Sunday, March 14, 2021

Realness is the relatively stable tendency to act on the outside the way one feels on the inside, regardless of proximal consequences; is a core feature of authenticity, generally adaptive but largely unrelated to agreeableness

Realness is a core feature of authenticity. Christopher J. Hopwooda et al. Journal of Research in Personality, March 13 2021, 104086. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104086

Highlights

• Authenticity is a multidimensional process with costs and benefits.

• Authenticity processes have been obscured in recent research.

• Realness is a tractable, measurable, and core component of authenticity.

• Being real is adaptive but not always agreeable.

Abstract: We established realness as the relatively stable tendency to act on the outside the way one feels on the inside, without regard for proximal personal or social consequences. In nine studies, we showed that realness is a) a core feature of individual differences in authenticity, b) generally adaptive but largely unrelated to agreeableness, c) highly stable, d) reliably observable in dyadic behavior, and e) predictive of responses to situations with potential for personal or social costs. Informants both perceive agreeable motives in real behavior and recognize that being real can be disagreeable. We concluded that realness represents an important individual difference construct that is foundational for authentic social behavior, and that being real comes with both costs and benefits.

Keywords: authenticitytransparencyrealnesscongruencepersonality

18. Discussion

At the moment, the world is awash in “fake news”, citizens are routinely manipulated by politicians who do not mean what they say, and social media platforms incentivize virtue signaling and punish straightforwardness. Although being “yourself” is often extolled in modern society, it comes with social risks. It is these moments of social risk that provide perhaps the most valid test of whether a person is actually being real: a person who is only real when it pays off is not really real at all.

This complexity is emphasized in classical psychological theories about authenticity and related concepts (congruence, genuineness, transparency), yet contemporary research uses measures that are strongly related to agreeableness, and which tend to mix content that is central to authentic behavior with content that is more peripheral. We sought to identify, distinguish, and validate the tendency to be real, the core individual difference variable underlying authentic personality processes, which we define as doing on the outside what one feels on the inside regardless of the proximal social consequences.

Realness may be a particularly important individual difference variable within certain domains of social behavior. For instance, being real may be both harmful and beneficial for politicians, but for citizens, it is a key characteristic of trust (Rosenblum et al., 2019). As such, both actual demonstrations and (potentially inaccurate) perceptions of realness are nearly always an important consideration in the political sphere. Related, standing up to or criticizing powerful people and institutions to promote social justice is socially risky, by definition. People who have been made famous for doing so (e.g., Joan of Arc, Sitting Bull, Colin Kaepernick, Thomas Paine, Rosa Parks, William Tell, Henry David Thoreau) strike us as prototypically real – and they have historically experienced both the costs and benefits of this trait. To the degree that being real is an important ingredient for making the world a better place, understanding and promoting realness at the individual level may contribute to a more just society. At the same time, people who both hold and express hateful, racist, and divisive beliefs are also being real. As such, the social value of realness may depend on the health of those inner qualities that support it, such as self-awareness and capacity for reflection.

Realness may be particularly important in close relationships, such as psychotherapy, romance, or parenting. Indeed, we would hypothesize that, all things equal, most people would rather have a close relationship with someone who is real than with someone who is not. Again, however, we would expect that realness would be particularly valued in close relationships when it is supported by internal capacities for empathy and personal reflection. This notion is captured by the idea that people generally prefer a friend whose “heart is in the right place”.

These speculations point the way to future research that will benefit from our generation of a unidimensional model of realness. In these studies, realness was relatively stable, observable, predictive of contextualized social behavior, positively associated with adaptive functioning, and largely unrelated to concerns about being agreeable vs. antagonistic, as predicted. These results have implications for understanding individual differences in an important pattern of social behavior and may help clarify disconnections between classical theories and contemporary research on authenticity.

18.1. Realness and Authenticity

Authenticity has captured the attention of theorists and researchers for decades, but it is a highly complex construct that has proven difficult to study and around which no scholarly consensus has emerged (Hicks et al., 2019). The authenticity literature is somewhat disjointed, with measures that are similar but not identical, and in which theory and research have parted ways in important respects (Baumeister, 2019). Moreover, our results suggest that existing measures deviate from classical theories about authenticity in being strongly related to agreeable personality characteristics.

Based on our literature review, we concluded that this was a result of two main factors. The first was that existing measures seem to capture some non-specific social desirability variance that contributes to discriminant validity issues with respect to agreeableness-related traits and behaviors. The second was the effort to account for multiple internal and external features that give rise to authentic behavior, even if they are supportive but not essential. We understand authenticity as a relatively complex, multi-component, within-person process involving dynamic connections between internal states and external behavior. Many of the existing authenticity measures were based on theories that explicitly referenced such dynamic, multi-component, within-person processes. These processes included some features that seem central to authenticity (behavioral expressions of inner states), as well as other features that may support authentic behavior but in a somewhat non-specific way (e.g., self-awareness).

To be clear, we think that studying authenticity and all of the processes that support it is an important endeavor for social scientists. However, we concluded that, rather than trying to capture all of the features involved in complex within-person authenticity dynamics using measures designed to detect between-person differences, it would be better to begin by isolating a core between-person variable that is central to authentic behavior. A firm model of individual differences in realness can help facilitate authenticity research by distinguishing those individuals most likely to be real in a given situation, and by providing a variable that can be used to study the within-person contours of real behavior across time and situations.

We found that realness content was present in existing multidimensional measures of authenticity, but that it was also obscured in measures with scales that focused on either internal characteristics such as capacities for personal awareness, accurate perception, and reflective function, or external characteristics involving explicit social behavior. While such characteristics, in combination, may support authenticity, it is not being aware or behaving in a certain way in isolation that provides evidence that someone is authentic – it is the correspondence between these inner and outer states. This correspondence could be labeled congruence or transparency, terms which directly indicate the connection between inner and outer states. However, the second obscuring factor was that item content on existing measures tended to have a strong positive valence. A consequence of this positive valence is that authenticity measures tend to be strongly correlated with agreeable traits. However, as described in detail above, this pattern of correlation departs significantly from classical theories of authenticity. An authentic person should be so whether or not there are potential negative consequences. In fact, situations in which the potential for negative consequences are present provide the truest tests of authenticity. We refer to this tendency to be transparent or congruent without regard for social consequences as realness. By realness, we simply mean that when a person reveals everything they think, feel, and want on the inside to others in a way that is direct and straightforward, they are being real; when they conceal such features, they are being fake.

To be clear, realness does not solve all of the problems with authenticity. A significant hurdle is that the validity of realness scores depends on the rater having a valid account of inner states. Generally speaking, the self is the best source of information about inner states, although individuals may have not accurately report them for a variety of reasons. Observers and informants, in contrast, may not share all of the self’s blind spots, but they also do not have direct access to the target’s inner states. It may be possible to create experimental approaches to test the relevance of self-insight to some degree (e.g., by manipulating inner states directly via priming techniques), which would be an important direction for future work.

One specific way in which realness may be different from authenticity occurs when a person has two motives. For instance, a person may disapprove of someone else’s behavior but also value social harmony, and expect that expressing that disapproval would create disharmony. It is not clear whether expressing disapproval or not would be the most authentic behavior in this situation. However, the most real response would be to both express disapproval and also express the desire to maintain social harmony. To the extent that either of these inner states or motives are concealed, the response is not real (but still could potentially be authentic in at least some sense). Future work focused on the how people express themselves when their motives conflict would be informative about both realness and the broader concept of authenticity.

18.2. Correlates of Individual Differences in Realness

We found that individual differences in realness were strongly related to variation in existing measures of authenticity and correlated with high levels of extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, honesty, dominance, internal locus of control, and interpersonal competence. Realness was negatively associated with neuroticism, a range of maladaptive personality characteristics, interpersonal problems, self-monitoring, and fear of negative evaluation; and it was largely unrelated to agreeableness, although the pattern of results was complicated, as we will discuss in more detail below. Overall, this pattern of correlations suggests that people who are more real tend to have more adaptive personalities. This is consistent with classic theories that postulate that realness is an outgrowth of psychological maturity (e.g., Horney, 1951; Maslow, 1968). However, as discussed above, this may depend on the level of health of inner characteristics such as self-awareness and capacity for reflection and emotion regulation. In other words, it may be the case that realness is adaptive among healthy, prosocially motivated individuals, whereas it is maladaptive or even pernicious among people who are less well-developed or antisocial. Indeed, we note that children are often seen as characteristically “real”, despite not having developed personalities. Given that both classical theory and our data imply but do not prove that realness is an outcome of healthy maturation, genetically-informed developmental data would be useful for better understanding the sources of individual differences in the construct (Wagner et al., 2020), and future research should seek to distinguish being real from the healthy inner capacities that support personal and interpersonal adaptation.

Although we conceptualize realness as an individual difference construct, we also wish to emphasize that it is importantly different from the big five or analogous personality traits. Personality traits such as those in the big five indicate the tendency to behave in a certain way, relative to others, across time and situations. For instance, people who are high in extraversion are more extraverted than most other people in most situations. In contrast, realness is a contingent construct, in that it is only possible to test whether someone is real when social risk is present. As such, it is most telling to observe realness when the relevant costs are present. In an individual difference measure such as the RS, this can be specified in the items themselves. In observational or experimental work, this would have to be taken into account in other ways, such as the manipulation of scenarios so as to create social risk. This would be a fruitful avenue for future research because it would help inform the mechanics of real behavior, and help distinguish it from other kinds of traits.

18.3. Realness and conceptually similar constructs

Some of the modest correlations between realness and conceptually similar constructs are important for understanding the difference between realness and other aspects of authenticity. For example, honesty as conceptualized on the HEXACO is a relatively instrumental trait with significant positive valence (e.g., If I knew that I could never get caught, I would be willing to steal a million dollars (reverse), I wouldn't use flattery to get a raise or a promotion at work, even if I thought it would succeed). In contrast, the social costs of realness are embedded in the items of the RS, which also focus on being real for its own sake, as opposed to the instrumental utility of the alternative. To be concrete, HEXACO honesty might be better at capturing the tendency (not) to use subterfuge in order to get something or impress someone, RS realness might be better at capturing the tendency to act according to inner experience regardless of personal or social consequences. It would be useful for future research to examine a wider range of correlates than in this study, to further elaborate the nomological net of realness.

Self-monitoring is another conceptually similar but somewhat broader and empirically distinct construct. Self-monitoring focuses on behavioral expression, and particularly non-verbal expressions (Snyder, 1974). Moreover, it the absence of self-monitoring can function to be either real or non-real. For instance, according to Snyder (1974), one of “the goals of self-monitoring may be to communicate accurately one's true emotional state”. In other words, for a person who is characteristically deceptive or fake, an absence of self-monitoring would tend to contribute to being less real. Overall, we see self-monitoring as capturing some aspects of being real in the sense that the absence of self-monitoring is thought to produce a tight, non-reflected connection between internal states and outward behavior, but that the concept also some of the internal features depicted in Figure 1, and may not necessarily be associated with being real in any particular situation. The relatively modest correlation between realness and self-monitoring in study 3 is consistent with this interpretation.

Disinhibition, a third conceptually similar construct, is a broad trait involving impulsive behavior. It tends to be associated with negative outcomes such as externalizing psychopathology (Patrick et al., 2013), and tends to decrease normatively with age (Vaidya, Latzman, Markon, & Watson, 2010). There is a similarity between being real and being disinhibited, because both of these concepts involve a connection between inner states and behavioral expression. However, disinhibition is broader and more maladaptive, and thought to reflect a kind of psychological immaturity or underdevelopment. For instance, whereas disinhibition is a strong predictor of substance use (Iacono, Malone, & McGue, 2008), we would not expect realness to be related to substance use. Instead, we would expect people who are real to use substances if they feel like them, and not use substances if they don’t, whereas we would expect disinhibited people to experience an urge to use substances that they find difficult to control. Disinhibition has been conceptualized as low conscientiousness (Clark & Watson, 2008); in this study the RS was consistently albeit modestly negatively correlated with conscientiousness, supporting the empirical distinction between realness and disinhibition.

18.4. Realness and Agreeableness

One of the main motivations for this research was our observation that classical theories of authenticity emphasized the potentially disagreeable aspects of realness (e.g., Maslow, 1968) whereas existing measures of authenticity had uniformly positive correlations with individual differences in agreeable behavior (e.g., Pinto et al., 2012). We concluded that this discrepancy may be due, at least in part, to social desirability. Generally speaking, authenticity and agreeableness are both positive characteristics, and thus items designed to assess them might contain non-specific positive valence, creating a correlation between the two constructs (Baumeister, 2019; Jongman-Sereno & Leary, 2016).

Comparisons of validity correlations from self, informant, and peer-nomination data were used to disentangle social desirability effects. The self-report correlation between realness and agreeableness was negligible. The correlation between informant-rated realness and informant-rated agreeableness was positive, which may suggest that informants would generally prefer their friends to be real. This interpretation is consistent with assertions by theorists like Rogers (1961) regarding the interpersonal importance of being real. However, when given a forced choice between a real and a polite friend, both of whom the rater likes, informants rated the polite friend as substantially more agreeable than the real friend. This pattern can be summarized as follows: people who are more real do not tend to see themselves as more agreeable, but people tend to see realness in their friends as more agreeable than otherwise, while also recognizing that it is less agreeable to be real than to be polite.

Longitudinal and experimental work would be useful for further disentangling realness from disagreeableness, from the perspective of both the self and others. Further refinement of the measurement of these constructs may also be useful. Specifically, it may be that realness is experienced as warm or communal in a deep sense, even if it is not agreeable in the more superficial sense. Colloquially, people often experience gratitude when others are “real” with them, presumably because they attribute that realness to some kind of deep or lasting concern. Given the possibility that perceived agreeableness and realness reflect different levels of psychological functioning, it may not make sense to measure them with the same kinds of tools (Leary, 1957), and it may be profitable to develop techniques that distinguish deeper, motivational aspects of behavior from more visible, superficial aspects.

18.5. Realness, Context, and States

One interesting finding from recent research is that people tend to report feeling more authentic when they are their best selves, not their most typical selves, in social situations (Beer and Harris, 2019Fleeson and Wilt, 2010). This speaks to the valence effect discussed above – people want to believe they are their best selves deep inside, which includes being authentic (Hicks, Schlegel, & Newman, 2019), and there is a fairly consensual model of what the best self is (Bleidorn et al., 2019). This may help explain why ratings of authenticity and ratings of adaptive personality traits, including agreeableness, converge at a very general level.

But a different and perhaps more interesting behavioral question is, in the moment when the crisis strikes, are you real (Sedkides et al., 2019)? Being real in this sense is not the same thing as behaving according to one’s typical trait levels, being the same way across all situations, or being the best version of yourself. As inner feelings may change dramatically across situations or roles, then behavior must correspondingly change, given that realness is defined by the congruence between inner and outer states. Realness is consistency with how one feels in a given moment, which itself might change across situations, and which may deviate from typical traits. A related question is, what if a person has an internal conflict and their behavior only corresponds to one side of that conflict? We would argue that this would be only partly real, and to be fully real, one should outwardly express both aspects of their internal conflict.

Longitudinal and contextualized, multi-method data are needed to test these kinds of hypotheses. We did not consider contextual factors such as relationship closeness or hierarchy (Chen, 2019), the match between internal and external states (Eastwick, Finkel, & Simpson, 2019), relationship dynamics (Finkel, 2019), internal conflict (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), or the level of support in the environment (Ryan & Ryan, 2019) affect realness. We anticipate that, like other traits, realness will be strongly impacted by both individual differences and situational dynamics. In this set of studies, we focused on individual differences and learned very little about situational dynamics. By generating a valid measure of realness that can be administered as a self-report, informant-report or behavioral observation tool, we have we have provided a method for capturing this core feature of authentic behavior and set the stage for work on the manifestation and dynamics of realness states in actual social contexts.

18.6. Limits to Generalizability

These studies were conducted exclusively in WEIRD samples in two countries. It would be important to examine how well the concept of realness generalizes to other cultures in terms of content validity, measurement invariance, and patterns of correlation before generalizing these results to people, in general. Even within these countries, efforts were not specifically made to examine how realness functions across important sub-segments of the population (e.g., different ethnicities or social classes). This is a related and important area for future work. It seems plausible that, within WEIRD countries, people with different backgrounds are more likely to exhibit realness than others. For instance, it may be that people with more historical or personal privilege experience relatively less social risk in being real than people from underrepresented or underprivileged groups. Extending from this idea is the possibility that certain known groups might be particularly high (e.g., counselors) or low (e.g., thieves) in realness. Studies sampling such groups would provide a novel means of validating and studying realness.

Saturday, March 13, 2021

From 2020... For men, who are expected to spend less time considering relationships, spending more time on those relationships might indicate more attention to the details of making relationships work

From 2020... Personality in Its Natural Habitat’ Revisited: A Pooled, Multi-sample Examination of the Relationships Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Daily Behaviour and Language Use. Allison M Tackman et al. European Journal of Personality, 34: 753–776 (2020). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/per.2283

Abstract: Past research using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an observational ambulatory assessment method for the real-world measurement of daily behaviour, has identified several behavioural manifestations of the Big Five domains in a small college sample (N = 96). With the use of a larger and more diverse sample of pooled data from N = 462 participants from a total of four community samples who wore the EAR from 2 to 6 days, the primary purpose of the present study was to obtain more precise and generalizable effect estimates of the Big Five–behaviour relationships and to re-examine the degree to which these relationships are gender specific. In an extension of the original article, the secondary purpose of the present study was to examine if the Big Five–behaviour relationships differed across two facets of each Big Five domain. Overall, while several of the behavioural manifestations of the Big Five were generally consistent with the trait definitions (replicating some findings from the original article), we found little evidence of gender differences (not replicating a basic finding from the original article). Unique to the present study, the Big Five–behaviour relationships were not always comparable across the two facets of each Big Five domain.

Key words: personality expression; naturalistic observation; Electronically Activated Recorder; behaviour; language


Demonstrating mirror self recognition at group level in Equus caballus

If horses had toes: demonstrating mirror self recognition at group level in Equus caballus. Paolo Baragli, Chiara Scopa, Veronica Maglieri & Elisabetta Palagi. Animal Cognition, Mar 13 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-021-01502-7

Rolf Degen's take: "Our results suggest the presence of mirror self-recognition in horses"

Abstract: Mirror self-recognition (MSR), investigated in primates and recently in non-primate species, is considered a measure of self-awareness. Nowadays, the only reliable test for investigating MSR potential skills consists in the untrained response to a visual body mark detected using a reflective surface. Here, we report the first evidence of MSR at group level in horses, by facing the weaknesses of methodology present in a previous pilot study. Fourteen horses were used in a 4-phases mirror test (covered mirror, open mirror, invisible mark, visible colored mark). After engaging in a series of contingency behaviors (looking behind the mirror, peek-a-boo, head and tongue movements), our horses used the mirror surface to guide their movements towards their colored cheeks, thus showing that they can recognize themselves in a mirror. The analysis at the group level, which ‘marks’ a turning point in the analytical technique of MSR exploration in non-primate species, showed that horses spent a longer time in scratching their faces when marked with the visible mark compared to the non-visible mark. This finding indicates that horses did not see the non-visible mark and that they did not touch their own face guided by the tactile sensation, suggesting the presence of MSR in horses. Although a heated debate on the binary versus gradualist model in the MSR interpretation exists, recent empirical pieces of evidence, including ours, indicate that MSR is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon that appeared once in phylogeny and that a convergent evolution mechanism can be at the basis of its presence in phylogenetically distant taxa.


Discussion

Here, we report the first evidence of mirror self-recognition at the group level in a non-primate species. Furthermore, using a larger sample size and applying a more accurate experimental procedure, the present study replicates a previous pilot study on mirror self-recognition in horses (Baragli et al. 2017).

Our horses used the mirror surface to guide their movements towards their faces previously marked, thus showing that they are able to recognize themselves in a mirror. They followed a sequence of behavioral steps towards the mirror before being marked. This is a fundamental criterion to be fulfilled before undergoing the mark test, as suggested by de Waal (2019), Gallup et al. (2002) and Gallup and Anderson (2019) in their reviews focused on the methodological issues. These steps are indicative of the cognitive processes leading animals to understand that the image reflected in the mirror is the image of self (Plotnik et al. 2006).

Firstly, we found that in presence of the reflective surface the behavior of the horses clearly differed when compared to the condition in which the surface was covered. Both selective attention and exploratory activity increased when the mirror was open, indicating the emergence of the violation of the expectancy phenomenon (Seyfarth et al. 2005; Poulin-Dubois et al. 2009; Kondo et al. 2012). Through the violation of expectancy paradigm, it has been demonstrated that horses are able to associate multiple sensory cues to recognize conspecifics and people (cross-modal recognition, Proops et al. 2009; Proops and McComb 2012). While the image in the mirror satisfied the visual criterion (there is a horse in the mirror sensu Lorenz 1974), the tactile and olfactory information did not match with the visual one (it is not a horse sensu Lorenz 1974) thus producing an incongruent set of information.

The information gathered by the selective attention and exploratory activities increased the horse’s motivation in engaging in contingency behaviors to solve such incongruency (Seyfarth et al. 2005). The so-called contingency behaviors include highly repetitive non-stereotyped or unusual movements only when animals are in front of the reflective surface, probably to verify if the movements of the image in the mirror match their own movements. When in front of the mirror, magpies moved their head or body back and forth (Prior et al. 2008), elephants displayed repetitive, non-stereotypic trunk and body movements (Plotnik et al. 2006), jackdows and crows showed “peek-a boo” movements during which the bird moved out and back in sight of the mirror (Soler et al. 2014; Vanhooland et al. 2019) and chimpanzees manipulated their lips and tongues while glancing into the mirror (Povinelli et al. 1993). Our horses engaged in contingency behaviors similar to those reported for other species such as head movements, peek-a-boo, and tongue protrusion almost exclusively in presence of the reflective surface (Table 3). It is possible that by slightly moving their head horses managed to avoid the blind spot characterizing their frontal view (Lansade et al. 2020) thus head movements could help verify whether the movements of the reflective image corresponds to their movements (Online Resource 6). One of the most indicative contingency behaviors reported in the literature is looking behind the mirror that is enacted to verify the possible presence of a conspecific behind the reflective surface (Pica pica, Prior et al. 2008Equus caballus, Baragli et al. 2017Loxodonta africana, Plotnik et al. 2006Pan troglodytes, Gallup 1970; Povinelli et al. 1993) (Online Resource 5). Our horses showed a high inter-individual variability in performing contingency behaviors in front of the reflective surface. We suggest that the strategy employed to test the mirror function varies among subjects that engaged in one or two contingency behaviors to solve the violation of expectancy (Table 3). This means that when studying MSR we should take into account for this variability by also checking a posteriori what animals do to test their own image reflected in the mirror (unusual, repetitive non-stereotyped behaviors), thus leaving open the ethogram fixed a priori.

After solving the violation of expectancy by engaging in contingency behaviors, animals gather the necessary information to potentially pass the mark test. In this study, due to the anatomical features limiting the degree of freedom of horses to reach specific areas of their face, we considered scratching the face (Face-SCR) as an attempt to remove the mark which was placed on both cheeks (bilateral marking) (Online Resource 1 and 9–12). The analysis at a group level showed that horses spent a longer time in scratching their face when marked with the colored mark compared to the sham mark (S vs M conditions). This finding indicates that horses did not see the sham mark and that it was not the tactile sensation that induced the animal to touch its own face. The increased level of Face-SCR during the M condition suggests that by using the reflective surface the animals were able to visually perceive the colored spot on their face. The standardization of the procedure preceding the application of the mark, such as grooming on the whole body and identical shapes of the sham and colored stamps, guarantees that the use of the transparent mark worked as an effective control condition. An additional control in supporting the hypothesis that horses are able to perceive the colored spot on their face resides in the comparable levels of time spent in scratching directed to the rest of the body (Body-SCR). In the M condition, scratching appears to be highly directional towards a specific target: the colored face (Online Resource 16).

One of the novelties of the present study relies on the analysis at a group level, which ‘marks’ a turning point in the analytical technique of MSR exploration. It has been suggested that the individual variability in the MSR tests can reflect the low motivation of animals to remove the colored mark. The low motivation to react to the mark can introduce a strong individual bias in the accurate measurement of self-recognition abilities (Bard et al. 2006; Heschl and Burkart 2006). In our case, for example, four horses that did not scratch their faces in the S condition did it in the M condition but not for sufficient time to apply an individual test (expected frequencies < 5.0 s; see Table 4). The behavioral motivation of removing something from one’s own body, and to respond to the colored mark, is considered a hotspot in the discussion about the validity of the mark test for demonstrating MSR. In this perspective, the analysis at the population level provides the opportunity to employ larger samples also including the subjects showing low levels of motivation. Such individual motivation can also be affected by a series of species-specific features (e.g., anatomical difference in properly reaching the marked area, visual perception of specific colors, visual acuity, predominant sensory modality different from vision), including personality and cognitive style. Therefore, the sensory and cognitive systems, as well as the motivation to behaviorally respond to the mark, are substantial preconditions to keep in mind when we decide to test animals’ self-recognition abilities.

In conclusion, despite the strong inter-individual variability, our results suggest the presence of MSR in horses. Although the heated debate on the binary versus gradualist model in the MSR interpretation (de Waal 2019; Gallup and Anderson 2019; Brandl 2016), recent empirical pieces of evidence, including ours on horses, indicate that MSR is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon suddenly emerged in the phylogeny, but it has probably been favored by natural selection to adaptively respond to social and cognitive challenges an animal has to cope with. 

Rolf Degen summarizing... Everybody thinks they are doing a better job at following public health recommendations to contain COVID-19 than "other people"

Social Comparisons for Following Health Recommendations and Their Relation to Worry and Intentions During COVID-19. Jason P Rose, Keith A. Edmonds. European Journal of Health Psychology, February 2021. DOI: 10.1027/2512-8442/a000080

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1370618010663260160

Abstract

Background: During uncertain threatening situations, people make social comparisons that influence self-evaluations, inform decisions, and guide behavior. In 2019, an emerging infectious disease (COVID-19) became a pandemic and resulted in unparalleled public health recommendations (e.g., social distancing, wear masks in public).

Aims: The current research examined people’s beliefs about how their own compliance to recommendations compared to others and explored the unique associations between social comparisons, worry, risk perceptions, and intentions for health-protective action.

Method: An adult sample of US residents (N = 452) completed an online, cross-sectional survey about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results: First, participants reported better-than-average compliance beliefs. Second, comparative beliefs were positively (and uniquely) associated with intentions for future compliance-related behaviors and general risk-reduction behaviors (e.g., information seeking) – particularly for participants who viewed COVID-19 as threatening. Finally, the relation between comparative beliefs and intentions was indirect through worry (but not risk), though alternative models also achieved support.

Limitations: Our findings are limited by our use of a cross-sectional design, methodological choices, and our lack of behavioral measures.

Conclusions: Overall, results demonstrate that people are attentive to their comparative levels of compliance behaviors during an infectious disease pandemic. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications and the relevance of social comparisons for self-protective action during a pandemic.


Perceived Abilities And Specially Handsomeness Outperform Objective Intelligence Test Performance in Predicting Mate Appeal in Speed Dating

Hofer, Gabriela, Roman Burkart, Laura Langmann, and Aljoscha Neubauer. 2021. “What You See Is What You Want to Get: Perceived Abilities Outperform Objective Test Performance in Predicting Mate Appeal in Speed Dating.” PsyArXiv. March 12. doi:10.31234/osf.io/ewvny

Abstract: Are intelligent, creative, and emotionally competent people more desirable? Evolution-based theories and cross-cultural studies on the ideal partner suggest that they are, with some differences between the sexes and between short-term (ST) and long-term (LT) relationships. However, research that went beyond hypothetical partners and that used psychometric ability tests instead of relying on subjective ability perceptions is sparse. We aimed to assess whether people’s verbal, numerical, and spatial intelligence, creativity, and intra- and interpersonal emotional competence could predict their ST and LT mate appeal. 87 women and 88 men completed psychometric ability measures and participated in heterosexual speed dating. There, they met up to 14 members of the opposite sex and reported their interest in having an ST and LT relationship with each partner as well as their subjective perceptions of the partner’s abilities. External raters assessed the participants’ physical attractiveness. While perceived abilities could broadly predict mate appeal, only one measured ability – women’s creativity – showed a significant association to mate appeal. Notably, effects of perceived and measured abilities were substantially reduced after controlling for physical attractiveness. These results suggest that the investigated abilities – and particularly intelligence – play a lesser role in initial attraction than proposed in the past.


A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism. Tony Freeth, David Higgon, Aris Dacanalis, Lindsay MacDonald, Myrto Georgakopoulou & Adam Wojcik. Scientific Reports volume 11, Article number: 5821 (2021). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84310-w

Abstract: The Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical calculator, has challenged researchers since its discovery in 1901. Now split into 82 fragments, only a third of the original survives, including 30 corroded bronze gearwheels. Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography (X-ray CT) in 2005 decoded the structure of the rear of the machine but the front remained largely unresolved. X-ray CT also revealed inscriptions describing the motions of the Sun, Moon and all five planets known in antiquity and how they were displayed at the front as an ancient Greek Cosmos. Inscriptions specifying complex planetary periods forced new thinking on the mechanization of this Cosmos, but no previous reconstruction has come close to matching the data. Our discoveries lead to a new model, satisfying and explaining the evidence. Solving this complex 3D puzzle reveals a creation of genius—combining cycles from Babylonian astronomy, mathematics from Plato’s Academy and ancient Greek astronomical theories.


Conclusions

Figure 7, Supplementary Figs. S24, S25, Supplementary Videos S1S3 visualize our new model: the culmination of a substantial cross-disciplinary effort to elucidate the front of the Antikythera Mechanism. Previous research unlocked the ingenuity of the Back Dials, here we show the richness of the Cosmos at the front. The main structural features of our model are prescribed by the physical evidence, the prime factors of the restored planetary period relations and the ring description in the BCI. Hypothetical features greatly enhance and justify the Cosmos display: a Dragon Hand thematically linking the Front and Back Dials; and an Index Letter Scheme for the synodic events of the planets.

Because of the loss of evidence, we cannot claim that our model is a replica of the original, but our solution to this convoluted 3D puzzle draws powerful support from the logic of our model and its exact match to the surviving evidence. The Antikythera Mechanism was a computational instrument for mathematical astronomy, incorporating cycles from Babylonian astronomy and the Greek flair for geometry. It calculated the ecliptic longitudes of the Moon7, Sun3 and planets1,2,3,9,11; the phase of the Moon10; the Age of the Moon10; the synodic phases of the planets; the excluded days of the Metonic Calendar8; eclipses7,8,23—possibilities, times, characteristics, years and seasons; the heliacal risings and settings of prominent stars and constellations1,2,7,25; and the Olympiad cycle8—an ancient Greek astronomical compendium of staggering ambition. It is the first known device that mechanized the predictions of scientific theories and it could have automated many of the calculations needed for its own design (Supplementary Discussion S6)—the first steps to the mechanization of mathematics and science. Our work reveals the Antikythera Mechanism as a beautiful conception, translated by superb engineering into a device of genius. It challenges all our preconceptions about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks. 

Participants read hypothetical wrongdoings, recalled unethical events, reported daily transgressions, and learned of novel immoral behavior committed by close others

Forbes, Rachel C., and Jennifer E. Stellar. 2021. “When the Ones We Love Misbehave: Exploring Moral Processes Within Intimate Bonds.” PsyArXiv. March 12. Final DOI: 10.1037/pspa0000272

Abstract: How do we react when our romantic partners, friends, or family members behave unethically? When close others misbehave, it generates a powerful conflict between observers’ moral values and their cherished relationships. Previous research has almost exclusively studied moral perception in a social vacuum by investigating responses to the transgressions of strangers; therefore, little is known about how these responses unfold in the context of intimate bonds. Here we systematically examine the impact of having a close relationship with a transgressor on perceptions of that transgressor, the relationship, and the self. We predicted less negative emotional and evaluative responses to transgressors and smaller consequences for the relationship, yet more negative emotional and evaluative responses to the self when close others, compared to strangers or acquaintances, transgress. Participants read hypothetical wrongdoings (Study 1), recalled unethical events (Study 2), reported daily transgressions (Study 3; pre-registered), and learned of novel immoral behavior (Study 4) committed by close others or comparison groups. Participants reported less other-critical emotions, more lenient moral evaluations, a reduced desire to punish/criticize, and a smaller impact on the relationship (compared to acquaintances) when close others versus strangers or acquaintances transgressed. Simultaneously, participants reported more self-conscious emotions and showed some evidence of harsher moral self-evaluations when close others transgressed. Underlying mechanisms of this process were examined. Our findings demonstrate the deep ambivalence in reacting to close others’ unethical behaviors, revealing a surprising irony—in protecting close others, the self may bear some of the burden of their misbehavior.

 

Interactions including voice (phone, video chat, and voice chat) created stronger social bonds and no increase in awkwardness, compared with interactions including text (e-mail, text chat)

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2021). It’s surprisingly nice to hear you: Misunderstanding the impact of communication media can lead to suboptimal choices of how to connect with others. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(3), 595–607. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000962

Abstract: Positive social connections improve wellbeing. Technology increasingly affords a wide variety of media that people can use to connect with others, but not all media strengthen social connection equally. Optimizing wellbeing, therefore, requires choosing how to connect with others wisely. We predicted that people’s preferences for communication media would be at least partly guided by the expected costs and benefits of the interaction—specifically, how awkward or uncomfortable the interaction would be and how connected they would feel to their partner—but that people’s expectations would consistently undervalue the overall benefit of more intimate voice-based interactions. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants in a field experiment to reconnect with an old friend either over the phone or e-mail, and by asking laboratory participants to “chat” with a stranger over video, voice, or text-based media. Results indicated that interactions including voice (phone, video chat, and voice chat) created stronger social bonds and no increase in awkwardness, compared with interactions including text (e-mail, text chat), but miscalibrated expectations about awkwardness or connection could lead to suboptimal preferences for text-based media. Misunderstanding the consequences of using different communication media could create preferences for media that do not maximize either one’s own or others’ wellbeing.


Friday, March 12, 2021

Cultural values emphasizing the desire to acquire status, as well as cultures values devaluing similarity with others & gender egalitarianism, predict higher levels of competitiveness toward members of one’s own gender

Buunk, A. P. (2020). Cultural dimensions associated with intrasexual competitiveness. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Mar 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000233

Abstract: In the present study among 80 exchange students from 30 countries studying in The Netherlands, I examined how intrasexual competitiveness (ISC), that is, a competitive attitude toward members of one’s own gender, was associated with various cultural dimensions. A multiple regression analysis showed that vertical individualism predicted ISC positively and that horizontal collectivism predicted ISC negatively. That is, the higher individuals were in ISC, the more likely they came from cultures accepting inequality and status differences as a law of nature and the less likely they came from cultures emphasizing the similarity of members of their own culture. In addition, data independently collected showed that ISC was typical for those from cultures with a low level of gender egalitarian values. I conclude that cultural values emphasizing the desire to acquire status, as well as cultures values devaluing similarity with others and gender egalitarianism, predict higher levels of ISC.

Robust evidence that monozygotic twins are more likely to be concordant for handedness than dizygotic twins; this finding supports a partially genetic determination of handedness

Pfeifer, Lena S., Judith Schmitz, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, Jutta Peterburs, Silvia Paracchini, and Sebastian Ocklenburg. 2021. “Handedness in Twins: Meta-analyses.” PsyArXiv. March 12. doi:10.31234/osf.io/gy2nx

Abstract

Background: In the general population, 10.6 % of people favor their left hand over the right for motor tasks. Previous research suggests higher prevalence of atypical (left-, mixed-, or non-right-) handedness in (i) twins compared to singletons, and in (ii) monozygotic compared to dizygotic twins. Moreover, (iii) studies have shown a higher rate of handedness concordance in monozygotic compared to dizygotic twins, in line with genetic factors playing a role for handedness.

Methods: We identified 59 studies from previous literature and performed three sets of random effects meta-analyses on (i) twin-to-singleton Odds Ratios (21 studies, n = 189,422 individuals), (ii) monozygotic-to-dizygotic twin Odds Ratios (48 studies, n = 63,295 individuals), and (iii) concordance Odds Ratios (44 studies, n = 36,217 twin pairs). We also tested for potential effects of moderating variables such as sex, age, the method used to assess handedness and the twins’ zygosity.

Results: We found (i) evidence for higher prevalence of left- (Odds Ratio = 1.40) and non-right- (Odds Ratio = 1.36), but not mixed-handedness (Odds Ratio = 1.08) among twins compared to singletons. We further showed a reduction of difference over time, which suggests that higher levels of left-handedness observed in twins are linked to a higher frequency of birth complications which might have dropped nowadays in their overall prevalence because of better healthcare. While there was (ii) no difference between monozygotic and dizygotic twins regarding prevalence of left- (Odds Ratio = 0.98), mixed- (Odds Ratio = 0.96), or non-right-handedness (Odds Ratio = 1.01), we found that (iii) handedness concordance was elevated among monozygotic compared to dizygotic twin pairs (Odds Ratio = 1.11). Moderator analyses showed our results to be robust against potentially confounding variables.

Conclusion: We provide the largest and most comprehensive meta-analysis on handedness in twins. Results suggest that the previously reported effect that twins are more likely to be left-handed than singletons is robust. Furthermore, we also provide robust evidence that monozygotic twins are more likely to be concordant for handedness than dizygotic twins. In line with recent genome-wide association studies, this finding supports a partially genetic determination of handedness.


A memory must be malleable to maintain its predictive value in a dynamic environment; after being retrieved, a consolidated memory may become susceptible to updating (via reconsolidation, extinction, or forgetting)

Understanding the dynamic and destiny of memories. Lucas de Oliveira Alvares, Fabricio H. Do-Monte. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, March 12 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.03.009

Highlights

• A memory must be malleable to maintain its predictive value in a dynamic environment.

• After being retrieved, a consolidated memory may become susceptible to modifications.

• Retrieval can lead to memory updating via reconsolidation, extinction, or forgetting.

• These post-retrieval memory destinies involve distinct neural circuits and mechanisms.

• Memory updating has important biological functions including behavioral adjustment.

Abstract: Memory formation enables the retention of life experiences overtime. Based on previously acquired information, organisms can anticipate future events and adjust their behaviors to maximize survival. However, in an ever-changing environment, a memory needs to be malleable to maintain its relevance. In fact, substantial evidence suggests that a consolidated memory can become labile and susceptible to modifications after being reactivated, a process termed reconsolidation. When an extinction process takes place, a memory can also be temporarily inhibited by a second memory that carries information with opposite meaning. In addition, a memory can fade and lose its significance in a process known as forgetting. Thus, following retrieval, new life experiences can be integrated with the original memory trace to maintain its predictive value. In this review, we explore the determining factors that regulate the fate of a memory after its reactivation. We focus on three post-retrieval memory destinies (reconsolidation, extinction, and forgetting) and discuss recent rodent studies investigating the biological functions and neural mechanisms underlying each of these processes.

Keywords: Memory updatingReconsolidationExtinctionforgettingretrieval


The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Disposable Bag Regulation

Skipping the Bag: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Disposable Bag Regulation. Tatiana Homonoff, Lee-Sien Kao, Javiera Selman & Christina Seybolt. NBER Working Paper 28499, February 2021. DOI 10.3386/w28499

Abstract: Regulation of goods associated with negative environmental externalities may decrease consumption of the targeted product, but may be ineffective at reducing the externality itself if close substitutes are left unregulated. We find evidence that plastic bag bans, the most common disposable bag regulation in the US, led retailers to circumvent the regulation by providing free thicker plastic bags which are not covered by the ban. In contrast, a regulation change that replaced the ban with a small tax on all disposable bags generated large decreases in disposable bag use and overall environmental costs. Our results suggest that narrowly-defined regulations (like plastic bag bans) may be less effective than policies that target a more comprehensive set of products, even in the case when the policy instrument itself (a tax rather than a ban) is not as strict.


Meta-analysis: The amygdala is significantly involved in the ha-ha experience of decoding punchlines

Humor and emotion: Quantitative meta analyses of functional neuroimaging studies. Andrew H. Farkas et al. Cortex, March 11 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2021.02.023

Highlights

• Large meta-analysis of brain activation driven by humor versus control stimuli.

• Humor activates areas linked with language, theory of mind, & knowledge integration.

• Humor cue modality (picture, text, laughter) modulates brain network activation.

• Complex humor activates supramodal areas of the brain associated with emotion.

Abstract: Humor is a ubiquitous aspect of human behavior that is infrequently the focus of neuroscience research. To localize human brain structures associated with the experience of humor, we conducted quantitative activation likelihood estimate (ALE) meta analyses of 57 fMRI studies (n=1248) reporting enhanced regional brain activity evoked by humorous cues versus matched control cues. We performed separate ALE analyses of studies that employed picture-driven, text-based, and auditory laughter cues to evoke humor. A primary finding was that complex humor activates supramodal areas of the brain strongly associated with emotional processes, including bilateral amygdala and inferior frontal gyrus. Moreover, activation in brain regions associated with language, semantic knowledge, and theory of mind were differentially modulated by text and picture-driven humor cues, while hearing laughter enhances activation in auditory association cortex. The identification of humor-driven brain networks has the potential to expand brain-derived models of human emotion and could provide useful targets in translational research and therapy.

Keywords: humorhumouremotionmeta-analysishumanneuroimaging