2D:4D Digit Ratios in Adults with Gender Dysphoria: A Comparison to Their Unaffected Same-Sex Heterosexual Siblings, Cisgender Heterosexual Men, and Cisgender Heterosexual Women

2D:4D Digit Ratios in Adults with Gender Dysphoria: A Comparison to Their Unaffected Same-Sex Heterosexual Siblings, Cisgender Heterosexual Men, and Cisgender Heterosexual Women. Şenol Turan, Murat Boysan, Mahmut Cem Tarakçıoğlu, Tarık Sağlam, Ahmet Yassa, Hasan Bakay, Ömer Faruk Demirel & Musa Tosun. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Mar 10 2021, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-021-01938-5

Abstract: We compared gender dysphoria (GD) patients and their same-sex siblings in terms of their 2D:4D ratios, which may reflect prenatal exposure to androgen, one of the possible etiological mechanisms underlying GD. Sixty-eight GD patients (46 Female-to-Male [FtM]; 22 Male-to-Female [MtF]), 68 siblings (46 sisters of FtMs; 22 brothers of MtFs), and 118 heterosexual controls (62 female; 56 male) were included in the study. FtMs were gynephilic and MtFs were androphilic. We found that 2D:4D ratios in the both right hand (p < .001) and the left hand (p = .003) were lower in male controls than in female controls. Regarding right hands, FtM GD patients had lower 2D:4D ratios than female controls (p < .001) but their ratios did not differ from those of their sisters or male controls. FtM GD patients had no significant difference in their left-hand 2D:4D ratios compared to their sisters or female and male controls. While there was no significant difference in right hands between FtM's sisters and male controls, left-hand 2D:4D ratios were significantly higher in FtM's sisters (p = .017). MtF GD patients had lower right-hand 2D:4D ratios than female controls (p <.001), but their right-hand ratios did not differ from those of their brothers and male controls. There was no significant difference in left-hand 2D:4D ratios between MtF GD patients, and their brothers, or female and male controls. FtM GD patients showed significantly masculinized right-hand 2D:4D ratios, while there was no evidence of feminization in MtF GD patients.

Discussion

The 2D:4D ratio is thought to be determined during critical periods of prenatal development under the influence of sex hormones. Here, we conducted a case-control study of the 2D:4D ratio, which is thought to be indicative of prenatal exposure to sex hormones, in patients with GD, their unaffected same-sex heterosexual siblings, and cisgender heterosexual male and female controls. We observed that patients with FtM GD had lower right-hand 2D:4D ratios than cisgender heterosexual female controls and they did not significantly differ from cisgender heterosexual male controls. Although they had lower right-hand 2D:4D ratios than their unaffected heterosexual sisters, the difference was not significant. Furthermore, the left-hand 2D:4D ratios in patients with FtM GD did not differ significantly from that of their unaffected heterosexual sisters, cisgender heterosexual male or female controls. Patients with MtF GD had lower right-hand 2D:4D ratios than cisgender heterosexual female controls but they did not show a significant difference from their unaffected heterosexual brothers or cisgender heterosexual male controls. There was no significant difference in the left-hand 2D:4D ratios between patients with MtF GD and their unaffected heterosexual brothers, as well as the cisgender heterosexual male or cisgender heterosexual male controls.

Early studies of 2D:4D ratios in patients with GD found that patients with MtF GD have higher right-hand 2D:4D ratios than those of male controls, while differences in 2D:4D ratios between patients with FtM GD and female controls were not significant (Kraemer et al., 2007; Schneider et al., 2006). However, subsequent studies found results contradicting with the findings of these two first studies. Wallien et al. (2008) found a lower 2D:4D ratio in patients with FtM GD in comparison with female controls, but no significant difference between patients with MtF GD and male controls. Vujovic et al. (2014) echoed and extended the finding reported by Hisasue et al. (2012) that patients with FtM GD had the lowest left-hand 2D:4D ratios, as measured by X-rays, in comparison with both male and female controls. In a similar vein, Leinung and Wu (2017) found a low dominant-hand 2D:4D ratio in patients with FtM GD compared to female controls; however, a feminized 2D:4D (higher) in patients with MtF GD in comparison with male controls was not observed. In another more recent study, Sağlam et al. (2020) found a lower right-hand 2D:4D ratio in patients with FtM GD in comparison with female controls, but no significant difference between patients with MtF GD and male controls in both hands. In a meta-analytic study, Voracek, Kaden, Kossmeier, Pietschnig, and Tran (2018) concluded that patients with MtF GD showed feminized right-hand 2D:4D digit ratios, while the identical effect for the left-hand digit ratio was not significant. However, the study findings underscored that patients with FtM GD had neither masculinized right-hand 2D:4D ratios nor left-hand 2D:4D digit ratios. In another meta-analytic study conducted by Sadr et al. (2020), it was shown that 2D:4D digit ratios of patients with MtF GD (transwomen) were higher (feminized) than male controls and this finding was consistent across studies and both hands, but the effect sizes were small (left hand: d = .19, p = .010; right hand: d = .29, p = .0009). For patients with FtM GD (transmen), they had a lower (masculinized) 2D:4D digit ratio in both hands than female controls, while it was detected that the effect sizes were not statistically significant (left hand: d = − .20, p = .195; right hand: d = − .36, p = .123). The latest meta-analytic study conducted by Siegmann et al. (2020) showed that the 2D:4D digit ratios of patients with MtF GD were significantly higher than male controls (Hedge’s g = .153), and this effect is even more pronounced if the diagnosis was made by a clinician (Hedge’s g = .193). They did not detect any significant difference between patients with FtM GD and female controls.

In the present study, we found that patients with FtM GD had lower right-hand 2D:4D ratios than cisgender heterosexual female controls, but did not have lower ratios than cisgender heterosexual male controls. Previous studies have concluded that in humans the right-hand 2D:4D ratios are more sensitive to early prenatal androgen exposure than the left 2D:4D ratios (Hönekopp & Watson, 2010; Manning, 2002; Manning, Scutt, Wilson, & Lewis-Jones, 1998; Xu & Zheng, 2015). In keeping with the previous literature (Hönekopp et al., 2010; Kraemer et al., 2007; McFadden et al., 2005; Schneider et al., 2006), the differences appear to be more pronounced in the right-hand 2D:4D ratios in our study. To account for this finding, we may suggest that increased levels of prenatal steroid exposure may be associated with greater lateralization toward the left hemisphere (Grimshaw, Bryden, & Finegan, 1995; Jackson, 2008; Witelson & Nowakowski, 1991) which may make the differences in finger length ratios more visible in the right hand. Thus, ICC analyses showed that the 2D:4D ratios of patients with FtM GD and their unaffected heterosexual sisters revealed moderate resemblance in both the right hand and in the left hand, with a stronger correlation for the right hand. Adding to this perspective, an animal model put forth by Zheng and Cohn (2011) suggested that the 2D:4D ratios of the right paw are more sensitive to prenatal androgen exposure than the 2D:4D ratios of the left paw. Emerging evidence and the consistency of relevant findings appear to give credence to the increased sensitivity of the right hand to prenatal androgen exposure (Schneider et al., 2006). In addition to this, we also found no significant difference in the left-hand 2D:4D ratios between patients with FtM GD and cisgender heterosexual male controls. Vujovic et al. (2014) reported that patients with FtM GD showed the lowest left-hand 2D:4D ratio compared to both the control males and females. These findings may be interpreted as meaning that both the right and left hand may be affected by prenatal androgen exposure to a certain degree, but that this influence may be stronger for the right hand. However, there is no credible explanation for an underlying mechanism that specifies a different association of the right and the left finger lengths with prenatal androgen levels, and thus, the mechanism underlying this needs further investigation (Hisasue et al., 2012).

Growing evidence from family and twin studies demonstrates that genetic factors contribute to the development of GD (Gomez-Gil et al., 2010; Heylens et al., 2012; Polderman et al., 2018; Turan & Demirel, 2017), but a strong candidate gene accounting for the development of GD is yet to be identified (Zucker et al., 2016). In human beings, many traits and diseases have a polygenic architecture (Zucker et al., 2016), and many genotypical characteristics evolve into phenotypical traits through interactions with the environment. GD is most likely a complex condition that results from a combination of multiple genetic and environmental factors. In this context, the term endophenotype, meaning measurable components unseen by the unaided eye along the pathway between disease and genotype, has arisen as an important concept in the investigation of complex psychiatric diseases (Gottesman & Gould, 2003). An endophenotype is a quantitative biological trait which shows greater prevalence in unaffected first-degree parents of GD patients than in the general population ((Flint & Munafo, 2007; Kendler & Neale, 2010) and may be neurophysiological, biochemical, endocrinological, neuroanatomical, cognitive, or neuropsychological in nature (Gottesman & Gould, 2003).

In keeping with the literature, the most salient finding of the current data was that patients with FtM GD’s right-hand 2D:4D ratios had significant and strong intraclass correlation with their unaffected heterosexual sisters’ right 2D:4D ratios (r = 0.55). The same was also true for the left-hand 2D:4D ratios, but with a relatively more modest intraclass correlation coefficient (r = 0.36). In contrast, neither the intraclass correlation coefficients for the right-hand nor the left-hand 2D:4D ratios of patients with MtF GD and their unaffected heterosexual brothers were substantial. Moreover, patients with FtM GD and their unaffected heterosexual sisters did not significantly differ in their right 2D:4D ratios from cisgender heterosexual male controls.

These results may be interpreted as further evidence for significant associations between prenatal testosterone exposure and the gender-related behaviors previously suggested in the literature (Brown, Hines, Fane, & Breedlove, 2002; Grimbos et al., 2010; Hines, 2006; Lutchmaya, Baron-Cohen, Raggatt, Knickmeyer, & Manning, 2004; Voracek, Dressler, & Manning, 2007). To the best of our knowledge, relying on the present results, which were consistent with the preceding data (Manning, Bundred, Newton, & Flanagan, 2003; van Anders, Vernon, & Wilbur, 2006), the right-hand 2D:4D digit ratios, in particular, can be considered an endophenotype for masculinization in biological females, which may result in GD.

In this study, we found that patients with MtF GD had lower right-hand 2D:4D digit ratios than cisgender heterosexual female controls, but the mean difference from cisgender heterosexual female controls for the left-hand digit ratios was not significant. On the other hand, unlike patients with MtF GD, the unaffected heterosexual brothers of MtF GD patients had significantly lower left-hand 2D:4D ratios than cisgender heterosexual female controls. These findings are partly consistent with those of previous studies (Kraemer et al., 2007; Schneider et al., 2006; Vujovic et al., 2014) showing that patients with MtF GD seem to also be affected by prenatal androgen exposure, with the exception of the direction of the hand, in which right-hand sensitivity has been widely highlighted. The masculinization in patients with MtF GD might be conceived of as a “ceiling effect” in which males are exposed to sufficient levels of androgen stimulation during the prenatal period (Breedlove, 2010), and the right hand may be more affected from this exposure. However, the 2D:4D digit ratios did not show an endophenotypic characteristic for patients with MTF, when their unaffected heterosexual siblings, cisgender heterosexual male controls, and cisgender heterosexual female controls were considered.

Our study had several limitations that should be considered. First, the sample sizes were relatively small in all groups, which compromise the generalizability of the current results. Second, the measurement method of finger length was indirect. Previous studies showed that indirect finger length measurement methods such as photocopies tended to produce lower 2D:4D ratios than direct measurements (Manning, Fink, Neave, & Caswell, 2005; Ribeiro, Neave, Morais, & Manning, 2016; Xu & Zheng, 2015). Therefore, it has been suggested that indirect measurements may not be the best method to investigate sex or gender effects in 2D:4D ratios (Manning, 2017). However, it has been argued that indirect measurement methods can be used as long as 2D:4D ratios obtained with different digit measurement methods are combined within one study (Xu & Zheng, 2015). Third, because siblings were recruited by patients with GD, it can be said that we have a biased sample. Finally, the absence of patients with FtM GD who were sexually attracted to men and patients with MtF GD who were sexually attracted to women make it difficult to distinguish the effect of sexual orientation and gender identity on digit ratio. As a matter of fact, in the meta-analysis study conducted by Grimbos et al. (2010), similar to the results of our study, while homosexual women had a lower 2D:4D ratio than did heterosexual women, no significant difference was found between homosexual and heterosexual men.

In conclusion, patients with FtM GD had significantly masculinized right-hand 2D:4D ratios. The unaffected heterosexual sisters of patients with FtM GD measured between the digit ratios of cisgender heterosexual male and females in terms of right-hand 2D:4D ratio. This could be indicative of an endophenotype for prenatal exposure to androgens that has long been considered a significant antecedent of this phenomenon of the right-hand 2D:4D digit ratio. In contrast, we did not find prominent evidence pointing to feminization in the 2D:4D ratio in patients with MtF GD. Patients with MtF GD seemed to follow different developmental pathways in the early period. Further studies with larger samples should be conducted to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the potential underpinnings of GD in relation to the 2D:4D ratio.

Children Show a Gender Gap in Negotiation; let's change children so we can correct this ugly feature

Children Show a Gender Gap in Negotiation. Sophie H. Arnold, Katherine McAuliffe. Psychological Science, January 6, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620965544

Abstract... In the United States, there is an unfortunate yet pervasive gender gap in wages: Women tend to make less than men for doing the same work. One prominent account for why this wage gap exists is that women and men negotiate differently. However, we currently do not know whether differences in negotiation are a product of extensive experience or are deeply rooted in development. Here, we brought data from children to bear on this important question. We gave 240 children between the ages of 4 and 9 years old a chance to negotiate for a bonus with a female or a male evaluator. Boys asked for the same bonus from a male and a female evaluator. Older girls, in contrast, asked for a smaller bonus from a male than a female evaluator. Our findings suggest that a gender gap in negotiation emerges surprisingly early in development, highlighting childhood as a key period for interventions.

Keywords: negotiation, gender, wage gap, social categories, social cognitive development, open data, open materials

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, 2019, Fleeson 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.

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. 2008; Equus caballus, Baragli et al. 2017; Loxodonta africana, Plotnik et al. 2006; Pan 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.