Sunday, May 23, 2021

Australia: Women who identify as “mainly heterosexual” report poorer health, greater health-risk behaviors, and higher rates of victimization than women identifying as “exclusively heterosexual"

Prevalence and Sociodemographic Correlates of Identifying as Mainly Heterosexual: Stability and Change across Three Cohorts of Australian Women. Francisco Perales, Alice K. Campbell, Bethany G. Everett, Ruth McNair & Tonda L. Hughes. Archives of Sexual Behavior, May 18 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02000-0

Abstract: In recent decades, the ways in which sexual minorities identify have changed dramatically. In response, social and health surveys have begun offering a greater range of response options within sexual orientation questions—for example, intermediate categories for “mainly heterosexual” and “mainly lesbian/gay” alongside the more common response options of “heterosexual,” “bisexual,” and “lesbian/gay.” Recent studies indicate that women who identify as “mainly heterosexual” report poorer health, greater health-risk behaviors, and higher rates of victimization than women identifying as “exclusively heterosexual.” However, we know very little about the demographic profile of women who choose the “mainly heterosexual” identity label compared to the adjacent “exclusively heterosexual” or “bisexual” labels or about changes over time in the prevalence and correlates of “mainly heterosexual” identification. This study addressed these knowledge gaps by modeling unique, high-quality survey data from three national cohorts of Australian women (Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, 2000–2017, n = 76,930 observations). Consistent with the facilitative environments model, we document stark cross-cohort increases in the percentage of Australian women identifying as “mainly heterosexual”—from ∼1% of those born in 1946–1951 to ∼26% of those born in 1989–1995, coinciding with comparable declines in the percentage of women identifying as “exclusively heterosexual.” We also found evidence of cohort differences in the associations between key sociodemographic factors—such as age, education, and socioeconomic status—and the likelihood of women identifying as “mainly heterosexual.” Finally, our results indicate that same-sex sexual attractions were more strongly associated with “mainly heterosexual” identification than was same-sex sexual behavior.


Large scale human cooperation needs to be explained as an adaptation, likely rooted in the distinctive features of human biology, grammatical language, increased cognitive ability, and cumulative cultural adaptation

Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. 2021. “Large-scale Cooperation in Small-scale Foraging Societies.” EcoEvoRxiv. May 17. doi:10.32942/osf.io/fxwbr

Abstract: We present evidence that people in small-scale, mobile hunter-gatherer societies cooperated in large numbers to produce collective goods. Foragers engaged in large-scale communal hunts, constructed shared capital facilities; they made shared investments in improving the local environment; and they participated in warfare, alliance, and trade. Large-scale collective action often played a crucial role in subsistence. The provision of public goods involved the cooperation of many individuals, so each person made only a small contribution. This evidence suggests that large-scale cooperation occurred in the Pleistocene societies that encompass most of human evolutionary history, and therefore it is unlikely that large-scale cooperation in Holocene food producing societies results from an evolved psychology shaped only in small group interactions. Instead, large scale human cooperation needs to be explained as an adaptation, likely rooted in the distinctive features of human biology, grammatical language, increased cognitive ability, and cumulative cultural adaptation.




Irrespective of COVID, improved mood, less perceived stress were significanlty associated with some personality traits like neuroticism (lower), extraversion (higher), agreeableness (higher), and conscientiousness (higher)

Rettew DC, McGinnis EW, Copeland W, Nardone HY, Bai Y, Rettew J, et al. (2021) Personality trait predictors of adjustment during the COVID pandemic among college students. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0248895. May 17 2021. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0248895.

Abstract: Personality traits have been found to be related to a variety of health outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine how personality traits were associated with adjustment to the COVID pandemic in college students. The sample included 484 first-year university students (76% female) attending a northeastern university who completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality assessment at the beginning of a semester that was disrupted by the COVID pandemic. Using a phone-based app, students completed daily ratings of mood, perceived stress levels, and engagement in a number of health promotion activities (exercise, mindfulness, adequate sleep, etc.) throughout the semester both before and after the onset of the pandemic (e.g., a within-person longitudinal design). Results, as expected, showed that mood and wellness indices generally declined during the COVID period, although stress levels actually decreased. Further, irrespective of COVID, improved mood, less perceived stress and greater participation in health promotion activities were significantly associated with a number of personality traits including neuroticism (lower), extraversion (higher), agreeableness (higher), and conscientiousness (higher). Of primary interest, mixed-effects models were used to test how major personality traits interacted with any changes in daily ratings from the pre-COVID to COVID period. Significant interactions terms were found suggesting differential impacts of the COVID epidemic for students with low versus high levels of particular traits. Higher levels of extraversion, for example, were found to be related to decreases in mood as the pandemic progressed in contrast to those with lower extraversion, for whom there was a slight increase in mood over time. These data support the conclusion that personality traits are related to mental health and can play a role in a person’s ability to cope with major stressful events. Different traits may also be more adaptive to different types of stressors.

Discussion

This study aimed to examine the link between major personality dimensions and change in mental health functioning through the COVID pandemic in a group of college students. We utilized daily ratings of subjective mood, stress levels, and engagement in wellness activities such as mindfulness, healthy eating, and exercise obtained from a smartphone app that started before students were sent home due to COVID concerns and then continued as they completed the semester at home.

As has been reported in many studies examining the association between personality traits and various indices of well-being and functioning, we found robust associations with many of the higher-order personality traits. Lower levels of neuroticism and higher levels of extraversion were generally found to be related to improved mood, lower stress levels and more engagement in healthy activities. Higher levels of openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were also significantly related to better mood and more wellness engagement but were not significantly related to stress levels. Some of these significant main effects need to be interpreted with caution given the interactions found for some of these traits as levels changed between the pre-COVID and COVID period. High levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness showed particularly strong associations with better mood across the study period while higher levels of neuroticism were prominently and expectedly related to higher levels of perceived stress. High conscientiousness was significantly related to more participation in wellness activities and healthy activities. Conscientiousness refers to the tendency to be both goal oriented and to abilities that help people obtain goals such as reliability and organization. As such, this trait has often been associated with better health and well-being [23] and has been called the “most valuable psychological asset” a person can have when it comes to major personality traits [10].

The COVID pandemic also appeared to have a negative impact on our mental health indicators, although not as uniformly as we had expected. Comparing ratings between the pre-COVID and COVID period, mood and engagement in wellness activities generally decreased. Stress levels, however, significantly fell across the study period, although the magnitude of this drop was quite modest. Such a drop was hypothesized for students high in the trait of neuroticism but was found more globally. These results underscore how stressful college life can feel for some students [24]. It also may suggest some independence between mood and stress, the latter of which may be described more closely as anxiety. While mood and anxiety levels typically are found to move together–so much so that the two areas in combination are considered the core of “internalizing” problems [25], the COVID pandemic may present an important example of conditions that can separate the two domains. The college experience for many students provides engagement and relationships but, as has been well documented of late, can also be quite challenging and anxiety provoking [26]. With many exceptions, it is possible that the college environment, for those who do not find the experience overwhelming, represents an example of “good stress” that might contribute to a higher mood [27]. The COVID pandemic brought more isolation and inactivity but also some relief from the regular stresses of this environment and this may have overall depressed both mood and perceived levels of stress. Of course, it is possible that a more prolonged duration of disruption in regular life from COVID, as is now occurring, will result in perceived stress levels to rise. Further investigations with this sample and others will help reveal the long-term impact of COVID on experienced stress levels.

For the most part, associations between personality traits and mental health/wellness were preserved across the time period from before the COVID pandemic in January 2020 through the end of the semester in May. As previously mentioned, however, some interactions effects were found, suggesting a differential response to the COVID epidemic based on levels of specific traits. The dimension of extraversion was especially involved, with significant interaction effects found for mood, stress, and wellness participation. For mood, we found that those with higher levels of extraversion experienced a decrease in their mood as the COVID period progressed while mood ratings among those with lower levels of extraversion rose slightly. When it came to stress levels, however, those in the high extraversion groups felt decreased stress during the COVID period while those with lower extraversion experienced slightly more. There isn’t a straightforward interpretation of this combination of findings, but we speculate that, as hypothesized, more extraverted people might find the stimulation and challenges of busy academic life to be more rewarding. Leaving this environment for home isolation thus could have resulted in feeling less stressed but more bored and lonely, resulting in a decrease in mood. This finding partially supported our hypothesis, although it is important to note that students with higher levels of extraversion, despite having a clear decrease in mood with COVID, still reported an overall more positive mood than their low extraversion peers.

A similar, though less pronounced, pattern was found with neuroticism in which those with lower levels experienced a larger drop in mood levels with COVID compared to students with high neuroticism (although the higher neuroticism group continued to report lower mood overall). It is possible that this finding comes from a “floor effect” as students with higher levels of neuroticism had a lower mood at baseline. Alternatively, it is possible that the disruption from COVID represented a relatively bigger “loss” for those with lower levels of neuroticism.

These findings need to be interpreted with appreciation for some of the limitations of this study. First, these data were obtained from college students at a single university. As such, the generalizability of this study to other populations may be limited. Secondly, it is also not possible to prove with these data that is was the COVID pandemic and not another unmeasured factor that was responsible for any changes in the mental health ratings. Small but meaningful changes in personality have been documented in college students under “normal” conditions, although this has generally been found to occur over longer periods of time [28]. Finally, we note that both the personality and mental health assessments were obtained from self-report.

This study, however, also has some noticeable strengths. The use of daily ratings of our mental health indices may have provided a more valid assessment of these parameters over time and minimized bias inherent in more retrospective reporting. Personality assessment was also performed using a well-validated instrument based on a widely accepted and researched personality model.

The Himba, spousal separation & female sexual autonomy: In such a harsh environment, having a mix of formal and informal romantic partners may be less costly and more beneficial than a system of monogamous marriage

Scelza, Brooke; Prall, Sean; Starkweather, Kathrine. 2021. "The Role of Spousal Separation on Norms Related to Gender and Sexuality among Himba Pastoralists" Soc. Sci. 10, no. 5: 174. May 17 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10050174

Abstract: The gender-specific labor demands of arid pastoralism often lead to spousal separation. Men typically respond in one of two ways: engage in mate guarding tactics, or loosen restrictions on female sexuality. Among Himba pastoralists in northwest Namibia, the latter strategy is dominant. Rooted in a history of matriliny, Himba have strong norms promoting female sexual autonomy. We propose that these conditions, combined with a stochastic resource base, have led to women utilizing a combination of formal and informal partnerships to meet their needs and the needs of their children. Aspects of Himba socioecology also increase the costs of mate guarding for men and lower the costs of extra-pair paternity, further bolstering a concurrency strategy. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, we show how spousal separation, female autonomy, and concurrency are linked, and suggest that in this harsh environment having a mix of formal and informal romantic partners may be less costly and more beneficial than a system of monogamous marriage.

Keywords: spousal separation; female autonomy; multiple mating

5. Discussion

Here we bring together data on various aspects of Himba lives and livelihoods in order to understand how the particular socioecological context of contemporary Himba life affects their marital and reproductive decision-making. In particular, we are interested in understanding why a normative system of concurrent partnerships and sexual autonomy for women exists in this pastoral system, instead of the more typical pattern of strong mate guarding and restrictions on women’s autonomy.
Like many pastoralists, Himba must contend with a stochastic resource base, moving livestock in response to seasonal rainfall patterns and with them, various members of the household. As Bollig describes, these ecological constraints greatly affect household composition:
Himba pastoralism depends on independent movements of livestock camps (ozohambo) and households (ozonganda). After a few weeks of heavy rain (usually January to March) the entire household herd gathers at the main homestead…. In an average year they stay together for three to four months while the major gardening work is done…. However, a cattle camp … will be established long before grazing resources become depleted…. Later, in July or August, male goats and sheep are separated from the household and either a separate small stock camp is established or the small stock herd joins the cattle camp…. At the height of the dry season, between September and December, a number of households shift all their remaining cattle to their cattle camp…
Depending on how many camps are established, and how many able-bodied adults are available for herding, various members of the household might be separated. Our data reflect the general pattern Bollig describes in that husbands and wives are most likely to be separated during the early dry season when the herd is split between the main household and the cattle camp.
Our data also point to a pathway from spousal separation to extra-pair paternity. We show both that spousal separation can lead to long periods of abstinence between spouses, and that sex with boyfriends is common enough to lead to extra-pair paternity. Although more than a quarter of respondents noted that it had been at least a month since they had had sex with their husband, sex with a nonmarital partner was reported to have occurred within the last month in 37% of cases. Several interlocutors mentioned spousal separation explicitly as the cause of their abstinence, noting that their partner was at the cattle post. Although these separations can be long, they do not necessarily indicate marital strife. As one woman who had been apart from her husband for many months explained, “You know you are divorced if you are in the same place and he doesn’t come to you. But if you are just in different places, then you are still together.”
Similarly, interlocutors also remarked that spousal separation is instrumental to maintaining relationships with non-marital partners. Although it is widely seen as normative to have lovers, there is a set of rules that all parties are expected to follow in conducting those relationships. Boyfriends arrive after dark and leave just before dawn, and they often try to determine ahead of time whether their partner is alone. With cell phones becoming increasingly common, this can often be accomplished directly between partners, but as one Himba man explains, others are often enlisted in the process: “I see her when her husband is not around. I can ask around, even kids you can ask, to see if the husband is around. In the evening I would go to a house of someone I know nearby and tell someone to let her know I’m there. Then I go there late at night to see her. We wake up early, before the roosters, and I leave to go back home.” For their part, husbands are expected to sleep away from home if they are out after dark (e.g., chasing a rogue cow after sunset). This reduces the chance that a husband and lover will mistakenly encounter each other.
Our aim in this paper was not just to illustrate the correlation between spousal separation and a normalized system of concurrent partnerships, but also to understand why they co-occur. We believe there are three distinct, but interrelated, reasons why spousal separation is associated with sexual autonomy and concurrent partnerships among Himba: (1) Phylogenetic inertia sets the stage for norms promoting female autonomy, while also increasing the costs of mate guarding; (2) demographic and economic factors reduce the costs of lost paternity for men; and (3) the stochastic resource base makes concurrency a viable way for men and women to improve their fitness.

5.1. Phylogenetic Inertia

Himba arrived in Namibia via the Bantu expansion, and only became ethnically distinct from their close relatives, the Herero, in the last 100 years (Bollig 2006). Holden and Mace (2003) analyzed shifts in the inheritance structures and modes of production of Bantu groups as they moved across the continent, and depict a general pattern where the adoption of pastoral production led to a shift from matrilineal to patrilineal inheritance. Himba/Herero are unique in that they transfer livestock matrilaterally, and links to one’s matriclan are culturally and functionally important (Malan 1995Gibson 1956). The Bantu language tree that Holden and Mace used to conduct their analysis shows that of the five groups Herero are most closely related to, one practices double descent similar to Herero, and the other four have matrilineal inheritance (Figure S3). Further back, Holden and Mace show that Herero are in the half of the phylogenetic tree with the majority of matrilineal Bantu populations.
Their deep history of matriliny helps to explain why norms promoting female autonomy are likely prominent among Himba. Early ethnographies of Herero describe many of the same sexual practices that exist today, including frequent divorce, high rates of nonmarital sex, acceptance of children born outside of marriage, and senior wives being included in the process of choosing a co-wife (Gibson 1959). Our data compliment these findings, showing that Himba women have relatively high freedom of movement, including lengthy visits unaccompanied by their husbands (Figure 3). These visits serve a dual purpose, keeping up relationships with natal kin, and allowing women opportunities to maintain concurrent relationships. Relatives can also serve as conduits for resource transfers. As one man described, “You cannot give it straight to the woman if she is married. You give ‘behind.’ You can send it [the gift] to her father or sister, then when she goes there she gets it and she can say it was given to her by her family.”
However, the picture of Himba autonomy is complex. Although they have more freedoms than women in many pastoral societies, the limits placed on them indicate that some mate guarding is occurring For example, husbands are most reticent about their wives traveling alone to a funeral or ceremony, which is commonly described by both men and women as being a place where lovers frequently meet. Intimate partner violence is not uncommon, and violence in response to extra-marital sex was second only to child neglect in its acceptability among men and had the highest acceptability rating among women. Women and men both linked sexual jealousy to IPV, and several of the women in our interviews mentioned being hit by their partners. One woman explained, “My husband is very jealous. He beats me because he loves me. He doesn’t tell me to leave. He just beats me.”
There are also complicated notions about non-marital partnerships at play, as evidenced by our vignette study. The majority of men stated that a married woman having a boyfriend is unacceptable, and almost every respondent reported that they knew about this happening. We see similar variation in the types of punishments men reported, ranging from nothing, to mild verbal warnings, to severe physical harm. Several of our respondents described a situation where a husband who found out about his wife’s boyfriend snuck into his compound at night (when he knew they would be together) and attacked and killed the boyfriend. We do not know that our interlocutors were all describing the same event or different ones as we did not ask people to give names when they told these stories, but regardless, this exemplifies how dangerous concurrency can be, even in this population where the practice is largely normalized. However, other men described much more measured responses. One reported, “The husband asked the boyfriend not to sleep with his wife. The boyfriend continued anyway. One day the husband met an agemate who told him the man was still sleeping with his wife. That night he didn’t come home. Later, he caught the boyfriend again. He called the community and they met and fined the boyfriend 10 cows.”
It appears that Himba hold a dual notion of concurrency. On the one hand, they stated that informal partnerships are an integral part of their culture, socially acceptable, and very common. On the other hand, both men and women reported sexual jealousy and there are efforts to constrain spouses’ relationships with lovers, especially if they become too frequent and become a threat to the marital union. As one man summed it up, “You don’t want other people to sleep with your wife, but it’s the tradition.” There are several explanations for this tension. Although it may be socially advantageous for men not to buck the current system, individually they may be motivated to maintain as much paternity certainty as possible. Alternatively, as with many double descent systems, Himba may be in a state of disequilibrium, in the process of shifting their social structures from matriliny to patriliny (Scelza et al. 2019). We show here that older men are more likely to be accepting of women’s concurrency. Age also had a negative but non-significant effect on men’s beliefs about IPV, with older men less likely to believe IPV is acceptable under varying circumstances. These results could represent a generational shift, with more patrilineal, patriarchal norms becoming more prominent. Another possibility is that older men are less incentivized to mate guard because they are further along in their reproductive careers (Pazhoohi et al. 2016).
In addition to the direct impact of matriliny on female autonomy, the particular form of double descent that Himba practice, which involves largely matrilateral inheritance of cattle, impacts the costs and benefits of paternity certainty for men. When wealth can be aggregated and distributed, it can be used to generate fitness-related benefits such as bride-price payments and multiple wives via polygyny. This tends to benefit sons’ reproductive success more than daughters’, and has been used to explain the correlation between patriliny and pastoral production (Holden and Mace 2003). However, parents must balance the gains that their sons can accrue from inherited wealth with any costs of misallocated investment due to paternity uncertainty.
When cows are inherited matrilaterally, a different calculation becomes relevant. Paternity certainty pertains mainly to relatedness between siblings (as a man is giving to his sister’s son). Classic interpretations of the “paternity threshold model” of matrilineal inheritance require levels of paternity uncertainty that are highly unlikely, even in populations such as Himba where extra-pair paternity rates are the highest ever recorded (Greene 1978; but see Rogers 2013 for further discussion). However, when the paternity threshold is considered alongside other socioeconomic factors, stable strategies for this type of matrilineal inheritance can emerge. Fortunato (2012) shows that both polygyny and polyandry can make diagonal transfers (from uncle to nephew) beneficial to men’s fitness. With their combination of formal polygyny and informal polyandry, and a system of diagonal transfers of wealth, Himba may be a prime example of how high rates of extra-pair paternity, via women’s concurrency, can be fitness beneficial to men. If this combined system of polygyny and polyandry alongside matrilateral inheritance is beneficial to men, they may be more tolerant of spousal separation and less incentivized to spend time and energy on mate guarding.

5.2. Demography and Economics

There are several aspects of Himba sociodemography that affect the costs and benefits of spousal separation and potentially lost paternity. The first is the adult sex ratio. We previously reported that Himba have an ASR of 0.71 (i.e., 71 men for every 100 women, see Scelza et al. 2020c). This was the lowest ASR in that sample of 11 populations, as well as another cross-cultural study of ASR (Schacht et al. 2014). Although the reasons underlying the imbalance in this population are not well understood, a female-biased sex ratio appears to be a long-term trend. Reports from the early 20th century also show a surplus of adult women among Herero, with a sex ratio of 0.75, based on a sample of 16,201 individuals (Malcolm 1924). Gibson reported similar numbers in the 1959 (Gibson 1959), as did Harpending and Pennington in the 1990s (Harpending and Pennington 1991). The ratio of males to females affects the stability of partnerships. When there are more women than men in a population, men face lower costs to deserting their current partner because there are more alternatives in the population to choose from. In other populations this has led to female-biased sex ratios being associated with less monogamous behavior (Schacht and Mulder 2015Schacht and Kramer 2016).
Another factor that must be considered is the value of child labor. When children contribute to household production, they offset some of their own costs, mitigating potential losses to men if they care for children who are not their biological offspring. Although we do not present data on child labor here, our previous findings lend support to this idea. Himba men have been shown to bias their investments in biological versus non-biological children, in what appears to be a functional response to their productive value (Prall and Scelza 2020b). Girls, who Himba resoundingly praise as being valuable laborers, have poorer anthropometric outcomes when they are believed to be omoka (non-biological offspring). Our data support the idea that this may be because girls have to work harder to “earn their keep” in this situation. One Himba woman said to us, “Sometimes when the child starts to grow up, the child will be working very hard and the husband might start to like that child, even more than his own child.” On the other hand, Himba boys, whose labor is generally considered to be less valuable, are more likely to be fostered out when they are believed to be omoka. One woman explained, “When the husband talks about that child, he hates him. When he sees him he tells you to take that child to your parents.” In this case, it seems that men may be lowering their own investment costs when paternity certainty is low and the net cost of the child is greater.

5.3. Benefits of Concurrency

Our data show that women can benefit directly from having multiple partners. Women with both husbands and boyfriends have greater food security than those who have partners of only a single type. Although it is difficult to identify a causal pathway from concurrency to greater food security, the mix of data we present serves to illuminate how husbands and lovers support women in different ways. Husbands tend to be more reliable partners, giving gifts more often and in greater quantities than boyfriends. Boyfriends are less likely to provide food or livestock than husbands, but more likely to give cash. Women have noted that this is useful because cash can be given discreetly, and can be used for a wide variety of purposes, including for food, medical care, or transportation. These data show that the bond between spouses is strong—women rely on their husbands as their primary sources of support, and husbands largely fulfill that role. Boyfriends, on the other hand, are less socially obligated to give, and so there is more variability in the frequency of their giving, and in fact, whether he gives her anything of note at all.
Our qualitative data reveal an important aspect of resource transfer patterns that did not show up in our quantitative data. Multiple women reported that boyfriends are called upon in critical times, either when there is an inordinately large expense, or when their husband is not available to help. One woman explained, “They [her friends] could tell him [her boyfriend] that I needed something, so he would know…. If he saw I was having a problem he would give something to me to help, because we have been together so long…. My child was sick and my friend went to tell [the boyfriend] and he came to me and gave me N$1000.” These rare events are unlikely to show up in the recall data described above, which is better suited for describing general transfer patterns. In addition, the safety net of knowing that you could ask if you needed something is also an important aspect of resource security, and one that would not be picked up in our quantitative data. As one woman stated, “He’s never given me anything but I love him. I know if I asked he would give me something.”
Boyfriends, therefore, help in ways that can be either complementary or supplementary. This may be particularly critical when spousal separation is common because there are long periods of time (particularly historically when cars and cell phones were less common) when husbands may be unable to help. If a child is sick, or an unexpected food shortage arises, boyfriends can step in. One woman stated, “If you are tired of asking the husband, you can ask the boyfriend. It’s good to have both to ask,” while another said, “You need to eat two times. From the husband and the boyfriend.”

It should be noted that where this trickles down to affect the well-being of a couple’s children, both the husband’s and the wife’s fitness can be positively affected by concurrency. This creates a system of generalized reciprocity for men. Husbands invest in their wives’ children, only some of which are his biological offspring—which comes at a cost. However, help comes in toward those children from his wives’ informal partners. In addition, a man may be providing some investment toward children he has with his lovers, but the majority of investment in those children comes from their social father. Formal modeling and more specific empirical data would be needed to know whether this results in a net benefit for most men, but our data point toward this being a stable response in a system with a stochastic resource base and high mate guarding costs. Men can accrue the kinds of standard gains to fitness that are predicted through sexual selection theory, and any paternity loss that occurs in their marriage is buffered by support from other men. 

Saturday, May 22, 2021

The Dark Core: Psychopathy, callousness, pathological selfishness, Machiavellianism, and narcissistic rivalry

The good, the bad, and the ugly: Revisiting the Dark Core. Bojana M. Dinić, Anja Wertag, Valentina Sokolovska & Aleksandar Tomašević. Current Psychology, May 15 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01829-x

Abstract: The aim of this research (N = 268) was to explore several compelling candidates for the Dark Core of the broader set of dark and light traits by using network analysis and analyses of shared variance. Several previously proposed cores were tested: primary psychopathy, narcissistic rivalry, Honesty-Humility, Aggressiveness, Selfishness, Antagonism and its callousness facet as well as emotional competency, including its emotionality facet as negative aspect of callousness. The results showed that central elements in this network are primary psychopathy, callousness, pathological selfishness, Machiavellianism, and narcissistic rivalry. Furthermore, among basic traits, Antagonism shared the highest percentage with the dark traits, especially its facet callousness, which is the best candidate for the Dark Core. The combination of callousness, deceitfulness, and grandiosity shared 92% of the total common variance with dark traits and it could be seen as the Antagonistic Triad or alternative Dark Triad.


Belief in an imminent apocalypse co-evolved with and facilitated revolutionary violence, & belief in reincarnation caused people to acquiesce to existing social orders & withdraw from political activism

A phylogenetic analysis of revolution and afterlife beliefs. Kiran Basava, Hanzhi Zhang & Ruth Mace. Nature Human Behaviour volume 5, pages604–611. Jan 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01013-4

Abstract: Beliefs about the fate of humanity and the soul after death may structure behaviours of religious groups. Here we test theories from religious studies: that belief in an imminent apocalypse co-evolved with and facilitated revolutionary violence, whereas belief in reincarnation caused people to acquiesce to existing social orders and withdraw from political activism. We test these hypotheses by building a cultural phylogeny of historical Islamic sects and schools from the seventh to twentieth centuries and use phylogenetic comparative methods to show that these two types of belief display distinct relationships with intergroup violence. There is substantial evidence that apocalyptic beliefs co-evolved with revolutionary violence, whereas reincarnation beliefs were evolutionarily stable in peaceful groups. In both cases, violence precedes the emergence of beliefs, which suggests that conditions that generate revolutionary violence changed beliefs rather than beliefs generating violence. We also found that apocalyptic beliefs are associated with accelerated group extinction, although causal relationships cannot be determined.


More mindful individuals were only more charitable in their words, but not in their deeds

When it really counts: Investigating the relation between trait mindfulness and actual prosocial behavior. Simon Schindler, Stefan Pfattheicher. Current Psychology, May 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351586286

Abstract: Meta-analytical findings suggested a positive link between trait mindfulness and prosociality. However, most correlational studies on mindfulness and prosociality have relied on self-report measures. The present work aimed to address this serious limitation by investigating actual prosocial behavior. We further focused on mindfulness as a multi-dimensional personality trait to disentangle effects of different mindfulness aspects. In addition, we tested whether the relation between trait mindfulness and prosocial behavior emerges under a theoretical meaningful experimental boundary condition (i.e., feelings of guilt). In two studies (using four different samples; N = 1240), we did not find support for a positive link between trait mindfulness and (a) charitable donation and (b) behavior in an incentivized economic game, respectively. Evidence for manipulated guilt-level as a moderator was inconclusive. Taken together, the findings point to a more complex role of trait mindfulness for prosocial behavior. Limitations and ideas for further research are discussed.

Check also Poulin, Michael, Lauren Ministero, Shira Gabriel, Carrie Morrison, and Esha Naidu. 2021. “Minding Your Own Business? Mindfulness Decreases Prosocial Behavior for Those with Independent Self-construals.” PsyArXiv. April 9. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2021/04/mindfulness-decreases-prosocial.html

Petersen, Michael Bang, and Panagiotis Mitkidis. 2019. “A Sober Second Thought? A Pre-registered Experiment on the Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Political Tolerance.” PsyArXiv. October 20. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/10/analyses-of-data-from-pilot-experiment.html

‘I Do Not Exist’: Pathologies of Self Among Western Buddhists. Judith Pickering. Journal of Religion and Health, June 2019, Volume 58, Issue 3, pp 748–769. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/07/i-do-not-exist-pathologies-of-self.html

Mindfulness not related to behavioral & speech markers of emotional positivity (or less negativity), interpersonally better connected (quality or quantity), or prosocial orientation (more affectionate, less gossipy or complaining) 

Dispositional mindfulness in daily life. Deanna M. Kaplan, L. Raison, Anne Milek, Allison M. Tackman, Thaddeus W. W. Pace, Matthias R. Mehl. PLOS, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/11/mindfulness-not-related-to-behavioral.html

Elites, selected frequently for their ability to generate and evaluate good arguments, listen to and generate those arguments when they are rewarded for that, but not otherwise

Status Trumps Argument. Robin Hanson. Overcoming Bias, May 19, 2021. https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/05/status-trumps-argument.html

Excerpts:

Many elites are selected for their ability to generate and evaluate good arguments. So many are quite able to listen. But as with being nice, elites are especially good at a contingent strategy: they listen to and generate good arguments when they are rewarded for that, but not otherwise.

The key parameter that determines if an elite is rewarded for using and crediting good arguments is the relative status of the parties involved. When elites argue with equal status elites, their arguments may need to be good. At least if their particular audience values arguments.

But consider a case where two parties to a dispute are of very unequal status, and where the topic is one where there’s a perception that elite consensus agrees with the high status party. Ih this case, the higher status party only needs to offer the slim appearance of argument quality. Just blathering a few related words is often completely sufficient. Even if put together in context those words don’t really make much sense.

I have seen this happen many times personally. For example, if I argue with a higher status person, who for some reason engages with me in this context, and if my position is one seen as reasonable by the usual elite consensus, then my partner is careful to offer quality arguments, and to credit such arguments if I offer them. But if I take a position seen as against the current elite consensus, that same high status partner instead feels quite comfortable offering very weak and incoherent arguments.


Speed to a marching pace boosts blood flow to the brain (120 steps and 120 beats per minute), hinting at a possible sweet spot

How the way you move can change the way you think and feel. Caroline Wiliams. The New Scientist, May 19 2021. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25033350-400-how-the-way-you-move-can-change-the-way-you-think-and-feel

New research suggests the connection between exercise and the brain goes deeper than you might think. These six kinds of movement can help make you more creative, boost your self-esteem and reach altered states of consciousness

FILTER-FEEDERS aside, humans are the only creatures that can get away with sitting around all day. As a species, we have been remarkably successful at devising ways to feed, entertain ourselves and even find mates, all while barely lifting a finger.

True, this is a sign of just how clever and adaptable we are. But there is a huge cost to our sedentary ways, not only to our bodies, but also our minds. Falling IQs and the rise in mental health conditions have both been linked to our lack of physical movement.

But the connection between movement and the brain goes deeper than you might think. A revolutionary new understanding of the mind-body connection is revealing how our thoughts and emotions don’t just happen inside our heads, and that the way we move has a profound influence on how our minds operate. This opens up the possibility of using our bodies as tools to change the way we think and feel.

Evidence is starting to stack up that this is indeed the case, and it isn’t all about doing more exercise. In my new book, Move! The new science of body over mind, I explore emerging research in evolutionary biology, physiology, neuroscience and cell biology to find out which body movements affect the mind and why.

Whatever it is that you want from your mind – more creativity, improved resilience or higher self-esteem – the evidence shows that there is a way of moving the body that can help. Here is my pick of the best ways to use your body to achieve a healthier, better-functioning mind.

[...]

[Studies suggest that when our feet hit the ground, their arteries are compressed. This increases turbulence in the blood, providing it with an extra rush towards the brain of up to 15pct. Pick up the speed to a marching pace and things get more interesting. The biggest boost to blood flow happened when people's step rate and heart rate synchronized at 120 steps and 120 beats per minute, hinting at a possible sweet spot.]

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Is this why a lot of people loves to dance?


Friday, May 21, 2021

Prisoners’ perceptions: They engaged in self-enhancing comparisons, differentiating themselves from other prisoners and their past selves who committed the crime, and overestimated criminality in the general population

From 2020... Explaining the better-than-average effect among prisoners. Sarah G. Taylor, Hedwig Eisenbarth, Constantine Sedikides, Mark D. Alicke. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, October 28 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12719

Abstract: We addressed explanations for why prisoners manifest the Better-Than-Average Effect (perceptions of superiority to the average peer), focusing on three biases: self-enhancing (social as well as temporal) comparisons, denial, and self-serving attributions. We tested the Better-Than-Average Effect in regards to prisoners’ perceptions of their worst trait, and assessed the relationship between the three biases and positive self-evaluations. Prisoners engaged in self-enhancing comparisons, differentiating themselves from other prisoners and their past selves who committed the crime, but also expected self-improvement in the future. Prisoners also demonstrated denial for intentions to commit the crime, planning of it, recidivism, and over-estimation of crime prevalence in the general population. Although prisoners made self-serving attributions by distancing their own character from their criminal behavior and reporting they had experienced more hardship relative to others, they did not attribute the cause of their crime to such hardship. More extensive self-enhancing temporal comparisons and denial predicted more positive self-evaluations of prisoners’ worst trait relative to the average community member. The strength of some of these biases varied with levels of narcissism and psychopathy.


Men were more likely than women and older participants were more likely than younger participants to indicate that they would cheat on their partners if they were in a long-term intimate relationship

Plurality in mating: Exploring the occurrence and contingencies of mating strategies. Menelaos Apostolou. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 175, June 2021, 110689. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110689

Highlights

• Nominates nine different mating strategies

• Finds that 68% of the participants preferred a mixed mating strategy

• Finds that 82.8% of the participants preferred to have initially or eventually one long-term partner

• Finds significant sex, age and sexual orientation differences in the adoption of mating strategies

Abstract: People adopt a variety of strategies in order to achieve specific mating goals. The current research nominated nine different mating strategies, and attempted to estimate their occurrence. Evidence from an online sample of 6273 Greek-speaking participants, indicated that a mixed strategy was in the highest occurrence, followed by a long-term and a short-term mating strategy. Men were more likely than women to prefer a short-term and a mixed mating strategy, and that younger participants were more likely to prefer a mixed than a long-term mating strategy. In addition, heterosexual women with same-sex attraction were more likely than exclusively heterosexual women to prefer a short-term and a mixed strategy than a long-term mating strategy. Furthermore, we found that men were more likely than women and older participants were more likely than younger participants to indicate that they would cheat on their partners if they were in a long-term intimate relationship. Furthermore, heterosexual with same-sex attraction, bisexual and homosexual men and women were more likely than exclusive heterosexual participants to indicate that they would cheat on their partners when in a long-term intimate relationship.

Keywords: Mating strategiesMatingSex differencesCheatingInfidelity


From 2018... Applying automatic text-based detection of deceptive language: How we lie to the police

Applying automatic text-based detection of deceptive language to police reports: Extracting behavioral patterns from a multi-step classification model to understand how we lie to the police. Lara Quijano-Sanchez et al. Knowledge-Based Systems, Volume 149, 1 June 2018, Pages 155-168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2018.03.010

Highlights

• VeriPol is an effective text-based lie detection model for police reports.

• Our model includes feature selection by L1 penalization and heuristic rules.

• Computational experiments on a real dataset show a validation accuracy of 91.

• A pilot study shows a lower bound on the empirical precision of 83%, approx.

• The model analysis provides linguistic insights of how people lie to the police.

Abstract: Filing a false police report is a crime that has dire consequences on both the individual and the system. In fact, it may be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony. For the society, a false report results in the loss of police resources and contamination of police databases used to carry out investigations and assessing the risk of crime in a territory. In this research, we present VeriPol, a model for the detection of false robbery reports based solely on their text. This tool, developed in collaboration with the Spanish National Police, combines Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning methods in a decision support system that provides police officers the probability that a given report is false. VeriPol has been tested on more than 1000 reports from 2015 provided by the Spanish National Police. Empirical results show that it is extremely effective in discriminating between false and true reports with a success rate of more than 91%, improving by more than 15% the accuracy of expert police officers on the same dataset. The underlying classification model can be analysed to extract patterns and insights showing how people lie to the police (as well as how to get away with false reporting). In general, the more details provided in the report, the more likely it is to be honest. Finally, a pilot study carried out in June 2017 has demonstrated the usefulness of VeriPol on the field.

Keywords: Lie detectionInformation extractionPredictive policingModel knowledge extractionNatural language processingDecision support systems


The Ethnographic Atlas covers more than 1200 pre-industrial societies but has been seen skeptically; paper documents positive associations between the Atlas & self-reported data from 790,000 individuals across 43 countries

Tabulated nonsense? Testing the validity of the Ethnographic Atlas. Duman Bahrami-Rad, Anke Becker, Joseph Henrich. Economics Letters, Volume 204, July 2021, 109880. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109880

Highlights

• We validate the Ethnographic Atlas, a popular anthropological database.

• We benchmark the ethnographic data with self-reports from survey respondents.

• Ethnographic data and contemporary self-reports are positively correlated.

• Our results provide evidence for the validity of ethnographic accounts.

Abstract: The Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967), an anthropological database, is widely used across the social sciences. The Atlas is a quantified and discretely categorized collection of information gleaned from ethnographies covering more than 1200 pre-industrial societies. While being popular in many fields, it has been subject to skepticism within cultural anthropology. We assess the Atlas’s validity by comparing it with representative data from descendants of the portrayed societies. We document positive associations between the historical measures collected by ethnographers and self-reported data from 790,000 individuals across 43 countries.

Keywords: Ethnographic AtlasValidationCulture

3.2 Results

Twelve domains are equivalently represented in the DHS and the Atlas: (1) patrilocality, (2) matrilocality, (3) polygyny, (4) reliance on animal husbandry, (5) reliance on agriculture, (6) length of post-partum abstinence, (7) breastfeeding duration, (8) insistence on virginity, (9) a preference for sons, (10) prevalence of domestic violence, (11) age difference between husband and wife, and (12) geographical location.2

Throughout, we find positive associations between the ethnographic information from the Atlas and the self-reported individual-level data from the DHS (Table 1). Columns (1) to (5) list the results for variables that capture different aspects of kinship organization and subsistence modes. Almost all associations are positive, statistically significant, and sizeable. For example, a one standard deviation increase in the prevalence of historical patrilocality is associated with a 0.8 percentage points increase in the likelihood that an individual lives patrilocally today. This amounts to about twelve percent of the unconditional probability

of living patrilocally in this sample (0.7). We can only speculate about the lack of association for reliance on agriculture, which could be due to differences in pre-industrial and contemporary agriculture, or the fact that the DHS variable captures only one specific aspect of contemporary reliance on agriculture.

Columns (6) to (11) list results for variables that capture social norms, customs, or preferences. Again, the associations between the historical and contemporary measures are positive throughout, in most cases statistically significant, and often meaningful in terms of size. For example, a one standard deviation increase in the historical length of post-partum abstinence is associated with a twelve percentage points increase in how long respondents today abstain after childbirth. For the preference of female virginity before marriage the association between the two measures is very small. This can plausibly be attributed to the lack of variation in the contemporary sample: about 93% of respondents express this attitude. Again, we can only speculate about the lack of association between the historical age of an infant at the onset of weaning in an ethnic group and the average breastfeeding duration of its descendants. It could be that male ethnographers could not make informed guesses about this dimension, or that breastfeeding practices have undergone substantial change during the past century.

Finally, we show that geographical location of the centroid of an ethnic group as reported by ethnographers is related to where people actually live today. For each individual in the DHS for whom we have information on geographical location, we calculate the distance in kilometers to the centroid of the homeland of her ancestral society. Figure 1 in the supplementary material shows the distribution. The median distance is 168 kilometers and a non-negligible fraction of about 12 percent live as close as 50 kilometers to the centroid of their ancestral homeland.


2  Table 2 in the supplementary material describes how these dimensions are measured in the Atlas and the DHS

From 2013... Cultural traits studies from large, cross-cultural datasets: We are underestimating the probability of finding spurious correlations between cultural traits

From 2013... Roberts S, Winters J (2013) Linguistic Diversity and Traffic Accidents: Lessons from Statistical Studies of Cultural Traits. PLoS ONE 8(8): e70902. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070902

Abstract: The recent proliferation of digital databases of cultural and linguistic data, together with new statistical techniques becoming available has lead to a rise in so-called nomothetic studies [1]–[8]. These seek relationships between demographic variables and cultural traits from large, cross-cultural datasets. The insights from these studies are important for understanding how cultural traits evolve. While these studies are fascinating and are good at generating testable hypotheses, they may underestimate the probability of finding spurious correlations between cultural traits. Here we show that this kind of approach can find links between such unlikely cultural traits as traffic accidents, levels of extra-martial sex, political collectivism and linguistic diversity. This suggests that spurious correlations, due to historical descent, geographic diffusion or increased noise-to-signal ratios in large datasets, are much more likely than some studies admit. We suggest some criteria for the evaluation of nomothetic studies and some practical solutions to the problems. Since some of these studies are receiving media attention without a widespread understanding of the complexities of the issue, there is a risk that poorly controlled studies could affect policy. We hope to contribute towards a general skepticism for correlational studies by demonstrating the ease of finding apparently rigorous correlations between cultural traits. Despite this, we see well-controlled nomothetic studies as useful tools for the development of theories.


Solutions

Building better corpora

One of the most challenging issues to resolve is minimising the distance between those doing the data analysis and those researchers involved at other levels (e.g. field linguists). Part of the appeal of the nomothetic approach is the ease and cost-effectiveness in performing the analysis [14]. However, if the fundamental problems outlined in this paper are to be overcome, then there a few solutions we can apply to this distance problem which involve improving the data quality. First, we want to increase the resolution of each individual variable. So, to take the previous example of consonant inventory size, the aim should be to report all accounts and not select one on the basis of prior theoretical assumptions. Having more data per variable will increase the statistical power for nomothetic studies. Second, minimising distance can be achieved by using multiple and, ideally, independent datasets that work together to build up mutually supporting evidence for or against a particular hypothesis. Different datasets can take the shape of those derived from different large-scale studies (e.g. Phoible [75] and WALS for phoneme inventory counts [55]), idiographic accounts of individual case studies and experimental data.

Thirdly, databases such as the WALS indicate linguistic norms for populations, but may not capture the variation within and between individuals. One solution is for the primary data to be raw text or recordings of real interactions between individuals [76] and for population-level features, such as grammatical rules, to be derived directly from these. While collecting adequate amounts of data of this kind is more difficult, and while it is not free of biases, it offers a richer source of information.

Furthermore, databases should be collected and coded with specific questions in mind, otherwise there is a risk that correlations could emerge due to biases in the original motivation for the database. For example, the database that was used to demonstrate a link between future tense and economic behaviour was designed to identify similarities between European languages, which also happen to be culturally related and relatively wealthy [36].

Model comparison

The correct null models to use when assessing cultural traits can be difficult to estimate, or unintuitive. As we shall demonstrate below, standard baselines of chance may not be conservative enough to eliminate spurious correlations. Rather than use random chance as a baseline, studies should compare competing hypotheses (as in [7]). Model comparison techniques allow researchers to test one model against another to see which better explains a particular distribution of data [77][78]. So, whereas standard regression techniques are able to tell you the amount of deviance explained by a particular model, they do not provide information about whether you should have a preference for one model over another given a particular set of data. Model comparison techniques are therefore useful summaries of the available information and are better viewed as inductive-style approaches that should be complementary to the hypothetico-deductive and falisificationist approaches more typically associated with the scientific process [72]. Model comparison can also be used to test linear versus non-linear assumptions.

Phylogenetic comparative methods

A simple, although conservative, test that controls for the relatedness of languages is to run the analysis within each language family (as in [1]). For example, the correlation between acacia trees and tonal languages is only significant for one language family, which is evidence against a causal relationship. However, more sophisticated methods are available. Studies of cultural traits have borrowed tools from biology to control for the non-independence of cultures [11]. Comparative methods include estimating the strength of a phylogenetic signal [49][79] and estimating the correlation between variables while controlling for the relatedness of observations [80][82]. For example, in the analyses above we found that speakers who take siestas have grammars with less verbal morphology. While experiments show that daytime naps affect procedural memory [83], which has been linked to morphological processing [84], the predictions run in the opposite direction to the results. However, doing the same analysis, but accounting for the relatedness of languages using a phylogenetic tree [80], this correlation disappears entirely (r = 0.017, t = 0.13, p = 0.89, see methods). This highlights the very different implications that can come out of nomothetic studies when considering the independence of the observations.

While phylogenetic methods are relatively new and phylogenetic reconstruction (see below) is computationally expensive, software for phylogenetic comparative methods is freely available (e.g. packages for R, [85][88]) and do not require intense computing power. The more limiting factor for studies of linguistic features is a lack of standard, high-resolution phylogenetic trees.

Other phylogenetic techniques have been used to reconstruct likely trees of descent from cultural data (e.g. [89][91]). These may also be useful as further steps for determining whether links between cultural traits discovered by nomothetic studies are robust. For example, apparent universals in the distribution of linguistic structural features may actually be underpinned by lineage-specific trends [92].

Causal graphs

Our analyses above suggests that cultural features are linked in complex ways, making it difficult to know what to control for in a specific study and potentially casting doubt on the value of nomothetic approaches. However, we see nomothetic studies as a useful tool for exploring complex adaptive systems. One change to the approach which could offer better resistance to the problems above would be to move away from trying to explain the variance in a single variable of interest towards analysing networks of interacting variables.

One method that could aid this type of analysis is the construction of causal graphs from large datasets [15]. While mediation analyses are often used to assess the causal relationship between a small number of variables [4], recent techniques are designed to handle high-dimensional data. We applied this technique to many of the variables in the study above. Figure 4 shows the most likely directed, acyclic graph that reflects the best fit to the relationships between the variables. We emphasise that this graph should be interpreted as a useful visualisation and as a hypothesis-generating exercise rather than representing proof of causation between variables.

Figure 4. The most likely directed, acyclic graph of causal relationships between different variables in this study.

Boxes represent variables and arrows represent suggested causal links going from a cause to an effect. See the methods section for details.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0070902.g004


Some interesting relationships emerge. First, some elements make intuitive sense, like the contemporary pathogen prevalence relying on the historical pathogen prevalence and the Gini coefficient (the balance between rich and poor within a country). Also, environmental variables like the number of frost days, mean growing season and mean temperature are linked.

More importantly, while the initial analysis above finds a direct correlation between linguistic diversity and road fatalities, even controlling for many factors, the causal graph analysis suggests that linguistic diversity and road fatalities are not causally linked. Instead, linguistic diversity is affected by demographic variables such as population size and density while road fatalities are affected by economic indicators such as GDP and the Gini coefficient. Similarly, the analysis suggests that tonal languages and the presence of acacia trees are not causally linked.

While the causal graph mainly provides evidence against some of the correlations above, it may also suggest interesting areas of further investigation. Interestingly, the causal graph suggests that collectivism is not directly linked with the genetic factors implicated by [4], but the relationship is mediated by (current) migration patterns. While speculative, it would be interesting to test the hypothesis that the distribution of genetic factors that are correlated with collectivism emerged by a process of selective migration (although see [93]). For example, the genotype that correlates with more collectivist countries is associated with a greater risk of depression under stress [29], so perhaps this gene came under selection in harsher climates. Indeed, we find some support for this idea, since adding environmental variables improves the fit of the model predicting the distribution of genotypes (compared to [4], see methods section). In this way, causal graph analyses may be a useful additional tool that can be used to explore relationships between complex adaptive variables such as cultural traits. Since the range of hypotheses suggested by inductive approaches can be very large, methods such as causal graphs can point to fruitful hypotheses to develop with more conventional approaches such as experiments.

Sexual self-schema reflects an individual’s cognitive representations of oneself as a sexual person; the more important women ranked religion, the more their SSS was consistently negative

Formal and informal sources of sexual information predict women’s sexual self-schema. Anneliis Sartin-Tarm, Kirstin Clephane, Tierney Lorenz. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, Vol. 30, No. 1, April 29, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjhs.2020-0046

Abstract: Sexual self-schema (SSS) reflect an individual’s cognitive representations of oneself as a sexual person, and predict critical sexual health and wellbeing outcomes in women. Like other cognitive structures, SSS are thought to form through exposure to different kinds of information. The current exploratory study investigated associations between young women’s experiences with different sources of sexual information and their SSS valence and complexity. Respondents (n = 401) completed a validated SSS measure and ranked their perceived importance of different sources of sexual information as they were growing up. We found that the more important women perceived their friends as sources of sexual information, the more consistently their SSS was negative or aschematic (i.e., neither positive nor negative). In contrast, the more important they ranked partners, the more their SSS was positive or coschematic (i.e., both positive and negative). Finally, the more important women ranked religion, the more their SSS was consistently negative. Overall, preliminary associations suggest that friends, partners, and religion influence young women’s SSS valence and complexity. Further research may examine directionality and mechanistic causality of these associations, as well as how multiple varied sources of information interact to produce diverse SSS configurations.

KEYWORDS: Adolescent sexual behaviour, sex education, sexual information, sexual self-schema, women’s sexuality