Girls with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appear to have more genetic mutations than boys with ASD; differences in brain structure and function; advocate caution in drawing conclusions regarding female ASD based on male-predominant cohorts

A neurogenetic analysis of female autism. Allison Jack et al. Brain, awab064, April 16 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab064

Abstract: Females versus males are less frequently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and while understanding sex differences is critical to delineating the systems biology of the condition, female ASD is understudied. We integrated functional MRI and genetic data in a sex-balanced sample of ASD and typically developing youth (8–17 years old) to characterize female-specific pathways of ASD risk. Our primary objectives were to: (i) characterize female ASD (n = 45) brain response to human motion, relative to matched typically developing female youth (n = 45); and (ii) evaluate whether genetic data could provide further insight into the potential relevance of these brain functional differences. For our first objective we found that ASD females showed markedly reduced response versus typically developing females, particularly in sensorimotor, striatal, and frontal regions. This difference between ASD and typically developing females does not resemble differences between ASD (n = 47) and typically developing males (n = 47), even though neural response did not significantly differ between female and male ASD. For our second objective, we found that ASD females (n = 61), versus males (n = 66), showed larger median size of rare copy number variants containing gene(s) expressed in early life (10 postconceptual weeks to 2 years) in regions implicated by the typically developing female > female functional MRI contrast. Post hoc analyses suggested this difference was primarily driven by copy number variants containing gene(s) expressed in striatum. This striatal finding was reproducible among n = 2075 probands (291 female) from an independent cohort. Together, our findings suggest that striatal impacts may contribute to pathways of risk in female ASD and advocate caution in drawing conclusions regarding female ASD based on male-predominant cohorts.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, functional MRI, genetics, striatum, social perception

Discussion

This ASDf-enriched sample has yielded a number of novel insights into female neuro-endophenotypes of social motion perception and potential contributors to female risk for ASD. While functional MRI highlights widespread functional differences between ASDf and TDf viewing human motion, analysis of the size of rare CNVs containing genes expressed in these functional MRI-identified brain regions suggests that potential impacts to striatum may be related to a sex-differential process of risk in early development. These larger ASDf CNVs support the FPE model prediction of greater genetic load in ASDf versus ASDm. Below, we discuss findings related to our major research objectives: (i) characterization of a functional MRI-based profile of ASDf (versus TDf) response to socially meaningful motion; and (ii) integration of functional MRI and genetics data.

First, we observed that the ASDf brain response during human action observation is characterized by less recruitment of parietal and posterior frontal cortex relative to TDf, particularly right somatosensory cortex, motor/premotor areas, and the putaminal region of striatum. This is distinct both from the ASD neural response associated with this paradigm in previous ASDm-predominant literature,13,14 and from trend-level TDm > ASDm results in this sample, which exhibit minimal overlap with TDf > ASDf. One prominent peak of TDf > ASDf occurred in right PMv, a region putatively associated with ‘mirroring’ properties,47,48 and which some suggest may help observers ‘fill in’ information missing from point-light human motion displays.49 Somatosensory regions detected in TDf > ASDf also display putative mirroring properties.50 Thus, greater recruitment of these regions by TDf might imply stronger engagement of such processes. PMv was not represented in BrainSpan, and was thus excluded from our Objective 2 analyses.

To contextualize our TDf > ASDf results, we also analysed differences in response between TDf and TDm, TDm and ASDm, and between ASDf and ASDm. TDf showed increased response to BIO > SCRAM relative to TDm in a variety of frontal and parietal regions. As in the sample of typically developing adults from the study by Anderson and colleagues20, TDf versus TDm demonstrated greater BIO > SCRAM activation within right DFC, although other regions demonstrating typically developing child (e.g. ventromedial prefrontal cortex) or typically developing adult (e.g. amygdala) sex differences in their cohort did not replicate in our sample, possibly due to differences in the age ranges of our samples. Many of the regions that emerged from our TDf > TDm contrast overlapped with those represented in the TDf > ASDf map, including right-lateralized anterior insula, IFG, DFC, MFG, and bilateral aIPS and paracingulate. Together, these regions resemble the salience and central executive brain networks. The salience network contains bilateral fronto-insular cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate, and contributes to monitoring and detection of salient stimuli.51 The central executive network is correlated with right fronto-insular activity and includes DFC, supplementary motor area, and lateral parietal cortices; these systems together play a role in attention, working memory, and cognitive control.52 The executive and salience sites recruited more strongly by TDf could play a number of roles potentially contributory to resilience in social perception. Right anterior insula contributes to detection of novel salient stimuli51 and switching between the task-negative (default) and task-positive central executive network53; activity in right anterior insula, IFG, and MFG/DFC can indicate renewed attention to a stimulus.54 These functions suggest more robust attentional reorienting among TDf to the human stimulus after a scrambled block, and/or greater attribution of salience to BIO displays by TDf than either TDm or ASDf.

In previous work examining resting state functional connectivity in our GENDAAR cohort, we found that typically developing youth demonstrated sex differences in functional connectivity of the salience but not the central executive network, while ASD youth showed the opposite pattern, with sex differences in the central executive, but not the salience network.55 Given our previous results, and the role of the salience network in managing switching to the central executive network,53 the TDf > ASDf differences we observed in response to social stimuli within nodes of these two networks could be driven by intrinsic neurotypical sex differences in the salience network that are not evident in ASD. Unfortunately, while our present results, and those of our previous resting state work, suggest that anterior insula and aIPS might have relevance to TDf resilience in social perception, these regions were not characterized in BrainSpan, and thus could not be assessed in our Objective 2 analyses.

We did not detect significant differences between ASDf and ASDm in their functional MRI neural response to biological motion. Moreover, contrary to extant literature, ASDm did not differ from TDm on this task. In exploratory follow-up analyses, we considered whether the TDm > ASDm pattern might be similar to that of TDf > ASDf, but below our threshold for statistical detection. Under a more lenient method for statistical inference, ASDm versus TDm displayed right pSTS hypoactivation similar to that found in previous work,13,14 suggesting that modern methods of functional MRI statistical inference may reduce our power to detect this effect in exchange for greater type I error control. TDf > ASDf did not overlap with TDm > ASDm under this more lenient method. Thus, while ASDf and ASDm response to human motion did not significantly differ, at the same time what distinguishes ASDf from TDf does not appear similar to what distinguishes ASDm from TDm.

While ASDf and ASDm functional brain response did not differ, genetic analyses demonstrated significant differences between these groups. Specifically, ASDf (versus ASDm) exhibited larger size of rare CNVs containing genes expressed during early development of striatum. This finding, accompanied by ASDf (versus TDf) hypoactivation of putamen (a component of the striatum) during social perception, suggests that potential impacts to striatum may be an element of developmental risk for ASD trajectories in girls. Previously, putaminal disruptions in ASD versus typically developing individuals have been documented,56–61 albeit largely in ASDm-exclusive or ASDm-predominant samples. We interpret our findings as suggesting that striatal involvement, while not unique to ASDf, may have a particularly important role in ASDf aetiologies. The putamen, historically attributed a primarily motoric role, also appears involved in social and language functions.62 Among typically developing individuals, the putamen receives projections from motor/premotor (primarily terminating in dorsolateral/central putamen), and prefrontal cortex (primarily terminating in anterior putamen), and appears to serve as an interface between information about motivational value and voluntary behaviour.63,64 Recent work using resting state functional MRI data suggests that while TDm (females not assessed) demonstrate distinct functional segregation of putamen into anterior and posterior segments, putamen in ASDm appears as one functional unit.56 In the present investigation, we observed the peak coordinate of TDf > ASDf striatal response in a region of right anterior putamen characterized as having structural connectivity primarily to executive prefrontal regions (including MFG and DFC65) It also may be notable that in addition to reduced ASDf response in M1C, we observed larger size of CNVs containing genes expressed in M1C in many (though not all) of our control tests. Taken together, this pattern of results could indicate disturbances to the striatomotor-cortical system more broadly and, thus, processes of linking information about motivational value to action. Differential putaminal recruitment during social perception might reflect differing organization of functional connectivity, in which the region is linked to the central executive network and, perhaps, associated protective functions for TDf but not ASDf. Genetic disruptions specifically impacting striatal cortex during development may underlie such functional atypicalities, and have greater impact via disruption of female protective mechanisms. The general lack of female characterization in the literature on ASD putaminal disruptions, however, makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions along these lines. Future work should analyse ASDf and TDf patterns of functional connectivity and gene co-expression among these regions to clarify this possibility.

When considering together our findings of robust TDf > ASDf and TDf > TDm differences in brain function, lack of ASD sex differences in brain response, and greater ASDf versus ASDm size of CNVs containing genes expressed in early striatal development, the overall picture presented is complex but not inconsistent with an FPE model. While the FPE predicts that ASDf should have greater genetic load than ASDm—a prediction supported by our findings—this does not necessarily equate to greater symptomaticity or disruption of brain function. While some ASDf may lack resilience factors typically found in TDf, other ASDf may retain aspects of female protection that make their phenotype less severe than it might otherwise have been given their greater aetiological load. Moreover, female resilience factors may also have sociocultural aspects (e.g. more emotion-oriented talk to daughters versus sons66); the different socialization experiences that an ASDf might encounter could lead, by adolescence, to a brain profile that does not significantly differ from ASDm despite greater genetic load.

In sum, our findings provide new insights into ASDf brain response during social perception, reveal a potential substrate of female risk for ASD trajectories, and illuminate unique qualities of TDf response to human motion relative to TDm. In addition to the basic systems for processing social motion engaged by both sexes, TDf (unique from TDm or ASDf) recruit additional salience and central executive systems. Further, relative to TDf, ASDf show reduced recruitment of striatum during this perceptual task. Compared to ASDm, ASDf (both in our cohort and an independent sample) demonstrate larger size of rare CNVs containing genes expressed in early striatal development, suggesting that, for ASDf, potential impacts to striatum may be particularly relevant. Our results demonstrate the risk of drawing conclusions regarding ASDf based on work comprised of ASDm-predominant samples, and argue for continued attention to the unique characteristics of ASDf.

Men lower in status-linked variable "perceived mate value" are relatively disinclined to offset their high hostile sexism with high benevolent sexism

Curvilinear Sexism and Its Links to Men’s Perceived Mate Value. Jennifer K. Bosson, Gregory J. Rousis, Roxanne N. Felig. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, April 23, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211009726

Abstract: We tested the novel hypothesis that men lower in status-linked variables—that is, subjective social status and perceived mate value—are relatively disinclined to offset their high hostile sexism with high benevolent sexism. Findings revealed that mate value, but not social status, moderates the hostile–benevolent sexism link among men: Whereas men high in perceived mate value endorse hostile and benevolent sexism linearly across the attitude range, men low in mate value show curvilinear sexism, characterized by declining benevolence as hostility increases above the midpoint. Study 1 (N = 15,205) establishes the curvilinear sexism effect and shows that it is stronger among men than women. Studies 2 (N = 328) and 3 (N = 471) show that the curve is stronger among men low versus high in perceived mate value, and especially if they lack a serious relationship partner (Study 3). Discussion considers the relevance of these findings for understanding misogyny.

Keywords: hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, ambivalent sexism, social status, mate value

Quality assurance and cultural sensitivity: The case study of interpreting taboo from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa

Quality assurance and cultural sensitivity: The case study of interpreting taboo from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa. Vital Bizimana. Univ of Rwanda, Master's. Feb 2021. www.dr.ur.ac.rw/bitstream/handle/123456789/1261/DISSERTATION%20BIZIMANA%20VITAL%20FINAL%20VERSION%20AFTER%20DEFENSE%20ok.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Abstract: This study claims that interpreting taboo from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa  can affect negatively the quality of interpreting due to cultural factors. Therefore, it explores the  negative consequences of interpreting taboo and investigates relevant strategies to cope with them.

The methods adopted for conducting the research were the following: questionnaires to and semi-structured interviews with interpreters, as well as a comparison of interpreting performances. All  these methods helped to identify the difficulties the interpreters face when dealing with taboo and  the frequency of strategies they use in the case of such difficulties.

In order to assess the quality of the interpreting rendition, the study mainly adopted the list of  quality assessment criteria by Schjöldager (1996). Her list is comprised of comprehensibility and  delivery, language, coherence and plausibility, and loyalty.

Findings obtained at the end of the analysis first show that linguistic taboos in Kinyarwanda,  English and French cultures include but are not limited to words related to sex, race, ethnic group,  blasphemy, bad language (swearing, cursing, insults), sexual taboo (sexual organs, bodily  functions) and scatological taboo (excrements). Secondly, they indicate that ignoring or using  taboo while interpreting from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa may have severe  consequences on the message, the listener and the interpreter. The message may be unfaithful,  implausible, misleading, distorted, diluted or lost. The listener may be shocked, embarrassed or  offended. The interpreter may be marginalized as someone who talks “dirty”. Finally, the findings  show that interpreters resort to various strategies to cope with challenges posed by taboo language.

On the one hand, the strategies include, for euphemistic purposes, equivalence, paraphrasing,  omission, addition and substitution. On the other hand, they are comprised of literal interpretation  and equivalence techniques for faithfulness and linguistic accuracy purposes.

In view of the above, this study recommends schools of interpreting and/or interpreting  associations to organize specialized training on interpreting taboo, to monitor the practice of  interpreting taboo and to draft guidelines on interpreting taboo. It also recommends research on  interpreting taboo from the psycholinguistic, ethical and listener’s perspectives. 

Keywords: taboo, linguistic taboo, culture, interpreting quality, interpreting strategies, euphemism

Research found that people are willing to compromise on physical attractiveness for other qualities; against expectations, people gave more importance to attractiveness than before the epidemic, maybe as proxy for good health

Settling down without settling: Perceived changes in partner preferences in response to COVID-19 concern. Alexopoulos, Cassandra et al. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (In Press). Apr 2021. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/30179/

Abstract: The goal of this study was to explore the positive association between concern related to COVID-19 and single individuals’ perceived changes to their partner preferences. In addition, we investigated the mediating role of fear of being single. Results indicated that people with greater COVID-19 concern perceived an increase in the importance of stability, family commitment, and physical/social attractiveness, as well as fear of being single. Fear of being single only negatively predicted the importance of physical/social attractiveness, whereas it positively predicted the importance of stability and family commitment. Thus, in most cases, people with a greater concern for COVID-19 perceived themselves to become more selective, even when they exhibit higher levels of fear of being single.

Egos deflating with the Great Recession: Narcissistic traits rose and fell with the U.S. economy, incresed 1982 to 2008 and then declined; economic growth is linked to more narcissism and individualism.

Egos deflating with the Great Recession: A cross-temporal meta-analysis and within-campus analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, 1982–2016. Jean M.Twenge  et al. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 179, September 2021, 110947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110947

Highlights

• Narcissistic personality traits increased 1982 to 2008 and then declined.

• Narcissistic traits rose and fell with the U.S. economy.

• Economic growth is linked to more narcissism and individualism.

Abstract: Scholars posit that economically prosperous times should produce higher individualism and narcissism, and economically challenging times lower individualism and narcissism. This creates the possibility that narcissism among U.S. college students, which increased between 1982 and 2009, may have declined after the Great Recession. Updating a cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to 2013 (k = 164, N = 35,095) and adding two within-campus analyses to 2015 (Study 2: UC Davis, N = 58,287) and 2016 (Study 3: U South Alabama, N = 14,319) revealed a non-monotonic pattern, with increases in NPI scores between 1982 and 2008 and declines thereafter. The decline in NPI scores during and after the recession took narcissism back to their original levels in the 1980s and 1990s. Implications for the interplay between economic conditions and personality traits are discussed.

Keywords: NarcissismNarcissistic personality traitsBirth cohortTime periodRecession

5. General discussion

Across three separate studies, we identified a non-monotonic trend in narcissism scores over time, with scores increasing until the Great Recession and then decreasing during and after it. Consistent with previous research (Stewart & Bernhardt, 2010; Twenge et al., 2008; Twenge and Foster, 2008, Twenge and Foster, 2010, cf. Grijalva et al., 2015), narcissism increased among college students between 1982 and the late 2000s. Then, around the beginning of the Great Recession, narcissism scores began to falter, by 2013–2016 falling to the levels of the 1980s/1990s. This pattern appeared in both a nationwide cross-temporal meta-analysis of college student samples (Study 1) and within-campus analyses of students from University of California, Davis (Study 2) and the University of South Alabama (Study 3). In some analyses, years with higher unemployment and fewer young people participating in the workforce had lower narcissism scores. Thus, the Great Recession may have acted as a reset for the steady rise in narcissism between the 1980s and the 2000s.

These results are consistent with theoretical models that tie narcissism and related constructs (e.g., higher individualism, lower communalism) to economic growth and decline, especially employment (e.g., Bianchi, 2014, Bianchi, 2016; Greenfield, 2009; Park et al., 2014). It is also consistent with models that link higher socioeconomic status to higher narcissism and related variables (e.g., entitlement, antagonism; Piff, 2014; Piff et al., 2012).

Although we have explored economic factors as a potential cause of trends in narcissism, other causes are also possible. For example, narcissism began to decline when the nation elected its first African-American president, Barack Obama, who regularly spoke about the importance of empathy. In addition, the increasing popularity of social media may have played a role. In the years before 2010 when social media was less popular, these sites may have encouraged narcissism as they were an effective way to gain attention and followers (Liu & Baumeister, 2016; McCain & Campbell, 2018). Once social media became used by the vast majority of traditional-age college students after 2012, however, happiness and self-esteem – traits positively correlated with grandiose narcissism in young populations (Sedikides et al., 2004) – began to decline (Twenge et al., 2018), perhaps because social media leads to unflattering upward social comparison (Steers et al., 2014). The possible suppressive effects of social media on narcissism may be one reason why narcissism scores leveled off in Study 3 after 2013 and why economic factors were better predictors in analyses up to 2013 compared to those up to 2016. This suggests that other factors were lowering NPI scores after 2013. Research should continue to explore links between social media, narcissism, and poor psychological well-being.

The time-lag design of this study holds age relatively constant. Thus, age (i.e., being younger versus older) is unlikely to explain the results; not only would age have to differ systematically with year, but it would have to follow the same non-monotonic trend as narcissism to explain the results. However, this design cannot determine whether the shifts are due to cohort effects (which only affect young people) or time period effects (which affect people of all ages). If this is a cohort effect, early Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1988) reached all-time highs for narcissism and remained that way, while late Millennials (those born between 1989 and 1994) returned narcissism to the levels of the late Boomers (those born in the early 1960s) and will remain that way. If this is a time period effect, it would suggest that the narcissism of all generations deflated during and after the Great Recession.

As found in previous research, the change over time in narcissism is moderate at the average (around a third of a standard deviation), similar to many effects in social psychology (Richard et al., 2003). However, the effects are larger at the ends of the distribution. In 1982, about 19% of college students answered the majority of the NPI items in the narcissistic direction; by 2009 this was 30%, a 58% increase (Twenge & Foster, 2010). By 2013, it was back to around 19%, a 37% decrease. These changes are thus large enough to be noticeable, particularly if those scoring 20 or higher on narcissism cause issues in the classroom or workplace (Campbell et al., 2015).

5.1. Limitations and future research

This research is limited in several ways. First, the method of cross-temporal meta-analysis is limited to the available data. The samples taken each year are not random. Optimally, they are random with respect to the association of interest (i.e., narcissism and time) but that is not guaranteed. We partially remedied this by also examining samples from the same college campus in Studies 2 and 3. Ideally, future research will explore changes over time in other individual difference data sets that are differently constructed, include variables related to narcissism such as better-than-average ratings or values, and include relevant cultural products (e.g. song lyrics). Also, all three of these studies were limited to college students, who are a growing but select portion of young Americans. The conclusions are also limited to the U.S.; it is unknown if the downward trend in narcissism after 2008 also appeared in other countries.

Second, there is not an optimal economic measure to use in this research. We used the unemployment rate and the employment to population ratio because they have a long history of use and are linked directly to individuals' economic experience. The unemployment rate may not have a direct or immediate effect on college students via their job prospects, but may influence them through their parents' employment experiences and their sense of their own economic prospects in the future. Other measures of economic activity such as GDP may be less directly related to individuals psychologically, and price inflation/deflation is challenging to measure cleanly. For example, the consumer price index (CPI) often obscures the sources of inflation that dominate people's thinking on a day-to-day basis (e.g., education, housing prices, and medical care). Overall, there is a need for more sophisticated economic models and data in terms of psychological processes.

When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey

Kowal M, Groyecka-Bernard A, Kochan-Wójcik M, Sorokowski P (2021) When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey. PLoS ONE 16(4): e0249516. Apr 22 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249516

Abstract: The present global study attempts to verify the links between marital satisfaction and the number of children as well as its moderators in an international sample. Data for the study was obtained from our published dataset and included 7178 married individuals from 33 countries and territories. We found that the number of children was a significant negative predictor of marital satisfaction; also sex, education, and religiosity were interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction, while there were no interactions with economic status and individual level of individualistic values. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children in several, non-Western countries and territories.

Discussion

Our findings are in line with other research [26, 28], which showed that the number of children can be considered as a global, negative correlate of marital satisfaction. Even though some previous studies found that being a parent (as compared to non-parents) is linked to increased overall well-being [1, 2] (and that there are pronounced, cross-cultural differences within this matter, e.g., between American and Chinese adults [62]), the current analyses seem to refute the notion that such beneficial influence of parenthood extends to marital satisfaction. Moreover, as much greater share of variance can be attributed to individuals than to countries, one can reasonably conclude that marital satisfaction depends more on the individual characteristics than on the values promoted in the country. At the same time, we found that the association between marital satisfaction and the number of children vary substantially across countries, what necessitates further investigations.

Our study provided evidence for the complexity and the influence of other variables on the link between marital satisfaction and the number of children, namely, sex, education, and religiosity. We observed that a higher number of children was associated with decreased marital satisfaction only among women. According to the social role theory [37], it is women who are culturally pressured to fulfill tasks related to childbearing and housekeeping, while men provide for their families outside of the home. In such a situation, having more children generates more home duties for mothers than fathers [6, 34]. At the same time, as caring for children and their safety is a typical female role [37], men may solely focus on having fun and playing with the offspring [2], and thus, men may experience less distress and, in turn, more positive emotions regarding their spouse. Considering the imbalance between spouses’ duties related to having more children, results of the present study are in line with the equity theory [35], which predicts that partners, who invests more in the relationship than their spouses, experience more severe distress.

In addition to the sex differences, our analyses showed the interactive effect of the number of children and the level of parental education on marital satisfaction. Previous findings suggested that higher level of parental education should facilitate family size planning and achieving a balance between familial and personal life goals by both parents [63]. However, our results advocate for the opposite–we observed that the more education parents receive, the lower levels of marital satisfaction they experienced. When higher educated parents have more children, they may encounter more difficulties in balancing various social roles. This situation may result from the limitations of time and personal resources necessary to reconcile satisfyingly fulfilling parental, partner, and professional roles at the level determined by generally available knowledge [64].

We hypothesized that material status may be interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction. Surprisingly, we found no support for this hypothesis. Parents of more children, regardless of their material situation, reported lower levels of marital satisfaction. Two complementary mechanisms may explain these findings. First, according to the restriction of freedom model [26], parents of high material status may more severely perceive a greater restriction of their free time. Instead of pursuing desirable careers or fulfilling dreams that would otherwise be financially affordable, parents focus on their offspring (who require time and attention). Second, according to the financial cost model [26], having children entails a myriad of expenses. With more children, it is even more difficult to make ends meet. Also, economic problems may be associated with husbands’ increased hostility and decreased supportiveness, both leading to wives’ perceptions of lower marital quality [39]. On the other hand, Twenge et al. [26] showed that when a couple becomes parents, a relationship between the transition to parenthood and the decline of marriage satisfaction may be stronger for individuals of higher socioeconomic status. Thus, we conclude that when the number of children increases, neither good nor bad material situation protects spouses from experiencing decreased levels of marital satisfaction. Similarly, in case of individualism. Previous studies found that parents from Western countries, usually recognized as more individualistically oriented [49], experience a decrease of marital satisfaction upon birth of their children [26], and thus, we hypothesized that more level of individualistic values may interact with marital satisfaction and the number of children. However, we found no evidence for the influence of individualism on this relationship.

Analyzing the impact of religiosity on the number of children and marital satisfaction, we observed that religiosity may be a protective buffer against a marital satisfaction decrease in larger families. Many religious communities stress positive marital and family relations [65, 66], offer different forms of support to parents [67], and value parenting likewise bringing up children through religious teachings, ceremonies or accommodations to families with children [65, 68]. Furthermore, religious people may not consider maternity in terms of inner conflict between individual aims and parent obligations [6, 69]. On the contrary, religiosity may promote traditional roles (i.e., being a parent, a spouse), and thus, positively influence the link between parenthood and marital satisfaction [70–72].

The correlations between the number of children and marital satisfaction differed across countries (see Fig 1), being positive in few cases (only among men) and negative in others. However, these correlations were never strong. The plot suggests no emerging patterns that could condition the direction and intensity of these relationships (e.g., a positive relationship in men in Germany, Nigeria, and Mexico). However, a positive effect of individualism on marital satisfaction suggests that it remains dependent on culturally determined issues. Although individualism did not differentiate the relationship of our interest, some country-level or other culturally relevant aspects of spouses’ functioning should be tested in future studies. For example, work culture [73], country policies [74] or social equity norms shared within a society [36] may explain to a higher extent the cultural differences in the role that number of children play in marital satisfaction. Nevertheless, due to the limitations described below we want to stress that the present results should be treated with caution until future cross-cultural studies provide further support.

Strengths and limitations

Results of the present analysis are not free of limitations. Most importantly, the statistical significance of the observed relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children was very close to the conventional threshold of 0.05. We cannot exclude the scenario in which the significance of this predictor might have been a result of a large sample size, what required caution in drawing any general conclusions. Furthermore, the data samples are not fully representative for the whole world’s population, as the majority of participants inhabited more urbanized regions. We were also unable to analyze interdependent marriage dyads or non-married, cohabitating couples. Moreover, religiosity appeared to be a moderator of the link between the number of children and marital satisfaction, but, unfortunately, it was assessed only by a single question in the survey (“Are you religious?”), which makes further interpretations difficult. The partial, declarative knowledge of participants economic status also limits our conclusions. It would be insightful if future studies focused on the age of the children, as it may also affect the relationship between the family size and marital satisfaction. Finally, our study did not focus on very complex relationships between our variables of interest (i.e., three-way-interactions). We suggest that building upon sound theoretical backgrounds, future studies could form more detailed hypotheses on the interplay between several predictors of marital satisfaction and their temporal dynamics.

On the other hand, in the present analysis we used a large-scale sample database from different regions of the world. All participants answered the same questionnaires, which tried to capture numerous important variables, previously shown to correlate with marital satisfaction. The data was collected in the same period of time and originated in different regions of the world. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children and variables that are frequently hypothesized to influence this relationship (i.e., sex, religiosity, age, education, level of individualism, material situation, and marriage duration) in several, non-Western countries and territories. Such insight may be especially important when considering the importance of marital satisfaction on health and well-being both of spouses [75] and their children [76].

Play vocalisations in primates and other mammals often include sounds of panting, supporting the theory that human laughter evolved from an auditory cue of laboured breathing during play

Play vocalisations and human laughter: a comparative review. Sasha L. Winkler & Gregory A. Bryant. Bioacoustics, Apr 19 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/09524622.2021.1905065

Abstract: Complex social play is well-documented across many animals. During play, animals often use signals that facilitate beneficial interactions and reduce potential costs, such as escalation to aggression. Although greater focus has been given to visual play signals, here we demonstrate that vocalisations constitute a widespread mode of play signalling across species. Our review indicates that vocal play signals are usually inconspicuous, although loud vocalisations, which suggest a broadcast function, are present in humans and some other species. Spontaneous laughter in humans shares acoustic and functional characteristics with play vocalisations across many species, but most notably with other great apes. Play vocalisations in primates and other mammals often include sounds of panting, supporting the theory that human laughter evolved from an auditory cue of laboured breathing during play. Human social complexity allowed laughter to evolve from a play-specific vocalisation into a sophisticated pragmatic signal that interacts with a large suite of other multimodal social behaviours in both intragroup and intergroup contexts. This review provides a foundation for detailed comparative analyses of play vocalisations across diverse taxa, which can shed light on the form and function of human laughter and, in turn, help us better understand the evolution of human social interaction.

KEYWORDS: Play vocalisationslaughtersocial signallingevolutionvocal communication

Deceptive self-presentation in social media: The more sex-egalitarian the country, the more females reported more use of physical attractiveness and males reported use of personal achievement

Gender gaps in deceptive self-presentation on social media platforms vary with gender equality: A multinational investigation. Dasha Kolesnyk, M.G. de Jong, Rik Pieters. Psychological Science, Accepted/In press Apr 2021. https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/gender-gaps-in-deceptive-self-presentation-on-social-media-platfo

Abstract: Deceptive self-presentation (DSP) on social media platforms appears to be common. However, its prevalence and determinants are still largely unknown, partly because admitting such behavior is socially sensitive and hard to study. The authors investigated DSP from the perspective of mating theories in two key domains: physical attractiveness and personal achievement. A truth-telling technique was used to measure DSP in a survey among 12,257 individuals (51% female) across 25 countries. As hypothesized, men and women reported more DSP in the domain traditionally most relevant for their gender in a mating context (females about physical attractiveness and males about personal achievement). However and contrary to lay beliefs (N = 790), we found larger rather than smaller gender differences in DSP in countries with higher gender equality, due to fewer gender-atypical relative to gender-typical DSP in countries with higher gender equality. Higher gender equality was also associated with less DSP for men and women worldwide. Thus, increased gender equality conditions on the (super)national level may allow traditional, ingrained gender differences to express themselves more.

Apparent contradiction between dogs' stronger affectional bonds toward humans than toward members of their own species: Dogs' intense sensitivity to social hierarchy contributes to their willingness to accept human leadership

Dogs' (Canis lupus familiaris) behavioral adaptations to a human-dominated niche: A review and novel hypothesis. Clive D. L. Wynne. Advances in the Study of Behavior, April 24 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.asb.2021.03.004

Abstract: This chapter contextualizes the dog-human relationship in the dog's origin as a scavenger on the fringes of human settlements over 15,000 years ago. It then reviews the evidence for unique evolved cognitive structures in dogs that could explain their success in a human-dominated world. Failing to find evidence of unique human-like social-cognitive capacities I then review uncontroversial facts of dogs' basic behavioral biology, including reproductive and foraging behavior and, particularly, affiliative and attachment-related behaviors. This leads to consideration of dogs' social behavior, both conspecific and toward other species, especially humans. I draw attention to a seldom-noted apparent contradiction between dogs' stronger affectional bonds toward humans than toward members of their own species. Dogs' social groups also show steeper social hierarchies accompanied by more behaviors indicating formal dominance than do other canid species including wolves. I resolve this contradiction by proposing that dogs' intense sensitivity to social hierarchy contributes to their willingness to accept human leadership. People commonly control resources that dogs need and also unknowingly express behaviors which dogs perceive as formal signs of dominance. This may be what Darwin was referring to when he endorsed the idea that a dog looks on his master as on a god. Whatever the merits of this idea, if it serves to redirect behavioral research on dogs in human society more toward the social interactions of these species in their diverse forms of symbiosis it will have served a useful function.

Keywords: DomesticationSymbiosisImprintingDominanceSocial hierarchyDogs (Canis lupus familiaris)Wolves (Canis lupus lupus)

Does success change people? Examining objective career success as a precursor for personality development

Does success change people? Examining objective career success as a precursor for personality development. Andreas Hirschi et al. Journal of Vocational Behavior, April 20 2021, 103582, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2021.103582

Highlights

• Tested if objective career success predicts changes in Big Five personality traits

• Representative German sample assessed three times over eight years was examined

• Career success (i.e., income and occupational prestige) predicted increase in openness

• Higher income predicted decrease in neuroticism

• Higher occupational prestige predicted decrease in extraversion

Abstract: Numerous studies established personality traits as predictors of career success. However, if and how career success can also trigger changes in personality has not received much attention. Drawing from the neosocioanalytic model of personality and its social investment and corresponsive principles, this paper investigated how the attainment of objective career success contributes to personality change in the Big Five traits of neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. We conducted cross-lagged analyses with three measurement waves over eight years with a representative sample of 4′767 working adults from the German Socio-Economic Panel and examined if objective success (i.e., income and occupational prestige) predicted changes in personality. We also tested if effects differed across age groups or between men and women. Results showed that career success predicted changes in personality for neuroticism, extraversion, and openness. Higher income predicted a decrease in neuroticism and increase in openness. Higher prestige predicted a decrease in extraversion and an increase in openness. Results did not differ according to age group or for men or women. We discuss the results in light of the effects that career success can exert on personality development and the complexity inherent in observing personality change.

Keywords: Personality changeCareer successPrestigeIncomeSocial investment

3. Discussion

The aim of this paper was to test how personality traits change due to achieved objective career success. We thereby contribute to the limited research on the consequences of career success (Spurk et al., 2019) and to the literature on how work experiences affect changes in personality traits (Tasselli et al., 2018). We also contribute to personality-related vocational and counselling psychology research (Brown and Hirschi, 2013) by highlighting that personality traits not only can affect occupational attainment, but that occupational attainment can also lead to changes in personality. In an important extension of existing research, which is typically based on selective and non-representative convenience samples, we investigated our hypotheses in a large representative sample and conducted multigroup analyses to examine potential age group and gender differences. Globally, our results show evidence for personality change following career success and also that personality predicts career success.

Reciprocal Influences between Career Success and Personality.

The results of the cross-lagged analyses gave some evidence for the notion that career success prompts changes in personality. Higher income preceded a decrease in neuroticism, but an increase in openness. More prestige preceded an increase in openness and a decrease in extraversion. The direction of the relations for neuroticism and openness were expected, with success supporting the developmental trend of personality towards functional maturity over time as indicated by less neuroticism and more openness (Roberts and Wood, 2006).

The relation between neuroticism and income was reciprocal and negative, which confirms previous research in a smaller U.S. sample assessed with two measurement waves over 10 years (Sutin et al., 2009). These results suggest that neuroticism is a hindrance to the attainment of objective career success, presumably because achieving career success necessitates emotional stability, and dealing with stressful work challenges and uncertainties in a productive way. Based on the corresponsive principle (Roberts et al., 2003), the results moreover imply that attaining and sustaining success poses social role demands that are contrary to neuroticism, which leads successful people to suppress and decrease their neurotic tendencies over time.

The relation between openness and success was reciprocal and positive, also confirming our assumption and previous results that assessed the relation between upward job changes and openness in a representative Australian sample (Nieß and Zacher, 2015). The findings suggest that openness is a resource for the attainment of objective career success, presumably because attaining and maintaining success necessitates meeting intellectual role demands, such as being open to new ideas and opportunities or finding innovative solutions to challenges and problems at work. In turn, meeting such demands would activate and strengthen openness over time.

We had expected that extraversion would increase, not decrease, as a consequence of success. Previous research showed that aspects of extraversion, such as positive emotionality, are important for attaining success (Le et al., 2014; Roberts et al., 2003). However, some research found that while extraversion may be predictive of attaining positions with certain occupational characteristics, these same characteristics do not necessarily predict changes in extraversion (Wille and De Fruyt, 2014). Thus, it may be that once individuals attain a certain level of prestige, there is less need to be sociable, because one's position in interpersonal contexts is defined by one's status, and less by one's social relations. Moreover, successful individuals might depend less on the support from others, decreasing their need to be sociable. Hence, our findings suggest that being in a prestigious occupation might decrease sociable role demands, resulting in decreases of extraversion over time.

In terms of personality predicting success, we also observed that conscientiousness predicted a decrease in income, which goes against meta-analytic findings of a positive association between conscientiousness and salary and promotions (Ng et al., 2005; Ng and Feldman, 2014). However, research on the relation between conscientiousness and success has not produced consistent results, with several studies reporting no significant relation between conscientiousness and objective career success (e.g., Nyhus and Pons, 2005; Seibert and Kraimer, 2001). This suggests that the relation between conscientiousness and objective career success is not straightforward. The negative predictive effect of conscientiousness in our sample might be explained in the way that conscientious individuals tend to select conventional occupations (Barrick et al., 2003) which in some cases may include jobs with a lower salary (Ghetta et al., 2018). In addition, it may be that individuals with higher levels of conscientiousness may prefer to fulfill the duties in their current jobs and not look for higher success opportunities, which in turn, results in a decrease in income over time. In addition, some work demands associated with increased objective success, such as leading and supervising, might be in contradiction to typical aspects of high conscientiousness, such as rigidity or perfectionism, leading successful individuals to lower their manifestations of conscientiousness over time to achieve a better fit.

Our examinations on how career success predicts subsequent changes in personality also make a more general contribution to the investigation of the corresponsive principle of personality development (Roberts et al., 2003). Based on this perspective, we assumed the same traits that predict career success should also change as a result of career success and that attaining and maintaining objective success poses demands that trigger personality adjustment processes. We found support for corresponsive mechanisms for neuroticism and openness. For extraversion, success predicted a change in this trait, but this trait did not predict changes in success.

For agreeableness, no significant relations were observed in either direction. This is in contrast to research showing that agreeableness is negatively related to objective career success (Judge et al., 2012; Ng et al., 2005) and that individuals in positions with more responsibilities showed slower increases in agreeableness over time (Wille and De Fruyt, 2014). However, other studies found that more prosocial individuals (a characteristic closely related to agreeableness) have higher incomes (Eriksson et al., 2018). It could be that the relation with career success is thus more complex and moderated by other factors, such as occupation or organization. For example, in a more competitive climate where individual contributions are highly valued, agreeableness might be less positive for objective career success compared to in environments where cooperation and team performance are more important (Bolino and Grant, 2016). Also, being successful might cause individuals to be less depended on others and thus reduce their agreeableness. However, it could also be that the security of having achieved success might induce individual to become more invested in (pro)social activities (Harari et al., 2017), potentially increasing their agreeableness over time. Future research could more closely examine under which conditions agreeableness might relative positively or negatively with career success.

To understand the nonsignificant findings, it is also important to remember that objective career success and personality do not develop in a vacuum, and it is the merit of the social investment principle to have pointed attention to the different roles that people take up during the life course and their potential impact on personality development processes. For example, research showed that life events such as child birth or unemployment can have a meaningful impact on personality change (Denissen et al., 2019). Such live events could also affect the attainment of objective career success and can thus affect the relations between success and personality change in many ways that our study could not account for. As such, when applying the social investment principle and the corresponsive mechanism, it seems necessary to attend to multiple influences of personality development.

An inherent difficulty in empirically examining the claims of the social investment principle is determining at what time people start to invest in a particular role, and how investment in different roles at the same time works out across a longer time frame for individuals. Investing in two different roles at the same time may affect personality in similar ways, hence strengthening changes in a particular trait, but roles may also affect traits in opposite ways, without noticeable change. A promotion towards a more managerial job with more responsibilities and work demands may make someone more emotionally stable (i.e., lower in neuroticism), whereas a baby at home may challenge that person's neuroticism score in the opposite direction (Denissen et al., 2019). Such examples resulting from the social investment principle illustrate the complexities to demonstrate its claims and predictions.

Our findings also have important implications for vocational and counselling psychology research which is mostly focused on assessing traits as relatively stable predictors of career choices, vocational behavior, occupational attainment, and occupational niche-finding (Brown and Hirschi, 2013). Extending this literature, our study shows that occupational attainment can lead to changes in personality also in adulthood and that personality traits are thus more dynamically linked with vocational behavior and attainment than typically assumed. This insight could for example inform future theory and research on the social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent and Brown, 2013; Lent et al., 1994) which acknowledges that more distal person inputs in terms of personality traits can have important effects on vocational interests, career choices, performance, and career self-management behaviors. Our findings could extend this framework by investigating how career attainments can have feedback effects not only on more proximal but also more distal person factors, thereby acknowledging even more dynamic social cognitive processes in career development. Similarly, in career construction theory (Savickas, 2013) the framework of adaptivity, adaptability, adaptive responses, and adaptation (Hirschi et al., 2015) sees traits as components of adaptivity which predicts other outcomes. In extension, our findings suggest that adaptation outcomes could also lead to changes in adaptivity.

Moderating Effects.

Our multigroup comparisons showed no evidence for age group or gender differences in how personality traits and career success impact each other. While previous research has shown that personality change is most prominent in young adulthood (Schwaba and Bleidorn, 2018), our results show that career success and personality relate to each other in uniform ways across age. This suggests that sustained social investment in the work role, and the attainment of objective career success, can have an impact on individuals' personality not only in early or middle adulthood (Roberts et al., 2003; Roberts and Mroczek, 2008) but throughout the entire working lifespan into older age. Similarly, the impact that personality can have on career success attainment seems to remain consistent across age too. This suggests that the importance of personal characteristics for objective career success is not limited to the early career years, but that personality remains an influential factor throughout one's career.

Our results also showed that there are no differences between men and women in how success relates to personality change. This finding advances previous research focusing on gender differences in the relation between personality and success (Gelissen and de Graaf, 2006; Mueller and Plug, 2006; Nyhus and Pons, 2005). Our results are line with previous research showing that developmental trends of personality do not differ for men and women (Damian et al., 2018). Thus, while men and women may experience the work role differently and may attain differing salaries and levels of occupational prestige, the way that career success and personality impact each other seems consistent for men and women. Overall, our findings suggest that the attainment and maintenance of objective career success poses demands on personality traits that are comparable across age groups and gender, which leads to comparable effects of success on personality change across groups.

Limitations.

Our study has some notable strengths that include the use of a large, representative, heterogeneous sample spanning adulthood; cross-lagged analyses with three measurement points over several years; the consideration of age group and gender as moderators; and the use of objective indicators of career success. Nonetheless, some limitations of this study should be kept in mind when considering the results. First, several of the expected relations between success and personality were not confirmed in our study. Because we examined a representative and large sample and conducted a series of robustness checks, the nonsignificant findings are unlikely to result from sample bias or lack of statistical power. More likely is the interpretation that changes in income and occupational prestige are influenced by multiple factors, and so are changes in personality. This results in overall small direct effects, that in some cases become negligible. The relatively small effects found in our study thus caution against overstating the effects of success on personality. However, it is important to interpret effect sizes according to a meaningful benchmark (Funder and Ozer, 2019). We report cross-lagged effects, which take into account the stability of the construct and autoregressive effects over time. Because the examined constructs in our study are very stable, small cross-lagged effects can be expected. Indeed, the effects sizes reported in our study are comparable to the average cross-lagged effects between personality traits (e.g., self-esteem, positive emotionality) and other variables (e.g., social relationships, depression) reported in meta-analyses (Harris and Orth, 2019; Khazanov and Ruscio, 2016). It is also important to note that while all observed effects were small, small effects might be consequential over time (Funder and Ozer, 2019), and even small changes in personality can have a meaningful impact on an individual's life (Roberts et al., 2006). Second, the personality measure used in this study only included three items per personality trait. While the applied measure is comparable to other longer measures of personality (Donnellan and Lucas, 2008), the full scope of each personality trait is not covered. For example, the extraversion items in the applied measure cover sociability, but to a lesser extent positive emotions and energy. Investigations into personality facets and how these might change as a result of work success (Sutin et al., 2009) could therefore not be conducted. This could be important as research has shown that changes in traits (e.g., extraversion) can depend on which facets of the trait are investigated (Roberts et al., 2006; Soto et al., 2011a). It is thus possible that we failed to detect changes in specific facets of the examined traits.

Future Research.

Our study hypotheses were based on the corresponsive mechanism within the neosocioanalytic model of personality (Roberts et al., 2003). However, we were not able to directly test which specific expectations, norms, and rewards associated with career success lead to changes in traits. One area for future research would thus be to investigate possible mechanisms that explain why experiencing success at work leads to changes in personality. The social investment principle suggests that psychological role commitment is relevant for personality change (Lodi-Smith and Roberts, 2007). Hence, role involvement and commitment or job satisfaction may be possible mediators, or moderators, in the link between success and personality change. Furthermore, the expectations, norms, and demands associated with roles are an important source of personality change (Lodi-Smith and Roberts, 2007; Woods et al., 2019). Thus, future research may want to investigate to what extent the specific expectations, norms, and demands associated with successful positions, and the resulting behavior of the individual, prompt personality development. In situations where there is a clear behavior difference, as well as a clearer trait-behavior link, it may be more likely to observe the corresponsive mechanism at work.