Seasonality of mood and affect in a large general population sample: Only participants higher on neuroticism showing seasonality

Seasonality of mood and affect in a large general population sample. Wim H. Winthorst ,Elisabeth H. Bos,Annelieke M. Roest,Peter de Jonge. PLoS, September 14, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239033

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1305747281346519041

Abstract: Mood and behaviour are thought to be under considerable influence of the seasons, but evidence is not unequivocal. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether mood and affect are related to the seasons, and what is the role of neuroticism in this association. In a national internet-based crowdsourcing project in the Dutch general population, individuals were invited to assess themselves on several domains of mental health. ANCOVA was used to test for differences between the seasons in mean scores on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (QIDS). Within-subject seasonal differences were tested as well, in a subgroup that completed the PANAS twice. The role of neuroticism as a potential moderator of seasonality was examined. Participants (n = 5,282) scored significantly higher on positive affect (PANAS) and lower on depressive symptoms (QIDS) in spring compared to summer, autumn and winter. They also scored significantly lower on negative affect in spring compared to autumn. Effect sizes were small or very small. Neuroticism moderated the effect of the seasons, with only participants higher on neuroticism showing seasonality. There was no within-subject seasonal effect for participants who completed the questionnaires twice (n = 503), nor was neuroticism a significant moderator of this within-subjects effect. The findings of this study in a general population sample participating in an online crowdsourcing study do not support the widespread belief that seasons influence mood to a great extent. For, as far as the seasons did influence mood, this only applied to highly neurotic participants and not to low-neurotic participants. The underlying mechanism of cognitive attribution may explain the perceived relation between seasonality and neuroticism.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether mood and affect are related to the seasons. Secondly, we examined the role of neuroticism as a potential moderator of seasonality. The main findings of this study were: on a population level, participants scored higher on positive affect in spring compared to the other seasons, lower on negative affect in spring compared to autumn, and lower on QIDS depressive symptoms in spring compared to the other seasons. The same pattern was visible in the separate “seasonality-related” questions of the QIDS (except for weight change and increased appetite): participants felt less sad, slept less, had more energy, more general interest in spring compared to the other seasons, mainly autumn and winter. In summary, this study shows that participants, in general, feel better in spring compared to the other seasons, but effect sizes were small or very small. The personality factor neuroticism moderated the effect of the season in all three outcomes. There were no within-subject seasonal differences in the scores of positive and negative affect, as shown in the repeated measures analysis in participants who filled out the questionnaires twice. The power of these analyses may have been insufficient to detect significant seasonal differences, due to smaller numbers and the fact that effect sizes were already very small or small in the first group. This may also explain that neuroticism did not moderate within-subject seasonal differences.

The finding that seasonal differences were only seen in the group of high-neurotic participants is in line with our previous study, in which we hypothesised that subjects who score high on neuroticism tend to attribute their symptoms and unhappiness to the seasons [26]. This finding is also in line with the findings of Rosellini and Nooteboom that the symptoms of depression are related to the personality trait neuroticism [58, 59].

In the crowdsourcing study HND procedure, the general public volunteered to assist in scientific research. In return, participants received feedback on their scores and were able to follow the results of the research on the internet [31]. Brabham described the internet crowdsourcing procedure as a relatively new model for application in public health [60]. Possible advantages mentioned by Bevelander are that by this sampling methodology already existing hypotheses can be reproduced but also that this methodology can generate ideas that are less well-documented or otherwise tend to be overlooked [61]. In previous crowdsourcing studies, the participants recruited were more diverse than in other means of recruitment [62]. Possible disadvantages of this method are selection bias and the impossibility to calculate non-response percentages, as it is not possible to know how many people have heard of the project or visited the website but did not enter the study [63, 64]. In order to find a group of participants for HND that could be representative for the general population (and thereby attempting to reduce the limitation of selection bias), publicity for HND was sought using several newspaper articles, magazine articles, public lectures, radio interviews, and other media. In order to examine possible selection effects, Van der Krieke et al. [31] compared the HND sample with the governmental data of the general Dutch population (Central Bureau of Statistics) and two large population studies: the Netherlands Mental Health Survey (NEMESIS-2) and the Lifelines population study [32,33]. They confirmed a certain selection bias. Compared to the general Dutch population, the HND participants were more often women (65.2% versus 50.5%; NEMESIS = 55.2%, Lifelines = 57,9%), on average 6 years older (45 versus 39 years; NEMESIS = 44, Lifelines = 42), more often with a partner (74% versus 58%;), more often living together (61 versus 47%; NEMESIS = 68%) and had higher education levels (> 20 years 76% versus 35%; NEMESIS = 35%) [31].

This selection bias clearly is a limitation of the present research. Moreover, in our study, a majority of the participants completed the questionnaires in spring. Although we adjusted for the differences between the seasons due to this selective inclusion by using the demographic variables as covariates, we cannot rule out the possibility that the results were still partly due to some unmeasured confounder. Since our sample was a general population sample, another potential limitation is that the proportion of participants suffering from SAD can be expected to be low (ranging from 3%–10%), implying that the contribution of SAD patients to our study results will be limited[11].

Depressive disorders and anxiety disorders show a high comorbidity [65, 66]. For this reason, it would have been interesting to include a measure of anxiety. However, in a previous article, we showed that the administered depression scale (QIDS) and the BAI (Becks Anxiety Inventory) showed a correlation of 0.80 [27]. In the HND study, the Anxiety subscale of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) was used to assess anxiety over the previous week. In our data, there was a correlation of 0.70 between the QIDS and the anxiety scale of the DASS (S1 Table). Since our main objective was to investigate the seasonality of depression and positive and negative affect, we did not include this measure of anxiety as a confounder because it could have masked the seasonal effect on depression.

A strength of this study is its large sample size for the analyses in the entire group and the spring–winter group in the repeated measures analyses. Other strengths are the use of validated instruments, comparability with other Dutch population studies, the use of questionnaires covering a short period guaranteeing a relative absence of memory bias, and the inclusion of a personality factor in the analyses.

The mechanism of cognitive attribution may underlie the relation between (perceived) seasonality and neuroticism [27, 67, 68]. For future studies on seasonality of mood and behaviour, we recommend including the personality measure neuroticism and a measure to establish the attribution style. Other confounding factors like presence or absence of pre-existing physical or mental health conditions, treatment and stressful life events should be measured as well. The objective then is to further disentangle the relationship between neuroticism, attribution style and (perceived) seasonality of mood and behaviour.

Hating magic was marked by lower Openness to Experience, lower awe-proneness, & lower creative self-concepts; & higher socially aversive traits (lower Agreeableness, higher psychopathy, & lower faith in humanity)

Silvia, Paul, Gil Greengross, Maciej Karwowski, Rebekah Rodriguez, and Sara J. Crasson. 2020. “Who Hates Magic? Exploring the Loathing of Legerdemain.” PsyArXiv. September 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/mzry6

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1305498014207946752

Abstract: Magic is an ancient, universal, diverse, and wide-ranging domain of artistic performance. Despite its worldwide popularity, however, any working magician will tell you that some people really hate magic. They seem to see every illusion as a challenge to be solved and every performance as an insult to their intelligence. A distinctive feature of magic is that it seeks to create wonder and amazement through deception—practitioners create the illusion of the impossible, which can provoke intense curiosity, but will not explain the method—so we speculate that disliking magic could stem from (1) low propensity for curiosity, awe, and wonder, and (2) high needs for social status and dominance, which make a person averse to being fooled and manipulated. The present research explored people’s attitudes toward magic with our Loathing of Legerdemain (LOL) scale. In a multinational sample of 1295 adults, we found support for these two broad classes of predictors. People who hated magic were marked by (1) lower Openness to Experience, lower awe-proneness, and lower creative self-concepts; and (2) higher socially aversive traits, such as lower Agreeableness, higher psychopathy, and lower faith in humanity. We suggest that magic is an interesting case for researchers interested in audience and visitor studies and that the psychology of art would benefit from a richer understanding of negative attitudes more generally.

Based on an analysis of all authoritarian regimes between 1900 and 2015, the authors argue that regimes founded in violent social revolution are especially durable

Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability. Jean Lachapelle, Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way and Adam E. Casey. World Politics, September 3 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000106

Abstract: This article explores the causes of authoritarian durability. Why do some authoritarian regimes survive for decades, often despite severe crises, while others collapse quickly, even absent significant challenges? Based on an analysis of all authoritarian regimes between 1900 and 2015, the authors argue that regimes founded in violent social revolution are especially durable. Revolutionary regimes, such as those in Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam, endured for more than half a century in the face of strong external pressure, poor economic performance, and large-scale policy failures. The authors develop and test a theory that accounts for such durability using a novel data set of revolutionary regimes since 1900. The authors contend that autocracies that emerge out of violent social revolution tend to confront extraordinary military threats, which lead to the development of cohesive ruling parties and powerful and loyal security apparatuses, as well as to the destruction of alternative power centers. These characteristics account for revolutionary regimes’ unusual longevity.

We generally find extreme runs of success by individuals to be more captivating; people appear to be more moved by individual success than group success

Walker, J., & Gilovich, T. (2020). The streaking star effect: Why people want superior performance by individuals to continue more than identical performance by groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Sep 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000256

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1305478259765923840

Abstract: We present evidence in 9 studies (n = 2,625) for the Streaking Star Effect—people’s greater desire to see runs of successful performance by individuals continue more than identical runs of success by groups. We find this bias in an obscure Italian sport (Study 1), a British trivia competition (Study 2), and a tennis competition in which the number of individual versus team competitors is held constant (Study 3). This effect appears to result from individual streaks of success inspiring more awe than group streaks—and that people enjoying being awe-inspired. In Studies 4 and 5, we found that the experience of awe inspired by an individual streak drives the effect, a result that is itself driven by the greater dispositional attributions people make for the success of individuals as opposed to groups (Study 6). We demonstrate in Studies 7a and 7b that this effect is not an artifact of identifiability. Finally, Study 8 illustrates how the Streaking Star Effect impacts people’s beliefs about the appropriate market share for companies run by a successful individual versus a successful management team. We close by discussing implications of this effect for consumer behavior, and for how people react to economic inequality reflected in the success of individuals versus groups.

General discussion, from the Jesse Taylor Walker's PhD Thesis, August 2019 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/233840797.pdf

Although past researchers have exerted considerable energy studying streaks of success and failure, very little attention has been paid to the conditions that influence whether or not observers want a given streak to continue. The original aim of this work was to fill that gap. In the first eight studies, we identified a reliable bias such that people desire streaks of success by individuals to continue more than identical streaks by groups. We demonstrated two mechanisms that drive this effect. One key factor is that people experience a greater sense of awe at the prospect of seeing an individual continue a run of dominance than a group. A second is that people take the other competitors into greater consideration when a group is on a streak than when an individual is on a streak. The remaining studies illustrated how the implications of this work extend far beyond people’s preference for the continuation of streaks of success by individuals. Chapter 3 demonstrated ways in which the Streaking Star Effect can impact consumer behavior. We found that consumers were willing to pay more for products associated with individual runs of dominance than group runs of dominance, presumably because products associated with individual dominance are imbued with greater feelings of awe. As an additional extension, we showed how the psychology underlying the Streaking Star Effect may be used to influence attitudes toward inequality. In Chapter 4, inequality was judged to be more acceptable and fair when people perceived the top rung of the income ladder to be occupied by a successful individual as opposed to a successful group. - 69 - The differing attributions that people make for individuals and groups is at the root of many of these findings. Part of the reason that individual dominance is more awe inspiring may be because people tend to make greater dispositional attributions for the behavior of individuals than groups. Similarly, we found in Chapter 4 that people are more likely to make dispositional attributions for the success of wealthy individuals than wealthy groups. Mechanisms themselves often have their own psychological explanations, and these results raise the question as to why people make more dispositional attributions for individuals as opposed to groups. Although other research has supported this attributional pattern (Critcher & Dunning, 2014), no work has identified why people may follow this pattern when making judgments about individuals and groups. One possible explanation is that groups are more abstract than individuals, which may lead people to focus on different factors when making judgments about individuals and groups. The concrete nature of an individual target may call to mind specific characteristics like the target’s will and determination. These kinds of characteristics may seem especially difficult to ascribe to an abstract group of people who do not possess a single consciousness. As a result, outside social and environmental forces may be seen as acting more easily on a group of people than on specific individual. The ultimate reason, though, as to why people follow this attributional pattern is beyond the empirical goals of this work and would be better addressed by future research. Although we have explored at great length a condition that dictates whether people prefer a streak of success to continue, we have not examined the preferences people may have when the streak in question is one of failure rather than success. Do people prefer individuals to discontinue losing streaks more than they prefer groups to dis-continue identical streaks? While - 70 - people are often sensitive to the plight of a long-suffering individual (e.g. Small & Loewenstein, 2015), anecdotal evidence suggests that the preference for losing streaks to end may not follow the same kind of pattern as winning streaks. As an example, for over 100 years, The Chicago Cubs had suffered the longest championship drought of any professional team. But in 2016, they made it to the World Series and defeated the Cleveland Indians. The national reaction leading up to the World Series suggested that many people everywhere, regardless of location or prior allegiance, were pulling for the Cubs to end their run of futility (this author included). The number of people jumping on the Cubs’ “Bandwagon” was so great that it inspired a series of popular memes in addition to several news articles noting the sudden nationwide popularity of the Cubs (Linder, 2016). It seemed possible that the prospect of witnessing the Cubs’ put an end to over 100 years of losing may have been awe-inspiring in its own right. In a more formal test, we asked 200 participants on Mturk to imagine that an individual Calcio player or Calcio team had failed to qualify for the playoffs for 6 consecutive years. We then asked how much people would like to see these streaks come to an end. We suspected it may be possible that the prospect of a team ending a losing streak may inspire greater awe than individuals ending losing streaks (a reversal of the Streaking Star Effect). But this did not prove to be the case. In fact, there was no difference in the amount that participants wanted to see the individual end his of run futility and how much they wanted to see the team do the same. It is possible that people do want to see a team turn around a stretch futility (maybe even more than they would want that team to continue a streak of success) but people appear equally interested in seeing an individual on a run of futility turn around his fortunes.

Frequency of persuasive bullshitting positively predicts bullshit receptivity (sensitivity) and this association is robust to individual differences in cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style

Littrell, Shane, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang. 2020. ““You Can’t Bullshit a Bullshitter” (or Can You?): Bullshitting Frequency Predicts Receptivity to Various Types of Bullshit” PsyArXiv. September 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/5c2ej

Abstract: Research into both receptivity to falling for bullshit and the propensity to produce it have recently emerged as active, independent areas of inquiry into the spread of misinformation. However, it remains unclear whether those who frequently produce bullshit are inoculated from its influence. For example, both bullshit receptivity and bullshitting frequency are negatively related to cognitive ability and aspects of analytic thinking style, suggesting that those who frequently engage in bullshitting may be more likely to fall for bullshit. However, separate research suggests that individuals who frequently engage in deception are better at detecting it, thus leading to the possibility that frequent bullshitters may be less likely to fall for bullshit. Here we present 3 studies (N = 826) attempting to distinguish between these competing hypotheses, finding that frequency of persuasive bullshitting positively predicts bullshit receptivity (sensitivity) and that this association is robust to individual differences in cognitive ability and analytic cognitive style.

As a predictor of violence (indexed with attitudinal, intentional, & behavioral measures), autocratic orientation outperformed other variables highlighted until now, including socioeconomic status & group-based injustice

Dominance-Driven Autocratic Political Orientations Predict Political Violence in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and Non-WEIRD Samples. Henrikas Bartusevičius, Florian van Leeuwen & Michael Bang Petersen. Psychological Science, Jul 24 2020. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797620922476

Abstract: Given the costs of political violence, scholars have long sought to identify its causes. We examined individual differences related to participation in political violence, emphasizing the central role of political orientations. We hypothesized that individuals with dominance-driven autocratic political orientations are prone to political violence. Multilevel analysis of survey data from 34 African countries (N = 51,587) indicated that autocracy-oriented individuals, compared with democracy-oriented individuals, are considerably more likely to participate in political violence. As a predictor of violence (indexed with attitudinal, intentional, and behavioral measures), autocratic orientation outperformed other variables highlighted in existing research, including socioeconomic status and group-based injustice. Additional analyses of original data from South Africa (N = 2,170), Denmark (N = 1,012), and the United States (N = 1,539) indicated that the link between autocratic orientations and political violence reflects individual differences in the use of dominance to achieve status and that the findings generalize to societies extensively socialized to democratic values.

Keywords: political violence, political orientation, autocracy, dominance, aggression, open data, open materials, preregistered

They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?

They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen? Elizabeth Weil Aug. 28, 1010. https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen

Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California. Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year. Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres. The state passed a few new laws in 2018 designed to facilitate more intentional burning. But few are optimistic this, alone, will lead to significant change. We live with a deathly backlog. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres — an area about the size of Maine — to restabilize in terms of fire.

[...]

[...] When I reached Malcolm North, a research ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service who is based in Mammoth, California, and asked if there was any meaningful scientific dissent to the idea that we need to do more controlled burning, he said, “None that I know of.”

[...]

When asked how we were doing on closing the gap between what we need to burn in California and what we actually light, Goulette fell into the familiar fire Cassandra stutter. “Oh gosh. … I don’t know. …” The QFR acknowledged there was no way prescribed burns and other kinds of forest thinning could make a dent in the risk imposed by the backlog of fuels in the next 10 or even 20 years. “We’re at 20,000 acres a year. We need to get to a million. What’s the reasonable path toward a million acres?” Maybe we could get to 40,000 acres, in five years. But that number made Goulette stop speaking again. “Forty thousand acres? Is that meaningful?” That answer, obviously, is no.

Check also Barriers and enablers for prescribed burns for wildfire management in California. Rebecca K. Miller, Christopher B. Field & Katharine J. Mach. Nature Sustainability volume 3, pages101–109 (2020). Jan 20 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0451-7

Abstract: Prescribed burns to reduce fuel can mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires. However, multiple barriers limit their deployment, resulting in their underutilization, particularly in forests. We evaluate sociopolitical barriers and opportunities for greater deployment in California, an area recurrently affected by catastrophic fires. We use a mixed-methods approach combining expert interviews, state legislative policy analysis and prescribed-burn data from state records. We identify three categories of barriers. Risk-related barriers (fear of liability and negative public perceptions) prevent landowners from beginning the burn planning process. Both resource-related barriers (limited funding, crew availability and experience) and regulations-related barriers (poor weather conditions for burning and environmental regulations) prevent landowners from conducting burns, creating a gap between planning and implementation. Recent policies have sought to address mainly risk-related challenges, although these and regulations-related challenges remain. Fundamental shifts in prescribed-burn policies, beyond those currently under consideration, are needed to address wildfires in California and worldwide.

From 2016... Establishing a link between sex-related differences in the structural connectome and behaviour

From 2016... Tunç B et al. 2016. Establishing a link between sex-related differences in the structural connectome and behaviour. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 371:20150111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0111

Recent years have witnessed an increased attention to studies of sex differences, partly because such differences offer important considerations for personalized medicine. While the presence of sex differences in human behaviour is well documented, our knowledge of their anatomical foundations in the brain is still relatively limited. As a natural gateway to fathom the human mind and behaviour, studies concentrating on the human brain network constitute an important segment of the research effort to investigate sex differences. Using a large sample of healthy young individuals, each assessed with diffusion MRI and a computerized neurocognitive battery, we conducted a comprehensive set of experiments examining sex-related differences in the meso-scale structures of the human connectome and elucidated how these differences may relate to sex differences at the level of behaviour. Our results suggest that behavioural sex differences, which indicate complementarity of males and females, are accompanied by related differences in brain structure across development. When using subnetworks that are defined over functional and behavioural domains, we observed increased structural connectivity related to the motor, sensory and executive function subnetworks in males. In females, subnetworks associated with social motivation, attention and memory tasks had higher connectivity. Males showed higher modularity compared to females, with females having higher inter-modular connectivity. Applying multivariate analysis, we showed an increasing separation between males and females in the course of development, not only in behavioural patterns but also in brain structure. We also showed that these behavioural and structural patterns correlate with each other, establishing a reliable link between brain and behaviour.



Check also Multifaceted origins of sex differences in the brain. Margaret M. McCarthy. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B Vol. 371, Issue 1688, February 19 2016. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0106

Abstract: Studies of sex differences in the brain range from reductionistic cell and molecular analyses in animal models to functional imaging in awake human subjects, with many other levels in between. Interpretations and conclusions about the importance of particular differences often vary with differing levels of analyses and can lead to discord and dissent. In the past two decades, the range of neurobiological, psychological and psychiatric endpoints found to differ between males and females has expanded beyond reproduction into every aspect of the healthy and diseased brain, and thereby demands our attention. A greater understanding of all aspects of neural functioning will only be achieved by incorporating sex as a biological variable. The goal of this review is to highlight the current state of the art of the discipline of sex differences research with an emphasis on the brain and to contextualize the articles appearing in the accompanying special issue.

But there is another window into the human brain and that is through the minds of boys and girls. Hines has discovered a robust sex difference in toy preference between boys and girls and has convincingly demonstrated over many studies that girls prenatally exposed to androgen owing to a genetic anomaly (congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) girls) have a boy-like toy preference [30,31]. In this issue, Hines [32] makes another major leap forward in illuminating how androgens impact the developing human brain with evidence that CAH girls are less sensitive than unaffected girls to extraneous socialization cues about gender-appropriate toy-choices. Thus, rather than concluding that there is some undiscovered ‘prefers-dolls-nucleus' in the brain, her recent work demonstrates how children are differentially sensitive to socializing cues, so that girls become even more girl-like by modelling the behaviour of other females. In this way, the nature versus nurture conundrum is broken down with the realization that nature determines the response to nurture. Whether the converse is true for boys is not yet known.