorized correlates. Participants completed the newly developed Somnophilia Interest and Proclivity Scale, which comprises three subscales (active consensual, passive consensual, and active nonconsensual somnophilia). To test hypotheses about the convergent and divergent validity of different paraphilic interests, participants also completed scales measuring necrophilic, rape-related, and sadistic/masochistic sexual fantasies, rape proclivity, and the need for sexual dominance/submission. Male participants scored higher than females on all scales except the passive subscale. For both males and females, each subscale was associated most strongly with conceptually congruent variables. These results support existing theoretical assumptions about somnophilia, as well as offering newer insights, such as distinguishing between active and passive somnophilia. Limitations and implications for further research are discussed.
Keywords somnophilia, necrophilia, paraphilia, biastophilia, sexual fantasy, dormaphilia
How Common Is Somnophilia?
Somnophilia has been termed a rare paraphilia (Lauerma, 2016). Yet, to the authors’ knowledge, no empirical studies have directly examined the prevalence of somnophilia per se in either community or forensic populations. A study by Joyal et al. (2015) did, however, provide some insight. Using an online sample of 1,516 community adults (799 females; 717 males), they examined the prevalence of 55 different sexual fantasies. Fantasies about “sexually abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious” were found to be used more frequently by males than females (22.6% vs. 10.8%, respectively). As Joyal et al. (2015) note, the prevalence of these sexual fantasies in women was statistically unusual (<16%), which was not the case for men. It should be highlighted, however, that the fantasy item was framed in offending terms (i.e., “abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious”). Had it been framed in neutral or consensual terms, the results may have been different. Moreover, the fantasy item was not specific to sleep, but instead included two other passive states (i.e., drunk and unconscious). Thus, the specific rate of somnophilic fantasies (involving just a sleeping person) cannot be accurately established, as any participants with sexual fantasies about sex with a drunk person, for example, would have also responded to this item.
Discussion
In this study, we assessed participants’ interest and proclivity to engage in active somnophilia (i.e., having sex with a sleeping person), in both consensual and nonconsensual contexts, as well as consensual passive somnophilia (i.e., being the recipient of sexual activity while asleep). This was achieved using a newly developed measure termed the SIPS, which showed convergence with corresponding sleep-related sexual fantasies. The SIPS data were then used to test the main theorized assumptions about somnophilia present within the literature. These included whether each aspect of somnophilia is associated with (a) necrophilic fantasies, (b) rape-related variables (i.e., biastophilic fantasies and fantasies of being raped, as well as rape proclivity in males), and (c) sexually sadistic/masochistic fantasies and the need for sexual dominance/ submission.
Males were found to have higher scores than females on all SIPS subscales, except for the passive subscale. This extends upon Joyal et al.’s (2015) finding, as the present gender difference was focused more specifically on somnophilia (i.e., being asleep) and included consensual somnophilic acts (not just abusive/nonconsensual behaviors). Given these results, male and female participants were subsequently analyzed separately. For both males and females, correlation and regression analyses showed that active somnophilic fantasies were most strongly associated with both active somnophilic subscales, while passive somnophilic fantasies were most strongly associated with the passive subscale. These results provide convergent and construct validity for the SIPS, along with the factor analysis results.
The findings also provided some support for the link between somnophilia and necrophilia (Calef & Weinshel, 1972; Fedoroff et al., 1997; Peck, 2006; Pettigrew, 2017). That is, necrophilic fantasies were associated with the nonconsensual SIPS subscale in male participants. However, necrophilic fantasies did not remain significant for the active SIPS subscales after the first stage of the hierarchical regression. Future research could look to see whether necrophilic fantasies play a mediating role in the link between somnophilic fantasies and somnophilic proclivity. Also, given that the lack of consent potentially plays a role, future research could examine whether the link between necrophilia and nonconsensual somnophilia is driven by having a sexual interest in passive targets (Pettigrew, 2017, 2019b).
The results also revealed that nonconsensual active somnophilia (and consensual active somnophilia to a lesser degree) is associated with biastophilic sexual fantasies in both males and females (as well as rape proclivity in males). These results provide support for the view that somnophilia is linked to an interest in nonconsensual sex (Lauerma, 2016; Pettigrew, 2019a). However, the results of the hierarchical regression revealed that rape proclivity in males and biastophilic fantasies in females remained significant independent variables for nonconsensual active somnophilia only. Thus, while rape-related variables are correlated with each form of somnophilia, they may play a more central role in nonconsensual somnophilia. These findings suggest that it may be beneficial to distinguish between an interest in consensual and nonconsensual somnophilic behavior. Although both are primarily driven by somnophilic fantasies, having an interest and proclivity to engage in biastophilic behaviors may shape someone’s somnophilic interest so that it includes a lack of consent.
Sadistic fantasies and the need for sexual dominance were correlated positively with both forms of active somnophilia. Interestingly, however, the hierarchical regression showed that using sadistic fantasies less frequently was a significant independent variable of nonconsensual somnophilia in both males and females. This perhaps suggests that an interest in more aggressive sexual acts is not linked to nonconsensual somnophilia. In light of these results, it could be argued that that nonconsensual somnophilia is driven by an underlying interest in “passivity, power, and the elimination, in degrees, of the possibility of rejection” (Pettigrew, 2017, p. 353), rather than an overt interest in sexual aggression. Further research is needed to understand the role of sexual sadism in relation to somnophilia. Perhaps it functions as a mediator between somnophilic fantasies and consensual somnophilia proclivity while playing less of a role in the proclivity to engage in nonconsensual somnophilia.
As expected, passive somnophilia was associated most strongly with passive-oriented variables. For example, sexual fantasies about being the recipient of sex while asleep was the strongest correlate in both males and females. In addition, fantasies of being raped were associated with passive somnophilia, particularly in females. It is possible that those who are aroused by being the passive recipient are striving to be totally submissive to their partner (Knafo, 2015). Indeed, the need for sexual submission and the use of masochistic fantasies were both strongly correlated with the passive subscale. Also, masochistic fantasies emerged as a significant independent variable in the hierarchal regression for females. However, passive somnophilic fantasies remained the strongest independent variable in the regression analysis for both males and females. Of course, all these data are correlational and so do not imply causal relationships between the variables.
Limitations
Although this study provides some important and useful insights into somnophilia, a number of limitations should be noted. First, we did not ask participants whether they actually engage in consensual somnophilic behavior. Doing so would have offered the opportunity to compare those who act upon their interest against those who do not. Further to this, it would have been useful to have asked participants where they had seen the study posted. From our data, we were unable to isolate and quantify how many participants were collected from fetish sites and forums related to somnophilia. This information would have helped to establish an approximate prevalence rate of somnophilia within the general population versus those recruited from somnophiliarelated sites. Moreover, the study was advertised as being about somnophilia and so the biases that come with recruiting a self-selected sample are likely present in the results. Thus, some caution is warranted when drawing conclusions from the findings. Related to this, many of the participants in this self-selected sample are unlikely to have a sexual offending background as such individuals commonly have internet use prohibitions. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized to those who have actually engaged in paraphilic offending of this nature. However, it should be noted that such prohibitions are not universal and may not always be followed by the person with a history of sexual offending. Thus, future research is needed to gain a wider picture of somnophilic-driven offending behavior.
In addition, the consensual active and passive somnophilia subscales of the SIPS were each comprised of two scenarios, both of which involved a romantic partner. The nonconsensual subscale comprised only one scenario, which involved a nonpartner (i.e., housemate). Thus, the SIPS could be amended to include a nonconsensual scenario involving one’s romantic partner for consistency. Similarly, future researchers may want to consider investigating nonconsensual passive somnophilia by developing and using a relevant scenario. We chose not include this in the present study as it was deemed conceptually problematic (i.e., having a proclivity for being a recipient of nonconsensual somnophilic behavior). However, as some participants reported fantasies of being raped, it is possible that some individuals will also harbor an interest in (rather than a proclivity for) nonconsensual passive somnophilia—especially within a self-selected online sample.
As the SIPS is a self-report measure, it is susceptible to socially desirable responding. Future research should look to examine the SIPS’s relationship with an impression management measure, as well as its convergence with an indirect (i.e., response-latency) measure of somnophilic interest. Doing so, along with a knowngroups comparison, will aid toward validating the SIPS further. A final potential issue, as with many online studies, is that some participants may not respond plausibly, may not pay attention, and/or may respond spuriously in order to get to the end of the study. Although the Mahalanobis Distance analysis helped identify participants who were outliers across multiple measures, this issue was not explicitly accounted for within the design of current study (e.g., adding questions that can highlight implausible responding, asking whether the participant answered truthfully, using attention checks). This is recommended for future research on this topic.
Abstract: Somnophilia refers to the interest in having sex with a sleeping person. Using an online sample of 437 participants, the present study provides the first empirical examination of somnophilia, its various forms, and theorized correlates. Participants completed the newly developed Somnophilia Interest and Proclivity Scale, which comprises three subscales (active consensual, passive consensual, and active nonconsensual somnophilia). To test hypotheses about the convergent and divergent validity of different paraphilic interests, participants also completed scales measuring necrophilic, rape-related, and sadistic/masochistic sexual fantasies, rape proclivity, and the need for sexual dominance/submission. Male participants scored higher than females on all scales except the passive subscale. For both males and females, each subscale was associated most strongly with conceptually congruent variables. These results support existing theoretical assumptions about somnophilia, as well as offering newer insights, such as distinguishing between active and passive somnophilia. Limitations and implications for further research are discussed.
Keywords somnophilia, necrophilia, paraphilia, biastophilia, sexual fantasy, dormaphilia
How Common Is Somnophilia?
Somnophilia has been termed a rare paraphilia (Lauerma, 2016). Yet, to the authors’ knowledge, no empirical studies have directly examined the prevalence of somnophilia per se in either community or forensic populations. A study by Joyal et al. (2015) did, however, provide some insight. Using an online sample of 1,516 community adults (799 females; 717 males), they examined the prevalence of 55 different sexual fantasies. Fantasies about “sexually abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious” were found to be used more frequently by males than females (22.6% vs. 10.8%, respectively). As Joyal et al. (2015) note, the prevalence of these sexual fantasies in women was statistically unusual (<16%), which was not the case for men. It should be highlighted, however, that the fantasy item was framed in offending terms (i.e., “abusing a person who is drunk, asleep, or unconscious”). Had it been framed in neutral or consensual terms, the results may have been different. Moreover, the fantasy item was not specific to sleep, but instead included two other passive states (i.e., drunk and unconscious). Thus, the specific rate of somnophilic fantasies (involving just a sleeping person) cannot be accurately established, as any participants with sexual fantasies about sex with a drunk person, for example, would have also responded to this item.
Discussion
In this study, we assessed participants’ interest and proclivity to engage in active somnophilia (i.e., having sex with a sleeping person), in both consensual and nonconsensual contexts, as well as consensual passive somnophilia (i.e., being the recipient of sexual activity while asleep). This was achieved using a newly developed measure termed the SIPS, which showed convergence with corresponding sleep-related sexual fantasies. The SIPS data were then used to test the main theorized assumptions about somnophilia present within the literature. These included whether each aspect of somnophilia is associated with (a) necrophilic fantasies, (b) rape-related variables (i.e., biastophilic fantasies and fantasies of being raped, as well as rape proclivity in males), and (c) sexually sadistic/masochistic fantasies and the need for sexual dominance/ submission.
Males were found to have higher scores than females on all SIPS subscales, except for the passive subscale. This extends upon Joyal et al.’s (2015) finding, as the present gender difference was focused more specifically on somnophilia (i.e., being asleep) and included consensual somnophilic acts (not just abusive/nonconsensual behaviors). Given these results, male and female participants were subsequently analyzed separately. For both males and females, correlation and regression analyses showed that active somnophilic fantasies were most strongly associated with both active somnophilic subscales, while passive somnophilic fantasies were most strongly associated with the passive subscale. These results provide convergent and construct validity for the SIPS, along with the factor analysis results.
The findings also provided some support for the link between somnophilia and necrophilia (Calef & Weinshel, 1972; Fedoroff et al., 1997; Peck, 2006; Pettigrew, 2017). That is, necrophilic fantasies were associated with the nonconsensual SIPS subscale in male participants. However, necrophilic fantasies did not remain significant for the active SIPS subscales after the first stage of the hierarchical regression. Future research could look to see whether necrophilic fantasies play a mediating role in the link between somnophilic fantasies and somnophilic proclivity. Also, given that the lack of consent potentially plays a role, future research could examine whether the link between necrophilia and nonconsensual somnophilia is driven by having a sexual interest in passive targets (Pettigrew, 2017, 2019b).
The results also revealed that nonconsensual active somnophilia (and consensual active somnophilia to a lesser degree) is associated with biastophilic sexual fantasies in both males and females (as well as rape proclivity in males). These results provide support for the view that somnophilia is linked to an interest in nonconsensual sex (Lauerma, 2016; Pettigrew, 2019a). However, the results of the hierarchical regression revealed that rape proclivity in males and biastophilic fantasies in females remained significant independent variables for nonconsensual active somnophilia only. Thus, while rape-related variables are correlated with each form of somnophilia, they may play a more central role in nonconsensual somnophilia. These findings suggest that it may be beneficial to distinguish between an interest in consensual and nonconsensual somnophilic behavior. Although both are primarily driven by somnophilic fantasies, having an interest and proclivity to engage in biastophilic behaviors may shape someone’s somnophilic interest so that it includes a lack of consent.
Sadistic fantasies and the need for sexual dominance were correlated positively with both forms of active somnophilia. Interestingly, however, the hierarchical regression showed that using sadistic fantasies less frequently was a significant independent variable of nonconsensual somnophilia in both males and females. This perhaps suggests that an interest in more aggressive sexual acts is not linked to nonconsensual somnophilia. In light of these results, it could be argued that that nonconsensual somnophilia is driven by an underlying interest in “passivity, power, and the elimination, in degrees, of the possibility of rejection” (Pettigrew, 2017, p. 353), rather than an overt interest in sexual aggression. Further research is needed to understand the role of sexual sadism in relation to somnophilia. Perhaps it functions as a mediator between somnophilic fantasies and consensual somnophilia proclivity while playing less of a role in the proclivity to engage in nonconsensual somnophilia.
As expected, passive somnophilia was associated most strongly with passive-oriented variables. For example, sexual fantasies about being the recipient of sex while asleep was the strongest correlate in both males and females. In addition, fantasies of being raped were associated with passive somnophilia, particularly in females. It is possible that those who are aroused by being the passive recipient are striving to be totally submissive to their partner (Knafo, 2015). Indeed, the need for sexual submission and the use of masochistic fantasies were both strongly correlated with the passive subscale. Also, masochistic fantasies emerged as a significant independent variable in the hierarchal regression for females. However, passive somnophilic fantasies remained the strongest independent variable in the regression analysis for both males and females. Of course, all these data are correlational and so do not imply causal relationships between the variables.
Limitations
Although this study provides some important and useful insights into somnophilia, a number of limitations should be noted. First, we did not ask participants whether they actually engage in consensual somnophilic behavior. Doing so would have offered the opportunity to compare those who act upon their interest against those who do not. Further to this, it would have been useful to have asked participants where they had seen the study posted. From our data, we were unable to isolate and quantify how many participants were collected from fetish sites and forums related to somnophilia. This information would have helped to establish an approximate prevalence rate of somnophilia within the general population versus those recruited from somnophiliarelated sites. Moreover, the study was advertised as being about somnophilia and so the biases that come with recruiting a self-selected sample are likely present in the results. Thus, some caution is warranted when drawing conclusions from the findings. Related to this, many of the participants in this self-selected sample are unlikely to have a sexual offending background as such individuals commonly have internet use prohibitions. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized to those who have actually engaged in paraphilic offending of this nature. However, it should be noted that such prohibitions are not universal and may not always be followed by the person with a history of sexual offending. Thus, future research is needed to gain a wider picture of somnophilic-driven offending behavior.
In addition, the consensual active and passive somnophilia subscales of the SIPS were each comprised of two scenarios, both of which involved a romantic partner. The nonconsensual subscale comprised only one scenario, which involved a nonpartner (i.e., housemate). Thus, the SIPS could be amended to include a nonconsensual scenario involving one’s romantic partner for consistency. Similarly, future researchers may want to consider investigating nonconsensual passive somnophilia by developing and using a relevant scenario. We chose not include this in the present study as it was deemed conceptually problematic (i.e., having a proclivity for being a recipient of nonconsensual somnophilic behavior). However, as some participants reported fantasies of being raped, it is possible that some individuals will also harbor an interest in (rather than a proclivity for) nonconsensual passive somnophilia—especially within a self-selected online sample.
As the SIPS is a self-report measure, it is susceptible to socially desirable responding. Future research should look to examine the SIPS’s relationship with an impression management measure, as well as its convergence with an indirect (i.e., response-latency) measure of somnophilic interest. Doing so, along with a knowngroups comparison, will aid toward validating the SIPS further. A final potential issue, as with many online studies, is that some participants may not respond plausibly, may not pay attention, and/or may respond spuriously in order to get to the end of the study. Although the Mahalanobis Distance analysis helped identify participants who were outliers across multiple measures, this issue was not explicitly accounted for within the design of current study (e.g., adding questions that can highlight implausible responding, asking whether the participant answered truthfully, using attention checks). This is recommended for future research on this topic.
While psychological pain led to more empathic concern, physical pain led to higher ratings of personal distress
Empathic concern and personal distress depend on situational but not dispositional factors. Sarah Fabi, Lydia Anna Weber, Hartmut Leuthold. PLoS November 14, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225102
Abstract: Empathic concern and personal distress are empathic responses that may result when observing someone in discomfort. Even though these empathic responses have received much attention in past research, it is still unclear which conditions contribute to their respective experience. Hence, the main goal of this study was to examine if dispositional empathic traits or rather situational variables are more likely to evoke empathic concern and personal distress and how the two empathic responses influence motor responses. We presented pictures of persons in psychological, physical, or no pain with matched descriptions of situations that promoted an other-focused state. Approach-avoidance movements were demanded by a subsequently presented tone. While psychological pain led to more empathic concern, physical pain led to higher ratings of personal distress. Linear mixed-effects modelling analysis further revealed that situational factors, such as the type of pain but also the affect experienced by the participants before the experiment predicted the two empathic responses, whereas dispositional empathic traits had no significant influence. In addition, the more intensely the empathic responses were experienced, the faster were movements initiated, presumably reflecting an effect of arousal. Overall, the present study advances our understanding of empathic responses to people in need and provides novel methodological tools to effectively manipulate and analyze empathic concern and personal distress in future research.
Abstract: Empathic concern and personal distress are empathic responses that may result when observing someone in discomfort. Even though these empathic responses have received much attention in past research, it is still unclear which conditions contribute to their respective experience. Hence, the main goal of this study was to examine if dispositional empathic traits or rather situational variables are more likely to evoke empathic concern and personal distress and how the two empathic responses influence motor responses. We presented pictures of persons in psychological, physical, or no pain with matched descriptions of situations that promoted an other-focused state. Approach-avoidance movements were demanded by a subsequently presented tone. While psychological pain led to more empathic concern, physical pain led to higher ratings of personal distress. Linear mixed-effects modelling analysis further revealed that situational factors, such as the type of pain but also the affect experienced by the participants before the experiment predicted the two empathic responses, whereas dispositional empathic traits had no significant influence. In addition, the more intensely the empathic responses were experienced, the faster were movements initiated, presumably reflecting an effect of arousal. Overall, the present study advances our understanding of empathic responses to people in need and provides novel methodological tools to effectively manipulate and analyze empathic concern and personal distress in future research.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Europe: Height is positively associated with leadership for women, no effect for men; for women, absolute and relative height are about equally strong
About the Relation between Height and Leadership: Evidence from Europe. Felix Bittmann. Economics & Human Biology, November 15 2019, 100829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2019.100829
Highlights
• The study investigate the association between height and leadership in Europe.
• Height is positively associated with leadership for women.
• There is no effect for men when controlling for education and occupational position.
• For women, absolute and relative height are about equally strong.
Abstract: To better explicate the well-researched finding that taller individuals have higher wages on average, potential mechanisms should be studied in detail. The present analysis investigates the relationship between height and the probability of being in a leadership position in the workplace using multinational European Social Survey data from 19 countries. Studying full-time, employed individuals between 20 and 55 years of age reveals considerable country differences which is beneficial for the estimated multilevel models as variation is increased.
The results indicate a statistically significant effect whereby women are 0.15 percentage points more likely to be in a leadership position for each additional centimetre of absolute height when controlling for education and occupational position whereas there is no effect for men.
In order to study the relevance of absolute vs relative height, which is the difference to the local peer-group, regional data is utilized. The main findings are that there is no effect of relative height for men but a statistically significant effect for women. For them, absolute and relative effects are about equally strong.
Highlights
• The study investigate the association between height and leadership in Europe.
• Height is positively associated with leadership for women.
• There is no effect for men when controlling for education and occupational position.
• For women, absolute and relative height are about equally strong.
Abstract: To better explicate the well-researched finding that taller individuals have higher wages on average, potential mechanisms should be studied in detail. The present analysis investigates the relationship between height and the probability of being in a leadership position in the workplace using multinational European Social Survey data from 19 countries. Studying full-time, employed individuals between 20 and 55 years of age reveals considerable country differences which is beneficial for the estimated multilevel models as variation is increased.
The results indicate a statistically significant effect whereby women are 0.15 percentage points more likely to be in a leadership position for each additional centimetre of absolute height when controlling for education and occupational position whereas there is no effect for men.
In order to study the relevance of absolute vs relative height, which is the difference to the local peer-group, regional data is utilized. The main findings are that there is no effect of relative height for men but a statistically significant effect for women. For them, absolute and relative effects are about equally strong.
Believers are more likely to justify their own passive immorality, & to commit everyday acts of passive immorality such as parking across multiple spaces & keeping overdue library books
When a good god makes bad people: Testing a theory of religion and immorality. Jackson, Joshua Conrad Gray, Kurt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nov 2019. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-06349-001
Abstract: When might religious belief lower ethical standards? We propose a theory of religion and immorality that makes 3 central predictions. First, people will judge immoral acts as more permissible when they make divine attributions for these acts, seeing them as enabled by an intervening God. Second, people will be more likely to make divine attributions when evaluating passive immorality (e.g., keeping a lost wallet) than active immorality (e.g., pick-pocketing) because human action makes people less likely to infer God’s agency. Third, believers will be more likely than nonbelievers to perpetrate passive immorality, because they feel justified taking advantage of God’s beneficence. Thirteen studies support these predictions. Our findings show that people who attribute events to God judge morally questionable behaviors more leniently (Study 1), American states with more prayer groups have higher rates of crime (Study 2), and experimentally manipulated divine attributions lead people to see selfish and harmful behavior as less immoral (Study 3). Divine attributions—and corresponding moral permissibility—are more likely with passive immorality than with active immorality (Studies 4–7). Compared with nonbelievers, believers are more likely to justify their own passive immorality (Study 8), and to commit everyday acts of passive immorality such as parking across multiple spaces (Study 9) and keeping overdue library books (Study 10). A novel behavioral economics task reveals that although passive immorality is not affected by religious priming, it does correlate with self-reported religious belief (Studies 11–13). Finally, an internal meta-analysis supports our predictions.
General Discussion
Does God make you good, or does He help you justify immorality? We suggest that both alternatives are true, and that the link between religion and morality is more complex than once thought. Properties of religious belief such as supernatural monitoring and punishment may encourage prosociality (Johnson, 2005; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008), but beliefs in divine intervention seem to encourage the rationalization of immorality, especially in cases of passive immorality when human agency is absent. The present research provides support for this idea, revealing that global religious belief has little zero-order association with moral judgment. Instead, divine attributions increase moral permissiveness, whereas global religious belief predicts stricter moral judgments once variance associated with divine attributions has been removed.
Thirteen studies—and an internal meta-analysis—reveal evidence supporting three key predictions. Our first prediction was that people who make divine attributions for immoral acts see them as more permissible (Studies 1–3). Study 1 used self-report measures to show that divine attributions predict permissive moral judgment, whereas global religious belief predict stricter moral judgments once variance associated with divine attributions has been removed. Study 2 found that prayer group membership—a group-level proxy for divine attributions—positively predicts statewide crime rates whereas religious belief negatively but nonsignificantly predicts crime. Study 3 replicated the correlational link between divine attributions and moral permissibility with an experimental manipulation of divine attributions.
Our second prediction was that divine attributions for immorality should be most common in cases of passive immorality—when human agency is ambiguous— because these situations encourage people to infer God’s agency (Studies 4 –7). Studies 4 and 5 revealed that passive (vs. active) immorality predicts divine attributions, which are linked to seeing other people’s transgressions as more morally permissible. Study 6 showed that this effect is strongest when God’s agency is salient via prayer, and Study 7 showed that the active-passive divide cannot be explained by differences in act severity.
Our third prediction was that, because believers can make divine attributions for passive immorality, they should be more likely than nonbelievers to perpetrate these acts (Studies 8 –10). Study 8 found that believers are more likely to justify their past passive immorality compared with nonbelievers, an effect that is mediated by divine attributions. Studies 9 and 10 showed that religion is linked to two forms of real-world passive immorality: failing to correct bad parking (Study 9) and failing to return overdue library books (Study 10). Studies 11–13 also showed that religious belief predicts more passive immorality in a novel economic game, though these effects were not impacted by religious priming.
Abstract: When might religious belief lower ethical standards? We propose a theory of religion and immorality that makes 3 central predictions. First, people will judge immoral acts as more permissible when they make divine attributions for these acts, seeing them as enabled by an intervening God. Second, people will be more likely to make divine attributions when evaluating passive immorality (e.g., keeping a lost wallet) than active immorality (e.g., pick-pocketing) because human action makes people less likely to infer God’s agency. Third, believers will be more likely than nonbelievers to perpetrate passive immorality, because they feel justified taking advantage of God’s beneficence. Thirteen studies support these predictions. Our findings show that people who attribute events to God judge morally questionable behaviors more leniently (Study 1), American states with more prayer groups have higher rates of crime (Study 2), and experimentally manipulated divine attributions lead people to see selfish and harmful behavior as less immoral (Study 3). Divine attributions—and corresponding moral permissibility—are more likely with passive immorality than with active immorality (Studies 4–7). Compared with nonbelievers, believers are more likely to justify their own passive immorality (Study 8), and to commit everyday acts of passive immorality such as parking across multiple spaces (Study 9) and keeping overdue library books (Study 10). A novel behavioral economics task reveals that although passive immorality is not affected by religious priming, it does correlate with self-reported religious belief (Studies 11–13). Finally, an internal meta-analysis supports our predictions.
General Discussion
Does God make you good, or does He help you justify immorality? We suggest that both alternatives are true, and that the link between religion and morality is more complex than once thought. Properties of religious belief such as supernatural monitoring and punishment may encourage prosociality (Johnson, 2005; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008), but beliefs in divine intervention seem to encourage the rationalization of immorality, especially in cases of passive immorality when human agency is absent. The present research provides support for this idea, revealing that global religious belief has little zero-order association with moral judgment. Instead, divine attributions increase moral permissiveness, whereas global religious belief predicts stricter moral judgments once variance associated with divine attributions has been removed.
Thirteen studies—and an internal meta-analysis—reveal evidence supporting three key predictions. Our first prediction was that people who make divine attributions for immoral acts see them as more permissible (Studies 1–3). Study 1 used self-report measures to show that divine attributions predict permissive moral judgment, whereas global religious belief predict stricter moral judgments once variance associated with divine attributions has been removed. Study 2 found that prayer group membership—a group-level proxy for divine attributions—positively predicts statewide crime rates whereas religious belief negatively but nonsignificantly predicts crime. Study 3 replicated the correlational link between divine attributions and moral permissibility with an experimental manipulation of divine attributions.
Our second prediction was that divine attributions for immorality should be most common in cases of passive immorality—when human agency is ambiguous— because these situations encourage people to infer God’s agency (Studies 4 –7). Studies 4 and 5 revealed that passive (vs. active) immorality predicts divine attributions, which are linked to seeing other people’s transgressions as more morally permissible. Study 6 showed that this effect is strongest when God’s agency is salient via prayer, and Study 7 showed that the active-passive divide cannot be explained by differences in act severity.
Our third prediction was that, because believers can make divine attributions for passive immorality, they should be more likely than nonbelievers to perpetrate these acts (Studies 8 –10). Study 8 found that believers are more likely to justify their past passive immorality compared with nonbelievers, an effect that is mediated by divine attributions. Studies 9 and 10 showed that religion is linked to two forms of real-world passive immorality: failing to correct bad parking (Study 9) and failing to return overdue library books (Study 10). Studies 11–13 also showed that religious belief predicts more passive immorality in a novel economic game, though these effects were not impacted by religious priming.
Narcissism & Machiavellianism were positive predictors of task performance; psychopathy & sadism were negative predictors; narcissism was positively related to contextual performance
Bad guys perform better? The incremental predictive validity of the Dark Tetrad over Big Five and Honesty-Humility. Elena Fernández-del-Río, Pedro J. Ramos-Villagrasa, Juan Ramón Barrada. Personality and Individual Differences, November 15 2019, 109700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109700
Highlights
• Dark Tetrad has incremental effects over Big Five and Honesty-Humility.
• Narcissism and Machiavellianism were positive predictors of task performance.
• Psychopathy and sadism were negative predictors of task performance.
• Narcissism was positively related to contextual performance.
• Sadism was positively related to counterproductive work behavior.
Abstract: This study analyzed incremental effects of the Dark Tetrad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism) on job performance dimensions (i.e., task performance, contextual performance, counterproductive work behavior) over the Big Five and Honesty-Humility. Using a multi-occupational sample of 613 employees, results revealed positive outcomes depending on the specific Dark Tetrad trait analyzed. After including sociodemographic and work-related variables, Big Five, and Honesty-Humility, narcissism and Machiavellianism were positively related to task performance, whereas psychopathy and sadism were negative predictors. Narcissism was also a positive predictor of contextual performance, while sadism was positively related to counterproductive work behavior. These results show that the Dark Tetrad is useful in its own right and incrementally above normal-range personality measures.
Keywords: NarcissismMachiavellianismPsychopathySadismBig FiveHonesty-HumilityJob performance
Highlights
• Dark Tetrad has incremental effects over Big Five and Honesty-Humility.
• Narcissism and Machiavellianism were positive predictors of task performance.
• Psychopathy and sadism were negative predictors of task performance.
• Narcissism was positively related to contextual performance.
• Sadism was positively related to counterproductive work behavior.
Abstract: This study analyzed incremental effects of the Dark Tetrad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism) on job performance dimensions (i.e., task performance, contextual performance, counterproductive work behavior) over the Big Five and Honesty-Humility. Using a multi-occupational sample of 613 employees, results revealed positive outcomes depending on the specific Dark Tetrad trait analyzed. After including sociodemographic and work-related variables, Big Five, and Honesty-Humility, narcissism and Machiavellianism were positively related to task performance, whereas psychopathy and sadism were negative predictors. Narcissism was also a positive predictor of contextual performance, while sadism was positively related to counterproductive work behavior. These results show that the Dark Tetrad is useful in its own right and incrementally above normal-range personality measures.
Keywords: NarcissismMachiavellianismPsychopathySadismBig FiveHonesty-HumilityJob performance
The tendency of political journalists to form insular groups/packs, chasing the same angles & quoting the same sources, is a well-known issue in journalism & has long been criticized for its role in groupthink & homogenous coverage
Exploring Political Journalism Homophily on Twitter: A Comparative Analysis of US and UK Elections in 2016 and 2017. Kelly Fincham. Media and Communication, Vol 7, No 1 (2019), March 21 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1765
Abstract: The tendency of political journalists to form insular groups or packs, chasing the same angles and quoting the same sources, is a well-documented issue in journalism studies and has long been criticized for its role in groupthink and homogenous news coverage. This groupthink attracted renewed criticism after the unexpected victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election as the campaign coverage had indicated a likely win by the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. This pattern was repeated in the 2017 UK election when the Conservative party lost their majority after a campaign in which the news coverage had pointed to an overall Tory victory. Such groupthink is often attributed to homophily, the tendency of individuals to interact with those most like them, and while homophily in the legacy media system is well-studied, there is little research around homophily in the hybrid media system, even as social media platforms like Twitter facilitate the development—and analysis—of virtual political journalism packs. This study, which compares Twitter interactions among US and UK political reporters in the 2016 and 2017 national elections, shows that political journalists are overwhelmingly more likely to use Twitter to interact with other journalists, particularly political journalists, and that their offline tendencies to form homogenous networks have transferred online. There are some exceptions around factors such as gender, news organizations and types of news organization—and important distinctions between types of interactions—but overall the study provides evidence of sustained homophily as journalists continue to normalize Twitter.
Keywords elections; groupthink; homophily; political journalism; Twitter, UK; US
6. Discussion
The results of this study point to significant homophily
throughout political journalists’ interaction networks
during the US and UK election campaigns, offering key insights
into the emergence of common Twitter practices
among political journalists in two of the “Liberal Media”
countries (Hallin & Mancini, 2004); and providing further
evidence of the continuing normalization of Twitter in
the hybrid media environment. The results show that
political journalists in both the US and the UK are significantly
more likely to engage with other political journalists
during election campaigns and that the extent of
such homophily can be affected by factors like news organization,
types of news organization (print; broadcast;
digital or wire) and gender. However, while the findings
point to overall homophily there are some marked differences
between the two countries and between the two
types of interactions as discussed below.
To answer the first two research questions, the study
shows a pronounced degree of homophily in both countries
in retweets and replies with higher rates of homophily
in retweets. While the US journalists are more
likely to be more homophilous overall, the political reporters
in both countries formed distinct journalismcentered
bubbles—with political journalists the single
largest group—and “other” non-journalism voices significantly
marginalized. Taking retweets first, the US political
journalists paid more attention to other political
reporters than their UK counterparts with 82 percent
against 64 percent. However, the political reporters in
both countries retweeted very high percentages of journalists
overall with 93 percent in the US and 84 percent
in the UK. The difference in types of journalists and the
higher UK retweeting rates of non-journalist accounts
(16 percent to 7 percent in the US) could be attributed to
the suicide bombing in Manchester during the UK election
campaign which caused 23 deaths and led to the
24-hour suspension of the campaign. While content analysis
was beyond the scope of this article, examining the
content of the retweets would help in determining if the
difference around retweeted users could be explained by
the effect of this major news story which dominated the
news cycles for days in the UK. The findings on replies
may also have been impacted by the May 22 suicide
attack. The percentage of political-journalist-to-politicaljournalists
replies in both countries were roughly similar
(US: 70 percent; UK: 68 percent) which suggests some significant
similarities in the cross-national trend, but there
were also quite marked differences: UK reporters sent
more than three times the number of replies than the US
reporters and the higher number of replies were used to
engage with a higher percentage of non-journalists with
22 percent against 16.5 percent in the US. Again, content
analysis would be useful in understanding if the differences
are linked to a major news story that disrupted the
UK election campaign rather than emerging differences
in journalism practice in two similar media systems.
The second two research questions explored the degree
of homophily in retweets and replies across a set
of shared characteristics and found that news organization,
types of news organization (print, broadcast, digital
or wire) and gender play a role in the homophily observed
in both countries. The study shows similar patterns
in both countries, particularly around gender, with
significant levels of homophily in male political journalists’
interactions. While both male and female journalists
are more likely to use replies to interact with their
own gender; the effects are small to medium-sized for
females and more pronounced for males. The impact
of gender in retweets is striking with both male and female
political journalists in the UK and US more likely
to retweet male political journalists than female political
journalists. However, given that the amplification most
often benefits male political journalists, the gender findings,
while initially suggestive of homophily, may in fact
be more reflective of the political journalism gender inequities
highlighted by Usher et al. in 2018. Indeed, the
findings here almost exactly mirror those from Hanusch
and Nölleke (2018) whose work on Australian reporters
found only mild gender-based heterophily within female
retweet networks. The lack of gender diversity among
political journalists, particularly in the UK parliamentary
press lobby, has been highlighted in recent years (Tobitt,
2018) and these findings suggest that male political journalists’
voices are amplified by Twitter journalism engagement
practices in both countries.
Interestingly, the analysis of news organizations
showed political journalists in both countries were more
likely to retweet political journalists from outside their
organizations than inside, echoing Vergeer’s 2015 finding
that Dutch national news journalists were more likely
to connect with those outside their own news organizations.
While news organization was not seen as a major
factor in Twitter homophily, types of news organization
did emerge as a significant factor, in particular the US
broadcast sector and the UK newspaper sector, findings
which may point to a linkage between political bias and
Twitter homophily as these are the two media sectors
generally regarded as more politically biased than other
types of news organizations in their respective countries
(Hallin & Mancini, 2004).
Overall, homophily is clearly visible in the political
journalists’ sustained Twitter interactions as they repeatedly
train their attention on other political journalists in
retweets and replies and re-create their legacy pack networks
online. While homophily itself does not become
more, or less, apparent during election campaigns, these
time-frames were chosen to explore the most frequent
discussion partners chosen by political journalists during
a period when the public is paying more attention to politics
and to explore how journalists sort themselves into
the kinds of homophilous groups, or filter bubbles, which
can amplify the general consensus and shape the types
of news that develop (Carlson, 2017). Much is known
about homophily in legacy journalism practice but research
into similar behavior on Twitter has been slow to
emerge, even as studies have frequently pointed to high
rates of journalist-to-journalist interactions on Twitter.
The very speed with which journalists have adopted
Twitter and integrated it into their work routines may
have helped create the kinds of homophilous macro processes
revealed in this study, processes which are difficult
to detect or prevent at the individual journalist level
(Vergeer, 2015). Studies such as this can perhaps help educators
and newsrooms alike in creating more education
and awareness around engagement and interaction on
platforms like Twitter, which offer a myriad of opportunities
for journalists to interact with other information
sources, and thus avoiding the intra-journalistic activity
and pack journalism identified here.
The significant differences in gender warrant more research.
It is beyond the scope of this article to determine
whether or not the political journalists were deliberately
or inadvertently focusing on male political journalists, but
these interaction patterns deserve greater inquiry and the
findings again speak to the pressing need for increased education
around diversity in Twitter interactions.
Finally, while concerns have been raised around the
propensity of citizens to receive information via filter
bubbles on social media, the results of this study suggest
that perhaps more attention should be focused on
journalists rather than individuals as a journalist’s filter
bubble can have a far more powerful effect on the news
agenda. This tendency of political journalists to form
close-knit networks on Twitter is particularly worthy of
scrutiny as political journalists are essential in explaining
campaign policies and platforms and helping voters
understand the issues under discussion. Moreover, the
power to set the agenda remains concentrated with actors
who “enjoy power and visibility both on and off
Twitter,” (Siapera, Boudourides, Lenis, & Suiter, 2018)
and this study shows that political journalists, despite the
almost limitless opportunities to do otherwise, continue
to confer such power and visibility on other political journalists,
particularly male political journalists, as they remain
tethered, albeit virtually, to the journalism packs of
the legacy media era.
6.1. Limitations
While the results show that US and UK political journalists
restrict the range and diversity of voices chosen as
discussion partners, there are limitations to this study.
For example, while the journalists generated a sizeable
number of tweets the population size itself was kept relatively
small to allow for manual coding and analysis.
A larger population size could have explored these issues
in more detail, but this would have entailed more coders
and/or machine analysis. Content analysis would have
helped in exploring some of the issues, particularly the
cross-national difference observed in replies.
Check also Journalistic Homophily on Social Media: Exploring journalists’ interactions with each other on Twitter. Folker Hanusch & Daniel Nölleke. Digital Journalism, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/02/journalists-continue-to-live-in-bubbles.html
Abstract: The tendency of political journalists to form insular groups or packs, chasing the same angles and quoting the same sources, is a well-documented issue in journalism studies and has long been criticized for its role in groupthink and homogenous news coverage. This groupthink attracted renewed criticism after the unexpected victory of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election as the campaign coverage had indicated a likely win by the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. This pattern was repeated in the 2017 UK election when the Conservative party lost their majority after a campaign in which the news coverage had pointed to an overall Tory victory. Such groupthink is often attributed to homophily, the tendency of individuals to interact with those most like them, and while homophily in the legacy media system is well-studied, there is little research around homophily in the hybrid media system, even as social media platforms like Twitter facilitate the development—and analysis—of virtual political journalism packs. This study, which compares Twitter interactions among US and UK political reporters in the 2016 and 2017 national elections, shows that political journalists are overwhelmingly more likely to use Twitter to interact with other journalists, particularly political journalists, and that their offline tendencies to form homogenous networks have transferred online. There are some exceptions around factors such as gender, news organizations and types of news organization—and important distinctions between types of interactions—but overall the study provides evidence of sustained homophily as journalists continue to normalize Twitter.
Keywords elections; groupthink; homophily; political journalism; Twitter, UK; US
6. Discussion
The results of this study point to significant homophily
throughout political journalists’ interaction networks
during the US and UK election campaigns, offering key insights
into the emergence of common Twitter practices
among political journalists in two of the “Liberal Media”
countries (Hallin & Mancini, 2004); and providing further
evidence of the continuing normalization of Twitter in
the hybrid media environment. The results show that
political journalists in both the US and the UK are significantly
more likely to engage with other political journalists
during election campaigns and that the extent of
such homophily can be affected by factors like news organization,
types of news organization (print; broadcast;
digital or wire) and gender. However, while the findings
point to overall homophily there are some marked differences
between the two countries and between the two
types of interactions as discussed below.
To answer the first two research questions, the study
shows a pronounced degree of homophily in both countries
in retweets and replies with higher rates of homophily
in retweets. While the US journalists are more
likely to be more homophilous overall, the political reporters
in both countries formed distinct journalismcentered
bubbles—with political journalists the single
largest group—and “other” non-journalism voices significantly
marginalized. Taking retweets first, the US political
journalists paid more attention to other political
reporters than their UK counterparts with 82 percent
against 64 percent. However, the political reporters in
both countries retweeted very high percentages of journalists
overall with 93 percent in the US and 84 percent
in the UK. The difference in types of journalists and the
higher UK retweeting rates of non-journalist accounts
(16 percent to 7 percent in the US) could be attributed to
the suicide bombing in Manchester during the UK election
campaign which caused 23 deaths and led to the
24-hour suspension of the campaign. While content analysis
was beyond the scope of this article, examining the
content of the retweets would help in determining if the
difference around retweeted users could be explained by
the effect of this major news story which dominated the
news cycles for days in the UK. The findings on replies
may also have been impacted by the May 22 suicide
attack. The percentage of political-journalist-to-politicaljournalists
replies in both countries were roughly similar
(US: 70 percent; UK: 68 percent) which suggests some significant
similarities in the cross-national trend, but there
were also quite marked differences: UK reporters sent
more than three times the number of replies than the US
reporters and the higher number of replies were used to
engage with a higher percentage of non-journalists with
22 percent against 16.5 percent in the US. Again, content
analysis would be useful in understanding if the differences
are linked to a major news story that disrupted the
UK election campaign rather than emerging differences
in journalism practice in two similar media systems.
The second two research questions explored the degree
of homophily in retweets and replies across a set
of shared characteristics and found that news organization,
types of news organization (print, broadcast, digital
or wire) and gender play a role in the homophily observed
in both countries. The study shows similar patterns
in both countries, particularly around gender, with
significant levels of homophily in male political journalists’
interactions. While both male and female journalists
are more likely to use replies to interact with their
own gender; the effects are small to medium-sized for
females and more pronounced for males. The impact
of gender in retweets is striking with both male and female
political journalists in the UK and US more likely
to retweet male political journalists than female political
journalists. However, given that the amplification most
often benefits male political journalists, the gender findings,
while initially suggestive of homophily, may in fact
be more reflective of the political journalism gender inequities
highlighted by Usher et al. in 2018. Indeed, the
findings here almost exactly mirror those from Hanusch
and Nölleke (2018) whose work on Australian reporters
found only mild gender-based heterophily within female
retweet networks. The lack of gender diversity among
political journalists, particularly in the UK parliamentary
press lobby, has been highlighted in recent years (Tobitt,
2018) and these findings suggest that male political journalists’
voices are amplified by Twitter journalism engagement
practices in both countries.
Interestingly, the analysis of news organizations
showed political journalists in both countries were more
likely to retweet political journalists from outside their
organizations than inside, echoing Vergeer’s 2015 finding
that Dutch national news journalists were more likely
to connect with those outside their own news organizations.
While news organization was not seen as a major
factor in Twitter homophily, types of news organization
did emerge as a significant factor, in particular the US
broadcast sector and the UK newspaper sector, findings
which may point to a linkage between political bias and
Twitter homophily as these are the two media sectors
generally regarded as more politically biased than other
types of news organizations in their respective countries
(Hallin & Mancini, 2004).
Overall, homophily is clearly visible in the political
journalists’ sustained Twitter interactions as they repeatedly
train their attention on other political journalists in
retweets and replies and re-create their legacy pack networks
online. While homophily itself does not become
more, or less, apparent during election campaigns, these
time-frames were chosen to explore the most frequent
discussion partners chosen by political journalists during
a period when the public is paying more attention to politics
and to explore how journalists sort themselves into
the kinds of homophilous groups, or filter bubbles, which
can amplify the general consensus and shape the types
of news that develop (Carlson, 2017). Much is known
about homophily in legacy journalism practice but research
into similar behavior on Twitter has been slow to
emerge, even as studies have frequently pointed to high
rates of journalist-to-journalist interactions on Twitter.
The very speed with which journalists have adopted
Twitter and integrated it into their work routines may
have helped create the kinds of homophilous macro processes
revealed in this study, processes which are difficult
to detect or prevent at the individual journalist level
(Vergeer, 2015). Studies such as this can perhaps help educators
and newsrooms alike in creating more education
and awareness around engagement and interaction on
platforms like Twitter, which offer a myriad of opportunities
for journalists to interact with other information
sources, and thus avoiding the intra-journalistic activity
and pack journalism identified here.
The significant differences in gender warrant more research.
It is beyond the scope of this article to determine
whether or not the political journalists were deliberately
or inadvertently focusing on male political journalists, but
these interaction patterns deserve greater inquiry and the
findings again speak to the pressing need for increased education
around diversity in Twitter interactions.
Finally, while concerns have been raised around the
propensity of citizens to receive information via filter
bubbles on social media, the results of this study suggest
that perhaps more attention should be focused on
journalists rather than individuals as a journalist’s filter
bubble can have a far more powerful effect on the news
agenda. This tendency of political journalists to form
close-knit networks on Twitter is particularly worthy of
scrutiny as political journalists are essential in explaining
campaign policies and platforms and helping voters
understand the issues under discussion. Moreover, the
power to set the agenda remains concentrated with actors
who “enjoy power and visibility both on and off
Twitter,” (Siapera, Boudourides, Lenis, & Suiter, 2018)
and this study shows that political journalists, despite the
almost limitless opportunities to do otherwise, continue
to confer such power and visibility on other political journalists,
particularly male political journalists, as they remain
tethered, albeit virtually, to the journalism packs of
the legacy media era.
6.1. Limitations
While the results show that US and UK political journalists
restrict the range and diversity of voices chosen as
discussion partners, there are limitations to this study.
For example, while the journalists generated a sizeable
number of tweets the population size itself was kept relatively
small to allow for manual coding and analysis.
A larger population size could have explored these issues
in more detail, but this would have entailed more coders
and/or machine analysis. Content analysis would have
helped in exploring some of the issues, particularly the
cross-national difference observed in replies.
Check also Journalistic Homophily on Social Media: Exploring journalists’ interactions with each other on Twitter. Folker Hanusch & Daniel Nölleke. Digital Journalism, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/02/journalists-continue-to-live-in-bubbles.html
Abstract: Journalists have for considerable time been criticized for living in their own bubbles, a phenomenon industry commentators have referred to as groupthink, while in scholarship the tendency of individuals to connect with people who are like them is termed homophily. This age-old process has come under scrutiny in recent times due to the arrival of social network sites, which have been viewed as both working against but also leading to more homophily. In journalism scholarship, these processes are still little understood, however. Focusing on the social network site Twitter and drawing on a large-scale analysis of more than 600,000 tweets sent by 2908 Australian journalists during one year, this study shows that journalists continue to live in bubbles in their online interactions with each other. Most journalists were more likely to interact with journalists who have the same gender, work in the same organization, on the same beat or in the same location. However, the study also demonstrates some notable exceptions as well as the importance of differentiating between types of interaction.
Keywords: homophily, interactions, journalist, social media, Twitter, groupthink, bubble
Conservatives do not generally form more negative attitudes than liberals; the cognitive processes underlying exploration of novel stimuli & attitude formation are similar for both, but these processes are evoked by different kinds of stimuli
Of deadly beans and risky stocks: Political ideology and attitude formation via exploration depend on the nature of the attitude stimuli. Michael Edem Fiagbenu, Jutta Proch, Thomas Kessler. British Journal of Psychology, November 14 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12430
Abstract: An attitude formation task examined how conservatives and liberals explore information about novel stimuli and form attitudes towards them. When framed as the BeanFest game, conservatives sampled fewer beans and exhibited a stronger learning asymmetry (i.e., better learning for negative than positive beans) than liberals. This has been taken as strong evidence that conservatives are more sensitive to negative stimuli than liberals. We argue that the learning asymmetry and sampling bias by conservatives is due to framing of the game. In addition to the BeanFest, we framed the game as StockFest (i.e., a stock market game) where participants learned about novel stocks. We replicated the pronounced learning asymmetry for conservatives in the BeanFest game, but found a pronounced learning asymmetry for liberals in the StockFest game. We suggest that conservatives and liberals are equally sensitive to negative stimuli but in different domains.
Statement of contribution
Shook and Fazio (2009, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 995–998) used a food foraging game called BeanFest to show that conservatives explore novel food/health environments more cautiously and consequently form more negative attitudes than liberals (i.e., learn and remember more negative than positive beans). This finding is taken as strong evidence that conservatives are generally more negatively biased or threat‐sensitive than liberals. However, it is not known whether such differences are independent or dependent on the nature of the task or stimuli. Although there are some indications that liberals may also be threat‐sensitive in certain domains, most of the evidence comes from self‐reported risk attitudes, which do not address the basic cognitive processes underlying attitude formation, including how liberals learn and remember negative information. We find that when the same task is framed as a stock market game, that is, StockFest, liberals explore novel financial environments more cautiously and consequently form more negative attitudes than conservatives (i.e., learn and remember more negative than positive stocks). Our findings show for the first time that conservatives do not generally form more negative attitudes than liberals. Rather, the basic cognitive processes underlying exploration of novel stimuli and attitude formation are similar for conservatives and liberals, but these processes are evoked by different kinds of stimuli.
In the current study, we argue that the difference in attitude formation could reflect the nature of the stimuli or task, rather than actual psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. To examine whether psychological processes are independent of the nature of the stimuli, one would have to vary the experimental stimuli as recommended by the representative stimuli sampling approach (Brunswik, 1947, 1955; Wells & Windschitl, 1999).
Based on this recommendation, we examine whether the assumed differences between liberals and conservatives are general differences or whether they are contingent on the nature of the stimuli. This procedure allows us to evaluate whether differences between liberals and conservatives are stimulus‐unspecific (i.e., domain‐general) or stimulus‐specific (i.e., domain‐specific).
Our study contributes to the existing literature by assessing for the first time whether basic cognitive processes of attitude formation through exploration of novel stimuli actually reflects fundamental psychological differences between liberals and conservatives when the stimuli are varied.
The Negativity Bias Hypothesis (NBH) is a recent influential proposal that links political attitudes to basic psychological and physiological reactions to negative information (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014). After reviewing a large body of evidence, the NBH suggests that the basic psychological difference between conservatives and liberals is conservatives’ greater sensitivity to negative stimuli compared to liberals. For example, conservatives exhibit stronger attentional biases (Carraro, Castelli, & Macchiella, 2011), physiological (Dodd, Hibbing, & Smith, 2011; Oxley et al., 2008) and neural responses to negative words, images, and sounds than liberals (Ahn et al., 2014; Amodio, Jost, Master, & Yee, 2007; Kanai, Feilden, Firth, & Rees, 2011). The NBH further argues that differences in negativity biases explain conservative’s greater support for protective policies, because they satisfy underlying needs to manage existential anxieties, a notion that has been echoed in many other studies (see Jost, 2017; Jost et al., 2003, for reviews).
Beyond evidence from self‐report measures, strong support for the NBH comes from the intriguing study on the relationship among political ideology, information gain by exploration, and subsequent attitude formation (Shook & Fazio, 2009). The researchers argued that ideological differences in openness to experience may influence how conservatives and liberals explore their social world and form attitudes towards novel stimuli. They predicted that conservatives would exhibit greater caution in exploring novel stimuli that signal potential exposure to negative information. In contrast, liberals would tend to ignore signs of negativity and explore novel situations more indiscriminately. Conservatives’ cautious exploratory strategy would reduce their gain of information and, thereby, decrease correction of any potential negative attitudes towards the stimuli. Consequently, conservatives would exhibit a learning asymmetry and would overestimate the distribution of negative compared to positive stimuli. In contrast, liberal’s greater exploration will facilitate information gain, correction of negative attitudes towards the stimuli, and consequently a balanced estimation of negative and positive stimuli.
To examine their hypothesis, Shook and Fazio (2009) used a performance task (called BeanFest) in which participants form attitudes based on the exploration of information about novel objects (Fazio, Eiser, & Shook, 2004). The game assesses how individuals explore their environment and form attitudes towards differently shaped and marked visual patterns of stimuli referred to as ‘beans’. The game requires participants to approach different beans in order to learn which are positive (i.e., good beans that increase points) and which are negative (i.e., bad beans that decrease points). If they approach a bean, they receive feedback that reveals whether the bean was negative or positive. If they avoid a bean, they do not receive feedback about the value of the bean. This means that only approach behaviour leads to gain or loss of points.
The findings from Shook and Fazio show that conservatives and liberals act differently in the game. Conservatives adopt a more cautious strategy by exploring fewer beans than liberals, whereas liberals adopt a more open strategy by exploring more beans than conservatives. Differences in exploration produce an asymmetry in learning as a consequence. Conservatives learn bad beans better than good beans (i.e., form more negative than positive attitudes), whereas liberals learn both bad and good beans equally well (i.e., form balanced attitudes). These findings are taken as strong evidence supporting the NBH (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014; Shook & Fazio, 2009).
The NBH argues that ‘in many respects, compared with liberals, conservatives tend to be more psychologically and physiologically sensitive to environmental stimuli generally but in particular to stimuli that are of negatively valenced, whether threatening or merely unexpected and unstructured’ (Hibbing et al., 2014, p. 303). Such a broad statement anticipates that conservatives would generally exhibit greater sensitivity to all kinds of negatively valenced stimuli than liberals. If this is true, then the relationship between political ideology and negativity bias is domain‐general (i.e., does not depend on the type of negative stimuli).
However, one potential limitation of the NBH is that it conceptualizes negative valence very broadly but operationalizes this broad concept too narrowly. Critics have noted that most of the negative stimuli reviewed by the NBH may be subsumed under a general category of stimuli that have potential to cause direct physical or bodily harm (Crawford, 2017; Eadeh & Chang, 2019). Consequently, the functional stimuli sample size for the studies supporting the NBH is N = 1 (Wells & Windschitl, 1999). For instance, in the case of Shook and Fazio’s study (2009), only one instance of negative stimuli (i.e., bad or ‘poisonous’ beans) was used as experimental stimuli. This stimulus, arguably, falls under the category of food/health or the more general category of physically threatening stimuli. Besides these threats, there are other negative stimuli such as loss of money, poverty, financial scams, and bankruptcy. The NBH assumes, without explicitly testing, that conservatives would exhibit greater sensitivity to these categories of negative stimuli as well.
Under‐sampling of a broad range of negative stimuli from non‐physical domains poses a challenge for the NBH. First, stimuli under‐sampling may overstate negativity bias in conservatives and understate negativity bias in liberals. For example, it is possible that liberals also exhibit greater negativity bias towards other stimuli besides physically threatening stimuli. But this may only be observed if other negative stimuli domains are included in research designs. Secondly, stimuli under‐sampling precludes the generalizability of the findings to other stimuli domains (Brunswik, 1947; Kenny, 1985; Wells & Windschitl, 1999). For example, is negativity bias in conservatives restricted to physically harmful stimuli or does this phenomenon generalize to non‐physically harmful domains as well?
There is some indication that the relationship between ideology and negativity bias could be domain‐specific (i.e., depends on the type of negative stimuli) rather than domain‐general. Prior self‐report studies demonstrate that the relationship between ideology and risk attitudes differs depending on the risk domain (Choma, Hanoch, Gummerum, & Hodson, 2013; Choma, Hanoch, Hodson, & Gummerum, 2014; Choma & Hodson, 2017). Using the domain‐specific risk‐taking (DOSPERT) scale, Choma et al. (2014) showed that, compared to liberals, conservatives report less risk propensity in ethical and social domains, whereas a trend of higher risk propensity for conservatives emerges in the financial domain. However, in the financial domain, a more complex pattern emerges (three‐way interaction) whereby conservatives show higher risk propensity when expected benefits and risk perceptions are high. In a recent study, Choma and Hodson (2017) demonstrated that risk perception may also vary according to the conceptualization of ideology. They differentiate between social and economic conservatism and show that social conservatism (measured as right‐wing authoritarianism) tends to be positively related to risk perception, whereas economic conservatism (measured via social dominance orientation) tends to be negatively related to risk perception (see also Choma et al., 2013).
Furthermore, recent studies using simulated stock markets and real‐world investment portfolios have demonstrated that liberals are less likely to participate in the stock market (Han, Jung, Mittal, Zyung, & Adam, 2019; Kaustia & Torstila, 2011; Moore, Felton, & Wright, 2010), because they perceive the stock market to be a more dangerous and risky place to invest money than conservatives (Fiagbenu & Kessler, 2019). These findings reveal that conservatives may not be generally risk‐averse than liberals as they report higher risk propensity in the financial domain.
Despite the above evidence, the NBH is still broadly accepted. In their most current meta‐analytic evidence in support of the NBH, Jost et al. (2017, p. 345) emphasized that researchers should ‘agree on the basic fact’ … ‘that conservatives are somewhat more sensitive than liberals to potentially threatening stimuli’. Moreover, proponents of the NBH suggest that Shook and Fazio (2009) provide a convincing argument in support of the NBH because the findings reveal the basic learning and memory processes underlying how conservatives form negative attitudes more than liberals.
Although previous studies (Choma et al., 2013, 2014; 2017; Han et al., 2019) have shown that liberals report greater risk aversion in the financial domain than conservatives, differences in the basic processes of exploration and attitude formation remain to be examined with respect to broader stimuli sampling. If the NBH is valid, conservatives should equally show cautious exploratory behaviour and a learning asymmetry across a variety of stimuli. In contrast, if cautious exploration of novel stimuli and learning asymmetry depend on the quality of the stimuli, then liberals and conservatives should equally exhibit cautiousness and learning asymmetry towards different kinds of stimuli.
The aim of the current study is to examine whether the relationship among political ideology, exploration of novel stimuli, and attitude formation is domain‐specific or domain‐general. The BeanFest paradigm is suitable for examining our competing hypotheses because it is amenable to framing. Previous studies have shown that the BeanFest can be framed as a neutral game whereby participants play for points, or as a life and death game whereby participants play for energy points in order to survive and to avoid dying (Fazio et al., 2004). Whereas Shook and Fazio (2009) used the bland or neutral version, we decided to use the negative version in order to examine how negative framing influences attitude formation as a function of political ideology. Consequently, in addition to the BeanFest, we considered a different variant of the game, which we call StockFest. StockFest is a wealth‐bankruptcy game in which participants learn about the same visual patterns referred to as ‘stocks’. Buying good stocks increases wealth points, whereas buying bad stocks decreases wealth and results in bankruptcy. Both StockFest and BeanFest have exactly the same structure and are represented by the same visual patterns, but only differ by how they are framed.
Both games are suitable for investigating whether the relationship between political ideology, exploration, and attitude formation depends on the nature of the attitude stimuli or not. The domain‐general hypothesis predicts that in both games, conservatives would show more cautious exploration and would consequently form more negative attitudes than liberals whereas liberals would exhibit greater exploration and would form more positive attitudes than conservatives. Alternatively, the domain‐specific hypothesis predicts that in BeanFest, conservatives would exhibit greater caution and form more negative attitudes, whereas liberals will be more exploratory and would form more positive attitudes as a consequence. A reverse pattern is expected in StockFest whereby conservatives would exhibit greater exploratory behaviour and form more positive attitudes, whereas liberals would be more cautious and therefore form more negative attitudes.
Abstract: An attitude formation task examined how conservatives and liberals explore information about novel stimuli and form attitudes towards them. When framed as the BeanFest game, conservatives sampled fewer beans and exhibited a stronger learning asymmetry (i.e., better learning for negative than positive beans) than liberals. This has been taken as strong evidence that conservatives are more sensitive to negative stimuli than liberals. We argue that the learning asymmetry and sampling bias by conservatives is due to framing of the game. In addition to the BeanFest, we framed the game as StockFest (i.e., a stock market game) where participants learned about novel stocks. We replicated the pronounced learning asymmetry for conservatives in the BeanFest game, but found a pronounced learning asymmetry for liberals in the StockFest game. We suggest that conservatives and liberals are equally sensitive to negative stimuli but in different domains.
Statement of contribution
Shook and Fazio (2009, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 995–998) used a food foraging game called BeanFest to show that conservatives explore novel food/health environments more cautiously and consequently form more negative attitudes than liberals (i.e., learn and remember more negative than positive beans). This finding is taken as strong evidence that conservatives are generally more negatively biased or threat‐sensitive than liberals. However, it is not known whether such differences are independent or dependent on the nature of the task or stimuli. Although there are some indications that liberals may also be threat‐sensitive in certain domains, most of the evidence comes from self‐reported risk attitudes, which do not address the basic cognitive processes underlying attitude formation, including how liberals learn and remember negative information. We find that when the same task is framed as a stock market game, that is, StockFest, liberals explore novel financial environments more cautiously and consequently form more negative attitudes than conservatives (i.e., learn and remember more negative than positive stocks). Our findings show for the first time that conservatives do not generally form more negative attitudes than liberals. Rather, the basic cognitive processes underlying exploration of novel stimuli and attitude formation are similar for conservatives and liberals, but these processes are evoked by different kinds of stimuli.
Background
It is commonly believed that conservatives and liberals differ in their psychological dispositions, which are assumed to explain their differences in political attitudes (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014; Hibbing, Smith, Peterson, & Feher, 2014; Jost, 2017; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Whereas evidence for these differences mostly comes from self‐report measures, there is also evidence from basic cognitive functioning demonstrating that conservatives seem to explore and process negative information and, thereby, develop attitudes differently than liberals (Shook & Fazio, 2009).In the current study, we argue that the difference in attitude formation could reflect the nature of the stimuli or task, rather than actual psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. To examine whether psychological processes are independent of the nature of the stimuli, one would have to vary the experimental stimuli as recommended by the representative stimuli sampling approach (Brunswik, 1947, 1955; Wells & Windschitl, 1999).
Based on this recommendation, we examine whether the assumed differences between liberals and conservatives are general differences or whether they are contingent on the nature of the stimuli. This procedure allows us to evaluate whether differences between liberals and conservatives are stimulus‐unspecific (i.e., domain‐general) or stimulus‐specific (i.e., domain‐specific).
Our study contributes to the existing literature by assessing for the first time whether basic cognitive processes of attitude formation through exploration of novel stimuli actually reflects fundamental psychological differences between liberals and conservatives when the stimuli are varied.
The Negativity Bias Hypothesis (NBH) is a recent influential proposal that links political attitudes to basic psychological and physiological reactions to negative information (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014). After reviewing a large body of evidence, the NBH suggests that the basic psychological difference between conservatives and liberals is conservatives’ greater sensitivity to negative stimuli compared to liberals. For example, conservatives exhibit stronger attentional biases (Carraro, Castelli, & Macchiella, 2011), physiological (Dodd, Hibbing, & Smith, 2011; Oxley et al., 2008) and neural responses to negative words, images, and sounds than liberals (Ahn et al., 2014; Amodio, Jost, Master, & Yee, 2007; Kanai, Feilden, Firth, & Rees, 2011). The NBH further argues that differences in negativity biases explain conservative’s greater support for protective policies, because they satisfy underlying needs to manage existential anxieties, a notion that has been echoed in many other studies (see Jost, 2017; Jost et al., 2003, for reviews).
Beyond evidence from self‐report measures, strong support for the NBH comes from the intriguing study on the relationship among political ideology, information gain by exploration, and subsequent attitude formation (Shook & Fazio, 2009). The researchers argued that ideological differences in openness to experience may influence how conservatives and liberals explore their social world and form attitudes towards novel stimuli. They predicted that conservatives would exhibit greater caution in exploring novel stimuli that signal potential exposure to negative information. In contrast, liberals would tend to ignore signs of negativity and explore novel situations more indiscriminately. Conservatives’ cautious exploratory strategy would reduce their gain of information and, thereby, decrease correction of any potential negative attitudes towards the stimuli. Consequently, conservatives would exhibit a learning asymmetry and would overestimate the distribution of negative compared to positive stimuli. In contrast, liberal’s greater exploration will facilitate information gain, correction of negative attitudes towards the stimuli, and consequently a balanced estimation of negative and positive stimuli.
To examine their hypothesis, Shook and Fazio (2009) used a performance task (called BeanFest) in which participants form attitudes based on the exploration of information about novel objects (Fazio, Eiser, & Shook, 2004). The game assesses how individuals explore their environment and form attitudes towards differently shaped and marked visual patterns of stimuli referred to as ‘beans’. The game requires participants to approach different beans in order to learn which are positive (i.e., good beans that increase points) and which are negative (i.e., bad beans that decrease points). If they approach a bean, they receive feedback that reveals whether the bean was negative or positive. If they avoid a bean, they do not receive feedback about the value of the bean. This means that only approach behaviour leads to gain or loss of points.
The findings from Shook and Fazio show that conservatives and liberals act differently in the game. Conservatives adopt a more cautious strategy by exploring fewer beans than liberals, whereas liberals adopt a more open strategy by exploring more beans than conservatives. Differences in exploration produce an asymmetry in learning as a consequence. Conservatives learn bad beans better than good beans (i.e., form more negative than positive attitudes), whereas liberals learn both bad and good beans equally well (i.e., form balanced attitudes). These findings are taken as strong evidence supporting the NBH (Hibbing, Smith, & Alford, 2014; Shook & Fazio, 2009).
The NBH argues that ‘in many respects, compared with liberals, conservatives tend to be more psychologically and physiologically sensitive to environmental stimuli generally but in particular to stimuli that are of negatively valenced, whether threatening or merely unexpected and unstructured’ (Hibbing et al., 2014, p. 303). Such a broad statement anticipates that conservatives would generally exhibit greater sensitivity to all kinds of negatively valenced stimuli than liberals. If this is true, then the relationship between political ideology and negativity bias is domain‐general (i.e., does not depend on the type of negative stimuli).
However, one potential limitation of the NBH is that it conceptualizes negative valence very broadly but operationalizes this broad concept too narrowly. Critics have noted that most of the negative stimuli reviewed by the NBH may be subsumed under a general category of stimuli that have potential to cause direct physical or bodily harm (Crawford, 2017; Eadeh & Chang, 2019). Consequently, the functional stimuli sample size for the studies supporting the NBH is N = 1 (Wells & Windschitl, 1999). For instance, in the case of Shook and Fazio’s study (2009), only one instance of negative stimuli (i.e., bad or ‘poisonous’ beans) was used as experimental stimuli. This stimulus, arguably, falls under the category of food/health or the more general category of physically threatening stimuli. Besides these threats, there are other negative stimuli such as loss of money, poverty, financial scams, and bankruptcy. The NBH assumes, without explicitly testing, that conservatives would exhibit greater sensitivity to these categories of negative stimuli as well.
Under‐sampling of a broad range of negative stimuli from non‐physical domains poses a challenge for the NBH. First, stimuli under‐sampling may overstate negativity bias in conservatives and understate negativity bias in liberals. For example, it is possible that liberals also exhibit greater negativity bias towards other stimuli besides physically threatening stimuli. But this may only be observed if other negative stimuli domains are included in research designs. Secondly, stimuli under‐sampling precludes the generalizability of the findings to other stimuli domains (Brunswik, 1947; Kenny, 1985; Wells & Windschitl, 1999). For example, is negativity bias in conservatives restricted to physically harmful stimuli or does this phenomenon generalize to non‐physically harmful domains as well?
There is some indication that the relationship between ideology and negativity bias could be domain‐specific (i.e., depends on the type of negative stimuli) rather than domain‐general. Prior self‐report studies demonstrate that the relationship between ideology and risk attitudes differs depending on the risk domain (Choma, Hanoch, Gummerum, & Hodson, 2013; Choma, Hanoch, Hodson, & Gummerum, 2014; Choma & Hodson, 2017). Using the domain‐specific risk‐taking (DOSPERT) scale, Choma et al. (2014) showed that, compared to liberals, conservatives report less risk propensity in ethical and social domains, whereas a trend of higher risk propensity for conservatives emerges in the financial domain. However, in the financial domain, a more complex pattern emerges (three‐way interaction) whereby conservatives show higher risk propensity when expected benefits and risk perceptions are high. In a recent study, Choma and Hodson (2017) demonstrated that risk perception may also vary according to the conceptualization of ideology. They differentiate between social and economic conservatism and show that social conservatism (measured as right‐wing authoritarianism) tends to be positively related to risk perception, whereas economic conservatism (measured via social dominance orientation) tends to be negatively related to risk perception (see also Choma et al., 2013).
Furthermore, recent studies using simulated stock markets and real‐world investment portfolios have demonstrated that liberals are less likely to participate in the stock market (Han, Jung, Mittal, Zyung, & Adam, 2019; Kaustia & Torstila, 2011; Moore, Felton, & Wright, 2010), because they perceive the stock market to be a more dangerous and risky place to invest money than conservatives (Fiagbenu & Kessler, 2019). These findings reveal that conservatives may not be generally risk‐averse than liberals as they report higher risk propensity in the financial domain.
Despite the above evidence, the NBH is still broadly accepted. In their most current meta‐analytic evidence in support of the NBH, Jost et al. (2017, p. 345) emphasized that researchers should ‘agree on the basic fact’ … ‘that conservatives are somewhat more sensitive than liberals to potentially threatening stimuli’. Moreover, proponents of the NBH suggest that Shook and Fazio (2009) provide a convincing argument in support of the NBH because the findings reveal the basic learning and memory processes underlying how conservatives form negative attitudes more than liberals.
Although previous studies (Choma et al., 2013, 2014; 2017; Han et al., 2019) have shown that liberals report greater risk aversion in the financial domain than conservatives, differences in the basic processes of exploration and attitude formation remain to be examined with respect to broader stimuli sampling. If the NBH is valid, conservatives should equally show cautious exploratory behaviour and a learning asymmetry across a variety of stimuli. In contrast, if cautious exploration of novel stimuli and learning asymmetry depend on the quality of the stimuli, then liberals and conservatives should equally exhibit cautiousness and learning asymmetry towards different kinds of stimuli.
The aim of the current study is to examine whether the relationship among political ideology, exploration of novel stimuli, and attitude formation is domain‐specific or domain‐general. The BeanFest paradigm is suitable for examining our competing hypotheses because it is amenable to framing. Previous studies have shown that the BeanFest can be framed as a neutral game whereby participants play for points, or as a life and death game whereby participants play for energy points in order to survive and to avoid dying (Fazio et al., 2004). Whereas Shook and Fazio (2009) used the bland or neutral version, we decided to use the negative version in order to examine how negative framing influences attitude formation as a function of political ideology. Consequently, in addition to the BeanFest, we considered a different variant of the game, which we call StockFest. StockFest is a wealth‐bankruptcy game in which participants learn about the same visual patterns referred to as ‘stocks’. Buying good stocks increases wealth points, whereas buying bad stocks decreases wealth and results in bankruptcy. Both StockFest and BeanFest have exactly the same structure and are represented by the same visual patterns, but only differ by how they are framed.
Both games are suitable for investigating whether the relationship between political ideology, exploration, and attitude formation depends on the nature of the attitude stimuli or not. The domain‐general hypothesis predicts that in both games, conservatives would show more cautious exploration and would consequently form more negative attitudes than liberals whereas liberals would exhibit greater exploration and would form more positive attitudes than conservatives. Alternatively, the domain‐specific hypothesis predicts that in BeanFest, conservatives would exhibit greater caution and form more negative attitudes, whereas liberals will be more exploratory and would form more positive attitudes as a consequence. A reverse pattern is expected in StockFest whereby conservatives would exhibit greater exploratory behaviour and form more positive attitudes, whereas liberals would be more cautious and therefore form more negative attitudes.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Sociosexuality and Sex with New Partners: Indirect Effects via Drinking at Parties and Bars
Hone, Liana S. E., Maria Testa, and Weijun Wang. 2019. “Sociosexuality and Sex with New Partners: Indirect Effects via Drinking at Parties and Bars.” PsyArXiv. November 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3nvce
Abstract
Objective: The desire for many novel, concurrent, uncommitted, sex partners (i.e., unrestricted sociosexuality) may encourage individuals to seek out contexts that facilitate casual sex. We tested a model in which the effects of sociosexuality on sex with new partners were mediated via drinking in specific contexts. We hypothesized that drinking at parties and bars, which are known to facilitate casual sex (but not drinking at home) would contribute to sex with new (but not with previous) partners.
Method: Participants were 427 freshmen men from a large, public, Northeastern university. They completed a baseline survey in their first semester followed by 56 days of daily reports on drinking and sexual activity during their second semester.
Results: As predicted, sociosexuality measured at baseline positively predicted occasions of sex with a new partner, but not sex with a previous partner. In support of the model, effects were partially mediated by frequency of drinking at parties and bars across the 56-day reporting period, but not by drinking at home.
Conclusions: Previous research has demonstrated associations among sociosexuality, drinking, and casual sex. Our study is unique in suggesting that drinking in specific contexts—that is, drinking at parties and bars, but not drinking at home—partially mediates the effects of sociosexuality on sex with new partners. This pathway suggests that men with a desire for many novel, concurrent, uncommitted, sex partners seek out drinking contexts as a way of facilitating these encounters.
Discussion
Consistent with hypotheses, college men higher in sociosexuality reported more occasions of sex with new partners—but not more occasions of sex with previous partners—over a 56-day period. We proposed that this relationship would be mediated via more frequent occasions of drinking at parties and bars, context that provide opportunities to meet new sexual partners. Recent studies have suggested that sociosexuality predicts drinking frequency because individuals with unrestricted sociosexual orientations seek out drinking contexts that facilitate casual sex (Cleveland et al., 2019; Hone et al., 2013; Testa and Hone, 2019). However, to date, no study has directly tested whether specific drinking contexts mediate the relationship between sociosexuality and sex with new partners. Using aggregated daily reports from more than 400 college freshman men, the model was supported: Men high in sociosexuality at baseline assessment engaged in more occasions of drinking at parties and bars over a subsequent 56-day daily reporting period, which positively predicted engaging in sex with new (but not previous) partners during that period. The present study is unique in showing that the effect is specific to drinking at parties and bars. Sociosexuality did not predict more drinking at home, a context which presumably provides less access to new sex partners, and drinking at home did not mediate the effect of sociosexuality on sex with new partners. Although not expected, men who reported more occasions of drinking at home reported more occasions of sex with previous partners. It is possible that this relationship reflects event-specific use of alcohol as an aphrodisiac or facilitator of intimacy within established relationships (George and Stoner, 2000) or it may simply reflect drinking patterns among men in relationships.
The study adds to a growing body of literature on the importance of considering specific drinking contexts—and not just drinking—in understanding sexual outcomes (Bersamin et al., 2012; Cleveland et al., 2019; Mair et al., 2016; Testa and Cleveland, 2017). For example, frequency of attendance at parties and bars mediated the relationship between sociosexuality and perpetration of sexual aggression (Cleveland et al., 2019). Our findings suggest that the desire to have sex with new partners among men high in sociosexuality may drive this relationship, and indeed sexual events involving new partners include more sexually aggressive tactics than do events with previous partners (Testa et al., 2015). Party and bar drinking contexts may function as “hotspots” contributing to sexually aggressive activity and hence as a worthy target for prevention efforts. Moreover, men high in sociosexuality are a worthy target for alcohol and sexual aggression intervention efforts, given their motivation to drink in social contexts and to engage in sex with new partners. It is important for college drinking intervention efforts to recognize these important motivations, which may interfere with efforts to limit drinking (Hone et al., 2013).
Although we found support for our hypothesized indirect effects model, we also found positive effects of drinking events at home on number of occasions of sex with previous partners, which comprise the majority of sex events. Although not hypothesized, findings are consistent with prior reports of a positive relationship between alcohol and various measures of sexual activity within adolescent samples (Claxton et al., 2015). While it is tempting to interpret findings at the event level (e.g., drinking at parties and bars increases likelihood of sex with new partner later that day), our model tests between-participant relationships, indicating that men who are motivated to have sex with new partners indeed do report more sexual events with new partners, and that the relationship is at least partially explained by a greater number of occasions of drinking at parties and bars. Earlier multilevel analyses of these data at the daily event level revealed that at the within-person level, drinking events (context unspecified) increased the likelihood of sex with a new partner in the next four hours but decreased the likelihood of sex with a previous partner (Testa et al., 2015). However, these effects were obtained after accounting for the positive between-participant effects of number of drinking events on both sex with new and sex with previous partners: that is, men who drank more frequently also had more sex.
Abstract
Objective: The desire for many novel, concurrent, uncommitted, sex partners (i.e., unrestricted sociosexuality) may encourage individuals to seek out contexts that facilitate casual sex. We tested a model in which the effects of sociosexuality on sex with new partners were mediated via drinking in specific contexts. We hypothesized that drinking at parties and bars, which are known to facilitate casual sex (but not drinking at home) would contribute to sex with new (but not with previous) partners.
Method: Participants were 427 freshmen men from a large, public, Northeastern university. They completed a baseline survey in their first semester followed by 56 days of daily reports on drinking and sexual activity during their second semester.
Results: As predicted, sociosexuality measured at baseline positively predicted occasions of sex with a new partner, but not sex with a previous partner. In support of the model, effects were partially mediated by frequency of drinking at parties and bars across the 56-day reporting period, but not by drinking at home.
Conclusions: Previous research has demonstrated associations among sociosexuality, drinking, and casual sex. Our study is unique in suggesting that drinking in specific contexts—that is, drinking at parties and bars, but not drinking at home—partially mediates the effects of sociosexuality on sex with new partners. This pathway suggests that men with a desire for many novel, concurrent, uncommitted, sex partners seek out drinking contexts as a way of facilitating these encounters.
Discussion
Consistent with hypotheses, college men higher in sociosexuality reported more occasions of sex with new partners—but not more occasions of sex with previous partners—over a 56-day period. We proposed that this relationship would be mediated via more frequent occasions of drinking at parties and bars, context that provide opportunities to meet new sexual partners. Recent studies have suggested that sociosexuality predicts drinking frequency because individuals with unrestricted sociosexual orientations seek out drinking contexts that facilitate casual sex (Cleveland et al., 2019; Hone et al., 2013; Testa and Hone, 2019). However, to date, no study has directly tested whether specific drinking contexts mediate the relationship between sociosexuality and sex with new partners. Using aggregated daily reports from more than 400 college freshman men, the model was supported: Men high in sociosexuality at baseline assessment engaged in more occasions of drinking at parties and bars over a subsequent 56-day daily reporting period, which positively predicted engaging in sex with new (but not previous) partners during that period. The present study is unique in showing that the effect is specific to drinking at parties and bars. Sociosexuality did not predict more drinking at home, a context which presumably provides less access to new sex partners, and drinking at home did not mediate the effect of sociosexuality on sex with new partners. Although not expected, men who reported more occasions of drinking at home reported more occasions of sex with previous partners. It is possible that this relationship reflects event-specific use of alcohol as an aphrodisiac or facilitator of intimacy within established relationships (George and Stoner, 2000) or it may simply reflect drinking patterns among men in relationships.
The study adds to a growing body of literature on the importance of considering specific drinking contexts—and not just drinking—in understanding sexual outcomes (Bersamin et al., 2012; Cleveland et al., 2019; Mair et al., 2016; Testa and Cleveland, 2017). For example, frequency of attendance at parties and bars mediated the relationship between sociosexuality and perpetration of sexual aggression (Cleveland et al., 2019). Our findings suggest that the desire to have sex with new partners among men high in sociosexuality may drive this relationship, and indeed sexual events involving new partners include more sexually aggressive tactics than do events with previous partners (Testa et al., 2015). Party and bar drinking contexts may function as “hotspots” contributing to sexually aggressive activity and hence as a worthy target for prevention efforts. Moreover, men high in sociosexuality are a worthy target for alcohol and sexual aggression intervention efforts, given their motivation to drink in social contexts and to engage in sex with new partners. It is important for college drinking intervention efforts to recognize these important motivations, which may interfere with efforts to limit drinking (Hone et al., 2013).
Although we found support for our hypothesized indirect effects model, we also found positive effects of drinking events at home on number of occasions of sex with previous partners, which comprise the majority of sex events. Although not hypothesized, findings are consistent with prior reports of a positive relationship between alcohol and various measures of sexual activity within adolescent samples (Claxton et al., 2015). While it is tempting to interpret findings at the event level (e.g., drinking at parties and bars increases likelihood of sex with new partner later that day), our model tests between-participant relationships, indicating that men who are motivated to have sex with new partners indeed do report more sexual events with new partners, and that the relationship is at least partially explained by a greater number of occasions of drinking at parties and bars. Earlier multilevel analyses of these data at the daily event level revealed that at the within-person level, drinking events (context unspecified) increased the likelihood of sex with a new partner in the next four hours but decreased the likelihood of sex with a previous partner (Testa et al., 2015). However, these effects were obtained after accounting for the positive between-participant effects of number of drinking events on both sex with new and sex with previous partners: that is, men who drank more frequently also had more sex.
Dehumanization of the Opposition in the 2016 Political Campaigns: Opponents portrayed candidates as animals, subhuman primates, mosters or machines
Dehumanization of the Opposition in Political Campaigns. Erin C. Cassese. Social Science Quarterly, November 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12745
Abstract
Objective: This article documents dehumanization in the 2016 presidential contest.
Methods: Using a mixed‐method approach, I analyze dehumanized portrayals of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in visual campaign rhetoric and on common survey measures of dehumanization.
Results: Images from the campaign discourse reflect animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization of the presidential candidates. The survey data reveal that voters dehumanize opposition candidates and party members in both subtle and blatant ways that also reflect this animalistic–mechanistic distinction.
Conclusion: The findings affirm the external validity of measurement strategies for dehumanization by showing the correspondence between campaign imagery and common survey‐based measurement tools. This work situates dehumanization as a psychological process relevant to the study of campaigns and elections.
Abstract
Objective: This article documents dehumanization in the 2016 presidential contest.
Methods: Using a mixed‐method approach, I analyze dehumanized portrayals of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in visual campaign rhetoric and on common survey measures of dehumanization.
Results: Images from the campaign discourse reflect animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization of the presidential candidates. The survey data reveal that voters dehumanize opposition candidates and party members in both subtle and blatant ways that also reflect this animalistic–mechanistic distinction.
Conclusion: The findings affirm the external validity of measurement strategies for dehumanization by showing the correspondence between campaign imagery and common survey‐based measurement tools. This work situates dehumanization as a psychological process relevant to the study of campaigns and elections.
The horny man think women want him too: Present-state sexual arousal affects single men’s interpretations of women’s sexual willingness
Does the horny man think women want him too? Effects of male sexual arousal on perceptions of female sexual willingness. Peter O. Rerick,Tyler N. Livingston &Deborah Davis. The Journal of Social Psychology, Nov 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2019.1692330
ABSTRACT: Disputes over acquaintance rape typically center on the issue of whether the alleged victim consented to sex. Disputed sexual encounters often take place when one or both involved parties is sexually aroused, and this arousal might influence the extent to which the parties perceive sexual consent. Two studies tested the effects of men’s sexual arousal on their interpretations of the extent to which 25 hypothetical female behaviors reflected sexual willingness. Arousal was manipulated via written fantasies (Study 1) or exposure to erotic material (Study 2). Manipulated arousal and individual differences in rated arousal were each associated with greater perceptions of female sexual willingness. Manipulated arousal was significant only for single men in Study 2. Findings suggested present-state sexual arousal affects single men’s interpretations of women’s sexual willingness. Men’s sexual arousal might prominently contribute to misunderstandings in sexual communication.
KEYWORDS: Sexual assault, sexual arousal, rape, overperception, perceived consent
General discussion
Together the results of Studies 1 and 2 further support the link between men’s sexual arousal and perceptions of women’s sexual willingness. In Study 1, the arousal manipulation led men to interpret more sexual intent from women’s behaviors, and this result was most powerful for those who were single. Study 2 appeared to have a less powerful arousal manipulation, and thus only induced higher interpretations of sexual intent in single men. Unsurprisingly, the type of manipulation used to induce arousal does seem to matter, sexual fantasies exerting a stronger effect than visual stimuli. Results demonstrated that single men’s perceptions of women’s sexual willingness, and in turn their consent to sex, can be affected by present-state sexual arousal.
In Study 1, the effect of arousal on perceptions of sexual willingness was medium-sized (d = .39) for single participants but nonsignificant for non-single participants, although the interaction between arousal condition and relationship status was non-significant. We observed a significant interaction between these variables in Study 2, despite the comparatively less powerful manipulation of arousal. The difference in the observed interaction could have been due to the way relationship status was coded in both studies. In Study 1, participants who had regular contact with potential sexual partners but who were not in an “official” relationship might have indicated that they were single. Comparatively, Study 1 reduced the ambiguity of responses by asking participants to selfcategorize simply as single or non-single.
Both studies supported the findings of Bouffard and Miller (2014) that self-reported sexual arousal is positively related to interpretations of sexual intent underlying women’s behaviors. Both studies also establish preliminary evidence that single men rely more strongly than those in relationships on present-state sexual arousal when interpreting women’s sexual intentions. Given the dearth of literature on this specific topic we cannot rule out the possibility that individual differences in arousal are confounded with other individual differences, but we found no evidence of such a confound with any difference measured in these two studies. None were correlated with selfreported arousal. It should also be noted that differences in self-reported arousal are a function of both individual differences in tendencies to be sexually aroused or to become sexually aroused in response to sexual stimuli, and the manipulation of arousal. Thus, it may be premature to speculate regarding the nature of individual differences that might explain our results or those of Bouffard and Miller (2014). One individual difference that should receive closer attention is relationship status. Only Study 2 found a significant interaction between relationship status and arousal condition, and neither showed a difference in self-reported arousal between single and non-single participants. Despite these inconsistencies, we still observed more powerful effects of the arousal manipulation for single (vs. non-single) participants in both studies. Arguably, the issue of misperception of sexual intent is most important for the single population.
Although our studies did not test any explanations of this effect of relationship status, the effect might be explained in part by differences in motivated cognition. Perhaps those in relationships, who regularly have their sexual needs satisfied, do not feel any need to perceive sexual intent in women’s behaviors. In contrast, aroused single men are more motivated to perceive sexual interest among women because sex for these men is a relatively scarce resource. Or, when aroused, men in relationships might think of their partners and have no need to see sexual interest in other women. Single men might not direct their sexual interest to a specific woman and therefore might read more into the behavior of all women. This difference might also be due to the reference population men are thinking of when they answer these questions. If men in relationships are imagining what it means when their partners, who they are extremely familiar with, engage in these sometimes-ambiguous behaviors, they might be able to think up many more reasons for these behaviors besides desiring sex. Single men might only be thinking about women abstractly, and without specific knowledge of qualities like personalities, political and religious preferences, etc., might be less able to think up reasons for ambiguous behaviors outside of sexual interest.
At this point, this difference needs replication before it can be considered reliable. Only one study showed a significant interaction between relationship status and manipulated arousal, even though both studies showed the simple effect of arousal was significant within single males and not within non-single males. Importantly, for the more powerful manipulation of arousal (that of Study 1), the effect of the arousal manipulation was significant overall. For the weaker manipulation of arousal (that of Study 2), the manipulation was successful only for single men. The possibility remains that with an even more powerful arousal manipulation than that of Study 1, the manipulation might be comparably effective for both populations.
ABSTRACT: Disputes over acquaintance rape typically center on the issue of whether the alleged victim consented to sex. Disputed sexual encounters often take place when one or both involved parties is sexually aroused, and this arousal might influence the extent to which the parties perceive sexual consent. Two studies tested the effects of men’s sexual arousal on their interpretations of the extent to which 25 hypothetical female behaviors reflected sexual willingness. Arousal was manipulated via written fantasies (Study 1) or exposure to erotic material (Study 2). Manipulated arousal and individual differences in rated arousal were each associated with greater perceptions of female sexual willingness. Manipulated arousal was significant only for single men in Study 2. Findings suggested present-state sexual arousal affects single men’s interpretations of women’s sexual willingness. Men’s sexual arousal might prominently contribute to misunderstandings in sexual communication.
KEYWORDS: Sexual assault, sexual arousal, rape, overperception, perceived consent
General discussion
Together the results of Studies 1 and 2 further support the link between men’s sexual arousal and perceptions of women’s sexual willingness. In Study 1, the arousal manipulation led men to interpret more sexual intent from women’s behaviors, and this result was most powerful for those who were single. Study 2 appeared to have a less powerful arousal manipulation, and thus only induced higher interpretations of sexual intent in single men. Unsurprisingly, the type of manipulation used to induce arousal does seem to matter, sexual fantasies exerting a stronger effect than visual stimuli. Results demonstrated that single men’s perceptions of women’s sexual willingness, and in turn their consent to sex, can be affected by present-state sexual arousal.
In Study 1, the effect of arousal on perceptions of sexual willingness was medium-sized (d = .39) for single participants but nonsignificant for non-single participants, although the interaction between arousal condition and relationship status was non-significant. We observed a significant interaction between these variables in Study 2, despite the comparatively less powerful manipulation of arousal. The difference in the observed interaction could have been due to the way relationship status was coded in both studies. In Study 1, participants who had regular contact with potential sexual partners but who were not in an “official” relationship might have indicated that they were single. Comparatively, Study 1 reduced the ambiguity of responses by asking participants to selfcategorize simply as single or non-single.
Both studies supported the findings of Bouffard and Miller (2014) that self-reported sexual arousal is positively related to interpretations of sexual intent underlying women’s behaviors. Both studies also establish preliminary evidence that single men rely more strongly than those in relationships on present-state sexual arousal when interpreting women’s sexual intentions. Given the dearth of literature on this specific topic we cannot rule out the possibility that individual differences in arousal are confounded with other individual differences, but we found no evidence of such a confound with any difference measured in these two studies. None were correlated with selfreported arousal. It should also be noted that differences in self-reported arousal are a function of both individual differences in tendencies to be sexually aroused or to become sexually aroused in response to sexual stimuli, and the manipulation of arousal. Thus, it may be premature to speculate regarding the nature of individual differences that might explain our results or those of Bouffard and Miller (2014). One individual difference that should receive closer attention is relationship status. Only Study 2 found a significant interaction between relationship status and arousal condition, and neither showed a difference in self-reported arousal between single and non-single participants. Despite these inconsistencies, we still observed more powerful effects of the arousal manipulation for single (vs. non-single) participants in both studies. Arguably, the issue of misperception of sexual intent is most important for the single population.
Although our studies did not test any explanations of this effect of relationship status, the effect might be explained in part by differences in motivated cognition. Perhaps those in relationships, who regularly have their sexual needs satisfied, do not feel any need to perceive sexual intent in women’s behaviors. In contrast, aroused single men are more motivated to perceive sexual interest among women because sex for these men is a relatively scarce resource. Or, when aroused, men in relationships might think of their partners and have no need to see sexual interest in other women. Single men might not direct their sexual interest to a specific woman and therefore might read more into the behavior of all women. This difference might also be due to the reference population men are thinking of when they answer these questions. If men in relationships are imagining what it means when their partners, who they are extremely familiar with, engage in these sometimes-ambiguous behaviors, they might be able to think up many more reasons for these behaviors besides desiring sex. Single men might only be thinking about women abstractly, and without specific knowledge of qualities like personalities, political and religious preferences, etc., might be less able to think up reasons for ambiguous behaviors outside of sexual interest.
At this point, this difference needs replication before it can be considered reliable. Only one study showed a significant interaction between relationship status and manipulated arousal, even though both studies showed the simple effect of arousal was significant within single males and not within non-single males. Importantly, for the more powerful manipulation of arousal (that of Study 1), the effect of the arousal manipulation was significant overall. For the weaker manipulation of arousal (that of Study 2), the manipulation was successful only for single men. The possibility remains that with an even more powerful arousal manipulation than that of Study 1, the manipulation might be comparably effective for both populations.
Reasoning according to principles from behind a “veil of ignorance” (without knowing our place in the social order) leads to choices that favor the greater good
Veil-of-ignorance reasoning favors the greater good. Karen Huang, Joshua D. Greene, and Max Bazerman. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 12, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910125116
Significance: The philosopher John Rawls aimed to identify fair governing principles by imagining people choosing their principles from behind a “veil of ignorance,” without knowing their places in the social order. Across 7 experiments with over 6,000 participants, we show that veil-of-ignorance reasoning leads to choices that favor the greater good. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning makes people more likely to donate to a more effective charity and to favor saving more lives in a bioethical dilemma. It also addresses the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles (AVs), aligning abstract approval of utilitarian AVs (which minimize total harm) with support for a utilitarian AV policy. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be used to promote decision making that is more impartial and socially beneficial.
Abstract: The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision making by denying decision makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was originally applied by philosophers and economists to foundational questions concerning the overall organization of society. Here, we apply veil-of-ignorance reasoning in a more focused way to specific moral dilemmas, all of which involve a tension between the greater good and competing moral concerns. Across 7 experiments (n = 6,261), 4 preregistered, we find that veil-of-ignorance reasoning favors the greater good. Participants first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning about a specific dilemma, asking themselves what they would want if they did not know who among those affected they would be. Participants then responded to a more conventional version of the same dilemma with a moral judgment, a policy preference, or an economic choice. Participants who first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning subsequently made more utilitarian choices in response to a classic philosophical dilemma, a medical dilemma, a real donation decision between a more vs. less effective charity, and a policy decision concerning the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. These effects depend on the impartial thinking induced by veil-of-ignorance reasoning and cannot be explained by anchoring, probabilistic reasoning, or generic perspective taking. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be a useful tool for decision makers who wish to make more impartial and/or socially beneficial choices.
Keywords: ethicsdecision makingpolicy makingprocedural justicefairness
Significance: The philosopher John Rawls aimed to identify fair governing principles by imagining people choosing their principles from behind a “veil of ignorance,” without knowing their places in the social order. Across 7 experiments with over 6,000 participants, we show that veil-of-ignorance reasoning leads to choices that favor the greater good. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning makes people more likely to donate to a more effective charity and to favor saving more lives in a bioethical dilemma. It also addresses the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles (AVs), aligning abstract approval of utilitarian AVs (which minimize total harm) with support for a utilitarian AV policy. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be used to promote decision making that is more impartial and socially beneficial.
Abstract: The “veil of ignorance” is a moral reasoning device designed to promote impartial decision making by denying decision makers access to potentially biasing information about who will benefit most or least from the available options. Veil-of-ignorance reasoning was originally applied by philosophers and economists to foundational questions concerning the overall organization of society. Here, we apply veil-of-ignorance reasoning in a more focused way to specific moral dilemmas, all of which involve a tension between the greater good and competing moral concerns. Across 7 experiments (n = 6,261), 4 preregistered, we find that veil-of-ignorance reasoning favors the greater good. Participants first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning about a specific dilemma, asking themselves what they would want if they did not know who among those affected they would be. Participants then responded to a more conventional version of the same dilemma with a moral judgment, a policy preference, or an economic choice. Participants who first engaged in veil-of-ignorance reasoning subsequently made more utilitarian choices in response to a classic philosophical dilemma, a medical dilemma, a real donation decision between a more vs. less effective charity, and a policy decision concerning the social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. These effects depend on the impartial thinking induced by veil-of-ignorance reasoning and cannot be explained by anchoring, probabilistic reasoning, or generic perspective taking. These studies indicate that veil-of-ignorance reasoning may be a useful tool for decision makers who wish to make more impartial and/or socially beneficial choices.
Keywords: ethicsdecision makingpolicy makingprocedural justicefairness
Primates got personality, too: Toward an integrative primatology of consistent individual differences in behavior
Primates got personality, too: Toward an integrative primatology of consistent individual differences in behavior. Maryjka B. Blaszczyk. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, November 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21808
Abstract: In recent years, research on animal personality has exploded within the field of behavioral ecology. Consistent individual differences in behavior exist in a wide range of species, and these differences can have fitness consequences and influence several aspects of a species' ecology. In comparison to studies of other animals, however, there has been relatively little research on the behavioral ecology of primate personality. This is surprising given the large body of research within psychology and biomedicine showing that primate personality traits are heritable and linked to health and life history outcomes. In this article, I bring together theoretical perspectives on the ecology and evolution of animal personality with an integrative review of what we know about primate personality from studies conducted on captive, free‐ranging, and wild primates. Incorporating frameworks that emphasize consistency in behavior into primate behavioral ecology research holds promise for improving our understanding of primate behavioral evolution.
Abstract: In recent years, research on animal personality has exploded within the field of behavioral ecology. Consistent individual differences in behavior exist in a wide range of species, and these differences can have fitness consequences and influence several aspects of a species' ecology. In comparison to studies of other animals, however, there has been relatively little research on the behavioral ecology of primate personality. This is surprising given the large body of research within psychology and biomedicine showing that primate personality traits are heritable and linked to health and life history outcomes. In this article, I bring together theoretical perspectives on the ecology and evolution of animal personality with an integrative review of what we know about primate personality from studies conducted on captive, free‐ranging, and wild primates. Incorporating frameworks that emphasize consistency in behavior into primate behavioral ecology research holds promise for improving our understanding of primate behavioral evolution.
Surviving and Thriving: Fundamental Social Motives Provide Purpose in Life
Surviving and Thriving: Fundamental Social Motives Provide Purpose in Life. Matthew J. Scott, Adam B. Cohen. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, November 13, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219883604
Abstract: Purpose in life (PIL) is often associated with grand achievements and existential beliefs, but recent theory suggests that it might ultimately track gainful pursuit of basic evolved goals. Five studies (N = 1,993) investigated the relationships between fundamental social motives and PIL. In Study 1, attribution of a life goal pursuit to disease avoidance, affiliation, or kin care motives correlated with higher PIL. Studies 2 and 3 found correlations of self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, mate retention, and kin care motives with PIL after controlling for potential confounds. Study 4 showed that writing about success in the status, mating, and kin care domains increased PIL. Study 5 replicated the effect for mating and kin care, but not for status. Results imply that fundamental motives link to PIL through a sense of progress, rather than raw desire. Overall, this set of studies suggests that pursuit of evolved fundamental goals contributes to a purposeful life.
Keywords: motivation, purpose, meaning, well-being, evolution
General Discussion (excerpts)
The results of these studies present the first causal evidence
that thinking about satisfying at least some evolved social
goals increases PIL. Study 1 showed that the extent to which
individuals attributed their important goal pursuits to disease
avoidance, affiliation, and kin care motives predicted higher
PIL. Participants did not draw their own connections in
Studies 2 and 3, instead completing validated measures of
each construct. Study 2 showed that self-protection, affiliation,
status, mate retention, and kin care motives predicted
higher PIL among undergraduates, controlling for personality
and affect. Study 3 showed that affiliation, status, and kin
care motives predicted higher PIL, controlling for personality,
affect, regulatory focus, and approach/avoidance motivation.
Study 4 demonstrated that writing about accomplishment
of status, mating, or kin care goals increases PIL about
equally and that preexisting status and kin care motives made
the manipulations of those domains more effective in boosting
PIL. Study 5 replicated a causal effect of writing about
mating and kin care, but not status. Post-tests showed that the
manipulations did not affect amount of fundamental motivation
per se, suggesting that motive satisfaction feelings may
have increased PIL.
Previous work has shown that people with a tendency
toward goal locomotion endorse more PIL than those who
merely assess new goals (Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, Orehek, &
Scheier, 2017), leading researchers to theorize that working
toward goals increases PIL. The current work supports this
causal claim via two experiments.
The current findings both support and extend previous
work connecting fundamental social motives with purpose.
People not only believe that affiliation and kin care pursuits
lead to PIL but also people pursuing these motivations tend
to report higher PIL. Status motivations also predicted higher
PIL in Studies 2 and 3. Studies 4 and 5 showed that writing
about full accomplishment in mating, kin care, and sometimes
status domains increases PIL. Taken together, the moderation-
by-motivation finding of Study 4, the lack of motive
manipulation in Study 5, and the success-eliciting nature of
the writing prompts suggest that the feeling of progress or
satisfaction in a fundamental domain may be how fundamental
motives influence PIL.
Our work is also theoretically consistent with that of King
and colleagues, but a fuller integration with their perspective
will require more research. They make the important observation
that
In line with this expressed need for a new perspective,
we studied how everyday motives in everyday people foster
a sense of PIL. Future research should look at how
pursuing fundamental goals might influence the other facets
of MIL.
Some of the motives we studied overlap with those in
King and colleagues’ work, but not all of them. They note
that MIL is correlated with social integration (King et al.,
2016), which may be partially captured by the fundamental
motives mate acquisition, mate retention, or kin care as all
involve fostering social relationships. Ward and King (2016)
found a relationship of MIL with socioeconomic status,
which likely overlaps with the fundamental motive status.
Other predictors of MIL, such as religious faith (e.g., King
et al., 2016), likely correlate with kin care and affiliation
(e.g., Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004), but are far
more distinct from fundamental motives.
With regard to causal directions, there are multiple possible
perspectives. Kenrick and colleagues (Kenrick & Krems,
2018; Krems et al., 2017) have suggested that success in evolutionary
domains can lead to well-being, and our work here
shows fundamental motives influence PIL. However, it is
also possible that meaning and purpose influence evolutionary
success in ways that are not incompatible with what we
have shown, but which represent a causal direction we did
not focus on. King et al. (2016) proposed a
Future research should consider the multiple theoretically
derived causal directions that may be possible.
Abstract: Purpose in life (PIL) is often associated with grand achievements and existential beliefs, but recent theory suggests that it might ultimately track gainful pursuit of basic evolved goals. Five studies (N = 1,993) investigated the relationships between fundamental social motives and PIL. In Study 1, attribution of a life goal pursuit to disease avoidance, affiliation, or kin care motives correlated with higher PIL. Studies 2 and 3 found correlations of self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, mate retention, and kin care motives with PIL after controlling for potential confounds. Study 4 showed that writing about success in the status, mating, and kin care domains increased PIL. Study 5 replicated the effect for mating and kin care, but not for status. Results imply that fundamental motives link to PIL through a sense of progress, rather than raw desire. Overall, this set of studies suggests that pursuit of evolved fundamental goals contributes to a purposeful life.
Keywords: motivation, purpose, meaning, well-being, evolution
General Discussion (excerpts)
The results of these studies present the first causal evidence
that thinking about satisfying at least some evolved social
goals increases PIL. Study 1 showed that the extent to which
individuals attributed their important goal pursuits to disease
avoidance, affiliation, and kin care motives predicted higher
PIL. Participants did not draw their own connections in
Studies 2 and 3, instead completing validated measures of
each construct. Study 2 showed that self-protection, affiliation,
status, mate retention, and kin care motives predicted
higher PIL among undergraduates, controlling for personality
and affect. Study 3 showed that affiliation, status, and kin
care motives predicted higher PIL, controlling for personality,
affect, regulatory focus, and approach/avoidance motivation.
Study 4 demonstrated that writing about accomplishment
of status, mating, or kin care goals increases PIL about
equally and that preexisting status and kin care motives made
the manipulations of those domains more effective in boosting
PIL. Study 5 replicated a causal effect of writing about
mating and kin care, but not status. Post-tests showed that the
manipulations did not affect amount of fundamental motivation
per se, suggesting that motive satisfaction feelings may
have increased PIL.
Previous work has shown that people with a tendency
toward goal locomotion endorse more PIL than those who
merely assess new goals (Vazeou-Nieuwenhuis, Orehek, &
Scheier, 2017), leading researchers to theorize that working
toward goals increases PIL. The current work supports this
causal claim via two experiments.
The current findings both support and extend previous
work connecting fundamental social motives with purpose.
People not only believe that affiliation and kin care pursuits
lead to PIL but also people pursuing these motivations tend
to report higher PIL. Status motivations also predicted higher
PIL in Studies 2 and 3. Studies 4 and 5 showed that writing
about full accomplishment in mating, kin care, and sometimes
status domains increases PIL. Taken together, the moderation-
by-motivation finding of Study 4, the lack of motive
manipulation in Study 5, and the success-eliciting nature of
the writing prompts suggest that the feeling of progress or
satisfaction in a fundamental domain may be how fundamental
motives influence PIL.
Our work is also theoretically consistent with that of King
and colleagues, but a fuller integration with their perspective
will require more research. They make the important observation
that
the psychological approach to the experience of meaning in life
has focused on humanity’s search for an experience that seems
simultaneously ineffable yet vital, essential but somehow
potentially unattainable. Psychologists have often examined
what happens when meaning is absent: When experiences feel
senseless, when purpose is difficult to ascertain, when meaning
must be created. (King, Heintzelman, & Ward, 2016, p. 211)
In line with this expressed need for a new perspective,
we studied how everyday motives in everyday people foster
a sense of PIL. Future research should look at how
pursuing fundamental goals might influence the other facets
of MIL.
Some of the motives we studied overlap with those in
King and colleagues’ work, but not all of them. They note
that MIL is correlated with social integration (King et al.,
2016), which may be partially captured by the fundamental
motives mate acquisition, mate retention, or kin care as all
involve fostering social relationships. Ward and King (2016)
found a relationship of MIL with socioeconomic status,
which likely overlaps with the fundamental motive status.
Other predictors of MIL, such as religious faith (e.g., King
et al., 2016), likely correlate with kin care and affiliation
(e.g., Saroglou, Delpierre, & Dernelle, 2004), but are far
more distinct from fundamental motives.
With regard to causal directions, there are multiple possible
perspectives. Kenrick and colleagues (Kenrick & Krems,
2018; Krems et al., 2017) have suggested that success in evolutionary
domains can lead to well-being, and our work here
shows fundamental motives influence PIL. However, it is
also possible that meaning and purpose influence evolutionary
success in ways that are not incompatible with what we
have shown, but which represent a causal direction we did
not focus on. King et al. (2016) proposed a
meaning-as-information Framework . . . [which] draws on the
feelings-as-information hypothesis, which suggests that
affective states provide information to direct behavior and
cognitive processing in adaptive ways . . . feelings of meaning
track the coherence of one’s environment to provide important
information to direct processing in a situationally appropriate
manner. This framework suggests that strong feelings of
meaning can be adaptive because they emerge when one inhabits
a stable environment that fosters positive functioning across
many domains of life. (p. 214)
Future research should consider the multiple theoretically
derived causal directions that may be possible.
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