Comparing the effects of a mindfulness versus relaxation intervention on romantic relationship wellbeing: No significant differences

Comparing the effects of a mindfulness versus relaxation intervention on romantic relationship wellbeing. Johan C. Karremans, Gesa Kappen, Melanie Schellekens & Dominik Schoebi. Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 21696 (2020). Dec 10 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-78919-6

Abstract: There is increasing scientific interest in the potential association between mindfulness and romantic relationship wellbeing. To date, however, experimental studies using active control groups and testing dyadic effects (i.e. examining both actor and partner effects) are lacking. In the current study, romantically involved individuals engaged for 2 weeks daily in either guided mindfulness exercises, or guided relaxation exercises. Participants, and their partners, completed measures of relationship wellbeing at pre- and post-intervention, and at 1-month follow up. The mindfulness intervention significantly promoted relationship wellbeing, for both participants (i.e. actor effects) and their partners (i.e. partner effects). However, these findings did not significantly differ from changes in relationship wellbeing in the relaxation condition. Theoretical implications of these findings for understanding the association between mindfulness and romantic relationship wellbeing are discussed. Moreover, the findings are discussed in light of recent debates about the relative lack of proper control groups in mindfulness research.

General discussion

Does mindfulness promote the wellbeing of romantic relationships? The possible causal effect of mindfulness training on romantic relationships has received very little empirical attention so far. After 2 weeks of daily guided mindfulness practice, participants in the mindfulness intervention group reported significantly higher levels of relationship satisfaction, lower relationship distress, felt more connected to the partner, and were more accepting towards the partner (but not more excited about their relationship). These effects were maintained 1 month after the intervention. Their partners, who did not engage in mindfulness practice, also reported higher relationship satisfaction, less distress, and felt more accepted by their partners (but not more connected; and they reported actually less relationship excitement, a finding we further discuss below). In general, these findings may be considered as promising for the effectiveness of mindfulness intervention in promoting relationship wellbeing. A similar pattern of findings, however, was found in the active control condition. Participants who received a daily guided relaxation intervention for 2 weeks showed similar relationship benefits (in fact, they showed significantly more positive change in partner acceptance, and positive change in relationship excitement), as did their partners. Thus, while the current findings suggest that the daily practice of mindfulness generally can lead to various beneficial relationship outcomes, relaxation practice on a daily basis yielded comparable outcomes.

What is an adequate interpretation for these findings? First, these results might simply mean that any intervention, similar in structure, would positively affect self-reports of relationship wellbeing (sometimes referred to as a trial effect58). For example, the intervention may have prompted participants to reflect on their relationship, which could have promoted positive feelings and thoughts about the relationship (although in theory it might also do the opposite, of course). Also, engaging in an intervention could have led participants to report desired rather than actual outcomes. The fact that intervention participants showed similar changes in both conditions, across most relationship outcome measures, and that their partners showed similar changes (except regarding relationship excitement), makes this a possible interpretation of the current findings.

An alternative interpretation might be that the relationship benefits may be genuine, both in the mindfulness as well as relaxation intervention. In the introduction, we discussed several theoretical reasons why mindfulness may promote relationship wellbeing (for more details10), and the results in the mindfulness group may reflect such theorized effects. Similarly, the results obtained in the relaxation group may reflect true relationship benefits of daily relaxation exercises. For example, daily relaxation might reduce overall psychological and physiological stress levels, which in turn might positively affect how people behave and respond to their partners18,59. Accordingly, both mindfulness and relaxation intervention may have promoted relationship wellbeing, but possibly through different mechanisms. The obtained effects in both groups, however, also may have been caused by a similar ‘relaxation mechanism.’ While mindfulness is theoretically distinguishable from relaxation, in reality it is possible that the mindfulness exercises in our study increased feelings of relaxation to a similar extent as the relaxation exercises. As noted previously60, the historical development of (mindfulness) meditation and relaxation techniques as therapeutic strategies in the past century show substantial overlap, and indeed one of the challenges of studying the effects of mindfulness is to distinguish them from ‘mere’ relaxation effects61.

It could be theorized that longer mindfulness training is required to promote relationship wellbeing above and beyond effects of relaxation. Participants practiced mindfulness for 2-weeks, engaging in a relatively short guided mindfulness meditation each day. While such relatively short mindfulness interventions have revealed significant effects on various outcome measures42,43,44 (but rarely have been compared with active control groups), effects of mindfulness practice may occur and generalize to real life outcomes only after more extensive training, when paying non-judgmental attention becomes a more or less automatic manner of relating to one’s experiences62,63. How people cope with and respond to their experiences is the result of a lifelong process, and therefore difficult to ‘re-program’64,65. Likewise, particularly in long-term romantic relationships, interaction patterns between partners and appraisals about the relationship tend to become habitual, and are therefore difficult to change in the short run66. Thus, what the ‘dosage’ of mindfulness practice should be to potentially promote relationship wellbeing, and how much for whom, requires more research.

The results regarding relationship excitement revealed a somewhat different pattern than the other relationship outcome measures. There was no significant change in relationship excitement in the mindfulness group among intervention participants. This finding seems inconsistent with previous findings by Carson and colleagues, who found increases in relationship excitement after a mindfulness intervention35. The present results may suggest that it was not mindfulness per se leading to such changes in their study, but the fact that both partners engaged in their intervention may have explained an increase in relationship excitement. Interestingly, in the current study the partners of the mindfulness intervention participants actually reported significant declines in relationship excitement. We have previously speculated that there may be theoretical reasons to predict such declines13. For example, mindfulness may be associated with reductions in impulsivity, a potentially important source of relationship excitement67. This finding awaits future research and replication.

The results of the current study speak to the broader issue of the need for proper active control conditions in mindfulness research. A substantial percentage of research on mindfulness is lacking active control conditions, using waiting list controls, or examining changes in a variable of interest from pre- and post-mindfulness intervention68,69. Such studies can be informative to see whether mindfulness intervention is associated with any changes on variables of interest, or for example to study moderators of any effects of mindfulness intervention (e.g. for whom it does and does not ‘work’). Although the inclusion of an active control condition made the current findings perhaps more ambiguous and difficult to interpret, it highlights the importance of studying whether changes associated with mindfulness intervention can be attributed uniquely to mindfulness. In many previous articles on mindfulness research, the conclusion that mindfulness positively affects a certain outcome of interest is often unwarranted when an active control group is lacking32,40. The current findings raised a number of issues (as discussed above) that may remain unaddressed when control conditions are lacking, underscoring the need for active control groups to get a more nuanced and more comprehensive understanding of mindfulness and its effects, both for the individual and the relationship.

Similarly, the current findings have implications for couple intervention research more broadly. In the past decades, researchers have examined effects of various prevention and intervention couple programs. Some programs have obtained significant relationship benefits in the short- and longer-term70,71, others obtained negative outcomes (e.g. increased awareness that one is lacking relationship skills72, but often waiting list control groups are used to compare intervention outcomes. Relatively few studies used comparisons with active control groups, and if they did, similar effects have been found between target and control intervention groups73. Thus, there is a need for proper control interventions in order to examine relationship interventions more rigorously.

Before closing, some limitations should be noted. First, all outcome measures were self-reports, and future studies should include more objective measures of relationship functioning and wellbeing, such as observational coding of partner interactions, and/or physiological assessments of (relationship) distress. Second, as noted already, the interventions were relatively short. For example, examining the effects of longer protocolized interventions65, such as the mindfulness-based stress-reduction program on relationship outcomes, while including an active control intervention, would be a logical and important next step. Similarly, examining associations between length and frequency of mindfulness practice and relationship outcomes would be a valuable and complementary approach. Finally, a potential limitation of the current study is that the intervention in the current research targeted one member of the couple. While it is a theoretically interesting question whether the cultivation of mindfulness in one individual transfers to the relationship partner, mindfulness intervention might be more effective when both partners engage in the intervention.

The present study was the first to examine the causal impact of mindfulness training on romantic relationship outcomes using an active control group and testing both actor and partner effects, thereby extending previous research that has linked romantic relationship wellbeing mainly to self-report measures of mindfulness. The current study does not give definitive answers to the question whether or not mindfulness can causally affect relationship wellbeing, but does provide a compelling example of why research on mindfulness interventions would benefit from a wider use of active control groups, hopefully offering a springboard for future research. 

The vast majority students in a college sample believe that students can simply be bad test-takers; the majority also believe that they themselves are bad test-takers, a perspective which is maladaptive in light of relevant research

The Bad Test-Taker Identity. Jeffrey D. Holmes. Teaching of Psychology, December 29, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628320979884

Abstract: There is widespread belief that test-taking ability is an influential component of academic success distinct from domain knowledge and comprehension. Most of today’s college students took many more tests over the course of their primary and secondary education than students of previous generations, and also participated in regular training to strengthen their test-taking skills. Although such training and experience should equalize students on any isolated test-taking ability, the present study reveals that the vast majority students in a college sample believe that students can simply be bad test-takers. Moreover, the majority of students believe that they themselves are bad test-takers, a perspective which is maladaptive in light of relevant research. Accordingly, the data show that students who identify in this way also tend to possess other maladaptive academic attitudes.

Keywords: test-taking beliefs, test-taking self-efficacy, bad test-taking

Taller individuals were less supportive of government wealth redistribution overall, especially if they were wealthier; but effects were equally strong in males & females, inconsistent with current evolutionary theories

Height is associated with more self-serving beliefs about wealth redistribution. Thomas Richardson. Evolution and Human Behavior, Dec 30 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.12.001

Abstract: People vary widely in their attitudes towards how much their government should redistribute wealth. Evolutionary theory may shed light on why this variation occurs. Numerous studies have established an association between upper body strength and attitudes towards equality and wealth redistribution in males, showing that physically stronger men are more likely to hold self-serving beliefs on these issues. This effect is typically weaker or absent in women. A question that has received little attention is whether there are similar associations between other aspects of formidability and attitudes towards wealth redistribution. One such aspect is height. I tested this prediction using data from the European Social Survey, in a sample of 27031 people from 20 European countries. Results show that taller people are more likely to have self-serving attitudes towards government redistribution of wealth. The result was robust to numerous control variables and alternative model specifications, but the direct effects of height were small. Taller individuals were less supportive of government wealth redistribution overall, but were especially averse if they were also wealthier. Post-hoc analyses suggested that for lower income deciles, the association was reversed. For these people, there was a positive association between height and support for wealth redistribution. However, effects were equally strong in males and females, and so are not fully consistent with current evolutionary psychological theories of resource distribution.

Keywords: HeightEvolutionary political psychologyFormidability

4. Discussion

In a large sample of over 27000 people from 20 European countries, I find that taller people are slightly less supportive of government wealth redistribution, and that being tall exacerbates the negative effect of income on attitudes towards wealth redistribution. Equal support for was found for both a negative main effect of formidability (Price et al., 2011) and a formidability x income interaction (Petersen et al., 2013) as assessed by the AIC of the final models. These effects remained when controlling for several possible mediators such as age, education, overall political orientation or whether a respondent has a position of authority at work. These results suggest that taller individuals are more likely to endorse negative and/or self-serving, attitudes towards government wealth redistribution. Furthermore, I found a similar interaction between height and income on conservatism, but only for men.

The effects found were not as large as previous studies that investigated muscularity. Indeed, the effects were quite small. When the effect was examined for each of the 20 countries separately, few countries showed significant effects, though nearly all were in the predicted direction, and the overall result was not driven by the countries that showed the largest effects. One reason for this is the use of single item measures for egalitarianism and political orientation, as well as the use of self-reported height, all of which increase measurement error. This may be why the effects were often non-significant when broken down by country, as fig. 2 show large uncertainty around the coefficients. Previous studies have used detailed measures of support for inequality, such as the social dominance orientation questionnaire (e.g. Price et al., 2011), which might have reduced the standard errors around the effects in this study.

A smaller effect than previous studies that measured muscularity is also consistent with a formidability-based explanation. This is because muscularity is more strongly associated with strength and conflict success than height is (Sell, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2009; von Rueden et al., 2008). The beta coefficients indicated that the effects of height, as well as the height x income interaction, were similar in magnitude to the effects of 1 standard deviation increase in age (17.3 years) or the direct effect of being male in the same model. It should also be noted that the effects reported are the direct effects of height and the height income interaction effect on redistribution attitudes. I controlled for a larger number of possible mediators than is typical for studies of this type, which reduces the unique effects of height compared to previous studies. Height will also have an influence on attitudes indirectly through increasing occupational success, educational attainment and income (Judge & Cable, 2004; Meyer & Selmer, 1999; Stulp et al., 2013).

The results are consistent with previous findings that formidability negatively predicts support for redistribution and egalitarianism (Petersen et al., 2013; Price et al., 2017) but also that it interacts with wealth (Petersen & Laustsen, 2019; Price et al., 2011). The relationship is significant even when controlling for education and authority at work, indicating that the effects are not driven by the increased social standing and success that is associated with height. While height and a height x income interaction were found to predict greater conservatism, the effect on attitudes towards wealth redistribution remains when controlling for overall political orientation (as in Petersen et al., 2013). I also found that the relationship between conservatism and aversion to government redistribution of wealth is weak and highly variable between countries. Taken together, these suggests that there the effects of height are specific to wealth redistribution attitudes and not just a by-product of changes in general conservatism.

The lack of a sex-specific effect is not consistent with most previous work that suggests the association between formidability and attitudes is only seen in men (Petersen et al., 2013; Petersen and Laustsen, 2018; but see Kerry & Murray, 2019). In fact, when the analyses were split by sex the effect was significant in women but not men, though the effect in women was not significantly larger than the effect in men. This result is not necessarily predicted by the evolutionary psychological theories used to explain formidability effects. In the environments where we evolved, being more formidable would not have provided women with more status and resources as they did not engage in significant amounts of violent contest competition. Similarly, increased female height is not consistently associated with authority and status in modern societies (Bielicki & Charzewski, 1983; Case & Paxson, 2008; Gawley et al., 2009; Hamstra, 2014). Given the large and diverse sample size of the present study, it is highly unlikely the lack of result is due to low statistical power.

The lack of sex difference in effects may be due to the use of self-reported height rather than measured height. Both Petersen and Laustsen (2019) and Kerry and Murray (2019) note that subjective, but not objective measures of upper body strength are negatively associated with support for redistribution in women and conservatism in women. Directly measured height may not have shown significant effects for females. Another issue with self-reported height is that, if anti-egalitarianism causes respondents to overestimate their height, this could introduce a causal path from attitudes to height in this study. As ESS data is collected through in-person interviews, large biases in self-reported height are likely to be minimal because they would raise suspicion. Nonetheless, this only predicts that biases in height would be small, and the effects found were small, so reverse causality cannot be conclusively ruled out as an alternative explanation.

Another possible explanation for the lack of sex difference may be that taller women, while not benefitting directly from their height, benefit indirectly when it comes to wealth and status. First, as height is highly heritable (Yang et al., 2010), tall females will be born to taller families, and as status and resources are shared within families, tall females may gain from the success of their male relatives. There is also the possibility that taller females learn their attitudes towards wealth redistribution from their taller fathers. Additionally, as humans mate assortatively for height (Stulp, Simons, Grasman, & Pollet, 2017), taller women may seek and attract taller men, so may accumulate status and resources through their tall, formidable husbands. This latter point would also explain the difference with studies of muscularity, as humans do not seem to mate assortatively for muscularity.

A link between height and opposition to wealth redistribution may have been selected for in males and show up in females as a by-product, a process known as sexually antagonistic selection. Sexually antagonistic selection can result in both sexes showing a trait that is adaptive for one sex even if it is maladaptive to the other sex (Rice, 1992). There is evidence that sexually antagonistic selection might have occurred in humans for some traits (e.g. Camperio-Ciani, Corna, & Capiluppi, 2004; Garver-Apgar, Eaton, Tybur, & Thompson, 2011; Lee et al., 2014). This speculative explanation does assume that the fitness advantage conferred to ancestral males was large enough to offset any disadvantages to females, an assumption that may not be plausible considering the small effect size found in this study.

The differences between previous work and the current study could be explained by the differences in measures. The most obvious difference is that the present study tested height, whereas previous studies almost all tested upper body strength and muscularity. Both height and muscularity are thought to be key components of formidability (Blaker & van Vugt, 2014), and were both intrasexually selected to be higher in males throughout our evolutionary history (Hill et al., 2017; Puts, 2010). However upper body strength is far more sexually dimorphic than height is, with some studies estimating that male strength is on average around 3 standard deviations higher than women's (Lassek & Gaulin, 2009). In the present study, the average male height was 1.75 SD above the average female height. Smaller sexual dimorphism in height than upper body strength might imply smaller sex differences in effects. It is worth noting that men show reduced support for redistribution compared to women, which is what we'd predict as men are taller, though the difference was small. That said, sexual dimorphism in height is still substantial by most standards, so it is unclear why it produces no detectable sex differences in its effects on attitudes.

The results found here build on an emerging literature that shows our political psychology is influenced by variables that are arguably irrelevant to modern politics, in this case our height. Other literature has found that facial and vocal characteristics of political candidates can impact voting decisions (; Laustsen, Petersen, & Klofstad, 2015). If our political beliefs are affected by factors that have little relevance to political processes (such as our own height) it can threaten the very effectiveness of democracy. For this reason it is important to study these factors more, so that people can be made aware of their potential biases, and they can be addressed if necessary and possible.

One avenue of further research is to establish the mechanism by which height is associated with attitudes. If it is evolved, genetic factors may be primarily responsible. For example, genes that predispose greater height may also predispose aversion to wealth redistribution. Another possible mechanism is reactive heritability (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990), where individuals may be evolved to calibrate their behaviours or attitudes to their phenotype (in this case, their height). Finally, there may be more sociocultural factors that account for the effect that I could not test here. Given the small effect size, implications of this study are only likely to be seen at large scales. Further, this study shows that height differences between individuals are associated with differences in attitudes. Researchers should be careful not to assume that the same effect would be found within individuals. It does not necessarily follow from these findings that increasing the height of a given person (such as through better nutrition during development) will lower their adult levels of support for wealth redistribution. Further research is required to confirm this.

In conclusion, in a large sample of Europeans I find that taller people are less supportive of government redistribution of wealth than shorter people, especially when they have a high income. This relationship is independent of a large range of possible covariates and is found equally in males and females. This is partially consistent with evolutionary psychological theories of resource distribution, but the lack of a sex-specific effect remains to be conclusively explained.

Grandparents Raising Grandchildren generally experience a larger degree of adverse mental health outcomes than their non-parenting counterparts

The Mental Health Well-Being of Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Susan J. Kelley, Deborah M. Whitley, Shannon R. Escarra, Rowena Zheng, Eva M. Horne & Gordon L. Warren. Marriage & Family Review, Dec 28 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/01494929.2020.1861163

Abstract: The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine if raising grandchildren is related to diminished mental health well-being in custodial grandparents compared to contemporaries who are not raising grandchildren. Relevant studies were identified via comprehensive literature searches of electronic databases. We included six studies in the meta-analysis. A random effects model was used to calculate effect sizes. The results of the meta-analysis yielded a statistically significant, small-to-moderate summary effect size (ES) indicating caregiving grandparents generally experience a larger degree of adverse mental health outcomes than their non-parenting counterparts. While previous studies have produced conflicting results regarding the mental health outcomes experienced by custodial grandparents, the present meta-analysis findings provide another level of evidence that substantiates their emotional vulnerability. Recommendations for subsequent research are discussed.

Keywords: grandparents raising grandchildrencustodial grandparentsmental health well-beingstresscaregiversdepressionaging

Most people do not reduce their meat consumption in the face of humanized food animals, instead switching to healthier meat dishes, to find something pardonable in the act

Guilt of the Meat‐Eating Consumer: When Animal Anthropomorphism leads to Healthy Meat Dish Choices. JM Danny  Sunyee Yoon. Journal of Consumer Psychology, December 28 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1215

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1343947689050849281

Abstract: Despite increasing concerns about animal welfare and the general prevalence of meat‐eating practices, little attention has been paid in the consumer behavior literature to understanding consumer guilt around meat consumption. This research fills this void by exploring how consumers behave when animals are anthropomorphized, which can cause moral concerns to arise regarding the harm inflicted upon animals. We found that animal anthropomorphism can reduce meat consumption when consumers already have a low commitment to eating meat. However, the majority of consumers do not reduce their meat consumption in the face of animal anthropomorphism. Instead, they choose healthier meat dishes over less healthy but tastier meat dishes because the health benefits of meat consumption provide a strong excuse for eating meat, thereby dissipating their guilt about animal suffering. We demonstrate that guilt reduction is the underlying process mechanism and that the humane treatment of meat animals, which alleviates guilt about animal suffering, attenuates the effect of animal anthropomorphism on the choice of healthy meat dishes.

We found a reminiscence bump in adolescence (peaking around age 14) for both ratings of the autobiographical salience of songs featured in the charts during that period and the familiarity of these songs

A Cross-Sectional Study of Reminiscence Bumps for Music-Related Memories in Adulthood. Kelly Jakubowski et al. Music & Science, October 23, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204320965058

Abstract: Music is often intimately linked to identity, as evidenced by the high value many people place on musical activities and the way in which music can become seemingly effortlessly coupled to important memories from throughout one’s lifespan. Previous research has revealed a consistent reminiscence bump in autobiographical memory—the disproportionate recall of memories from between ages 10 to 30 years in comparison with other lifetime periods—which also appears to extend to music-related memories. The present study represents one of the largest explorations of the musical reminiscence bump across adulthood to date. Participants (N = 470; ages 18 to 82 years) were shown the titles and artists of 111 popular songs that had featured in the charts between 1950 and 2015 and rated the degree to which they had autobiographical memories associated with each song, as well as the degree to which they were familiar with and liked the song. We found a reminiscence bump in adolescence (peaking around age 14) for both ratings of the autobiographical salience of songs featured in the charts during that period and the familiarity of these songs. Liking ratings showed more divergent results depending on a participant’s current age, including evidence for a cascading reminiscence bump, in which liking ratings from young adults increased for music from their parents’ adolescent years. We also revealed new evidence that music-related autobiographical memories appear to invoke similar retrieval processes to the common methodology of eliciting autobiographical memories via word cues. We contextualize these results in relation to general theoretical accounts of the reminiscence bump, and age-related differences in the bump are discussed in relation to various sociocultural and technological changes in music listening habits.

Keywords: Aging, autobiographical memory, musical memory, music-evoked autobiographical memory, reminiscence bump

Discussion

In this article, we investigated the reminiscence bump for popular music from across a 65-year period (songs featured in the charts from 1950 to 2015) in participants across the full range of adulthood (ages 18 to 82 years). This represents one of the largest investigations of the musical reminiscence bump to date and, to our knowledge, the first extensive exploration of this phenomenon in the French population.

We found consistent evidence for a reminiscence bump for two aspects of the songs used here: ratings of the degree to which the songs evoke autobiographical memories, and familiarity ratings for the songs themselves. Reminiscence bumps for these two dependent variables were evidenced in all four age groups. The results for autobiographical salience ratings of the songs were broadly aligned with general theoretical conceptions of a reminiscence bump that occurs between ages 10 to 30 years (Rubin et al., 1998). The familiarity ratings exhibited largely the same response pattern as the autobiographical salience ratings, but the familiarity bump in the two middle age groups began somewhat earlier than expected (around 5 years before participants were born, although this result was statistically significant following correction for multiple comparisons only for the 42–55 age group). This suggests that songs that featured in the charts just before participants were born continued to be popular for some time beyond their initial release, and also demonstrates that the correspondence between the year a song is featured in the charts and the year at which a participant is first/most often exposed to it are not always equivalent. This result parallels the findings of Rathbone et al. (2017), who measured both age at release and age at which a pop song was rated as most important, and found the average age at release to be approximately 5 to 6 years earlier than the average age at which songs were rated as most personally important to participants.

We also found some slight variations in the reminiscence bump between age groups. The peak (highest point) in the bump for the oldest age group for both autobiographical salience and familiarity ratings was 5 years later than the other age groups. It is possible that this represents a cohort effect; for instance, the oldest age group may have engaged with music in different ways during adolescence than the younger groups as a result of both sociocultural and technological factors, causing them to discover their most autobiographically salient music later in their teenage years. It could also be that the bump may shift its peak later in time as people age (and potentially reengage with the music of their youth in different ways across the lifespan), such that the three younger groups may eventually show a similar pattern when they reach the age of the oldest group. Another notable difference between the four age groups was that the youngest group showed a less pronounced reminiscence bump (lower peak) than the other three age groups. This aligns with previous literature showing a stronger reminiscence bump effect in older than younger adults (Janssen et al., 2005). This may be related to reengagement with favorite music over the course of a lifetime, which can strengthen the link between the music and associated memories via regular retrieval and rehearsal (see also the work of Janssen et al., 2007 on memory re-sampling effects, which are stronger for music than other cultural products, such as films and books).

The youngest group showed evidence of a cascading reminiscence bump for music released up to two decades before they were born. This bump we found here is similar, although slightly earlier in time, in comparison with the bump occurring 8 to 12 years before participants were born reported by Krumhansl and Zupnick (2013). This difference may be partially attributed to the fact that the average maternal age is approximately 2 years older in France than the US,² but could also reflect some cultural variations in music listening habits or sharing of music between generations. In our study, the cascading reminiscence bump was particularly evidenced in higher than average liking ratings for music from this period, which were even higher than for current music, that is, music of the participants’ own reminiscence bump period. It would be interesting to follow up this finding in longitudinal research, for instance, to test whether this cascading reminiscence bump is maintained throughout a participant’s lifetime, or whether liking ratings for current pop music might increase as these young participants age and begin to look back on this period in a more nostalgic light. Future cross-sectional research could also compare how younger versus older adults respond to music released before they were born, as the present design primarily allowed for this particular factor to be investigated in the youngest two groups.

In general, liking ratings showed the least consistent evidence of a reminiscence bump. This was particularly due to differences between the two oldest and two youngest groups—the two oldest groups showed liking responses that were more consistent and more correlated with their autobiographical salience and familiarity ratings than the two youngest groups. These dissimilarities in liking ratings could be related to generational differences in the way people engage with music. For instance, younger adults tend to listen more to music via streaming and online services in comparison with older adults, which might allow for access to a wider range of music in terms of its release date, in comparison with older groups who more often make use of CD collections (Krumhansl, 2017). If young adults are listening to a broader array of music from across many decades,³ this may increase their openness to music from different eras and result in less varied liking ratings across the songs used in this study. The effects of such shifts in listening methods and technologies on the formation and lifetime stability of the musical reminiscence bump have yet to be fully explored. The results presented in Figure 4 also show evidence of some intergenerational shared preferences, with the three youngest groups all giving their highest liking ratings for music from the late 1970s to early 1980s, indicating that particular stylistic conventions or features of the songs themselves may also play a notable role in shaping preferences for the pop songs presented in this study.

Finally, we found that the reminiscence bump for autobiographical salience ratings of the songs aligned relatively well with previous findings on the reminiscence bump for autobiographical memories evoked via word cues. The results of our analysis presented in Figure 5 indicate that songs featured in the charts during adolescence are more likely to elicit strong autobiographical associations in older adults, peaking around age 14. Adolescence is a key period in terms of identity development (e.g., Erikson, 1956; Meeus, 2011), and previous research also suggests that musical tastes are developed around this period (Holbrook & Schindler, 1989; Lamont & Loveday (2020); North & Hargreaves, 2002). However, Holbrook and Schindler’s (1989) findings indicate that musical preferences peak for music released around age 24, suggesting that the reminiscence bump in music-related autobiographical memories may not be entirely explained by the crystallization of musical tastes. Our analysis also contributes the novel insight that the shape of the music-related reminiscence bump is well-characterized by a gamma distribution, which has implications for future research in terms of informing sampling decisions and making more precise assumptions about the predicted associations between age and music-related memories.

The comparatively earlier reminiscence bump evidenced for both music- and word-related memories indicates that the associative retrieval processes underlying these two tasks are accessing a somewhat different set of memories than the top-down retrieval method of asking participants to recall particularly important memories. Such findings are important for informing the development of interventions that aim to elicit memories via specific types of retrieval cues. For instance, this finding suggests that using musical or word cues to elicit memories in people with Alzheimer’s disease might be particularly effective for bringing back memories from adolescence. The “important memories” method may be less effective in this population in general, due to the impairments in strategic retrieval that are common to this disease. Therefore, it is important to investigate whether other associative cue types, beyond music and word cues, may be found to be effective in eliciting memories from other lifetime periods (e.g., early adulthood), or whether, on the other hand, all associative retrieval tasks show a bump in the same temporal location. Studies that compare autobiographical memories evoked by different cue types across the same sample of participants using the same data collection protocol should be conducted as a matter of priority, in order to ensure the differences in the reminiscence bump location seen here cannot be attributed to methodological differences between studies.

In general, further research is needed to isolate the mechanisms underlying these different types of retrieval tasks, and theoretical accounts of the reminiscence bump require revision to incorporate explanations for these differences in temporal location of the bump. In particular, the majority of existing theories provide a more sufficient explanation for memories accessed via the “important memories” method than via word cues or music (Koppel & Berntsen, 2015). It should also be noted that our analysis of the word-cued reminiscence bump gave some indication that there may actually be two bumps in the word-cued memories distribution (see Figure 5). An initial comparison of the studies producing earlier versus later word-cued bumps does not reveal any systematic difference in methodology; rather, it may be that the cue word method invokes several possible retrieval strategies, including a combination of both top-down and associative processes that may vary from one participant or one cue to another.

Future research on this topic should further compare the methods of soliciting ratings of songs via visual presentation of the title to auditory presentation of the song. In particular, our method can be potentially useful in clinical settings in which family or carers may be asked to select personally-relevant music to be used with patients from a written song list; as such, it is of both theoretical and practical importance to fully explore any potential limitations of this method. Our study is based on the assumption that a song title can elicit phenomenologically similar autobiographical memories to hearing the song, following the results of Cady et al. (2008). An additional important finding from Cady et al. (2008) is that seeing the song title and hearing the music both elicited a high degree of mentally “hearing” the song during the subsequent autobiographical recall task, which did not significantly differ between these two retrieval conditions. It is likely that the approach used in the present study also elicited a high degree of musical imagery for the songs whose titles were presented, although this factor was not explicitly measured. Subsequent research should investigate the degree to which musical imagery mediates the relationship between being presented information about a song (e.g., title, printed lyrics) and subsequent retrieval of autobiographical memories associated to that song. This is particularly important for understanding how different types of retrieval cues may affect the retrieved memory content and differentially impact the shape and temporal location of the reminiscence bump.

Our study has followed a similar approach to most previous research in this domain by focusing solely on popular music, which we acknowledge represents only one of many genres of music that may be autobiographically relevant to participants. In addition, technological advances such as music streaming services now offer researchers the opportunity to monitor and measure the listening histories of participants, which may be utilized to map the relationship between date of first exposure, number of total exposures, and the autobiographical salience of a song in a more precise manner than ever before (see Stephens-Davidowitz, 2018, for an initial exploration of the popularity of songs on Spotify by age and gender of the listener). Online streaming frequency or number of radio plays of particular songs, for instance, may also be used as proxy measures for likelihood of familiarity with a song, although such figures may be more representative of certain demographic groups than others (e.g., Spotify usage in particular is still skewed toward younger adults)⁴.

In conclusion, the results of this study indicate the presence of a reminiscence bump in adolescence for both the familiarity of songs featured in the charts during that period and ratings of the autobiographical salience of these songs. Evidence for this bump was found consistently across participants currently aged 18 to 82 years. Liking ratings showed more divergent results depending on the participants’ current age, with evidence for a cascading reminiscence bump, in which liking ratings from young adults increased for music of their parents’ generation. We also revealed new evidence that music-related autobiographical memories appear to invoke similar retrieval processes to the common methodology of eliciting autobiographical memories via word cues. These findings contribute to both theoretical and practical discussions around the extent to which music is intrinsically linked to personal memories from throughout the lifespan, and provide further impetus for exploring the efficacy of music to cue vivid autobiographical memories in everyday and clinical settings.

Norwegian mating: Men were more selective in physical appearance, whereas women were more selective in all the other mate preferences (e.g., understanding, dominant, kind, intellectual, etc.)

Norwegian Men and Women Value Similar Mate Traits in Short-Term Relationships. Mehmet Mehmetoglu, Ilmari Määttänen. Evolutionary Psychology, December 29, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704920979623

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1343866293712261121

Abstract: Previous research has provided evidence that females are generally the more selective sex in humans. Moreover, both sexes have been found to be more selective in long-term mating compared to short-term mating. In this study, we have examined the effects of sex, mating strategy (preferred relationship length) and their interaction on mate preferences (i.e., mate selection criteria) in an egalitarian Nordic society, namely Norway. The study sample consisted of 1,000 individuals, 417 of whom were male and 583 female respondents. According to our findings, men were more selective in physical appearance, whereas women were more selective in all the other mate preferences (e.g., understanding, dominant, kind, intellectual etc.). The respondents that were seeking short-term relationships had higher preference for physical appearance, humorousness and sociability. On the other hand, the respondents that were seeking long-term relationships were more selective in most of the other mate preferences (i.e., understanding, kind, cultivated, domestic, reliable, and similar). Interestingly, no interaction effect was found between sex and mating strategy in that differences between long-term and short-term seekers in mate preferences did not change depending on sex. This suggests that men and women value the same traits in short-term relationships.

Keywords: mate preference, sex differences, sexual selection, long-term mating, short-term mating

Discussion and Conclusion

To recap, we found evidence for sex differences in mate selection criteria: men were more selective with respect to physical attractiveness and women were more selective with respect to all the other mate preference criteria. This was an expected result in light of previous research with similar findings (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Castro & Lopes, 2011; Regan et al., 2000; Shackelford et al., 2005). The respondents that were searching for a short-term partner had a higher preference for physical attractiveness, humorousness and sociability. The respondents that were searching for long-term relationships were more selective in most of the other mate preference criteria. Perhaps surprisingly, no interaction effect between mating strategy and sex was found. This was contrary to what was predicted, based on Sexual Strategies Theory.

The respondents that were searching for long-term relationships were more selective in most of the other mate preference criteria (see also Castro &Lopes, 2011; Stewart et al., 2000). An issue with previous studies on the topic of short/long term relationship and sex differences is that typically the groups have been analyzed separately while often implying that there is an interaction between the sex and relationship length.

The results also suggested sex differences in preferences depending on the relationship length, but a relationship duration-sex interaction was not explicitly presented (Stewart et al., 2000). Thus, it is not completely clear, whether relationship length and sex interact with each other when they are analyzed together in a single analysis. This is a major question when resolving the hypotheses around this issue.

So, does each sex have also their particular preference when it comes to short-term mating (compared to long-term mating), or do both sexes have the same predictable pattern of preferences? Direct evidence for such an interaction-effect is relatively scarce in general. One exception was a study, in which sex and relationship length had an interaction in which women displayed a higher preference for partner’s sexual passion and desire for short-term partner than long-term partner, whereas there was no such difference among men (Regan et al., 2000). Another study found a sex-relationship length interaction in which both sexes had a similar high preference for attractiveness in short-term relationships but not in long-term relationships, in which women did not pay as much attention to attractiveness (Li & Kenrick, 2006). At least one study found no relationship length-sex interaction and interpreted this as evidence against Sexual Strategies Theory and in favor of Attachment Fertility Theory (Pedersen et al., 2014). Similarly, our results did not support such interaction effect, and thus underlying sex difference in any of the preferences.

One issue that may make interpreting the results more difficult may be the reporting style and underlying choosiness of each sex. For instance, commonly found self-reported preference for physical attractiveness may be influenced by different perception of attraction among different sexes: it is possible that women are more critical in their evaluations.

This study was conducted in an egalitarian, Nordic society, which may be relevant in the study of sex differences in preferences, as they are influenced by social change and societal norms (Bech-Sørensen & Pollet, 2016). Gender equality and strong social safety nets provided by the government may unmask preferences, which might in other environments be hidden under the most urgent materialistic needs. Chinese women, especially those with high socioeconomic status or who lived in cities, preferred “good father” over “good genes” or “good provider” in a self-report study (Lu et al., 2015). Some studies have provided evidence of change in preferences over time (Souza et al., 2016). Studies utilizing personality traits have provided evidence that people prefer traits that are associated to their own traits even in more traditionalistic societies such as Islamic countries (Atari et al., 2020).

Our results lacked the hypothesized interaction-effect, and thus did not support Sexual Strategies Theory, but it is not clear whether or not the results can be interpreted as supporting Attachment Fertility Theory (Pedersen et al., 2014) or some other existing theory. It is also worth remembering that not all traits are adaptations. Some features or traits may be a result of selection for that trait in the other sex (e.g., male nipples) or may otherwise be byproducts of an adaptation (Gould & Lewontin, 1978). It is possible that a similar issue may arise with preferences that are interpreted to be sex-specific or not sex-specific. As an example, it is possible that short-term mate preferences are actually adaptations in men but not in women.

Several studies have studied long- and short-term mating preferences via several different research methods, often in conflicting choice-situation (see Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2019; Cottrell et al., 2007; Mogilski et al., 2019; Perilloux & Cloud, 2019). As their experimental designs and methods differ from the current study, their use as a comparison against the results for this study is not completely straight-forward.

There were some limitations in the sample. The data was self-reported. However, self-reported preference measures are the most commonly used method in other studies of human mate preferences as well. It is also possible that people who are seeking a short-term relationship differ in their attractiveness from the ones who are seeking a long-term relationship. This, in turn, might have an influence on the preferences of the individuals. One final limitation of the study is that for interactions statistical power depends on the number of observations in the smallest cell, which in our case, corresponds to women respondents seeking short-term relationship (n = 63). There were 520 women respondents seeking long-term relationship, 92 men respondents seeking short-term relationship, and 325 men respondents seeking long-term relationship. The number of women seeking short-term relationship was low, as such, power to detect interactions if they exist was low, thus, the non-significant interactions should be interpreted cautiously. Future studies should pay attention the interaction-result that we presented in this study. In ideal case, a large number of women seeking for short-term relationships should be recruited for the study. Perhaps some innovative experimental design could also study this issue in the future.